Your financial institution works tirelessly to grow your book of business in an extremely competitive environment. In fact, your institution has dedicated sales resources in retail, commercial and treasury services that spend much of their day selling to new prospects.
We all understand the sales funnel. We need many prospects in our pipeline that over time turn into a smaller number of new customers. In this article, we will focus on bank prospecting and understand the value of prospect data. We will ask and answer some difficult questions as to why banks are risking future earnings by not securing this valuable asset.
Who owns your bank’s prospect data?
The first question your institution must ask is who is the owner of your prospect data? Does the bank own the data or does your employee own the prospect data. This should be obvious that the bank owns the prospect data. Your institution compensates highly skilled sales and service associates in the form of salary, commissions and benefits. If you check your salesperson’s job description or sales plan you are asking them to find new prospects for the bank and convert them to customers. Your institution is paying your sales associates significant dollars to find new prospects. Prospect data is an asset of the bank. 🎤👇 #micdrop
How many new prospects did your institution find this year?
Do you know how many new banking prospects are uncovered by your sales team each year? Did we find more this year than last year? Who is keeping track of this important statistic? Are you tracking this statistic as a KPI?
Going back to the sales funnel, we would expect if we have identified more qualified prospects this year, we should logically have more new accounts and balances, right? To find out how many new prospects we found in a time period means we need to track and store our prospect data somewhere so we have the data to understand if we are going in the right direction.
Where do we store, maintain, and secure our prospect data?
If we now agree that prospect data is a valuable asset of the bank, where is the information stored? We spend huge amounts of money securing our existing customer data. Is prospect data less valuable? In many instances it is more valuable as it drives future earnings. Depending on the financial institution, prospect data may be well managed in a centralized banking CRM or it may be scattered across the organization. It may be on a salesperson’s cell phone, in Outlook contact books or in paper notebooks.
The real question is where should it be stored? The answer is clear. Prospect data should be stored in a centralized database system called a bank CRM system. The banking CRM is the one place your institution can count on to store and maintain prospect information across the bank. Make this database accessible to everyone however manage it like a value asset of the bank.
Are you worried about employee turnover? Where is your prospect data stored?
Occasionally we have employee turnover. Maybe your commercial lender is lured away to work for your direct competitor. This creates worry and concern. Especially when you don’t know where your prospect data is stored. How do you know which prospects your commercial lender was working on? They may only enter the prospect into your Excel pipeline AFTER taking an initial commercial loan application. What about all the other prospects they have been working on for the past year that we have yet to take an application for? Are they now lost opportunities? In most cases, they will be lost opportunities that your financial institution has already paid for which will lower future earnings.
Should bankers have access to prospect data on their mobile phones?
Absolutely. Your best sales associates are out meeting and greeting prospects face-to-face on a daily basis. They need mobile CRM tools that allow them to lookup a customer or prospect, add notes and appointments, update sales pipelines as well as review customer banking account profiles directly from their mobile device. However, the key is providing a mobile CRM tool that is connected to a centralized CRM database so all interactions are tracked and secure.
In a competitive banking environment, prospect data is a valuable bank asset. The asset should be managed in a centralized database called a banking CRM but made accessible to your salesforce using mobile technology. For more information about best practices for managing your prospect data in a centralized banking CRM, contact Quest Analytics. With more than 22+ years’ experience in helping bankers grow customer relationships, Quest Analytics leads the industry with banking CRM solutions.