Winning New Bank Business In Quick Time

by Rick Wemmers, BOL Guru
Guru Bios

The pace of the world is significantly changing, driving virtually everyone to live, think, work at an ever-increasing speed. Because of this the banking industry is going through significant and permanent changes, particularly with its product offering and its ways of operating.

In addition to this mandate for change and quicker need fulfillment there is an increasing shortage of skilled, motivated, middle management bankers, especially ones that can manage the new pace of the selling process. (Banks are not the only businesses struggling with finding qualified people. Many American business owners, especially small business, have the same problem.)

If you are hesitant to accept that our world has a higher speed limit for living and working, look at the exploding growth of the Internet, cell phones and video conferencing. Customers in general are more informed, self-confident and expect faster "instant gratification". This rapid growth in consumer knowledge and expectations has taken its? toll on customer loyalty for banks.

"If you won?t give it the way I want it-- now, I?ll switch to another source." (Most of us have short memories of previous good deeds.) Consumers and competitors are sending signals that if a bank wants to retain current customers or gain new ones; it must empower its employees to be more knowledgeable and effective at discussing the pros and cons of banking service alternatives available at the time of the inquiry. Customers have less and less patience dealing with uninformed, slow-thinking and seemingly un-sympathetic employees.

Unfortunately, the shortage of qualified people is expected to continue for several years, according to human resources experts. The mandate for all CEOs is to make do with what you have because replacements are hard to come by and are more expensive. (Remember the old rule ? supply and demand.)

Thus bank CEOs are challenged to better understand their current staff strengths and weaknesses and help them improve their customer relationship-building and selling skills to end positively for the bank. It also means they must revamp the thinking and decision-making pace of activity in the management suite. Management shouldn?t expect employees to "pick up the pace" if they don?t themselves, so, if we must use the employees we have now and get their customer dialogue skills up to a higher speed to win more new business, how do we do it?

Here are banker success tactics:

1. The bank president must make a firm, very clear and lasting commitment to significant change as to how new business is identified, qualified, solicited and captured. My 28 years of banking experience has shown me that without this on-going commitment from the top, the employees who sell the bank don?t leave their "comfort zones." It is "business as usual".
   
   
2. Identify staff that are the key "drivers" of the bank?s growth. This is usually a small percentage of the total staff and they may all not be obvious. Closely assess the selling strengths and weaknesses of your drivers and then empower them with new selling skills and attitudes that are critical to competing with today?s new variety of financial services competitors. A great tool for this is the Personal Sales Behavior Assessment - DISC.
   
   As stated earlier, CEOs may not have the previous luxury of firing poor performers and trying for better. The DISC Assessment shows what employees don?t know how to tell managers or even each other about improving performance and relationships. Using this tool is really a "no-brainer" for bank management.
   
   
3. Follow-up new skills training with personal coaching for at least 2 months if the maximum return on this investment is to be realized. Many bank presidents believe training expenditures are "just putting good money down the rat hole". Not having adequate coaching after skills training is why this statement is all too often true.
   
   The American Society of Training & Development research has shown that if an employer provides skills training to an employee their productivity increases 22%. Furthermore, if that same employee is given coaching with the skills training, their productivity increases by as much as 88%! In my experience with community banks I have seen tremendous returns on training cost investments. Most clients clearly see between 15- 30% ROI, not to mention lots of new customers.
   
   
4. The next success tactic is to focus more on quality prospects verses focusing on the quantity of calls. For example, why have loan officers calling on prospects who have a very poor credit rating? Why are branch managers making prospect calls with little or no preparation? I?m not talking about carrying bank literature. Calls without doing homework on the prospect force the banker to "sell at" the prospect and virtually everyone hates to be sold to. We all love to buy.
   
   Focusing on quality very often requires buying qualified prospect lists, but isn?t it a good investment to have quality background prospect information readily available without spending hours of personal time looking for it? Quality is the way to get big growth spurts quickly.
   
   
5. Another proven key to quick success for a bank is to increase the number of "cold calls" which virtually all bankers really hate. They would much rather make a "cross-selling" call on a current customer. Why not? This is easy and has little selling pressure. However it is not the way to build business quickly!

Two success tools to help bankers overcome cold call reluctance are:

1. Buy a list of pre-qualified prospects. Time is money in banking. Yes, you could dictate that every one research all their own prospects, or you can buy that information and have it instantly available for about $5.00 per prospect.
   
   
2. Hire an outside firm to make appointments with qualified prospects for the officer to follow-up. The officer just shows up on the appointed day and time and pursues the prospects stated interest. Easy!

Community banks who want to keep the customers they have and win customers from competitors, must change. They need to increase the speed of this process and develop the selling expertise of their current employees. Those banks who continue to do business the way we always have? will find themselves feeding off the scraps of those who learn how to deal with the new, fast-paced world.

First published on BankersOnline.com 11/19/07