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Position Title:                  

Client Engagement Manager

Position Summary:        

• Organize, lead, and manage implementation of Clarity’s client performance improvement and training projects involving multiple client and Clarity team members and work streams.

• Develop client relationships and identify opportunities to provide additional services.

Essential Functions/Responsibilities:

• Works with client and Clarity sales team members to define best implementation strategies for training and organizational change.

• Assists Clarity sales team members to develop client proposals.

• Serves as the primary Clarity client interface and project leader from project onset until completion.

• Identifies and executes effective ways to engage client coaches and leaders.

• Schedules, leads, and represents Clarity at project meetings with client including kick-off meetings, mid-project reviews, and end of project reviews.

• Identifies opportunities to provide additional services to clients.

Required Skills/Experience:

• Retail, small business, or commercial banking industry experience/knowledge.

• Formal education or job-based training in principles of adult learning, training program design, organizational change management.

• Minimum 5-7 years of project management experience implementing training programs, organizational change initiatives, or introduction of new systems or tools.

• Proven ability and willingness to manage multiple projects and tasks as well as prioritize with minimal supervision in a fast paced changing environment.

• Independent and self-reliant, ready to work in a small business.

• Ability to attend to detail work and administration.

• Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook.

• Ability to work well with all levels of client team members.

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to travel (50%)
• Able to lift and carry for short distances suitcases or boxes of training or other materials weighing 20 – 40 pounds.

Resumes, recommendations, and inquiries go to  nickmiller@clarityadvantage.com.

Date: February 23, 2012

Title: New Beginnings – Strategic Conversations with Clients and Prospects for the New Year

Time: 12:00 PM ET (30 minutes)

Fee: Complimentary

Host: Nick Miller, President of Clarity Advantage

Intended Audience:  small business banking leaders, small business bankers, branch managers, heads of retail and small business, heads of client experience, heads of small business strategy

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Webinar Description:

Oh, my, our heads are spinning!  The end-of-year/beginning-of-the-year dust is settling.  The Republican presidential hopefuls head to the primaries. The optimistically upward flutterings in some sectors of the U.S. economy are overshadowed by the potential financial wipeout in the European Union, the tip of which is visible on the horizon.  For example, what happens to U.S. exports or imports if French banks collapse under the weight of a Greek withdrawal from the EU?

What ever could we find to talk to our clients and prospects about as the reality of 2012 settles in? 

In this brilliantly packed, deftly delivered 30-minute webinar, Nick Miller, President of Clarity Advantage will discuss:

• The critical importance of the strategic conversation to our roles as bankers and consultants.
• The structure for the strategic conversation business owners want to have with their bankers.
• How to prepare for the conversation using industry information and financial statement information.
• How to get into the conversation.
• How to engage in the conversation EVEN IF you’re not a strategy consultant.
• How to respond to the never-welcome, monosyllabic, grunt answer or “Gosh, I don’t know. What do you think?”
• (And, last but not least) How to get out of the conversation, whether it’s going well or poorly.

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Have colleagues who may be interested in attending?  Use the “share” buttons below to spread the word!

Clarity Advantage has assembled seven of its most insightful stories on positioning and selling the value of bank solutions, now available as a podcast on iTunes.

To listen, visit http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/positioning-value/id486833977.

Date: November 17, 2011

Time: 12:00 PM ET

Fee: Complimentary

Hosts: Nick Miller, President of Clarity Advantage and Bobby Martin, President of Vertical IQ

Intended Audience: small business banking leaders, small business bankers, branch managers, heads of retail and small business, heads of client experience, heads of small business strategy

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Want to be a hero to your small business and business banking clients?

Talk to them about their cash flow and cash cycle – the NUMBER ONE issue that businesses want  bankers to be “expert” in, the NUMBER ONE issue on which businesses want bankers to be their advisors, the NUMBER ONE provider of non-interest income to banks.

And yet….. And yet…. During the last two years of the recession, Barlow Research Associates data indicates that less than 20% of small business and business banking customers participated in a conversation with their bankers about cash flow and the impact of the recession.

Certainment, mesdames et messieurs, if we want to be heroes to our clients AND to our employers, we must focus on payment cycles and cash flows.

In this brilliantly packed, deftly delivered one-hour webinar, Nick Miller, President of Clarity Advantage, and Bobby Martin, President of Vertical IQ, will show you:

• The structure for the conversation business owners WANT to have with their bankers
• How to prepare for the conversation using industry information and financial statement information
• How to get into the conversation
• How to engage in the conversation EVEN IF you feel you’re not an expert at cash management
• How to build your expertise in cash management quickly, if you feel you’re not an expert
• How to use industry information effectively

And, we will be introducing a brand new tool, VERTICAL IQ, that will support you brilliantly in these conversations.

