The Fa La La Folly

By: Jack Hubbard,
Chief Experience Officer, St. Meyer & Hubbard, Inc.

I have recently had the privilege of making presentations in 15 cities over 20 business days. The programs dealt with practical sales tips and takeaways. One issue discussed was the folly of sending out Christmas/Holiday greeting cards. When I asked how many in the audience had abandoned this foolish, time consuming endeavor, not one person in any of the three time zones I was in raised his or her respective hand. Amazing.

It’s getting toward that time of year when someone in marketing, a key executive or someone in the bank is pulled off a vital, revenue centric project to take on the arduous task of getting the Christmas cards out the door. Maybe it’s easier now but when I was a banker it took days, weeks even, to scrub the list, add new names to the roster and in general be certain we didn’t miss anyone important. We always did. What card to select? Well, we bought the one from the girl scouts last year so we have to give equal funding to the boy scouts this time. Then we had to get the right cards to the right group of senior managers to sign and “personalize” the message (oh sure they did) and find someone good at calligraphy to address the envelopes. Add to that the hassle and expense of working with the US Postal Service…

Get my drift. Of course you do. You live it each and every holiday season. There is a solution to this madness and it is no farther away than your laptop. Go to www.hallmark.com and send a Thanksgiving Card this year – and EVERY year. Last year my colleagues sent more than 200 personalized e-cards to clients, friends and associates. It is easy to do, totally free and truly appreciated by recipients because it is customized for them. Better yet, these cards can be done from home in the evening and on the weekends to optimize belly to belly time with clients and prospects during your sales week. Best of all, you know they are read. When the card is opened by the recipient, an e-mail is generated back to you to let you know they have seen it.

“It would be great if I had the time to do this but you don’t know how busy I am around this time of year.” “My bank won’t allow me access to the internet at home.” “What if my customer doesn’t have e-mail?” “Jack, you travel 47 weeks a year and you have time to do this in hotel rooms. I need a work-life balance”.

How would you deal with these issues if you were an entrepreneur and your clients and prospects made the difference between eating or not, paying your bills or not, having a balance in your check book and other life fulfilling things? My sense is you might find the time and figure out a way to make it happen.

A mentor of mine, Kent Sticker, once told me that when you have earned the right to gain and have customers you must always show them an “attitude of gratitude.” If sending impersonal, “me too” holiday cards gets at that for you, fantastic. Be the recipient of a Thanksgiving card for a second. How do you feel?

Hey! We Missed the October Issue

No you didn’t. We did. We pride ourselves on writing, editing and creating graphics for each edition of Conversation Signposts ourselves. There are no “ghost writers” and we don’t subscribe to a service so we can plop an article in to fill up some space. This is a time of year when our clients ask for our time more than any other. We’re all out and about very regularly in the fourth quarter and sometimes we flat just run out of time. We’re sorry about that and we promise it probably WILL happen again. If you were one of our client partners though, you would probably appreciate that our priorities seem to be in the right place.

Trade Associations like ABA and BAI publish annual Resource Guides. These are of great service to members of those and other organizations. This year we decided to publish one too. Ours is slightly different in that we will only feature four companies. This month you will learn about First Research and Barlow Research. In December we’ll introduce you to Baker Hill and The Cornerstone Group.

When we asked senior officials at each firm to contribute to these next two newsletters we suggested they provide a blend of industry trends combined with something about what they can do should your bank require the type of help and support they can supply. We appreciate each of these firms investing their time and energy to show value to you, our reader. You expect and deserve that.

 

Barlow Research – The Voice of Your Business Banking Customer

By: Chuck Rogers
Managing Director, Barlow Research

“Customer-intimate companies need moment-to-moment readings of the customer pulse. They must be able to gauge, at any time, how effectively specific processes are delivering value. Just as important, everyone with a need to know must have access to all this information and knowledge – to provide greater responsiveness, to tailor the production or servicing process, to enhance marketing or business development, or to improve interaction with customers.”

- Fred Wiersema author of Customer Intimacy and co-author of The Discipline of Market Leaders

Financial services companies have dedicated much of the past two decades to building high performance sales and service architectures that promise to deliver game-changing results. In the process of doing so they have collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars selecting, installing, reinforcing, and reinventing sales and service business banking processes. As one would expect, those that executed in an effective and sustained manner have realized much of that promise in the form of greater revenues and a solid Return on Customer. Top performing business banks have capitalized upon their success by deeply penetrating portfolio relationships resulting in greater customer satisfaction and relationship profitability. According to Barlow’s Middle Market Banking 2005 report, top performing middle market banks are realizing penetration ratios of 85%. Barlow’s Small Business Banking 2005 report shows top performing small business banks penetrating at a rate of over 75%. That “deep and wide” success is driving tremendous revenue, especially when considering the typical middle market customer is using over 11 products and the typical small business customer using 6 products.

