Jimmy Lovelace On Leadership

When you let sales people just be sales people and service people just be service people, you get better sales and service.

Jimmy Lovelace was already an experienced financial services sales person and manager when he joined Community First Credit Union of Florida ($2.7B, Jacksonville, FL) after 10 years with Bank of America.

He also brought a performing arts background and several years of hotel experience to the Florida cooperative, where since 2014 he’s been deeply involved in building its sales and service culture and metrics.

Here, he shares leadership lessons he’s learned during his journey from branch sales manager to chief experience officer.

On professional theater and leadership …

My undergraduate degree is in performing arts, and I developed some great skills to take into the business world. That includes things like improvisation, teamwork, collaboration, and all those critical elements of putting productions together. It turned out to be a natural fit for what we do here.

On sustaining a sales culture …

My first role here at Community First was branch leadership and sales performance manager. We created a competitive sales plan for our branches, and to achieve our objectives, I needed to coach our market leaders and salesforce to continuously improve processes and fulfillment.

We’ve been successful at that, but I can’t take all the credit. When I first took that position, we had a vice president of branches who had worked to propagate a good sales culture across the credit union that was focused on meeting member needs.

My piece of it was to keep everybody focused on the prize, on hitting goals and finding ways to connect what we do with our impact on members. One way we did that was by sending out monthly newsletters that include examples of how a product we sold or something someone did made a difference in a member’s life. It was called the Jimmy Sales Minute.

On human behavior and the not-so-universal employee …

Universal employees were the big thing for a while — run branches with two people and train tellers and MSRs to do everything. But when you try to execute on something like that, you find out how hard it is for someone to learn all those functions for an entry-level position.

It’s more than potlucks, high fives, and pizza Fridays. It comes down to tools, to good role clarity, and good team development. For example, in our contact center we separated service and sales. That took recognizing that some employees give great service but don’t hit referrals — they’re two different things.

We did that and lo and behold, when you let sales people just be sales people and service people just be service people, you get better sales and service.

It’s all those human pieces I find so fascinating.

CreditUnions.com’s On Leadership series  spotlights notable leaders across the credit union landscape by discovering how they joined the movement, learning what makes them tick, uncovering career lessons and successes, and seeking advice for the future of the movement. Read the whole series today.

On transitioning to chief experience officer …

I became the senior vice president of member experience in 2018 and was responsible for ensuring we deliver a world-class experience for our employees and members through all our delivery channels. I like to call it anything our members touch, including our retail branches and Member Experience Center, commercial deposits, and business intelligence. When I became CXO this past March, I added responsibility for all the new tools associated with the digital experience. It’s an exciting time for our credit union and our industry.

This interview has been edited and condensed.