Awakening a sleeping behemoth Standard Bank’s Stuart Loxton has a triple whammy of big commitments to meet. Put simply, as director for Wealth and Product Sales, his job is to find better ways to sell more products to more customers, and in so doing to kick-start life-long relationships. That may not sound particularly unique, but there are a pair of seemingly unrelated concepts there which together create an intriguing proposition: banking and sales. If you don’t naturally associate those two words, you may appreciate the sizeable task with which Loxton has been charged. And yet evidence of the shift is everywhere. Just look at the switch in Standard Bank slogans from ‘Simpler. Better. Faster.’, which was largely about improvements to process fulfilment, to ‘Inspired. Motivated. Involved.’, which is significantly more proactive.

“The difference is massive. With the new positioning, we are talking about our long-term objective as a partner to you,” says Loxton. “The objective is that you as an individual are able to speak about the many reasons you specifically choose to be associated as a customer, with Standard Bank. That is a wonderful opportunity for any bank, but you need a sales environment to drive a lot of that stuff.”

But is it really selling?

Kick starting a proactive sales operation requires an understanding of how best to deal with customers however, and of what the appropriate selling opportunities might be. It is also critical to define what constitutes a sale in the banking environment. “When a client comes into the branch asking for a home loan, their requirement is only that the loan be granted, quickly and with the minimum of fuss. The question is, do you define the completion of that documentation as a sale, or do you define it as fulfilment, as an admin task? In other words, is the bank really in the business of selling home loans?” says Loxton.

“For that matter, does a customer even want to buy a home loan? No, probably not. The home loan is just a necessity which lets them put a roof over their heads and provide warmth, security and shelter for their family. So the opportunity becomes, if they are already thinking in terms of solutions rather than just of specific products or financial vehicles, what else can we do for that customer as part of the home loan purchasing process?” says Loxton.

Gathering the skills required

In this new way of thinking, the opportunity for the bank to become a sales operation is very strong. “When you start convincing a customer to do something rather than simply doing something that they have requested, that for me is your divide. That becomes the difference between an administrative function and a sales function, and it requires special skills because of the nature of the customer interface. People don’t wake up in the morning and say, “I am feeling kindly towards my beneficiaries, let me dash off and buy some life cover. That doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. In this environment, you have what I call an unwilling buyer and a very willing seller,” says Loxton.

“But there are huge opportunities. When someone buys a new home, invariably they fill it with more things. That means that they need a review of their short-term insurance to cover that new content. There is also a correlation, when you look at the trends, between a new home purchase and the purchase of a new vehicle, so we can talk about vehicle finance. Those new purchases might have an impact on their savings so there is the opportunity to provide a financial advisory service. And the list goes on,” he adds. “What we are saying is that if we want to retain that client forever, we better start the value add game.”

“This happens because traditionally banks are not in the sales world, they are in the fulfilment world. At the top end of the financial echelon we have always lived with customers who use multiple banks to provide their financial services. What is happening now however is that lower down the financial echelon, people are now becoming multi-banked. I believe this is an absolute consequence of our own banking sectors not having an inbred culture of going out and looking for ways to add more value to customers’ lives in a primary core banking relationship,” says Loxton.

“To counter that, the corporate strategy has to be that we want to add more value to our clients because in return they will stay with us and we will, as an organisation, give greater shareholder contribution,” he adds.

Categorising customers

Suddenly, in a selling environment, banks have the need to engage in segmentation. And not just vague segmentation, but the real deal. The task becomes that of getting the appropriate product offering delivered through the appropriate mechanisms – be that a person, a machine or a cell phone – to a specific community, so that they are blown away by the results.

“This is important because in the past South African banks have acted along the lines that there is one offer and as for whether the customer is a 25 year old hip hop artist or a 75 year old retiree, that is largely the customer’s problem,” says Loxton.

“Now we are saying hold on, we need to be more customer-centric in our thinking to add more value to that relationship with the aim of retaining the customer forever. That is powerful stuff, but it comes from a sales culture, not a process fulfilment culture. If you are partnering with a customer for life through a customer-centric culture, I promise you that customer isn’t going to be multi-banked when they are worth R15 million one day. They are simply not. Because the nature of the relationship has been ‘we are with you for the long term,’” he says.

Roping in the marketing department

Marketing plays a significant role in any business’s life, but Loxton says participation in the marketing approach is critical for sales in particular. In his philosophy, marketing can significantly aid, or indeed hinder, the achievement of a sales target. “I would see marketing’s role in the sales function as that of making customers aware of the kind of things we can actually do for them at a product level. That is the big issue for me,” he says.

An example Loxton uses is that of Liberty and Standard Bank’s short-term insurance business which competes with that offered by Mutual and Federal or SA Eagle. If you have never heard of it, perhaps that illustrates the challenge.

“Many people are aware that there is a Liberty/Standard Bank connection, because they know of the unit trust and life assurance offerings for example. But very few people know that we have a sophisticated short term business. So what I would do is ask marketing to facilitate an awareness of a particular product so that when I call a client about short-term insurance, they are aware that we are active in that business and that we have products to offer,” says Loxton.

Nobody needs a hammer.

This adage is as old as the hills, but it highlights a mode of thinking which is coming to banks in a big way. It goes something like this, although there are a thousand versions of it:

Nobody needs a hammer. When a customer is in the hardware store looking to buy a hammer, it isn’t the hammer that they want, but a means by which they can get a nail into their living room wall. But for that matter, they don’t actually want a nail in the wall, what they want is a means by which they can hang the painting they bought at the weekend. The painting’s purpose is to beautify the living room and so ultimately, they are in the hardware store looking for a hammer because they want a more beautiful living room. 

Beware the anxious Thai taxi driver

Banks experience the dual-edged sword of being extremely high-profile. Nothing invokes customer venom like an ATM that isn’t working at precisely the random moment when they have decided to pay it a visit. That is often enough for a customer to question the entire reputation of the bank in conversation with friends or colleagues, however much overkill that might be. The level of transactional servicing through Internet banking and ATMs has become such that there is a cast-iron expectation they will be available. But if you really consider the expectation, it is actually pretty staggering: today, you would be incensed if you put your South African credit card into an ATM in the middle of Bangkok at two in the morning and it didn’t immediately spit out cash. That is one hell of a minimum standard to maintain.

You selling, or taking orders?

Are you certain of which role you play? You may think you’re in sales, but Loxton defines it thus: if you have a proactive seller and a reactive buyer, you are in sales. If on the other hand you have a proactive buyer, such as someone coming into a bank branch looking for a home loan, and a reactive seller, such as a bank branch staff member, then you have an administrative fulfilment function. Not clear? Then check your remuneration. An order taker might enjoy a high basic and a 13th cheque, but the ability to influence your earnings is limited. A salesperson on the other hand, might have to fight for every single scrap of business, but there are big rewards and big incentives for success and earnings can be influenced substantially.

Real customer-centricity

Mick Jagger may leap about the stage in tight trousers and a torn t-shirt, but it is pretty certain he would fire any banker that took that into consideration. As a 63-year old multi-millionaire, he has 63-year old multi-millionaire demands, and though true customer-centricity would require his bank to understand his lifestyle and his needs, the primary core relationship between Jagger and his bank is that of trusted financial partner and valued customer. According to Loxton, any sales role will always, of necessity, be subservient to that relationship.

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