egyii blog

There is a lot of talk today in:

Government (Obama has been promising it in recent speeches and I have just counted 33 times that The White House Blog has written on it in different postings in 3 days!)

Business (“…transparency in Pharma’s relationships with physicians is here to stay…” from MSNBC)

Banking (Geitner “..the necessary response is to try to bring more confidence, more transparency to the strength of the system…” from NPR)

…about transparency. But what is transparency?

Merriam Webster’s dictionary describes it as:

2 a: free from pretense or deceit : frank b: easily detected or seen through : obvious c: readily understood d: characterized by visibility or accessibility of information especially concerning business practices.

Transparency is clearly one of the most talked about solutions as a way out of our current crisis, as highlighted in Trusted Matters.

Transparency in Banking

How does all of this relate specifically to banking and resolving the banks woes and challenges?

After the Great Depression and the initial “big financial collapse,” the government bodies worldwide have required high levels of requirements around transparency in the banking system- to a point where both the governments, the bank employees and the general public are confused.

There is probably too much information – which makes it absurdly difficult to digest and understand.

Problem: If the governments and the bank employees are confused, aren’t the clients confused? How does this translate into concerns around relationship management with clients?

Most banking clients have lost trust and are trying to re-build the relationships with their clients. Re-building trust is not going to be easy, but by focusing on your Relationship Managers’behavioural skills it can be done. On top of that, instilling a level of personal transparency (maybe we call it “truth”?) will always be a big bonus.

Simply put, all clients (as they sift through the paperwork and legalise) want to know is “How safe is my money?” Can anyone answer that?

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Today’s ‘crazy’ financial services market presents flexible, forward-thinking financial industry players with an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and grow their business.  This is the time for change. This is the time for those responsible for client contact to stand back and take another look at how they influence their clients.

To date, banks have emphasized product over relationship by offering what seemed like good returns on a whole host of financial products to a hungry audience. The time has now come where, like a guilty husband who has cheated on his wife, they have to re-seduce their clients. They have to be sensitive, caring and patient, all the time approaching their clients gently and testing the water.

This style of influence emphasizes the relationship first and foremost and the product a relatively distant second. But true relationship-building requires more than knowing how to ask the right questions to uncover recognised and unrecognised needs, and present a tailored solution. True relationship-building requires authenticity on the part of the Relationship Manager. And a client can sense when a Relationship Manager is inauthentic, however smoothly he runs through the sales process. 

This means there needs to be a focus on the second-by-second human behaviours passing between people. Relationship Managers need to learn to ‘calibrate’ effectively, which means paying attention to the many small signals their client is sending through their face and body language, their tone of voice, and the words they use. In this way they can ‘enter’ their client’s world and see the situation and themselves through their client’s eyes.  As Henry Ford said, “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

Why is this so important? Because being able to see through your client’s eyes opens the window to what she truly wants. And as we all know, the secret to winning other people’s trust and loyalty is to give them what they want. And at the end of the day, in addition to products and solutions, your client wants to be heard and understood. Then you can start writing your own cheque.

So take a minute to think about the way you behave in front of your clients. Eliminate everything from your mind, including your well-prepared script and your client strategy. Just go in there and open your mind to the world offered to you by your client. Treat your client like a great teacher, there to help you go places you have never gone before.

Bank clients today are like swinging voters. They are neither Republican nor Democrat, but are lost as to which way to turn and ready to turn towards a bank which can win their trust. What an opportunity! Go and get it!

James Irvine, Team Egyii Singapore

Many of us have attended courses on selling skills, communication skills, rapport-building skills etc. On these courses we usually learn a step-by-step process for getting from where we are to where we want to be, whether this is closing a sale or merely making our client feel comfortable.

The trouble is, when we are interacting with our client we are more focused on the process than on the human magic that is taking place. We have a set of questions well prepared, and by hook or crook we are going to get through those questions by the end of the meeting. And while we are thinking about our goal for the meeting, we are missing out on what our client is really telling us with her body language, tone of voice and choice of words.

Not only that, we fail to enter this magical kingdom which opens up second by second during the conversation. We operate on some kind of auto pilot where our responses to what our client is communicating have already been decided long before she started talking.

But if we just forget about our goals, our processes and our own thoughts and enter the conversation second by second, we will find a new world of knowledge and understanding opening before us. And as we learn, we respond with an authentic thought and feeling so that as our words come out of our mouth, our client feels truly listened to and understood. And this is the magic we all need in our communication. Just open our minds, switch from auto-pilot to present consciousness, and respond naturally to whatever comes our way.

This, my friends, is the secret of persuasion.