action plan to increase bank sales

Content Marketing

Deposit Acquisition Growth Strategies & Marketing Tactics For Banks in 2023

Use these proven marketing strategies to reach the right audience and increase deposit account growth.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2009, community bank performance rebounded in tandem with the rest of the banking industry. By 2015, community banks had returned to pre-crisis levels in terms of noncurrent loans, net charge-offs and percentage of unprofitable institutions. However, profitability has remained below pre-crisis levels in recent years.

Core deposits became stagnant over a three-year period for community banks with less than $10 billion in assets. That dormancy meant that these banks’ flexibility was greatly limited, and their lending capacity was significantly reduced.

According to a recent report from CommunityBanking.org , “Nearly one-third of bankers ranked either core deposit growth or the cost of funds as their greatest challenge.” Since then a number of factors have contributed to these concerns.

While foot traffic to branch offices had been decreasing prior to the pandemic, COVID-19 accelerated the trend. Branches will certainly continue to provide value for the foreseeable future, but physical bank locations will likely have a diminishing impact on deposit growth. More on increasing in-person visits to your branches here .

In addition, many are responding to the impact that inflation has on their financial plans. With rising costs, individuals are spending more and depositing less. Keeping customers informed about competitive interest rates and other financial measures to help counteract the loss of purchasing power during inflationary times is critical.

Local banks and credit unions increasingly need to execute effective deposit marketing strategies to reach and educate their target audiences.

This guide provides strategies for reaching prospective customers/members in order to increase core deposits.

Modern Banking Behavior

The average American’s banking behavior is very different now than it was in 2009.  6% of U.S. total banks closed following the financial crisis, and it is projected that 20% of all branches will close in the next few years. Retail branch offices have traditionally been a market advantage for local financial institutions, but the need for local bank branches to grow target markets may be dwindling. At least for transactional banking purposes, many customers can’t remember the last time they walked into a physical bank. And while national banks enjoy widespread brand awareness thanks to enormous marketing budgets, awareness of community banks and credit unions in their local market is typically about half that of megabanks. This presents a major challenge for local FIs since most consumers searching for a checking account already have a brand in mind, and largely end up choosing that brand (see Oliver Wyman study ). In order to attract and retain depositors, local banks must adjust how they engage customers and differentiate their brand.

As you plan a deposit growth strategy for your community bank or credit union, consider these essential tactics for increasing core deposits:

1. Local search engine optimization (SEO) ensures prospects will find you online

According to the CA Web Stress Index, 88% of consumers will shop online first before opening a checking account. You may be the closest financial institution, and you may have the best rates for your deposit accounts, but if your competitors are dominating the top organic positions in Google and Bing search results, then you are missing out on new customers. Are your prospective customers even aware of your bank?

Local SEO  (search engine optimization) is the key to maximizing your online visibility for each of your branches. Many elements play a role in creating a comprehensive local SEO strategy, but here are some essential strategies that you can use to get in front of your potential customers:

• Local Map Listings :  Create and verify map listings  for each of your branches in both Google and Bing. This information typically appears above organic results when a local search is performed and provides a breakdown of the essential information that your customers need most: branch address, hours of operation, phone number, a link to your website, and directions to lead them right to your door. Getting some 5-star reviews for these listings will increase your credibility, giving potential customers a greater sense of confidence that you will be able to help them.
• City-Specific Content : Create pages on your website for each of your bank’s branches. Flesh them out with contact information for the branch, a high-quality image of the building, and the address. Don’t forget to add few paragraphs of unique content that describe the services you offer, your staff, etc. Insert a link to your deposits page to help drive curious visitors into confident customers. These elements work together to help each branch location page rank higher in the search engine results.  More branch location page best practices here .
• Business Review Sites : Whether you added your business or not, review sites like Yelp and Yellow Pages likely have details about your locations. Make sure that each of your branch locations is listed and accurate on these sites. Check each listing to ensure that your address, phone number and hours of operation are all up-to-date. Again, getting some 5-star reviews on these sites will bolster your credibility .
• Content Marketing : Creating content that is valuable to your audience is an effective way to reach new prospects while providing useful resources that improve engagement with existing customers. This is an effective  digital marketing strategy used by banks to promote nearly any product or service. One method is to create content that answers the questions of your customers and prospects. Take deposits for example – do your customers frequently ask you about the differences between the accounts you offer, if they should plan to keep a certain amount of money in their account, or if multiple savings accounts can help keep their savings goals on track during periods of high inflation. These topics can inspire new pieces of content that will educate your audience and open a line of communication to your community bank.

Utilizing these local SEO strategies will also make it more likely for potential customers to find you through Google searches and business review sites. Once your visitor has landed on your site or visited one of your branches, this is the time to present an attractive offer for a new deposit account.

These strategies are generally useful for increasing your online visibility to a local audience and will yield long-term results. If you’re looking to target a more specific audience, keep reading to learn more.

2. Use multiple marketing channels to reach your desired audience

In today’s competitive climate, you can’t assume that any single channel will take your prospects through the entire buyer journey. Part of your  bank marketing plan  should be to identify the consumer and business personas who can significantly help you grow your deposits, then develop a multi-channel strategy to reach them.

Create a profile of the type of client you wish to pursue. What is their ZIP code, for example, and what financial products would they use? Are they lifelong residents in the area, or have they just moved here from out of state? Is this their first step towards organizing their finances, or are they looking to change financial institutions after many years? Each of these groups has different needs, and present unique opportunities to open new deposit accounts. You can start by analyzing your existing deposit holders’ demographics and preferences which can help you determine their overall profitability and interest rate sensitivity. Once completed, you have the basis to design profiles that will help you attract and retain more depositors. This information will aid in designing your bank deposit marketing and outreach plan effectively.

An important consideration as you create your desired customer profiles is to research what you think may be attractive to your audience. Millennials, Gen Z , and younger audiences can engage with finances differently; understanding these nuances can help improve the relevance of your products and communications ( check out our contribution to this podcast about attracting millenial and gen z customers to your community bank). However, when it comes to growing deposits, don’t forget that Baby Boomers still hold two-thirds of all deposits , with substantially more assets under management at RIA (registered investment advisory) firms.

