I was at my favorite Dairy Queen on Sanibel Island (my wife says it’s my favorite Dairy Queen because it’s on Sanibel Island), and Colleen said to me “They run this place the way you keep saying banks should run branches.”
They had a simple menu. Nothing fancy. And when patrons with their northern accents asked for that unique combination that might exist in the boutique ice cream shop back home, the staff patiently explained how they really wanted chocolate, vanilla or a combo.
Everyone could do everything – no specialization.
When they were customer facing, or “on stage”, or whatever you want to call it
- they were fully engaged. I could see a big sign directed at the staff: “no cell phones while on duty!”
So isn’t this kind of like running a typical branch? Most customers want simple, basic banking. Most banks
- especially Community Banks – don’t have, and can’t have, a very complicated menu of products. The majority of branches are staffed with about 4-6 FTE
- with this small a staffing complement, doesn’t everyone have to be able to do everything? And finally, don’t we all have to be fully engaged when we’re in front of customers?
By the way, this DQ has consistently been the top performing in total sales for years.
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Need expert help improving the performance of your branches? Peak Performance Consulting Group has best practices and unique solutions, with a proven track record of success helping clients achieve industry leading results. Contact us
- our experts can help you unlock the key to additional profitability and efficiency.
I recently met with two banks that had very impressive sales results – opening nearly twice as many new accounts per branch as peers. But when looking further at their total program, account growth was no better than our benchmarked average. Simply put, high attrition offset most of the impressive sales gains.
It’s not how many new accounts you book, but how many you turn into long term profitable relationships.
Some thoughts to ponder:
- You need to pay as much attention to account retention as you do to customer acquisition. In the retail bank, retention programs often don’t get the attention and focus they deserve when compared to front end sales efforts, marketing acquisition programs, and the like.
- The impact is huge. Think about the effect on revenue, core deposit Cost of Funds, and marketing expense if you can simply retain a higher percentage of your customers.
- You need to know the numbers. What is a good acquisition and retention rate? How do your metrics compare to peers? How do they compare to top quartile performers?
- You need to know what the best practices are, and assess which ones have the highest impact for your organization. Improving sales process by correctly profiling customers and placing them in the right product for their needs? Ensuring structured on-boarding processes are implemented? Cross-selling “sticky” products? Implementing attrition prediction models, backed-up with targeted retention campaigns? Reducing problem incidence and increasing overall satisfaction rates?
In the end, account churn is very costly – but it is also relatively inexpensive to control. We can help — we have benchmarks, best practices, and proven results. Give us a call.
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Need expert help improving revenue from your consumer and business customers? Peak Performance Consulting Group has best practices and unique solutions, with a proven track record of success helping clients achieve industry leading results. Contact us
- our experts can help you unlock the key to additional profitability and efficiency.
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