Sam Walton shamelessly copied his competitors. There’s a story, probably apocryphal but true in spirit, about his competitive shopping trips. After visiting his own stores, he’d usually ask the local manager to join him on a competitive shop. As the tale goes, he and the manager would enter the store – one did a circuit to the left, the other to the right, and they’d meet up at the front door to debrief.
Mr. Sam asked how it went. The local manager proceeded to tell him all the ways Wal-Mart was better.
“But”, Mr. Sam said, “did you see their great hosiery display?”
One of our clients, a very savvy and innovative bank marketer, is always is on top of — and learning from — the best practices of other banks-banks and credit unions in his market. Here’s how. Continue reading
Last week I had a meeting with MidSouth Bank and was impressed with how they are responding to consumer concerns about the stability of financial institutions and the availability of credit.
It got me thinking about the issue and I re-read a recent Nielsen surveythat assessed consumer attitudes in the the wake of the failures of IndyMac and Lehman, and the acquisition of WaMu, Wachovia and Merrill Lynch. Some results are to be expected, but there are a number of surprising conclusions. Continue reading
According the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, housing values continue to be in free-fall. Estimates of home values and housing trends are crucial to bank decisions on loan policy and risk management, so it is useful to understand which data sources provide the best information for your market area. Here’s some useful background Continue reading
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