Once you know who you want to reach, integrated marketing strategies that include multiple touch points from direct mail, video, website content, email, print, and digital ads can help you grow deposits from existing customers and convert new customers to boost your bank’s deposits.

3. Use paid search marketing to your advantage

It’s become the norm for potential customers to turn to a search engine to research a product or service before they make a decision. Even the majority of people who decide to open an account at a physical branch gather information online first . As a result, it’s become essential to place your community bank in front of these searchers. This much is obvious, but many financial institutions aren’t leveraging the full potential of their online presence with an effective search marketing campaign.

By utilizing strategies like  pay-per-click (PPC) advertising  using tools like Google Ads, community banks have the opportunity to push past their competitors and gain prominence at the top of the search engine results pages. Paid search campaigns are so effective because they can be targeted to a specific audience according to the exact phrases they are searching Google for. This is accomplished using target keyword groupings, specific ad content, geo-targeting and a host of other options.

Paid search advertising offers a clear path to presenting your services out to a highly-qualified audience. Here are some things you should consider when building a paid search campaign if your goal is to increase deposits:

• Build ads for each deposit service : Create ads that focus on individual deposit services and choose target keywords that will deliver those ads for relevant searches. Your ads should always align with the keywords you’re targeting. For example, if someone searches for “open checking account near me” then you’ll want to show ads related to your checking options, rates, etc. If ads for your premier checking accounts are displaying from a search related to CDs, then there’s little chance that users will actually click on them. This is a typical mistake by many search advertisers; in fact, the average Google Ads account  wastes 76% of its budget   on misaligned search terms and ad content.
• Use thoughtful geo-targeting : Specific targeting is key to driving qualified traffic and conversions. If your targeting area is too broad, then you may wind up with a rapidly-diminishing budget that is wasted by users who aren’t part of your target audience. If you have multiple branches, it’s smart to target prospects within a small radius around each of your locations.
• Consider your competition : Keeping a watchful eye on your competitors is a standard practice in search marketing. If you see ads for your local competitors in the search engines, take a look at the services they’re promoting and how they differentiate. This can help you get an idea of what their customers are interested in, and how they’re addressing those interests. You can also target your ads to appear when someone performs a search for one of your competitors, giving you the opportunity to position your bank as a better solution to their needs. You’ll never outspend a megabank, but you can absolutely  target megabank prospects or existing customers  to help them understand the benefits of banking locally.

The world of PPC is vast, and there are many elements that we haven’t touched on in this article – budget, ad extensions, display advertising, remarketing/retargeting, customer-match, and more. If you plan to enhance your online presence with paid ads, your best bet is to partner with a digital marketing agency that is experienced in helping banks grow.

4. Leverage social advertising to target prospects and existing customers

Many financial products are designed to assist people throughout the various stages of their lives – higher education, relocation, purchasing a home, starting a family.  Social advertising  – the use of ads on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn – enables marketers to target these individuals with ads that address their changing lifestyles and countless other demographics or behaviors.

Social media platforms offer powerful targeting tools that allow you to deliver highly-focused ads to a specific audience based on their interests and lifestyles. Couple this with a comprehensive understanding of your audience, and you can create social media ads that drive highly-qualified traffic to your site. For example, a LinkedIn Ads campaign promoting business IOLTA checking accounts can be delivered to business owners of law firms with less than 50 employees within your target geographic markets.

This targeting also allows you to create ads that are tailored to the needs of your specific audiences. This makes the most of your ad spend by only showing your ads to individuals that you’ve selected through targeting. You can further narrow your targeting to a specific list of customer email addresses (e.g. loan customers who don’t also have a checking account with your financial institution). By tapping into these audiences and following social advertising best practices, banks have the ability to reach highly qualified prospects (and existing customers/members) with timely and relevant offers. Find related resources on our blog about Facebook Ads best practices and LinkedIn marketing for bankers .

5. Create an effective mobile presence

In 2023, a few things are certain. One is that your customers spend much of their lives online and on their mobile phones. If your bank does not have a digital presence that allows simple transactions to be done anywhere, anytime, you will not grow your number of deposits and, in fact, you may lose existing customers. In order to make banking with your institution an attractive proposition, convenience is of the utmost importance.

If you do not already have a mobile app to offer your clients, create a simple option that allows customers to perform basic functions like check deposit, account overview, and funds transfer from their handheld device. With an  estimated 224 million smartphone users in the U.S., many of the high deposit customers your bank needs to attract are among this group. People’s lives are busier than ever, so offering time-saving options with a mobile-first mentality will make your bank more attractive and translate into growing your bottom line.

Read more about how to promote your mobile banking app. 

6. Deliver customer service that is both friendly and educational

There was a time when serving up a smile and a small gift was enough to gain new accounts. Now your community bank is competing against larger banks as well as online-only financial institutions for highly sought-after customers. That means you need to do your research, then roll out the red carpet. Identify the customers your bank would like to attract and try to understand their banking lives.

For example, busy people may not want to go through the hassle of switching their checking account, so you may not want to lead with checking account marketing strategies ( more ideas in our bank switcher marketing guide ). However, a competitive loan offer may entice the same personal or business customer. Once you establish a good relationship with this one product, it’s easier to cross-sell other products such as that no-fee checking.

On that note, make teller outreach a core part of your internal marketing strategy. In the era of direct deposit and mobile banking, customers don’t have to visit a physical branch. When they do, make it count with friendly, personalized service. This is often what distinguishes a community bank from larger, more impersonal institutions. As the teller processes the customer’s transaction, they can recommend products that would be a good fit, such as higher yield savings products or investment services.

When it comes to high net-worth customers, pick up the phone and get personal. Relationships are everything and individuals and businesses will appreciate the special touch and attention to their needs and satisfaction.

Overall, don’t take any customer for granted. Remember you’re not the only bank trying to woo potential customers or sell additional products to existing customers. Win them over by being genuine, accessible, thorough, and proactive.

7. Tell a (good) story

Effective storytelling can yield serious results. Research backs up common-sense that people purchase more often from companies that engage them with education. Invest in relevant educational content by creating high-quality website content and blog articles that will inform your audience.