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On October 13, 2011, business banking specialist and Clarity Advantage President Nick Miller will participate in The Road from Commercial Relationship Manager to Trusted Advisor: Is it Worth the Journey?, a briefing offered by the American Bankers Association.

Banks can increase both customer profitability and loyalty by achieving trusted advisor status with their business customers, says business banking specialist and Clarity Advantage President Nick Miller.

Miller, along with RBC Bank Executive Vice President Ginger Siegel and Pinnacle Financial Partners Senior Vice President Chip Higgins, will address this opportunity in a briefing entitled The Road from Commercial Relationship Manager to Trusted Advisor: Is it Worth the Journey?  Offered by the American Bankers Association, the ninety-minute briefing is scheduled for October 13, 2011 and will focus on research around trusted advisor relationships, the journey to trusted advisor status, and tools and checklists bankers can use to measure progress toward achieving this status.

“In this briefing, we’ll talk about the decisions that senior bank leaders must address to develop more trusted advisor relationships with their small and medium-sized business clients,” says  Miller.  “Our research and others’ findings suggest banks can earn significantly better client satisfaction, retention, revenue, deposit balances, loan outstandings, and referrals through a series of decisions, beginning with strategy and including value proposition, sales process, infrastructure, recruiting, and better execution of relationship management.”

To learn more about and register for The Road from Commercial Relationship Manager to Trusted Advisor: Is it Worth the Journey? go to http://www.aba.com/teleweb/tb101311a.htm.

About Clarity Advantage: Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage helps banks generate more profitable relationships faster with small and medium-sized companies, their owners, and employees.  Clarity consulting, communications, sales tools and training help banks recruit and deploy sales team members, choose their best business and consumer prospects and clients, then approach, engage, sell, expand, and retain relationships. Clarity also assists banks with consumer sales and cash management sales. Clarity clients have posted increases in household penetration, cross-sells, deposit volume, and loan volume.  Visitors to Clarity’s website, http://www.clarityadvantage.com, can subscribe to “The Weekly Sales Thought,” a free eNewsletter and podcast focused on business-to-business selling and sales management.

Contact:

Karen Tunks

Clarity Advantage

980-939-2112

karen.tunks@clarityadvantage.com

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Clarity Advantage and Barlow Research Associates to share insights from Barlow’s third quarter 2011 Economic Pulse survey in a complimentary webinar on Thursday, September 15 at 12:00 PM EDT.

Concord, Mass., August 30, 2011 — A critical challenge business bankers face is understanding how the U.S. economy affects their business customers and how to talk to them about it.  With the right information, bankers can more easily formulate questions and conversation starters with their customers and prospects.

Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage along with Barlow Research Associates will address this challenge in a complimentary webinar entitled Talking in Tough Times: Conversations with Business Owners. The one-hour webinar is scheduled for Thursday, September 15 at 12:00 PM EDT and will benefit bankers involved in small business and middle-market relationship management, product sales and sales management, marketing, market research and line-of-business strategy.

During the webinar, Clarity Advantage President Nick Miller and Barlow Research Project Director Bernie Kuechler will share insights from Barlow’s third quarter 2011 Economic Pulse survey.  Miller and Kuechler will also share specific ways bankers could use this information in their conversations with business owners.  Some of the insights they will discuss:

• As small business financial condition continues to weaken, business owners expect the U.S. economy to deteriorate, yet are somewhat optimistic about their own business’s performance expectations.
• Business owners are showing small signs of investing in capital equipment, even as they’re very cautious about hiring.
• Business owners aren’t expecting to approach banks for additional loans and they’re worried about a double-dip recession.

Attendees will learn:

• Business owners’ views about the economy and their industries.
• Their expectations about investing in equipment and hiring.
• Their thoughts about additional bank borrowing.
• Their attitudes toward adding additional banks or switching banks.
• What they are talking to their banks about, or not.
• How to use this information to formulate questions and conversation starters with prospects and customers.

To register for Talking in Tough Times: Conversations with Business Owners, visit http://www.clarityadvantage.com/wst/2011/08/news/webinar-sept-15-talking-in-tough-times-conversations-with-business-owners/

About Clarity Advantage: Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage helps banks generate more profitable relationships faster with small and medium-sized companies, their owners, and employees.  Clarity consulting, communications, sales tools and training help banks recruit and deploy sales team members, choose their best business and consumer prospects and clients, then approach, engage, sell, expand, and retain relationships. Clarity also assists banks with consumer sales and cash management sales. Clarity clients have posted increases in household penetration, cross-sells, deposit volume, and loan volume.  Visitors to Clarity’s website, http://www.clarityadvantage.com, can subscribe to “The Weekly Sales Thought,” a free eNewsletter and podcast focused on business-to-business selling and sales management.

