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Zions First National Bank

How to EnterCompany: Zions First National Bank
Company Description: Zions Bank, a subsidiary of Zions Bancorporation, operates 133 full-service offices in Utah and Idaho. In addition to offering a wide range of traditional banking services, Zions Bank is also a leader in small business lending and has ranked as the No. 1 lender of U.S. Small Business Administration 7(a) loans in Utah and Idaho for the past 18 and 10 consecutive years, respectively.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Director of the Year

Nomination Title: Rob Jeppsen, SVP Commercial Sales: Zions Bank

Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since the beginning of July 2010 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

When Zions Bank made the decision that aggressive growth in non-interest income
would be the driver to profitability in a challenging 2011 year, the task of
making this change become a reality fell to Rob Jeppsen.

With 300 Commercial Relationship Managers (RM),
only 3 financial products per business,& interest income from commercial
loans as the dominant revenue source, this was a daunting challenge.

With a governing principle that "Products have no value, they only derive
value" as the key driver, Jeppsen became the architecht of significant change
to this large regional financial institution.

Step 1: Rather than focus on the myriad of non-interest income products
businesses use to manage their corporate treasury, Jeppsen helped
identify the 6 "Core financial business problems" every business must address
simply by virtue of being in business.

Step 2: The 6 problem areas were overlayed to the products owned by the
existing client base (53,000 business clients.) Only 12 clients had all 6
problems solved by Zions. Only 1000 had 5 of the 6. This information was
helpful in getting the RMs to see the enormous opportunity.

Step 3: Jeppsen wanted to reinforce that the RMs were now changing what they
were looking for. Rather than looking to place products, they were looking to
solve problems. As a result, the bank had "problem training" where RMs were
introduced to the key problems, how to have conversations with business owners
about them, and become very comfortable in having detailed conversations...not
product related...relative to the impact of these core financial problems.

Step 4: A new, simple,Sales Process was developed.
- Enter: mutually agree with a client which financial challenges matter most.
- Diagnose: use the skills from problem training to understand how the
problem is being addressed, what alternatives exist, the immediate financial
impact of doing so, & the financial impact over time.
- Engage: If there is meaningful value found during the diagnose phase, the
RM engineers a plan to recognize the savings identified.

Step 5: The Incentive plan was changed to reward RMs for the % of their
portfolio where all 6 problem categories were met.

Step 6: Salesforce.com was used to help standardize the process and to
stimulate team selling activities. "Whitespace" analysis was developed to
visually show the problems solved by Zions & what the financial impact to the
account would be if other problems were solved by Zions products. This led to a
fundamental change in account planning as a sales team.

Step 7: Zions learned that clients were seeking help in sales. In response,
Jeppsen created the Business Performance Series, a "Sales School" for Zions
Business Clients. This has helped over 400 businesses completely redesign
their approach to sales.

Results:
- Treasury Management income: 126% of goal.
- 12,357 new products sold YTD (annual goal of 11,200 w/6 weeks left in the
FY)
- Ave # of products/business: 7 (up from 3)
- Clients with all 6 problems met: 1057 (up from 12)
- Clients with 5 of 6 problems met: over 4000 (up from 1000)
- Non-interest income exceeds interest income for FY.
- Zions returned to profitability in each FQ of 2011.

List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:

Rob Jeppsen is the SVP of Commercial Sales for Zions Bank. With 16 years of
direct sales and sales leadership experience, Rob has worked in publicly-traded
organizations, privately-held organizations, & has successfully led sales teams
in the Technology, Pharmaceutical, and Financial Services sectors.

Rob speaks at conferences nationwide and at universities in the Western US. He
is the creator of the Zions Bank Business Performance Series, offered to Zions'
clients interested in building a world-class sales system. The course has been
taken by over 400 businesses in 2010 and 2011.