Draw inspiration for these articles from common questions you receive on a regular basis, or highlight services that would be most beneficial for your target audiences. If you’re trying to sell a particular product – deposit accounts, for example – use your content as an opportunity to sell your audience by educating them about that product. By doing this, you’re creating an effective resource for your audience while simultaneously showing them why your services are the solution for their needs. Don’t forget to take advantage of client success stories- testimonials make for great storytelling !

Your target customers are more likely to respond to a local bank that actively works to strengthen its community. Your fortunes are intertwined with those of your neighbors and that is a powerful selling point.

Take the next step to increase deposit growth today

Which of these bank deposit marketing strategies will you use next? With a proactive plan that capitalizes on your institution’s existing strengths, your FI can create winning strategies to increase deposits and thrive in a new era banking.

Now that you’ve discovered how to grow bank deposits, do you need a partner that can execute your deposit growth strategy? BankBound works exclusively with community banks and credit unions, using data-driven marketing to ensure the best ROI. Reach out to start a conversation , we’re always happy to talk financial marketing!

Do you have additional marketing ideas for growing deposits? Let us know and we’ll add them to this post!

{BONUS} 30 Additional Deposit Gathering Strategies to Grow Your Bank:

• Free gifts for opening a checking account (new toaster anyone?)
• Cash incentives to open a new account (We’ve seen offers as high as $600, but cash incentives often require a certain amount of direct deposits within 60-90 days (typically $500+), a certain number of transactions completed (typically 5-10), and sometimes a savings account must also be opened and funded)
• Tiered rates based on higher deposit balances
• Referral incentives for signing up friends
• Internal employee competitions
• Offering completely free checking to earn new customers, with an intentional up-selling strategy
• Offering relevant checking accounts for specific life-stages (e.g. kids checking, youth/teen checking, student checking, 55+ checking)
• Offering high-interest checking products
• Offering a checking account that provides a higher interest rate based on how long the account has been open
• Lending discounts when loans are setup with an auto-pay checking account at your bank
• Offering personal financial management tools for deposit customers (or a cash management solution for commercial deposit customers) that make your financial institution especially sticky, increase share of wallet, and gain valuable intelligence on customers
• Mergers/acquisitions of deposit-heavy banks (see our  digital marketing checklist for bank mergers and acquisitions )
• Manually calling customers with other products who don’t have a checking account or other product with your bank
• Manually calling on customers before their CD matures or special rate period ends (consider giving them a rate increase for renewing their CD for another term – more CD marketing strategies here )
• Offer other benefits like cyber-security as part of account ownership
• Provide business clients with fraud management solutions like positive pay
• Save to win contests
• Direct mail promotions  to new movers with a special offer
• Introduce gamification through the bank’s mobile app to encourage saving
• Partner with a fintech company
• Launch a digital-only bank brand
• Accept deposit applications digitally
• Become the official bank of a local college/university
• Advertise on rate comparison websites (e.g. bankrate.com, nerdwallet.com, depositaccounts.com, etc.)
• Use  marketing automation  to nurture prospects that are not quite ready to make a decision
• Participate in reciprocal deposits (which are no longer considered brokered deposits thanks to the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act)
• Partner with a local travel agency to create a customer Travel Club that offers discounted trips but requires members to have an active account with your bank
• Partner with social media influencers and niche publishers (e.g. mom blogs ) to increase visibility with new audiences
• Offer companion savings accounts with high-yield checking and savings accounts combined
• Create a Bank at Work Program

{DOUBLE BONUS} More Than a Rate: 56 Checking Account Features & Benefits That Differentiate

• Online banking and bill pay
• Mobile app banking and bill pay
• Mobile check deposit
• Mobile P2P payments
• Free checks
• Custom check design
• Debit card chip technology for added security
• Fraud monitoring
• Debit card control (turn on/off from mobile app)
• Transaction alerts
• Protection for lost or stolen debit card
• No monthly account fee
• ATM fee refunds
• Higher cash withdrawal limits
• Free debit card replacement
• No international transaction fees
• Instant issue debit card
• Better rates on other bank products
• Wealth management advisory
• Wire transfers
• Cashier’s checks
• Bank-sponsored Travel Club membership
• Visa debit card benefits and security
• MasterCard debit card benefits and security
• Identity theft recovery services
• The ability to send paper checks without even owning a checkbook
• No account fees
• School Spirit Debit Cards designed with local school colors and mascots
• Offer users the ability to custody their crypto in your bank mobile app
• Access to exclusive events
• Free trades in a corresponding investment account
• Account bonus for good grades (student checking)
• No minimum account balance
• Money orders
• Stop payments
• Early direct deposit (many FIs now offering the ability to get paid 2 days early)
• Custom debit card design
• Automatic sweeps into higher interest accounts
• Overdraft protection
• Safe deposit box
• FDIC insurance beyond $250,000 in deposits
• Added mobile app security (fingerprint or two-factor authentication)
• Monitoring/alerts of recurring subscription payments
• Choice of printed statements or eStatements with check images included/archived, and optimized to include marketing offerings, financial insights, or other useful information
• Debit card rewards program
• 24/7 live customer service
• Smart ATMs that accept cash deposits, are contactless, mobile-friendly, have a video teller (ITM), or integrate directly into your banking core
• Debit card cash back program
• Automated account switching from a previous bank account
• Notary services
• Personal financial management tools
• Expedited account opening (“open an account in 5 minutes or less”)
• Zero liability protection
• Mortgage rate discount
• Discounted loan closing costs
• Subaccounts for specific goals/needs
• Priority customer support contact

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9 Banking Sales Strategies to Increase Profits

To succeed in banking, it’s crucial to have a strong sales strategy in place. Sales strategies are how a bank can increase its profits by acquiring new customers and growing business from current customers. 

Here are nine banking sales strategies that can help your business grow.

1. Develop a Banking Niche

Focus on a specific banking niche and develop sales strategies specifically for that market. This could be businesses in a specific industry, individuals with certain professions, or customers with particular financial needs. 

By understanding the needs of your target market, you can better tailor your products and services to them, making it more likely that they’ll do business with you.

2. Sell Banking Products and Services Online

In today’s digital world, it’s essential to have an online presence where potential customers can learn about your products and services. Many people research banking options online before deciding, so your bank must be visible in this space. You can sell banking products and services directly on your website or through online marketplaces.

