Managing for THE FUTURE MlLAN - LICENCED TO BANK I Every September, a group of new management trainees begins an intensive two-year course covering every conceivable area of banking. Practical work periods are built into the course and each 4 trainee spends time in each of CBS's divisions and at a member J O bank. But the emphasis tends to be on theory and the closest they 4 What's NewS Issue 3 June/July 1995 come to large corporate clients is case studies.The marketing day changed all that. What's NewS sat in with the current erop of graduates as they came into first-time contact with real live clients. The Graduates - f.l.t.r. standing: Marjan van de Weijden, Jeroen Wakkerman, Tanja Cuppen, Rachel Bosman, Barbara de Kanter; seated: Gerrit Willem Gramser, Erik van de Brake, Mijntje Rovers, Karina Joosten, Ferry de Vries, Tred Griffejoen. 'Imparting the theory hehind marketing ^nd telling the trainees all kinds of anec- dotal stories is all very well,' says Kim Egger of marketing services, 'but if you really want to know what clients want, then you have to ask the clients.' And that is precisely what the marketing services department did when they were invited to provide a day-long program for the man agement trainees. Two major corporate clients were willing to participate in the program - Sjoerd Zittema of the Hero concern and J. de Lange of the Dutch operation of Recticel, an international foam rubber company. 'Our main concern was to combine theory and practice,' says Egger, 'and to prove that the theory is truly relevant to the practice. In fact, it looked as though we had set everything up with the clients in advance and agreed on what they would ^ay, because they confirmed all we'd told the participants. But we hadn't.' CLIENT CONTACT Says one of the trainees: 'I think the most useful part was when Zittema of Hero told us what we should and shouldn't do when approaching a cliënt. The one that really stuck in my mind was: never use the word problem, a cliënt doesn't have "pro- blems", always talk in terms of opportun- ities. He also said you shouldn't come in and start talking about the bank, or the products. You should come in and let them talk. But the bottom line was that we also had to listen.' In preparation, the trainees had been given Hero's annual report. 'What we asked them to do,' says Egger, 'was to approach Hero as if the company was a prospect. They had to put together a presentation based on what they had discovered about the cliënt from this data - the company's goals, needs, etc. And to work out how the bank could be of assistance. In other words, not to go in with a lot of products, but to try and look at what was relevant from the client's point of view. Both Zit tema and De Lange feit it had been a pos- itive experience.' RECRUITMENT CRITERIA This particular group of graduates are now in their ninth month of training and are already at home in the organization. The next group will begin its two-year course in September, thus ensuring the bank has a continual inflow of manage ment trainees for CBS placement in the future. Graduates are recruited from all universities in the Netherlands. And in addition to academie excellence, the bank also looks very closely at attitude and social skills. 'We're actually a pretty eclec- tic group,' says one of the trainees. 'Many of us are basically economics graduates, but our majors can be very different - anything from international to business administration. And some of us are lawyers. So we come from a variety of academie backgrounds and insti- tutions.' While all will stream into CBS at the end of their training period, they are not oblig- ed to choose a specific discipline until that time. 'Some of us already know what we'd like to do because we do practical work periods in all the divisions,' says a trainee. 'But the divisions themselves are looking at us just as closely as we're looking at them. Hopefully, you're able to make a real impression and find a place in the particular area you want.' mixed feelings and a lot of happy faces when Ajax won.' CBS Utrecht was well represented at the of ficial opening, not least be cause an Investor Relations roadshow was held to mark the upgrading of the Milan office into a fully- fledged branch operation. As the picture shows, Rabobank Italia welcomed both the Utrecht contingent and institutional investors in true Italian style. KEN UW KLANT Het zijn de bankiers en/of managers van de toekomst: het selecte gezelschap van jonge, veelbelovende academici, dat dit jaar de intensieve management-training van het Centrale Bankbedrijf volgt. De opleiding duurt twee jaar. Ondanks een aantal stages bij de verschillende directoraten en bij een lokale bank, is het theoretische gehalte hoog. De trainees kregen de kans hun theoretische kennis aan de praktijk te toetsen tijdens een marketingdag, waaraan twee belangrijke klanten; Hero en Recticel deelnamen. Milan branch didn't choose the date of its offi cial opening - May 24 - to coincide with the Ajax-AC Milan European charn- pionship game, but it cer- tainly proved a hit with all of the 200 guests who at- tended the party that even- ing. 'Philips, a prospective cliënt in Italy, offered to lend us a giant screen for the game,' says general man ager Roberto de Cardona, 'and as you can imagine, there were some

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