One of the most effective and essential tools used by many of these best of breed institutions is a business process that consistently and systematically taps and subsequently acts upon the gold mine of customer feedback. This is not high-level customer satisfaction. Rather it is actively monitoring the details of the business banking customer experience at the portfolio level and tying that experience back into the relationship manager’s behaviors and the business unit's performance assessment. The importance of instituting this discipline at the relationship manager level is reinforced by Barlow Research’s Middle Market Banking 2005 report which found that:

With all due respect to the lip service the concept of capturing the voice of the business banking customer engenders, the bank’s bottom-line results are positively impacted when the voice of the customer is not only captured, but systematically, continually, and actively integrated into the bank’s performance management processes (planning, training, coaching, incentives, rewards, etc.), thereby driving accountability down to the team and relationship manager level.

Few would debate the importance of having a pipeline to the customer’s view of their relationship with the bank. But as with most great ideas, the challenge is not so much in deciding what to do but how to actually go about doing it. A growing number of leading business banks are addressing this challenge by putting business processes in place that allow them to capture, analyze, plan and, most importantly act upon the voice of the customer. One such approach is Barlow’s Customer Relationship Audit®. At a high level, the process rolls out as follows:

First Research…Call Planning and Industry Knowledge Second to None

Check your Outlook. Does it read something like this?

10 a.m. call with Lotech Manufacturing
1:30 a.m. call Doctors Hospital
4:00 p.m. Bucks County Lumber Company

Today’s plate of sales conversations is full on and tomorrow’s schedule is even more challenging – with yet another laundry list of different companies in different industries.

Since most bankers are generalists, this is likely a major source of anxiety for any calling officer. When sales associates are not properly prepared for each conversation, their efforts not only produce less than optimal returns, the call could end in extreme embarrassment. Many bankers feel uncomfortable about plunging into the world of prospect or client industries in when their knowledge of that industry might be limited

How does the banker obtain relevant, timely information about each of these prospects without researching hour upon hour? What challenges are these industries facing? What are the trends and best practices? What trade association and industry-specific publications do they look to for help? What does their competitive landscape look like today, tomorrow?

While the banker can’t possibly have expertise in each and every industry, it is vital to find some way to understand each customer’s industry triggers, pain points and opportunities. You must also be able to effectively communicate with decision makers, influencers and certainly senior executive.

Where do you start? The answer is simple – do your homework.

The first step in building any trust-based relationship is call planning and preparation. The foundation of call planning and preparation is research. Research can help qualify prospects faster and communicate targeted industry understanding to position your bank’s services and close more business. From the start, you will be better positioned to respond to clients and develop the personal relationships that are the heart of your business. You will also stand out from the competition by delivering client-centric presentations that engage decision makers in meaningful conversations by speaking his or her language.

In addition to doing relevant research (Google, reviewing previous call reports, talking to associates inside the bank, etc.) take the time to develop a list of industry-specific call preparation questions. Asking the right questions help enhances credibility. Let’s face it, it’s better to be interested than interesting. You can use these questions to confidently discuss operations, finance, marketing, technology and business strategy.

Preparation is not only critical on the street but inside the bank as well. Underwriters are rightly skeptical when the banker is uncertain about trends, financial stability, challenges and key financial ratios.
Enter First Research. With information covering more than 175 industries First Research targets the specific kinds of data that significantly reduces call preparation time while giving the banker the best opportunity to win the business. With solutions in Accounting, Software, Banking and Insurance, tools are cost effective, efficient and effective.

A First Research Industry Profile contains a great deal of information. Updated quarterly, each profile has 11 components. Each is easily reachable at the click of a button. The News & Media Information section takes the banker to the trade association and trade publications that can provides the banker the opportunity to print articles as call leave-behinds or lets them e-mail an article or two via e-mail as value adds.

No one can deny that failing to plan means planning to fail. In fact, the Business Banking Board reports that high producing business bankers invest double the time in call prep than do their barely at standard counterparts. No one every said that preparing for calls had to be torture either. First Research can’t put time on the Outlook calendar. We can make the process a little less painless.

First Research – A Trusted Partner of SM&H

First Research was founded in 1998 by a former commercial banker who recognized a direct correlation between the amount of time he spent preparing for and learning about a client’s business and industry conditions and the success of the sales call. Headquartered in Raleigh, NC, First Research is led by Bobby Martin, CEO and a team of outstanding sales associates and economists that always go the extra mile to optimize the value they bring to the marketplace. SM&H is proud to have First Research as a strategic partner. To learn more about First Research, visit www.firstresearch.com.

 

We’ll be there

We are privileged to make presentations at the nation’s most prestigious banking schools and financial services conferences. Below is a listing of programs we will be engaged in between now and the end of 2005. We look forward to seeing you at these programs. If you have questions about them, contact Linda Benjamin, Executive Vice President at 847-215-6091.

Jack Hubbard Presentations
• November 3, 2005, RMA Arizona Chapter
• November 15, 2005, Virginia Bankers Association, Commercial Conference

Mike Dillon Presentations
• December 5-6, 2005 Bank Insurance and Securities Association, Sales Management Workshop, Los Angeles, CA