3. Offer Free Banking Consultations

Offer potential customers a free consultation to discuss their banking needs. This is a great way to build trust and rapport with potential customers. During the consultation, you can get to know their needs better and identify their pain points with their current banking situation. You can then offer solutions that address their specific needs.

4. Use Banking Software to Automate Processes

Use banking software to automate repetitive tasks like customer onboarding or loan processing. This will free up your time to focus on selling and acquiring new customers. Automation can also help improve the accuracy of your banking records and make it easier to track sales metrics.

5. Provide Personalized Banking Services

Take the time to get to know your customers on a personal level. This could involve taking them out for coffee, getting lunch together, or simply conversing about their lives outside of banking. Building relationships with your customers will make them more likely to do business with you and recommend you to others.

6. Offer Unique Banking Products and Services

Stand out from the competition by offering unique banking products and services that cater to your target market’s needs. This could include special financing for businesses in a certain industry, custom debit cards, or exclusive access to certain banking products. By offering something that other banks don’t, you’ll make it more likely that customers will choose to do business with you.

7. Invest in Banking Technology

Stay ahead of the curve by investing in cutting-edge banking technology. This could include mobile banking apps, contactless payment solutions, or artificial intelligence-powered customer service chatbots. By investing in new technologies, you’ll be able to offer a better experience to your customers and stay ahead of your competition.

8. Focus on Customer Retention

Acquiring new customers is important, but it’s also essential to focus on retaining your existing customer base. This can be done by providing exceptional customer service, offering loyalty rewards, and regularly running promotions. Keeping your current customers happy will make them more likely to do business with you in the future and refer new customers to you.

9. Promote Banking Products and Services through Social Media

Use social media to promote your banking products and services to a wider audience. This could involve creating informative blog posts, sharing helpful infographics, or running social media ads. You can also use social media to engage with potential customers and build relationships with them.

Increase Profits as a Bank

Following these banking sales strategies can increase your chances of acquiring new customers and boosting your bank’s profits. Keep in mind that building relationships with potential customers takes time, so stay focused on your goals and continue working hard to provide the best banking experience for your customers.

Other Helpful Articles

Banking Services to Offer Your Customers

Rewriting the rules in retail banking

Retail banks have long competed on distribution, realizing economies of scale through network effects and investments in brand and infrastructure. But even those scale economies had limits above a certain size. As a result, in most retail-banking markets, a few large institutions, operating at similar efficiency ratios, dominate market share. Changes to the retail-banking business model have mostly come in response to regulatory shifts, as opposed to a purposeful reimagining of what the winning bank of the future will look like.

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Retail banks have also not kept pace with the improvements in customer experience seen in other consumer industries. Few banks stand out for innovation in customer interaction models or branch formats. Marketing investments have traditionally focused on brand building and increasing loyalty: a reputable brand stood for trust and security and became a moat, providing protection against new entrants to the sector.

Today, the moats that banks have built are more likely to restrict their own progress than protect them from attackers. Four shifts are reshaping the global retail-banking landscape to the point where banks need to fundamentally rethink what it takes to compete and win. This should be an urgent priority for banks. The pace of change will likely accelerate, with a select set of large-scale winners emerging in the next three to five years that will gain share in their core markets and begin to compete across borders, leaving many subscale institutions scrambling for relevance.

Four shifts are reshaping retail banking

Over the next three to five years, we expect a few players to emerge from the competitive scrum to gain dominant share in their core markets and possibly beyond. These firms will have taken bold and decisive actions to capitalize on the following shifts that are reshaping the industry. In some cases, these winners will be incumbents that build on an already significant share; in others, they will be institutions newer to the banking industry, which use their agility, strategic aggressiveness, and sharp execution to attract customers.

1. The traditional distribution-led growth formula no longer applies

Until the financial crisis in 2007, a retail bank’s total share of deposits was tightly linked to the size of its branch network. Over the past decade, this relationship between deposit growth and branch density has weakened. Deposits at the 25 largest US retail banks have doubled over the past decade, while their combined branch footprint shrank by 15 percent over the same period. This reverse correlation is even sharper for the top five US banks—while reducing branches by 15 percent, they increased deposits by 2.6 times (Exhibit 1). While there have been previous periods of branch contraction, they were clearly tied to economic downturns; this most recent wave of retrenchment has persisted through a period of robust economic growth.

Retail-banking branch networks are contracting across Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom (Exhibit 2), although the pace of change varies considerably between regions. Those that are ahead of the curve have reduced branches by as much as 71 percent (Netherlands). Banks in North America and Southern Europe are reducing branches and growing digital sales at a more gradual rate.

The rate of branch reduction is often tied to customer willingness to purchase banking products online or on mobile devices. Eighty to 90 percent of banking customers in the Nordics, for example, are open to digital product purchases for most financial products, compared to 50 to 60 percent in North America and Southern Europe. While customer willingness to purchase products via digital channels varies, however, the common thread is that in all markets this readiness is far ahead of actual digital sales and will require banks to catch up to consumer needs and expectations. Within any specific market, of course, there are banks that have acted swiftly to adopt digital and remote as their main channel for interactions; these banks are pulling away from the pack and have taken decisive actions on several fronts:

• Set a bold aspiration for sales/service channel mix. Banks must do more than react to shifts in consumer preferences—they need to set aspirational targets for sales and service across channels. Some customers will self-select into digital channels, but banks can do more to encourage less motivated customers to make the shift. Banks in markets like the Nordics and the United Kingdom have reduced the number of customers using branches by up to 60 percent by focusing on how to serve the heaviest branch users effectively through other channels.
• Use advanced analytics to reshape the physical footprint. Optimizing the branch network requires a deep understanding of consumer preferences in every micromarket, and of the economics of making changes at the branch level. Leading institutions are using combinatorial optimization algorithms to optimize the net present value (NPV) of the network based on granular customer data on characteristics such as digital propensity, willingness to travel, needs based on transaction patterns and branch usage, and the size and space/format of branches.
• Develop cutting-edge digital sales capabilities. Achieving meaningfully higher levels of digital sales requires sophisticated digital marketing and an understanding of how to optimize each stage of the funnel. Most consumers already seek information on financial products on digital channels, but few institutions are highly effective at converting these inquiries into digital sales. Leading banks use first- and third-party data (for example, geospatial, browsing behavior), a robust marketing technology stack (such as 360-degree view of customer, omnichannel campaigns), and an agile operating model (for example, cross-functional marketing war rooms). With these elements in place, progress can be rapid; a North American institution tripled annual online product sales in 12 months.