Contact:

Karen Tunks

Clarity Advantage

980-939-2112

karen.tunks@clarityadvantage.com

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Date: Thursday, September 15, 2011

Time: 12:00 – 1:00 PM EDT

Fee: Complimentary

Hosts: Nick Miller, Small Business Banking Sales Specialist and President of Clarity Advantage and Bernie Kuechler, Project Director, Barlow Research

 REGISTER NOW

It’s September.  And “double dip” does not refer to an ice cream cone. What should we be talking to our business owner customers about at this point?

The third quarter 2011 Economic Pulse survey conducted by Barlow Research Associates suggests a complex and interesting picture:

• As small business financial condition continues to weaken, business owners expect the U.S. economy to deteriorate, yet are somewhat optimistic about their own business’s performance expectations.
• Business owners are showing small signs of investing in capital equipment, even as they’re very cautious about hiring.
• Business owners aren’t expecting to approach banks for additional loans and they’re worried about a double-dip recession.

Join Nick Miller, small business banking sales specialist and president of Clarity Advantage, and Bernie Kuechler, project director of Barlow Research,  for this one-hour webinar where they’ll provide commentary on these and other insights gleaned from the recent Economic Pulse survey and specific ideas about conversation topics and lines of questioning.

Intended Audience

Bankers involved in small business and middle market relationship management, product sales and sales management, marketing, market research or line-of-business strategy.

You Will Learn

• Business owners’ views about the economy and their industries.
• Their expectations about investing in equipment and hiring.
• Their thoughts about additional bank borrowing.
• Their attitudes toward adding additional banks or switching banks.
• What they are talking to their banks about… or not.
• How to use this information to formulate questions and conversation starters with prospects and customers.

REGISTER NOW

Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage to share negotiation techniques in a live webinar on August 16, 2011 entitled Negotiating the Fees You Deserve.

All too often, bank sales team members view sales and negotiation as separate functions.  The fact is sales and negotiation happen together—selling is about assessing and building value; negotiation is about dividing the value.

“Good negotiating outcomes begin with and depend on value-oriented discovery and selling,” says Nick Miller, president of Clarity Advantage, a consulting and bank sales training firm.  To increase negotiation results, Miller recommends that bank sales team members:

• Ask more questions to identify customer problems and challenges correctly.
• Understand customers’ perceptions and priorities around value and how much the bank’s solution could benefit them in terms of saving time and money.
• Negotiate for the best outcome rather than concede on price at a customer’s first objection.

Miller, along with Rebecca Marek, Clarity Advantage senior consultant and negotiation specialist, will explore these and other negotiation techniques on August 16, 2011 in a live webinar entitled: Negotiating the Fees You Deserve.  The one-hour, complimentary webinar will begin at 12:00 PM EDT and is intended for bank sales representatives calling on businesses, $0 – $30 million in sales.

Negotiating the Fees You Deserve is part of Clarity Advantage’s Deep Diving into Sales Techniques summer webinar series.  The webinar series, which also includes sessions on First Calls on Prospects and Selling the Value of Bank Solutions, provides coaching material for sales managers and actionable tips and strategies for sales people.  To learn more about the series and register for Negotiating the Fees You Deserve, please visit http://www.clarityadvantage.com/wst/2011/05/news/summer-2011-webinar-series-deep-diving-into-sales-techniques/.

About Clarity Advantage: Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage helps banks generate more profitable relationships faster with small and medium-sized companies, their owners, and employees.  Clarity consulting, communications, sales tools and training help banks recruit and deploy sales team members, choose their best business and consumer prospects and clients, then approach, engage, sell, expand, and retain relationships. Clarity also assists banks with consumer sales and cash management sales. Clarity clients have posted increases in household penetration, cross-sells, deposit volume, and loan volume.  Visitors to Clarity’s website, http://www.clarityadvantage.com, can subscribe to “The Weekly Sales Thought,” a free eNewsletter and podcast focused on business-to-business selling and sales management.

Contact:

Karen Tunks

Clarity Advantage

980-939-2112

karen.tunks@clarityadvantage.com

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Business bankers can increase their banks’ margins with a proposal process that identifies, quantifies, and documents the value they offer.  This and other sales strategies to be shared by Clarity Advantage in a live webinar on July 19, 2011 entitled, Selling the Value of Bank Solutions.

Business bankers who want to increase or protect their price must focus their proposals on value, a change in customer operating conditions.  Nick Miller, president of Clarity Advantage, a consulting and bank sales training firm, says customers want to know what’s in it for them—how the proposed solution will save them time, make them money, reduce their stress, or make people think more highly of them.

