Steps to Improving Bank Cross-Sell Performance

by. Jim Marous

With an increasing need for banks to increase revenues and decrease costs, optimizing every marketing contact has never been more important. In addition to leveraging multiple channels to generate a steady stream of new customers, one of the easiest and most steady sources of new businesses and related revenue is to reach out to current customers for additional business.

With the cost of acquiring new retail, small business or commercial customers being five to ten times the cost of retaining an existing one, and with the average spend of a repeat customer being 50-100% more than a new one, bank marketers need to remember that the most efficient investment of marketing funds is to market to customers that already bank with you.

Here are 9 time-tested, common sense techniques that many bank marketers sometimes forget:

Ask questions: Consultative selling has been discussed the focus of the banking industry for decades. In a nutshell, the process begins by clearly analyzing a customer’s situation before presenting services or products. From the outset, a failure to cross-sell a brand new customer is a failure to develop a consultative relationship and a failure to ask the right questions.

Without these questions (which are close to impossible to ask later), the opportunity to open the right services initially or later in the relationship is made more difficult. In addition, as opposed to going through a long set of questions that make the banker (and customer) feel uncomfortable, the dialogue should be free flowing and natural. Another option is to engage the customer with tools that can be used to complete the profile easily such as a tablet device.

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