Leading a consumer bank through the coronavirus pandemic

2. customer experience is beginning to generate meaningful separation in growth.

Across all retail businesses—including banks—customers now expect interactions to be simple, intuitive, and seamlessly connected across physical and digital touchpoints. Banks are investing in meeting these expectations but have struggled to keep pace. Many are hampered by legacy IT infrastructures and siloed data. As a result, few banks are true leaders in terms of customer experience. Even for institutions ahead of the curve, typically only one-half to two-thirds of customers rate their experience as excellent.

The impact of this less-than-stellar performance is measurable. For example, McKinsey analysis shows that in the United States, top-quartile banks in terms of experience have had meaningfully higher deposit growth over the past three years (Exhibit 3). The few “experience leaders” emerging in retail banking are generating higher growth than their peers by attracting new customers and deepening relationships with their existing customer base. Highly satisfied customers are two and a half times more likely to open new accounts/products with their existing bank than those who are merely satisfied.

These experience leaders are adopting tactics pioneered by digital-native companies in other sectors such as e-commerce, travel, and entertainment: setting a “North Star” based on proven markers of differentiated experience (for example, user-experience design, carrying context across channels), redesigning journeys that matter most for digital-first customers and not just digital-only customers, and establishing integrated real-time measurement that cuts across products, channels, and employees. These banks know that customer experience is not just about the front-end look and feel, but that it requires discipline, focus, and investment in the following actions:

• Focus on the journeys and subjourneys that matter. The relative contribution of subjourneys (such as app downloading; activating account) in determining overall customer experience varies considerably. In fact, ten to 15 subjourneys have the biggest customer-satisfaction impact for most products and should thus be the first priority. For instance, when opening a new deposit account, the researching options subjourney has eight times the impact on customer satisfaction than other account-opening subjourneys, on average. For banks, the key is to prioritize these high-impact subjourneys and systematically redesign them from scratch—a process that can take about three to four months and result in at least a 15 to 20 percent lift in customer satisfaction.
• Change the way you engage with customers. Experience leaders understand that digitization is not just about creating a cutting-edge online and mobile experience, and that satisfaction is shaped by customer experience across channels . The experience should be seamless, especially on journeys that are more likely to take place over multiple channels, such as new account opening, financial advice, or issue resolution . One wealth manager equipped its frontline relationship managers (RMs) with robo-advice algorithms that are in sync with what customers see on the self-directed channel—and provided the RMs with daily and weekly next-best-action recommendations to nudge their clients. Banks need to deploy these tools broadly and empower their frontline staff to play a more consultative role that blends human and digital recommendations. They will also need to revisit how these employees are incentivized, shifting to a longer-term view of relationships and profitability rather than just product sales.
• Translate data into personalized products and real-time offers. The amount of data available on individual customers or prospects has exploded in recent years. The challenge is to convert these data into actionable nudges and highly relevant offers for customers that are delivered at the right moment. Credit-card companies have long offered discounts on specific spending categories or with specific retailers. Today, they can improve loyalty and share of spending by providing location-specific offers right when a customer enters a coffee shop, movie theater, or car dealership. South Africa’s Discovery, as an example, is launching a bank with product features that are informed by behavioral science and incentive-design research.

3. Productivity gains and returns to scale are back

Larger retail banks have historically been more efficient than their smaller competitors, benefiting from distribution network effects and shared overhead for IT, infrastructure, and other shared services. Our analysis of over 3,000 banks around the globe shows that while there is variation across countries, larger institutions tend to be more efficient both in terms of cost-to-asset and cost-to-income ratios. However, beyond a certain point, even larger institutions struggle to eke out efficiencies or realize benefits from scale.

We expect this paradigm to change over the next few years, as structural improvements in efficiency ratios and increasing returns to scale enable some large banks to become even more efficient. The reason is twofold: first, advances in technologies such as robotic-process automation, machine learning, and cognitive artificial intelligence—many of which are now mainstream and commercially viable—are unleashing a new wave of productivity improvements for financial institutions. Deployed effectively, these tools can reduce costs by as much as 30 to 40 percent in customer-facing, middle-, and back-office activities, and fundamentally change how work is done. Dramatic change has already taken place in banking sectors such as capital markets , where algorithmic trading and automation are radically changing the talent profile.

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The second factor leading to a wave of productivity improvement in retail banking is the shift from physical to digital channels for customer acquisition. Banks with scale—and skills in leveraging that advantage—will achieve customer-acquisition costs of up to two to three times lower than their smaller peers. Their outsized volumes of customer data will lead to better targeting and funnel conversion. As investments shift toward digital channels, the productivity gap between large and small banks will widen.

This dynamic has played out in more digitally mature industries, with firms like Amazon and Priceline acquiring customers at a significantly lower cost than competitors. As in these industries, eventually a limited number of dominant firms will emerge, squeezing out undifferentiated midsize and smaller competitors. There are early signs of this trend: undifferentiated smaller community banks in the US have lost a significant share of deposits over the last two to three years, while the three largest banks have gained share. Of course, scale is not everything. Banks that succeed in this new wave of productivity will also have taken the following actions:

• Use cutting-edge technology to automate. Over the next few years, banks will increase their use of technologies such as natural language processing and artificial intelligence to automate customer-facing interactions and complex internal tasks.
• Build and reinforce the brand. With rising digital sales consumers have more choice than ever in selecting a financial-services provider. However, our research shows that across most categories, consumers actively consider only two to three products before deciding on a purchase. So it remains as important as ever for a bank to be part of the initial consideration set. Brands with superior awareness and recognition are not only more likely to be part of the initial consideration set but also achieve higher conversion rates than lesser-known brands when they are considered. A leading credit-card provider in the United Kingdom that invested heavily in brand awareness is now twice as likely to be actively considered—by 17 percent of consumers versus 7 to 10 percent for other brands—and experiences 50 percent higher conversion when considered compared to lesser-known brands.

