Keeping Your Team Close To Clients - Linda Marcum - B2B EQ - Episode # 33

Not giving your new sales reps any goals for their first year may seem like a mistake, but it’s the secret to this brand's success. Our guest this week is a skilled manager who works to enable her team for success, and help them hit their targets. Please welcome to the show, Senior Vice President - Director of Sales Enablement at BOK Financial, Linda Marcum!

Linda sits down with Host Tim Harris to discuss how BOK, and the banking industry at large, approach the sales process. Linda shares how BOK had achieved an average sales rep tenure of 11 years, the risks of siloed knowledge, and lessons the SaaS industry can learn from banking.

Takeaways:

• Compared to SaaS sales teams, banking teams are structured a bit differently. In banking sales, client relationships are much longer, and require a more one on one relationship. Average tenure for a banking sales rep is almost 11 years.
• The most important soft skill for a seller to have is curiosity. To truly help your clients, you need to understand their business. Sellers need to leverage their curiosity to learn about how clients sell, how they work with their clients, and how they operate internally.
• While you want clients to trust sellers, you don’t want sellers to get bogged down with service questions. To help alleviate workload, sellers need to establish a trusted relationship between their clients and specific service team members.
• A large challenge for sales teams is the dissemination of knowledge. While an individual seller may know all the nuances off the top of their head, siloed data makes it difficult to take time off or distribute workload.
• While client retention is a key indicator of success, you don’t want to become stagnant. Sales leadership should also be focused on establishing a good balance of satisfying current clients and bringing on new clients.
• The key to establishing a strong relationship with your clients is to meet them where they are. By allowing your sellers flexibility between virtual and in person selling, you increase client satisfaction and expedite the sales process.
• While not giving sellers goals in their first year may seem counterintuitive, it allows new hires to focus on truly understanding the clients. Instead of prioritizing quick wins, a focus on fundamentals builds stronger client relationships.

Quote of the Show:

• “Let your customers drive that decision. Don't make that decision for them.” - Linda Marcum

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-marcum-b105893/
• Website: https://www.bokfinancial.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b2b-eq/id1672326834
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1T2zlqNsSYATzXFPH1DquY
• Google Podcast - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mYXN0Lndpc3RpYS5jb20vY2hhbm5lbHMvajRuNnNjYmc2Ni9yc3M