SAN ANTONIO – A leading business consultant told CU executives attending PSCU Financial Services' 2011 Senior Leadership Workshop and Member Forum today that they need to sell their employees on their CUs' strategic plans before it will be able get members to buy them.

Stan Slap, author of the best-selling book Bury My Heart at Conference Room 8, described how credit unions must convince their employees about the CU first, then recognize that it's not just what they are selling but how their members must buy it and remember always to keep paramount the passion about both their products and how they are sold.

He described how "branding" has been short changed by too many executives who misunderstand it as something that flows from marketing. In reality, marketers sell the brand but do not create it, Slap said. A CU's members create a CU's brand, as a gift and a reaction to the CU's products and, most importantly, how the CU treats them.