This document provides an overview of key skills needed for effective selling in the banking and financial services industry. It discusses 10 prerequisites for selling, including outcome-based selling, controlling personal state, creating rapport, time management, listening skills, asking questions, language use, handling objections, regular practice, and knowing when to walk away from unreceptive customers. The skills discussed aim to help salespeople understand customer needs, build trust, and influence purchase decisions through planned and personalized communication.

1. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
Personal Services
Product Knowledge
The Competitive Environment
Selling Skills
Customers Service
Sales Interviews
MODULE COVERAGE
1
Introduction to Marketing
Customer Relationship Management

2. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
What is selling?
Selling is responding to customer needs and wants through planned, personalized
communication in order to influence purchase decisions and ensure satisfaction. Simply
put, effective selling is helping the customer to buy the right product.
• Selling is planned communication. This means that as a banker you need to spend
adequate time learning about and understanding your products and their suitability to
your different customers. You need to know the features and associated benefits of
your product and should be able to demonstrate them effectively to particular
customers, and genuinely advise them on what best suits their need.
• Selling is personalized communication. It involves interaction with the customer, usually
face-to-face or over the phone. Selling is not advertising, then, since advertising is
impersonal communication directed toward entire market segments.
• Selling necessitates customer knowledge. Each customer is unique. The selling
techniques that work with one customer may not work with another. In addition to
knowing your product, you must also know your customers – their likes/ dislikes, family
circumstances, religion, political inclination, age, ethnicity and other attributes.
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3. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
• Successful selling involves ethics.
The importance of integrity in a sales career cannot be overstated. Your customers
must be able to trust you. Only by being dependable and trustworthy with
your customers will you be able to succeed in a sales career. By keeping
“customer satisfaction” as your goal, you will gain repeat business and
advance in selling.
• Selling requires persistence and patience.
Selling can be tough. Many times, salespeople are not greeted with a warm
welcome from potential customers. To succeed in selling, you will have to get
used to hearing the word “No.” Successful salespeople don’t get discouraged
or give up. They continue looking for ways to make the sale. Some sales just
take more time than others. Certain customers are slower when making up
their minds. It is important to remain patient, politely persistent so as to
eventually make the sale.
• It is not enough to know what these selling skills and attributes are. They need
to be practiced and honed until they become habit that the sales person
practices without even thinking. The test of a pro sales person is that they are
unconsciously competent at the sales skills and attributes elaborated here.
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4. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
Prerequisites for selling
i. Outcome based selling
The best salespeople probably make fewer sales calls - but better ones. They understand
that the best persuasion techniques in the world work much better with some planning
behind them. They focus a lot of effort on preparing for a call. while keeping their own
outcome at the forefront of all sales planning and activities, they keenly consider the
customer’s required outcomes or satisfaction and they determine the logical next step
for each meeting and then, working backwards, they think about what they need to do
to make the sale a reality. They look at every idea they come up with from their
customer's perspective.
ii. Control of your personal state
If you are in a good state of mind, your language will flow easier, you'll gain rapport
instantaneously, sound more convincing and let out the information you want faster.
Your professional selling skills will all be operating at their peak. The vital skill is here is
self-mastery -being able to master your state so that it doesn’t matter if you’ve just
been booked by police for over-speeding, had an argument with your partner or
suffered a loss. You will still be in a friendly mood when you walk into the sales meeting.
You are focused on the client. You are focused enough to sense the client’s mood and if
their mood is down and you’re feeling “on top of the world” you are capable of toning
down your mood to be only a little more upbeat than them.
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5. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
iii. Creating Rapport
• Rapport is the process of establishing and maintaining a relationship of
mutual trust and understanding between two or more people. Being in
rapport with someone is like getting the attention of their unconscious
mind. The real test for rapport is the degree to which a person is
responsive and open.
• When people are in rapport there is mutual responsiveness. If someone is
hesitant, uncooperative and reluctant to communicate, it is highly likely
that rapport is not sufficiently deep for the person to be open.
• A really good salesperson can reach this level of rapport quite quickly with
almost anyone. This is probably the most under-trained professional
selling skill.
• Sharon Drew Morgan in her book “Sales on the Line” writes,
“There are three ways to make a sale: Rapport, Rapport and Rapport. No
matter how good your product is, how good your questions are, if you are
out of Rapport with your buyer then there won’t be a sale.”
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6. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
iv. Time & self management
Most salespeople are out on the road most of the time. Often, they do
not have someone to keep them organised. Top salespeople plan
their time and activities and they keep organized by:
• Using their diaries effectively and extensively
• Focusing on the priorities all the time
• Being disciplined with their own and other people’s time
• Remembering to carry their sales aids with them
• Always having business cards with them
• Always carrying a pen and a notebook
• Always being on time
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7. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
v. Listening
Listening skills are essential professional selling skills if you want to be a good
salesperson. Listening shows respect for your client.
It also allows you to hear what is really important to them and to spot needs
when they arise and to learn more about the customer themselves. It is easier
to listen if you have planned a series of questions to ask before you go into the
sales call.
vi. Asking questions
The questions you ask your prospect should be aimed at finding out their
problems, needs and thus determining if and how your product or service can
help them.
You can then ask questions that focus on the effects of the problem, which in
turn focuses the prospect on all the benefits they would gain by solving the
problem.
vii. Use of appropriate language
Successful sales people are very good at the use of language.
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8. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
viii. Handling Objections
Uncovering and handling objections is one of the most important professional
selling skills a salesperson can have. An objection is anything the prospect
says or does that is an actual or potential obstacle to smooth closing.
Prospects object for different reasons such as dislike of decision-making,
reluctance to give up something old for new, unpleasant past associations
with you or your company, unconvincing or unclear presentation .
Objections can fall under any of the categories below:
• Product objection
• Objection to the salesperson
• Objection to the your company
• Don't want to make a decision
• Service objection
• Price objection
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9. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
What you could do
1. Strive to keep the buyers’ attitude toward you and your product positive.
2. Let customer know you are on this/ her side
3. Help customers with the objections (to even clarify them better).
4. If you get no response, give a multiple choice question to display an attitude
of genuine caring.
5. Help your prospect to realistically examine reasons for and against buying.
6. Bring out any or all of your options for the customer and give time for
rethinking if the customer completely fails to buy.
• Whether you close the sale or not, always follow up with customers to find out
what you can learn from them. The most successful sales people are the ones
that have repeat business.
• The only way to make a good sale is to have clients who are happy with what
you provided. It is always a mistake to be so desperate that you must make
this sale today if you don't care what happens tomorrow.
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10. THE UGANDA INSTITUTE
OF BANKING &
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UIBFS
ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED
ix. Regular practice.
The most professional salespeople practice all the skills mentioned above
most of the time. They practice until they are masters at them. Until they
have unconscious competence.
x. When to walk away from the customer
Ask customers whether they are seeing the challenges that you see in their
business. Ask them if they have a plan to resolve it. Ask them how they’re
going to fix it. So instead of giving the solution, ask the question.
Get them to think about whether they are doing well with their current
course. Could things be better? Could they be more efficient? What
problems are they not even aware of? Do they have a plan on improving
things? How are they going to do it? Then leave them with your contacts
and an opportunity for a further discussion.
When they call you back – they would have had some time to think about
their issues, and they’ll be a lot more receptive to what you have to offer.
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