4. The unbundling and ‘rebundling’ of retail banking

The tight one-on-one retail-banking relationships of old are unbundling. Forty percent of US households today hold a deposit account with more than one institution. It is common to have a mortgage with one bank, an unsecured loan with a different lender, and separate deposit and investment accounts. The banking relationship is fragmenting even faster in countries with higher digital adoption.

This decline of customer loyalty provides a perfect context for firms seeking to enter banking in a selective way— focusing on the most profitable segments . Some attackers have demonstrated that while they cannot compete with incumbent banks’ broad access to customer data, they can compete effectively on customer experience coupled with aggressive pricing.

New entrants in financial services typically begin by focusing on a niche—making either a product- or segment-focused play. Their ambition, however, is often to own the full banking relationship of this segment over time—providing cards, mortgage products, and broader banking services.

The Open Banking movement , heralded by Europe’s second Payments Service Directive and the United Kingdom’s Open Banking Standards, has the potential to accelerate the unbundling of banking in the regions where it applies, leading to increasingly intense competition over the next few years. The requirement for banks to share data and provide access to consumer and small-business accounts through a common framework of application programming interfaces is likely to fuel a wave of innovation and level the playing field for fintechs and technology providers seeking entry through payments or consumer financing.

The trend toward unbundling in financial services is well under way, but where it will lead is still an open question. In industries such as music, television, e-commerce, and transportation, digital distribution led to unbundling that destroyed value for incumbents in the short term; over time, consumers tend to converge on a single provider—often an attacker. In this context, firms that effectively orchestrate platform or ecosystem environments tend to eventually emerge as winners.

The balancing act: Omnichannel excellence in retail banking

The history of the music industry over the last 20 years provides a possible model for how things will go in banking. Until the 1990s, music distribution was dominated by stores selling tracks that record companies “bundled” onto albums. In the early 2000s, digital distribution, especially via iTunes, radically reduced distribution costs. Consumers could now “unbundle” albums by purchasing individual tracks online; not surprisingly, many record stores went out of business. Over the past few years, however, we have seen a “rebundling” in the form of the streaming playlist. Streaming services are now the dominant distribution channel, with a few large players such as Spotify and Apple emerging as winners. The success of these platforms is based on their ability to create highly personalized bundles based on consumer needs and preferences, and a superior interface without the friction of purchasing tracks individually. Leaders have created significant value for consumers by using customer data and insights to deliver a superior experience, rather than by manufacturing the underlying product.

If we apply this scenario to banking, winning firms will be those that leverage superior access to customer data to provide truly differentiated and cutting-edge experiences—potentially extending beyond financial products and services. To do this effectively, banks will need to retain privileged access to information about consumers’ sources and use of funds, especially through payments and transaction activity. Banks that rebundle effectively will use this data to deliver compelling and integrated experiences that provide seamless funding, investment, payments, and money-movement capabilities. The bottom line is that in order to reverse the unbundling of financial services, banks need to make it worthwhile for consumers to have a relationship with one institution; they need to deliver not only simplicity and convenience, but also superior value. Only a few banks in each market are likely to be able to succeed with this strategy.

Already, large technology firms such as Amazon are extending into parts of the financial-services value chain, starting with areas where they have a data advantage such as payments, short-term financing for purchases, and working-capital loans for merchants on their platform. To counter the unbundling of their most profitable products, banks need to develop capabilities that few currently possess, and follow the lead of successful technology platforms:

• Retain superior access to data on transactions and financial behavior. As vast amounts of data are captured by tech firms on consumers’ behavior and preferences, one of the last bastions of valuable information is data on transactions and financial behavior. To retain unparalleled access to this data, banks will need to continue to own the transaction layer, giving them a full view of inbound and outbound activity, to form a complete picture of consumer balance sheets. Historically, this required a bank to be a customer’s primary checking-account provider; over time, we expect that institutions could do this without necessarily owning the checking-account relationship. In some cases, payments or transaction providers could see a significant share of customers’ spend volume. Financial aggregators may also be in a position to capture a broad spectrum of customer activity and use it to build an analytics advantage.
• Leverage insights to develop innovative products and features. The traditional suite of products that financial institutions offer has remained largely unchanged over the past few decades and is often structurally hard to change given how banks are organized. More nimble firms will be able to leverage insights to create unique offerings—for example, cash in a checking account could automatically be optimized for return based on financial behaviors and spend patterns without needing to ring-fence and transfer it to a separate high-yield deposit or brokerage account.
• Extend beyond purely financial services and products over time. There are a couple of clear benefits that financial institutions are likely to have relative to ecosystems being created by large tech firms. Superior access to financial information enables them to create faster and more precise offers for big-ticket products that have financing needs associated with them (such as homes or cars). For these types of products, banks could be well positioned to own the full customer journey, including the browsing experience and the transaction. One Northern European bank has developed a mobile app that integrates house searches, booking viewings, budgeting, transactions, and help with setting up a new home (for example, utilities, appliances, and renovation).

Retail banking is at an inflection point, and we expect the pace of change to accelerate significantly over the next three to five years. Success will require clarity in direction, and speed and agility in execution. Retail banks that capitalize on current shifts in the market will emerge with a winning position in their core markets and begin to compete across borders.

This article is an edited extract from the full report,   Rewriting the rules: Succeeding in the new retail banking landscape (PDF–680KB).

Vaibhav Gujral is a partner in McKinsey’s New York office, where Nick Malik is a senior partner; Zubin Taraporevala is a senior partner in the London office.

The authors wish to thank Ashwin Adarkar, Jacob Dahl, Filippo Delzi, Miklos Dietz, Dave Elzinga, Darius Imregun, Somesh Khanna, Marc Levesque, Alejandro Martinez, and Robert Schiff for their contributions to this article.

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10 Strategies to Increase Deposits at Your Community Bank

Knowing exactly how to increase bank deposits is the goal of every community bank’s marketing team, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. There are so many ways to market your bank , and you may be wondering if some of your ideas are even worth trying.

Well, we’re here to tell you that yes, with the right plan it is absolutely worth it and that investing in your bank deposit gathering strategies is more important now than in the past decade due to rising savings rates.

