Tighten Up The Relationship
ARE YOU DELIGHTING YOUR COMPETITORS?
They are if you’re not hitting the streets and picking up the phone routinely to “call on” your customer. Your shareholder, your board and most definitely your underserved customer may surprise you some day with their disappointment. Today’s bankers must put the touch on the customer about what they need and how they perceive the level of service you are providing.
It could be your officers with business development and account relationship responsibilities use boat loads of excuses, even some legitimate, why they can’t get out and make customer/prospect calls. All of us avoid what we least like to do and those tasks where our comfort level is low.
It will cost to provide training, implement high tech tracking tools and provide rewards or incentives. But it can cost a lot more to neglect addressing the need to tighten up the relationships you have and to work at having more.
From the retail perspective it is about households. Growing franchise value is where it’s at today. Free checking, free gifts, and other promotional lures are used in your market everyday. The unattended customer, the customer who feels no sense of relationship at your institution is up for grabs. Once they leave they are very hard to get back. The ones who are enticed by good deals and rolling ice chests are serious contributors to non-interest income.
From the commercial perspective it is about attaching the customer through ACH and other products that make moving an account painful. Cash management sales seldom happen when an account gets open unless the sales strategy is to bring the account in by way of cash management products. Remote capture and other innovative services that are making banking more and more convenient for the customer mean that the competitor doesn’t have to have a choice location anymore to pick up choice customers. Nothing is more shocking to a lender or calling officer than when he or she sees an account they have taken for granted show up on the closed account list or learn the loan was paid off.
You have to work at keeping your customers and keeping them happy.
Your depositors are highly desirable whether they are high dollar customers or fee generators. Your borrowers who are willing to entertain more than one proposal from a financial services provider may find loans at a bargain. Get in the game and tighten up the relationships with extraordinary service delivery and making contact with the customer. Thank them in person, find out what else they need, go see what is happening in their world rather than waiting for them to call or show up.
Every calling officer of your institution must have a top 25 customer list that they work at earning and re-earning the relationship. Every calling officer must have a top 25 prospect list they actively work at moving to the customer list. Your institution’s top 100 customers are on your competitor’s top prospect list. Don’t let them take them without a fight. Get on the offense so you don’t find yourself on the defense.
Take a proactive stance by implementing a sales culture with accountability that ensures a high touch, aggressive approach to retaining and gaining customers.