Capture the Money: Integrate Marketing and Sales

Lana J. Chandler
February 11, 2009 | COMMENTS

There's a lot of money in motion right now. People—consumers and businesses—are moving their money from the mutual fund market/stock market/large bank/etc. to other locations looking for safety, security, and peace of mind versus an interest rate return.

“For savvy institutions, there is plenty of opportunity to grab a disproportionate piece of the marketplace and to attract depositors that may not have been either aware of your institution or given it serious thought,” maintains Bruce A. Clapp, president of MarketMatch in Englewood , Ohio . “People are looking for a safe haven and an institution that is locally based and focused represents that safety. Institutions that are aggressive in this financial downturn and that are financially strong have a unique and powerful position.”

Capturing the money, however, takes:

• Understanding the market each branch serves
• Staff that is willing and able to reach out to clients and ask for the business
• Marketing and advertising that is visible and attention-getting
• Leadership at the branch, department, and institution levels to empower the staff to step forward and ask the client for the business

Markets Can Vary by Branch

Even in the best of times, current and detailed market knowledge helps you capture more business. “Understanding your market can place you in the driver's seat when it comes to opportunity. It means you are informed about your competition, prepared for competitive changes, and ready to move at the branch level,” says Clapp.

Each market can be different. Even in small institutions branches can serve markets that vary greatly. Example: A branch in a college town is much different in terms of asset/liability mix and type of client than one in an upper-middle class bedroom community.

Successful marketing takes into consideration the branch's market such as its demographics, economic situation, and competitors. “The best institutions leverage the differences in their markets to capture greater shares of deposits or loans. They support this with advertising and marketing based on the prevailing demographics of each market,” says Clapp.

Creating Synergy

The most successful branches integrate marketing and sales. “The staff is willing and able to sell. They have the management support, the marketing support, the training support and they know the objectives they are to reach as an individual and collectively as a group,” Clapp says. “All efforts are cohesive and support one another. It also means that communication is clear and consistent and that the knowledge of the marketplace is translated from the sales team, which lives it every day, to the marketing team that needs to understand it to present an effective marketing message and tone.”

Integrating marketing and sales is the difference between synergy—the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts—and having splinter groups or messages that deflect the core messages. The integration ensures that when a person comes into contact with the organization, either in person, on the phone, over the web, or through the mail, the message, tone, and “brand promise” are consistent and that everyone does their part in the process to support the end goals of the organization.

Strong and Consistent Communications

“Communication is mission critical in successfully integrating marketing and sales,” emphasizes Clapp. “It's the difference from knowing that you need to ‘take the hill' and the clear understanding that ‘this hill is important to the institution as it drives 40% of our revenue and provides ongoing opportunity.'”

Strong and consistent communication creates empowerment, engagement, enthusiasm, and the drive for ideas and suggestions at all staff levels. These are core behaviors for sales and service excellence. Clapp offers these tips:

• Make the communication both broad in scope and deep in detail
• Ensure the communication is consistent
• Ensure it is actionable knowledge versus simple information/data
• Make it tailored to the branch/department/area in terms of impact and how they can contribute/ succeed
• Communicate early, often, and give indications of success of “how things are going”
• Provide weekly staff updates on promotions with numbers gained compared against numbers expected
• Highlight strong performing branches/people
• Provide monthly recaps of promotions, marketing activities. and client responses

Sales Is a Daily Routine

“When the sales process becomes part of your branch's daily routine, it is then consistent and ‘how we do things' versus a special promotion. It also helps to create an environment of service and sales that leads to a cultural adoption,” says Clapp. To foster this environment, he advises:

• Provide examples of doing activities that lead to sales success, such as notes to clients and preparing as much as you can for sharing product opportunities that make sense for individual clients
• Provide clear and consistent mentoring/coaching, such as being involved in client interactions and providing feedback after the client leaves
• Provide knowledge that is actionable to the staff, such as requesting MCIF next-product reports for your branch
• Share scripting of how to “get started” in a conversation with a client
• Give tools for helping jump-start conversations, such as a decision-tree that outlines if a client says/does “this,” then mention “this”

Enhance the Client Experience

“If only two or three activities can be effectively or consistently delivered, those activities should have the highest impact and be the most influential to the client experience. This becomes the internal message of the marketing and sales team,” says Clapp.

Examples:

• The Top-100 client lists for each branch and how often and when to communicate to that group
• The list of next product likelihood for all the branch's clients
• The list of clients that do not have certain core products (no checking, no debit card, etc)
• To effectively focus your staff on key initiatives that improve and enhance the client experience, Clapp advises:
• Make it widely known that if/when you have time, specific actions and resources such as reports on next-most-likely products, core system reports (checking clients with no loans, checking with no debit card, etc), birthday lists for top 50 clients, and potential center of influence people/businesses to contact are available to use
• Provide clear communication as to where the goals stand and what needs to be done to reach them
• Provide ongoing support and ideas to the staff

This article first appeared in Branch Manager's Letter. Contact publisher Lana J. Chandler at 304-343-020 or Lana@BranchManagersLetter.com. Reprinted with permission.