Meeting You Where You Are…

Building bridges takes time. Creating a Performance Culture is a long-term process too. Each must rest on a solid foundation and both need ongoing care and maintenance. Some elements of your culture work well. Others need an overhaul. Don’t rebuild, retool.

Taking You Where You Want to Go

It’s your bank, your culture, your vision. We don’t force fit our solutions into the environment; we overlay resources to align with your going forward needs and objectives. This collaborative effort creates high levels of employee and customer engagement while fostering sustainable bottom-line results.

Frequently Asked Questions

We began St. Meyer & Hubbard with a transparent philosophy. We are open with our staff and plain spoken with our clients. Below are several questions we have been asked since launching our company in 2000.

What about Trainer Certification?

It is robust and available for every Playbook. This process includes attendance as a participant in a certain Playbook, an immediate one or two-day Trainer Certification regimen, videotaped teach backs and ongoing coaching as needed. Once bankers are leader certified they receive leader materials and notes as well as PowerPoint decks and tools needed to immediately lead classes for turnover audiences.

How do we reach you?

If you have a need, contact Dana Perkins at dperkins@smandh.com or at 816-434-5543.

When will we see results and how will we know?

This is the most difficult question we always address. Results depend on commitment – the commitment within the bank to hold associates accountable to use the tools we teach. If the bank holds its managers accountable to lead their routines and if the bank holds its people accountable to prepare, execute and follow up on conversations in a trust-based manner, the sky is the limit of what you can expect.

One $1.3 billion client earned 15,400 referrals in one year and closed 40% of them
One large bank saw a 500% year over year increase in referrals to Treasury Management
One small business division met 97% of its loan goal by June of a particular year
One $900million bank hit 158% of its deposit goal in the first year of our partnership

We measure this by working with the bank to select five Key Performance Indicators. We benchmark each KPI at the beginning of the partnership and measure them monthly.

What does this cost?

We are more expensive than most firms and budget friendly for those banks that have selected us.

Why should we work with you?

Everyone has their own reasons for selecting a firm they wish to partner with. It all comes down to fit. For some banks we fit like a glove. For others, we are out of scope. Our goals are several fold with each client; to help create and sustain a Performance Culture for the long-term, to maximize ROI, to provide for the personal growth of the bankers we teach and to be certain we are in sync with the customer experience and overall strategies of each client.

Who at SM&H should receive our RFP?

No one. We don’t respond to RFPs. Banks that are looking for a competitive edge no longer find RFPs relevant. St. Meyer & Hubbard was founded on client intimacy and completing the same multi-paged form that everyone else does is not in our DNA.

Who is your competition?

From the outside, there are several world class firms that are in the mix when we have an opportunity to serve a new bank. In addition to SM&H, banks evaluate firms such as Clarity Advantage, MZ Bierly, Cohen Brown, Schneider Sales Management, Omega Performance, Richardson, and Huthwaite. Some banks create programs internally. Our job is to support not supplant their efforts as a performance partner.

What don’t you do from a Performance Culture standpoint?

There are firms in the marketplace that will say anything to generate business. We won’t. We are often asked to help with incentive programs, CRM systems, scorecards, marketing, department or bank structure, underwriting, branch placement, strategic planning, hiring and sales surveys and more. We do none of that. It’s not our expertise. We do have many partners we are confident with to refer those needs to.

What size banks do you work with?

We have partnered with community banks with as few as three offices and with the largest banks in the world. We currently have several banks below $1billion in assets and our wheelhouse bank is between $750million-$5billion. We also work with organizations who wish to fill in with a vertical module here and there such as using LinkedIn effectively, better Negotiation Skills, new client Onboarding or others.

Describe your training philosophy.

Banking is light years removed from the decades or the 80s, 90s and 00s. Unfortunately, many firms have not adapted to those radical changes and therefore bankers are still being taught consultative selling and are still asking questions like “what keeps you awake at night?” As a boutique firm, we can quickly help bankers adjust to the way consumers and entrepreneurs purchase banking solutions by modifying tools and classroom exercises and by creating new Playbooks that meet just in time skills.