The last time community banks had to proactively think about rising rate strategies was a few years before the 2008 crash, and according to The Financial Brand , there were three lessons to be learned:

• Big banks only passed on a small portion of the Fed’s rate hikes.
• Customer behavior changes when rates hit 2.5% and above.
• Large banks were too slow to capitalize on the rising rates, which left room for more nimble banks to pick up customers.

It’s fair to say there’s a similar opportunity today for community banks with smart deposit gathering strategies to play ball with bigger banks. It’s easier to be proactive when you aren’t dealing with hundreds of thousands of customers, and you should use that to your advantage.

With that in mind, let’s cover 10 bank deposit gathering strategies you can use to increase your deposits.

10 strategies for driving bank deposits

1. analyze your best customers.

If you want to attract more of a certain type of banking customer, then you and your entire staff need to understand who they are and their motivations for working with a local bank.

Analyze your existing customers and figure out which demographic will be your focus for this quarter or marketing campaign and then write up a one-sheet outlining exactly how they currently find out about your bank and what services you offer that are most appealing to them. Then, brainstorm ways to connect those threads.

2. Raise your deposit rate

One of the simplest ways to become more competitive is to offer better rates. This isn’t the end-all of marketing strategies, but it is the one that speaks most plainly and has the easiest pitch.

Just remember that unless you’re dealing with customers with high volumes of cash, then chances are a rate may get a potential lead in the door but won’t keep them — your customer experience and ability to help them achieve their financial goals will.

3. Invest in your community

There are few better pitches than personal care and community integrity when comparing local institutions to national banks. By firmly investing back into your community with both actions and words, you can give potential customers a reason to choose you over a bigger bank, even if those banks have better rates.

A great way to put your investment in plain view is to understand and support your local customers. If you work with local business owners, see if you can partner on fundraisers or donate to local schools together. You could also experiment with offering adult financial classes to help people understand how to secure their future — there are many options to utilize.

4. Make sure your local SEO is up-to-date

There are a lot of laundry list items you can do from a digital marketing standpoint to help you stand out online, and one of the most important ones is making sure your local SEO is up to snuff.

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s just making sure your site communicates with Google and other local directories in the best way possible. You can either hire someone to do this for you or try it yourself .

The biggest things to nail down are your Google Business page, collecting Google reviews, and making sure you’ve submitted your address and phone number to Google Maps, Waze, etc.

5. Use online advertising

While prices will be much higher in larger cities, you should definitely be playing the online advertising game. Setting up evergreen ad campaigns that bid for keywords on Google like “local bank near me” and “need to set up a checking account” can go a long way for lead generation.

Tie that into a custom landing page with a Facebook pixel to retarget people who click and boom! You have a set-it-and-forget-it bank deposit growth machine.

6. Make sure your website is responsive

Everything you do online has to be optimized for mobile these days. If it’s not, Google will downrank your site and younger demographics won’t convert as well.

Being responsive is just a fancy way of saying your site can be used and looks good on mobile. To learn more, go here .

An easy way to test if your site is responsive is to open it on your desktop, click the top right of the window, and drag it down to a small size. If your site automatically rearranges itself to fit within the window, then you’re set. If it starts cutting things off and looks bad, then you know you have work to do.

7. Tie in other services

Your bank should feel like a trusted resource. If your customers can rely on you for advice around important business decisions, then they are more likely to expand their business with you.

One way to do that is to build or partner with ancillary services that support your ideal customer. For example, if you work with a lot of business owners, you could partner with an entrepreneurship center to get discounts for your members or provide innovative merchant services via a partnership.

8. Partner with reputable businesses

On a similar note, finding the best businesses in your area and developing relationships with them can go a long way — especially if the services they provide frequently require financing.

For example, many credit unions and community banks partner with local car salesmen to offer seamless loan financing. When you partner with the right people, if a customer trusts them they will implicitly trust your business and view it as a trustworthy recommendation.

9. Segment your marketing

Marketing is all about specificity. When it comes to your marketing efforts, try to tie each initiative and plan to a specific demographic. That allows to you to be focused in your copy, emails, and all communications. The more you can speak to that customer persona’s specific needs, the more likely they are to convert to your bank.

You can also approach this from a product standpoint, so dividing your marketing efforts by student accounts vs. new business accounts, etc.

10. Offer additional incentive

Apart from the bigger picture deposit growth strategies, there are a variety of conventional ideas you can employ. Here’s a shortlist to get started:

• Offer bonuses for signing up or referring people.
• Offer progressive rates depending on the amount in an account.
• Remove or eliminate overdraft fees.
• Give members free checks.
• Offer mobile deposits.
• Don’t charge for transfers.
• Make sure your online portal is easy to use and makes getting new accounts easy.
• Offer free identity theft protection.

If you take the time to really build out a plan and execute it with a smart, analytical approach, then you will absolutely drive deposit growth for your bank. The ball is in your court now. Good luck!

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Ideas to Increase Banking Sales Targets

• Small Business
• Running a Business
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Pinterest" aria-label="Share on Pinterest">
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Reddit" aria-label="Share on Reddit">
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Flipboard" aria-label="Share on Flipboard">

Online Banking Vs. Traditional Banking

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• What Is Brick and Mortar Marketing?
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different strategies you can use in the contemporary market.

Improve Your Local SEO

simply because the toughest competition to beat is what they see first on search pages that list search engine results. As a bank salesman , the trick is to increase your visibility to these potential customers.

when it comes to new checking accounts. There are many ways you can do this.

Google Maps Listing

Make sure you have a map listing for your bank on Google Maps, since this is the information that comes first in organic search results and it provides basic information that customers will need about your bank, including your contacts, website, directions to your physical location, and your hours of operation.

Website Content

as well as contact information for the branches.. You should also add comprehensive descriptions of the branch, its staff members, and the services it offers. Set up a deposits page and a link to that page to attract curious visitors to open new accounts.

Positive Reviews

You should also have positive reviews on various business review sites. List all of your branches on the major business review sites and make sure your contact information is up to date. Also, monitor these sites closely to find out what people out there are saying about the quality of the services that your bank offers.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is also a great way to improve your bank’s SEO. Create content that solves problems for your target audience and that answers their questions. That way you present yourself to them as a solution to their problems and an authority and improve the perception of your brand in their eyes.

