Setting the stage for a successful call program in your Community Bank
We’ve successfully implemented call programs in community banks for over 20 years. When done right, you can increase your core deposits, build on current relationships and create a culture of advocacy. When done wrong, you can expect disgruntled employees, irritated customers, and a culture of product pitching with little or even negative results to the bottom line. Unfortunately, many community banks go into call programs with a trial and error mindset, just hoping to figure it out along the way. What’s interesting is that a call program isn’t that complicated as long as it is approached with the right strategy and the process is managed on a consistent basis. Whether your calling program is in the planning stages or has already begun, there a few keys that any successful program will follow.
Here are our top 6 keys
- Have a Reason to Call – We’re not talking about letting customers know about the new special rate or product of the week. We’re talking about a process of developing relationships with your best customers, attracting new core deposits, and bringing in new customers. Here are a few reasons to call… New Customer Call; 60-Days before CD Maturity Call; Paid Out Loan Call.
- Make sure your best people are calling – Don’t make the mistake of assuming certain employees are good on the phone. Make sure you have a Telephone Mystery Shopping service in place that will allow you to hear recordings of how well your employees are handling customer calls. Employees that score an A or higher should be the team making your outbound calls.
- Throw away the scripts – No one wants to hear a robot and that’s exactly what employees sound like when reading a script. Provide an objective for the call along with bullet points on what to cover. Before any employee makes a call, you should conduct a simple role play situation that will enable you to certify an employee before she begins making calls. Remember, your best employees are making the outbound calls. Allow their talents to shine and don’t handcuff them with a script.
- Develop a commonsense strategy – Have a special CD rate coming up? Call your best deposit customers at least 2 weeks prior to the special to give them a heads up so they can take advantage of the rate even if their CD comes due before the special rate officially begins. Try calling customer 60 days or more before their current CDs mature. The strategy should be to bring in new money, not reprice what you already have. Make sure the objectives and actions of your calling program fit into the culture and vision of the bank.
- Track it – Whether you use The Score Report or some other tracking system, you should be able to keep track of the leads generated through your calling program. You should also conduct a brief meeting (via webcasting to save time) each week to review successes and discuss challenges.
- Focus on results – Many call programs fail because their main focus is on activity such as how many calls were made by making all employees make a certain number of calls each day or week. It might look good in theory to have made 500 calls this week, but if you’ve only made 20 sales with 10 of those resulting in a repricing of your assets in a negative way and at the same time upsetting 50+ customers for various reasons (spilling the beans to one spouse about the other spouse’s secret CD), then what have you really accomplished? It would be much more effective to make 50 calls that are well thought out, with a focus on building relationships and attracting new products, services and dollars to the bank. Don’t celebrate the 500 calls this week. Celebrate the 5 relational and profitable sales resulting from the calls.
Is your calling program a net gain or a net drain?
Calling programs seem to come and go. However, most tend to go as a result of being a net drain to the bank when no real change is seen by the board and senior management or when complaints from your best customers begin to pile up. We can assure you that if properly implemented, a calling program will become a vital component to profitability, low-priced core deposits, customer loyalty and a relationship based culture. It’s not a complicated process but it does require consistency and accountability.
Here’s a good rule of thumb to wrap this up. Make sure the right employee is calling the right customer at the right time for the right reason.