Simply stated, we focus on the seven basic financial needs of business and the four basic financial needs of consumers. We teach to those needs in a trust-based format that puts the client, prospect and Centers of Influence in the center of the conversation.

It all begins and ends with sales management routines an ongoing accountability from the top of the house to the newest associate.

What is your approach to eLearning?

There are great companies that create eLearning modules, self-study or other means. We do not. Our approach is classroom centric. We do have clients that engage through an In-Perpetuity License which allows them to take a certain Playbook or all Playbooks internally and create Podcasts, skill builders or eLearning. These are typically organizations that have well established training departments with internal organizational development and design expertise.

How long does this take?

It depends on the budget and the capacity the bank has to take folks out of the field for training. Clients typically take a long-term approach based on a curriculum of three to four Playbooks annually. This helps the bank focus on top priority training needs, be budget friendly and time sensitive. Three clients have been with us using this approach for more than a decade. Others are in the 5-10 year range. We earn the right to continue working with a bank every year, however, and we are pleased that we rarely see attrition once a bank initiates a partnership.

Describe how you get started with a potential client.

We get to know you and your objectives from the first telephone conversation. We even use an intimate approach during our courting process. One bank CEO suggested it was; the best and most unique sales process she had ever experienced from an outside resource. Should we have the privilege of working with you, we assemble a team of colleagues including an Implementation Manager, an SM&H principal (Bob or Jack) and a trainer based on the audiences we will be working with. We begin with a White Board Process, followed by the Sales Management Playbook. We then teach the Retail Playbooks or Commercial Playbooks based on the priorities of the bank with corresponding Reconnect Webinars after each Playbook. We round it out with Performance Coaching of executives and senior managers – the leverage point of every culture.

What are those lines of business?

We are most widely known in Commercial and Business Banking. That’s two of them. We also do lots of work in Retail Banking and Call Centers. Wealth Management and Trust are other disciplines as well as Commercial Real Estate, Mortgage and Insurance.

What is your area of specialty?

The industry knows SM&H as a training company. We like to think of ourselves as Behavioral Conversationalists. That simply means that we work throughout the organization to help improve the way sales colleagues and sales managers dialogue with their clients – inside and outside the bank. We work in one industry – banking. We provide cohesive Performance Culture systems in seven lines of business.

How large is St. Meyer & Hubbard?

We are a staff of 12. We have full-time clients and we afford your bankers with full-time associates – not contract consultants. Ten associates are client facing in some way. We have three Implementation Managers who help clients with logistics and strategies. We employ six facilitators and coaches who are in the field with clients regularly (including Jack and Bob). We are a virtual company and while our world headquarters is in Elgin, IL, our real office is on an airplane or inside a bank, helping improve sales or sales management conversations.

What is a Performance Culture versus a Sales Culture?

Sales Culture	Performance Culture
Customer Service	Consistent Customer Experience
Consultative	Trust and Value-Based
Involvement (opt in)	Commitment (all in)
Numbers and Tick Marks	Quality
Straight Jacket	Flexible Consistency
Campaign after campaign	Sustainability
Quick Results	Urgent Patience
Cross-Selling	Cross-Solving
Busy Bank	Targeted and Focused
Scoreboard Staring	Scoreboard Glancing
Marketing, Operations, IT control	Partner
Training Events	Learning Organization
Your Way (my process)	Our Way (Client Experience Process)
Manage Numbers	Lead People

Meeting You Where You Are…

Taking You Where You Want to Go

What You've Experienced

The St. Meyer & Hubbard Difference

Meet the Team

Jack Hubbard

Chairman & Chief Experience Officer

Bob St. Meyer

President and Chief Operating Officer

Dana Perkins

Senior Consultant

Julie Ruffolo

Senior Consultant

Margie Kensil

Senior Consultant

Joe St. Meyer

Senior Consultant

Frequently Asked Questions

Taking you where you want to go starts with a conversation…