Improving Tech ROI through Stronger Internal Partnerships

Mark Sanchioni, SVP and Chief Banking Officer, Ridgewood Savings Bank

Mark Sanchioni, SVP and Chief Banking Officer, Ridgewood Savings Bank

Each business leader is spending a lot of time exploring opportunities to best grow their business during these unique times.  For example, for those with a retail presence, dynamics such as working from home have impacted historical customer and prospect traffic patterns.  The strategic discussions on how best to pivot in these moments often start with some variation of the old adage that growth comes from retaining your current customers, acquiring new customers, and doing more business with current customers. The last part of this adage is still a difficult formula to perfect.

Most success bankers achieve comes from cross selling existing customers more products and services within the same vertical.  Over time, the consumer bank customer who begins with a checking account also opens a savings account, eventually applies for a credit card, and so on.

Seemingly endless opportunities remain for bankers to cross sell across each other’s verticals (internal partnership referrals).  The customer is a client of the whole bank, not just a client of the banker of a specific line of business.   I imagine many of you have spent your entire career working to increase the penetration of such measures as commercial banking clients who also have a consumer banking relationship, or consumer banking clients who also have a Wealth Management relationship. 

Now more than ever, we must more effectively address why we haven’t lived up to our full potential for internal partnership referrals.  In the places I have grown to know well, the missing ingredient for full success has been Trust. 

Tremendous capital is spent on customer relationship management systems to better send, receive, and manage referrals.  Tremendous effort is spent on predictive data analytics to better understand who our customers are, what their next product need will likely be, and how they may be otherwise connected to other customers, prospects, and organizations. 

Vast amounts of time are spent building incentive plans that reward when internal partners from different lines of business cross sell each other’s products and services.  “Shadow credit” is given to insulate bankers when their partnership referrals result in some event that negatively impacts them, but is in the best interest of the customer.  Many of us have even seen incentive plan designs that punish teammates who don’t achieve expected levels of partnership referrals by reducing the payout on other earned incentives.

“Most success bankers achieve comes from cross selling existing customers more products and services within the same vertical.“ 

The technological investments have undeniable value.  And the internal rules of engagement within incentive plans are important for everyone to understand desired behaviors and consequences of outcomes.  However, we must also invest in trust establishment across the line of business partners if we are to achieve our full potential.  Banking has always been a people-business with customers choosing to do business with people they like and trust.  The same holds true internally.  Internal partners will choose to make referrals to teammates they like and trust.  Requiring them do so is not enough, and may create unintended consequences that destroy trust before any real effort is made to build it.  Investing in the latest technology to make the referral process better is not enough. 

So what’s a better way forward?

You don’t have to look too far to find examples of where this is often done well.  For years, bankers have flocked to groups such as their local Chambers of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, BNI (Business Networking International) groups, and so on in an effort to develop a network of COIs (centers of influence).  In these forums, bankers have successfully developed mutually beneficial relationships over time and we can replicate the dynamics in internal partnership referral networks.

Some of those dynamics include:

1. Allowing teammates to voluntarily join an internal partnership referral network . rather than require it.  Who would want to miss out on referrals within their territory that would end up going to someone else just because they didn’t choose to join.

2. Bring the internal partners together on a regular basis.  The right frequency is up to the group.  The format can be in-person, by video meetings, a mixture of both over time.  Again, the group will let you know what works best for them.

3. Consider leveraging a secondary initiative as a pathway to building trusting relationships.  Maybe the teammates can discuss how to take the company’s United Way campaign to the next level in the year ahead.  From the brainstorming discussions to idea implementation, the internal partners will be learning about each other’s style, commitment, and execution abilities.  They will be establishing trust in each other’s words and actions.

4. Celebrate success.  In these regularly scheduled gatherings, be sure to highlight the successes new partnerships are yielding, no matter how small.  They are often the inspirational examples that others feed on. 

In sales development, we often use the expression “planting seeds.”  Well, allow me to close by taking the farming analogy a little further.  The most experienced farmers know that in order to increase their odds of success, they need to invest in preparing the soil.  The seeds they plant will have a greater yield when the soil is as good as can be. 

Improve your technology ROI by also investing in the teammates who leverage it. 

Retail

ROI