Context
Our client is a leading French bancassurer that distributes health insurance through its banking network (several thousand advisors across branches and call centres). On this product, only 5% of advisors were commercially active. The board's target was to double that ratio.
The classic levers had been tried without success: product training was redesigned, financial incentives were adjusted, managerial campaigns were rolled out. The blocker was neither the product, nor the compensation, nor the training.
The problem
On a product that is complex and perceived as intrusive (health), advisors enter a negative reinforcement loop documented in the sales literature (Verbeke et al. 2011): low commercial activity → low product experience → low self-confidence → defensive posture during meetings → objection-driven interaction → reinforced avoidance → low commercial activity. This loop is self-sustaining. No external lever (training, incentive) breaks it, because it is not fuelled by a lack but by a psychological dynamic.
On top of this sits a distorted social norm: advisors massively overestimate how much their peers and their clients reject the product. This imagined norm is more paralysing than the actual norm.
Our approach
A mixed qualitative-quantitative study in seven steps.
- Kick-off and manager interviews to frame the diagnostic and identify observable behavioural markers.
- Field immersion on six sites (regional bancassurance entities and one large partner network in the Paris region), with call listening and qualitative branch interviews.
- Staff survey on 735 respondents (92% front-line advisors) covering beliefs, perceptions and product representations.
- Scientific literature review on selling complex products: 100 papers screened, 16 retained, including foundational work on sales resistance (Verbeke, Dietz & Verwaal 2011), social norms in professional contexts (Cialdini & Goldstein 2004), and self-perception in sales situations (Bagozzi 2006).
- Multi-entity data analysis to quantify performance gaps and identify positive outliers (high-performing entities and high-performing sellers).
- Behavioural diagnostic: formalisation of the negative reinforcement loop and identification of 8 prioritised behavioural challenges (hierarchy, management, next-step handling, social norm, simplicity, self-image, client orientation, product perception).
- Solution design scored on feasibility, cost, impact: 11 named operational levers calibrated to the reality of the network, including a peer-visibility mechanism (restoring the real social norm), a team-level pre-mortem routine, and a manager activation kit.
In parallel, unconscious brand perception by advisors was measured through an Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz 1998), and client Google reviews were audited to triangulate with the external perception.
Results
Diagnostic: the negative reinforcement loop was identified as the true blocker, something that classic diagnostics (training, compensation) had never surfaced.
8 prioritised behavioural challenges. 11 creative solutions scored (feasibility, cost, impact) and named for memorability.
Critical insight: ×3 performance gap between regional entities, ×4 between active and inactive advisors within the same entity. Internal variance is greater than cross-network variance, which confirms that the lever is behavioural, not structural.
What this case illustrates
On a complex product, what holds sales advisors back is not the product itself: it is their social perception of it. The distorted social norm ("no one sells it, all clients refuse it") is more paralysing than the real complexity. The action lever is not in product training: it is in restoring an accurate perception of the norm. This is also why financial incentives fail here: they act on motivation, while the barrier sits in representation.
Frameworks used
Social norm (Cialdini & Goldstein 2004), confirmation bias, loss aversion (Kahneman & Tversky), Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al. 1998), salience. See the glossary.
Frequently asked questions
How does Krakn diagnose behavioural barriers in a commercial network?
Through triangulation: field immersion, mass survey (several hundred respondents), scientific literature review, and multi-site data analysis. This triangulation isolates structural behavioural blockers from local or one-off artefacts.
What is a negative reinforcement loop in sales?
A self-sustaining dynamic where low commercial activity generates low product competence, which generates low confidence, which generates avoidance, which maintains low activity. This loop is invisible to classic HR tools because it does not correspond to any specific gap, which makes it resistant to training and incentive levers.
How many advisors were surveyed?
735 respondents to the internal survey, including 92% of front-line advisors, complemented by 6 field immersions with call listening and qualitative interviews.
Why do banking advisors under-sell health insurance products?
Three factors: perceived product complexity, the advisor's self-image (they do not see themselves as health-insurance salespeople), and above all a distorted social norm that "no one sells it" and "clients do not want it". The third cause is the strongest and most actionable.
How does the IAT reveal how staff perceive their own brand?
The Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al. 1998) measures unconscious associations between a concept and an attribute. Applied to internal staff, it reveals brand perceptions that no declarative questionnaire can capture, because respondents are either unaware of them or unwilling to voice them. Want to diagnose behavioural blockers in your network? Let's talk →