This blog article was originally posted on our QDS Financial Education blog. To read more articles like this one, subscribe to QDS Financial Education. I recently read an article talking mainly about what a big mistake turning your institution into a sales culture is or can be. The article points out that most community focused institutions talk about their differentiators being their people and their service. The article also claimed that creating this culture can often be expensive and a turn off to existing employees who may feel uncomfortable "selling". The problem with this rationale, in my opinion, is that it appears to be a close-minded version of someone with a negative view of sales. Truly, if we take the used car model and the ABC - Always Be Closing - strategy, then yes that would be painful to implement both to customers and employees alike. However, if done correctly, with clear communication and training, and while there may be expense in getting there, ultimately the return on investment is huge. If you stick your head in the sand and don't change in today's market, you soon will become irrelevant or part of someone else's institution that's doing it right.

White Board Video: Episode 6 - NCR vs MX-8800 As more Financial Institutions looks to consider video as a model to serve customers better, we compare the two primary competitors in the space and how their approaches are different.

White Board Videos: Episode 5 - How Integration Works for Multi-Users In this video we will explain how integrating a cash discriminator can be accomplished in a multi-user branch environment. This allows most branches to maximize the usage of a shared machine on the back counter. This solution is one of the most effective ways to process large amounts of cash coming in.

Whiteboard Videos: Episode 4 - Smart Safes 2.0 Smart safes can help deepen the banking relationship and offer additional value to your retail customer. In this video we discuss how today's smart safes provide added recycling capability, along with deposit functionality, to further automate the cash handling process.

Ways to Grow Your Business Without Big Branches While the overall economy is still in recovery mode, most financial institutions have been able to pivot from survival mode back into growth mode. A good number of institutions have merged to handle increased regulatory burden, or have survived the storm and are now looking back towards growing their business. So what strategies can a community institution deploy to help their business grow without having to build 2M branches?

Automation Avenue Episode 003 - Large Commercial Deposits In this episode we talk about large commercial deposits and customer service and what that means for banks and credit unions.