Miller recommends that business bankers begin the proposal process with a bank-wide effort to identify, quantify, and document the value the bank offers.  Here’s how:

• Link product details to customer challenges—to understand how and when products solve customer operations challenges and the value the products create when implemented.
• Gather customer success stories—to describe challenges similar companies face and demonstrate how the bank has helped them generate good outcomes.
• Build a database to store the collected information—to see the value created for other customers and how fast they generated the value.

“The best proposals are about customers and how the bank’s offerings will change their lives,” explains Miller.  “All too often, business bankers fail at focusing their proposals on outcomes and as a result, the banker is forced to concede on price and the bank loses its value and margins.”

Miller will explore these and other strategies for positioning value in sales calls on July 19, 2011 in a live webinar entitled Selling the Value of Bank Solutions.  The one-hour, complimentary webinar will begin at 12:00 PM EDT and is intended for bank sales people calling on businesses, $0 – $30 million in sales.

Selling the Value of Bank Solutions is part of Clarity Advantage’s Deep Diving into Sales Techniques summer webinar series.  The webinar series, which also includes sessions on First Calls on Prospects and Negotiating the Fees You Deserve, will provide coaching material for sales managers and actionable tips and strategies for sales people.  To learn more about the series and register for the webinars, please visit http://www.clarityadvantage.com/wst/2011/05/news/summer-2011-webinar-series-deep-diving-into-sales-techniques/

About Clarity Advantage: Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage helps banks generate more profitable relationships faster with small and medium-sized companies, their owners, and employees.  Clarity consulting, communications, sales tools and training help banks recruit and deploy sales team members, choose their best business and consumer prospects and clients, then approach, engage, sell, expand, and retain relationships. Clarity also assists banks with consumer sales and cash management sales. Clarity clients have posted increases in household penetration, cross-sells, deposit volume, and loan volume.  Visitors to Clarity’s website, http://www.clarityadvantage.com, can subscribe to “The Weekly Sales Thought,” a free eNewsletter and podcast focused on business-to-business selling and sales management.

Contact:

Karen Tunks

Clarity Advantage

980-939-2112

karen.tunks@clarityadvantage.com

###

Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage to share strategies for positioning value in bank sales calls in a live webinar on July 19, 2011 entitled Selling the Value of Bank Solutions.

Bank fees continue to rise and small business customers and prospects want to do everything they can to avoid them.  Account fees.  Cash management fees.  Deposit fees.  How do branch staff and business bankers justify them?  How can they avoid conceding on price too early in the negotiation process and sell the value in a way that doesn’t give up the bank’s margins?

The solution, according to Nick Miller, president of Clarity Advantage, a consulting and bank sales training firm, is for bankers to build up the value side before they start negotiating.  Here’s how:

• Correctly identify the client’s problems
• Clarify the implications of those problems for the client
• Know specifically what costs, delays, or lost revenues are at stake
• Know how much the bank’s solution could save the client

“If sales people have thoroughly explored the value side, then, when negotiation begins, they are in a position to start high on price because the perception of value is high,” says Miller.  “If they fail to build a compelling value before offering a price concession, they’ve adopted a risky and potentially expensive strategy.”

Miller will explore these and other strategies for positioning value in sales calls on July 19, 2011 in a live webinar entitled Selling the Value of Bank Solutions.  The one-hour, complimentary webinar will begin at 12:00 PM EDT and is intended for bank sales people calling on businesses, $0 – $30 million in sales.

Selling the Value of Bank Solutions is part of Clarity Advantage’s Deep Diving into Sales Techniques summer webinar series.  The webinar series, which also includes sessions on First Calls on Prospects and Negotiating the Fees You Deserve, will provide coaching material for sales managers and actionable tips and strategies for sales people.  To learn more about the series and register for the webinars, please visit http://www.clarityadvantage.com/wst/2011/05/news/summer-2011-webinar-series-deep-diving-into-sales-techniques/

About Clarity Advantage: Consulting and bank sales training firm Clarity Advantage helps banks generate more profitable relationships faster with small and medium-sized companies, their owners, and employees.  Clarity consulting, communications, sales tools and training help banks recruit and deploy sales team members, choose their best business and consumer prospects and clients, then approach, engage, sell, expand, and retain relationships. Clarity also assists banks with consumer sales and cash management sales. Clarity clients have posted increases in household penetration, cross-sells, deposit volume, and loan volume.  Visitors to Clarity’s website, http://www.clarityadvantage.com, can subscribe to “The Weekly Sales Thought,” a free eNewsletter and podcast focused on business-to-business selling and sales management.

Contact:

Karen Tunks

Clarity Advantage

980-939-2112

karen.tunks@clarityadvantage.com

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