Selling 101: Do Credit Unions and Selling Play Well Together?
by Robert McGarvey
Credit union profitability is sliding downward. One consultant, Megan Cummins at Fiserv-owned Raddon Performance Analytics, insists that the fix is to nurture a sales culture within them.
You know that Fiserv is a sales culture. It lives to sell, simple as that, and it sells to live.
Would something similar work in a credit union?
As for the claim that credit union profitability is tumbling, Cummins points to Raddon data that say only 29.8% of the 300 credit unions it measures data for are profitable. That’s down from 33.9% two years ago.
Cummins told CU Today: “‘There are credit unions that definitely have a sales culture, but there are still many that don’t,’ Cummins said, recalling a recent meeting with a credit union during which the topic of sales was addressed. ‘They wouldn’t even let me say the word sales in the meeting because you can’t say sales at this credit union. They said they never use the word because they don’t want to sell to their members.’
‘In that meeting the credit union said they never want to feel that they’re selling. But at this point we have to sell to the members we have. We have no choice.’” (Emphasis added.)