Take Advantage of Multiple Marketing Channels

employed at your bank should be to come up with an avatar of the ideal customer you would like to reach with your marketing efforts.

that you know where to look for them when you’re doing the marketing.

This is where a multi-channel marketing strategy comes in, because it is highly unlikely that your ideal customer likes to hang out in just one place , making it unreasonable to target them through only one channel.

Groups of Customers

when it comes to revenue. You want to assemble as much useful information as you can during this phase, so that the planning phase is easier.

There are numerous touch points you can use to reach your target market, depending on the persona you have developed: you could use email marketing_ ; content marketing; direct mail; ads on social media and search engine s _; and so on.

Paid Search Marketing

information gathering phase.

As a community bank, it is therefore in your best interest to make sure these curious passersby of the internet see your bank. We already mentioned local SEO to achieve this organically . However, to have a broader reach and far better targeting , choose paid search marketing.

Pay-per-Click Services

hone in on your ideal customer with razor-sharp targeting. You can use specific content, keyword grouping _s, geo-targeting, _ and many other different methods to reach your ideal customer in this way.

work for them.

Using Social Media

that they cater to customers depending on the stage of their life they are at. Whether they’re trying to continue with their education, buy a new home, start a business, or saving up for retirement, there is likely a financial product that offers something of benefit.

Social media advertising allows you to be specific with your targeting so you go for potential customers in the various stages of their lives, based on their behaviors and demographics.

Focus Your Ads

very particular audience with a very particular lifestyle and very particular interests. This will be even easier and more effective if you developed a comprehensive avatar of your audience.

ads won’t be a hit or miss. You know who you want to attract and you will develop your ad in that general direction.

">Have a Mobile Presence

behind the competition in no time,

What you need to do is make it possible for your customers to carry out transactions on their phones. That means that you need to have a mobile app with basic functionality for your users. This allows your customers to save time in their very busy lives and attracts new customers to your service for its convenience.

• CUInsight: 10 tips to increase loan growth, profitability, and retention
• BAI: Three ways community banks can trigger loan marketing success
• Bank Bound: 7 Bank Marketing Strategies to Increase Deposits
• Investopedia: Why Banks Don't Need Your Money to Make Loans
• Investopedia: The Banking System: Commercial Banking - How Banks Make Money
• The Financial Brand: 7 Common Sense Ways to Increase Bank Cross-Selling

Nicky is a business writer with nearly two decades of hands-on and publishing experience. She's been published in several business publications, including The Employment Times, Web Hosting Sun and WOW! Women on Writing. She also studied business in college.

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9 Bank Marketing Strategies for 2021

This article was updated 19 January 2021

In 2021, consumers have more options than ever to consider when choosing a bank. Online-only options like Schwa b and extra convenient services like Chase’s no card ATMs are disrupting the market and calling for retail banking executives to get more creative with bank marketing ideas.

We realize pushing through competitor messages can be tough, so we talked with bank marketing and branding experts Josh Mabus of The Mabus Agency , Dan Brill of Brill Creative & HyperDrive , and Peter Jacobs of Shark Communications to get their expert advice.

Here are 9 bank marketing ideas to help you attract and retain customers and establish a unique position in the marketplace in 2020.

1. Blogging

A blogging strategy for your bank can increase traffic to your site, build your social media profiles, and establish expertise.

Take some of the most asked questions or most voiced concerns from your customers, and turn them into helpful articles on your blog. Use these to feed your social media profiles and provide another platform for customer service.

To produce a well designed, SEO-optimized blog that meets the needs of your customers, remember these important aspects:

• Deliver a great user experience
• Provide a call to action that ties in your services
• Font, color, and content should represent your bank’s brand
• Use images and videos to diversify content
• Establish a consistent and easily readable post format

Aside from posting answers to your customers most asked questions, you can ensure that you are writing content your customers are actually searching for by using tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs. Both have keyword tools that can help you easily identify topics worth writing for. They are very helpful if you ever have writers block or need to come up with the year’s content calendar. They may be a bit intimidating to use at first so it is is helpful to find a good tutorial on how to best use them. Below is a helpful course put on by Ahrefs:

Along with adding high-quality and content relevant to your prospect’s searches, you’ll want to work with your website developers to ensure your site is loading fast. Search engines like Google will often prioritize sites higher in the results if they see that your site provides good user experience.

One of the measurements of good user experience is related to core web vitals . You can check how your site fares with online tools like GTmetrix or PageSpeed Insights .

2. Social Media Content

Social media is a must-use tool to market your bank and establish a brand presence amongst your competitors. However, social media should be used to engage your followers with useful, relevant information — not simply to sell .

87 percent of consumers say that most banks on social media are “annoying, boring, or unhelpful.” You can avoid these stigmas by making sure your strategy doesn’t reflect these common mistakes:

• Only creating content that is self-promoting
• Posting infrequently or irregularly
• Not preparing for negative customer feedback ( tips on this here )
• Broadcasting the same message across all channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Chase (@chase)

Chase Bank is one of Social Times’ “ Top Banks on Social Media .” They develop interesting original content to tell their brand story and connect with their customers. In their “ Show Me Your Walk ” series they’ve created a series of livestream events to celebrate commencement ceremonies during a time of social distancing.

Banks should aim to create content that is interesting, engaging, and most of all shareable. 

Building a strong bank brand often requires more thought towards strategy, creativity, and innovation to effectively drive consumer engagement and to maximize the advantages of today’s digital media channels and display opportunities. Peter Jacobs, Shark Communications  

3. Customer Service

Exceptional customer service can be built into your marketing strategy and ultimately used to boost your brand image.

To support their customer-first approach, TD Bank created a campaign called   #TDThanksYou to solidify themselves as a bank that knows and appreciates their customers. Their team captured customer reactions to unexpected service which resulted in a viral video on their social media profiles.

A great brand image helps to define a bank more distinctly in the marketplace, more importantly, it can create a sense of perceived value in the minds of consumers which often equates to profitability over the long haul   Peter Jacobs, Shark Communications

4. Video Content Campaigns

Your customers expect lively digital content like never before. Take advantage of videos and podcasts to capture their attention. With engaging digital media, you can develop content marketing strategies that position your bank for the best kind of marketing: word of mouth.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, CIBC strategically used video stories to help communicate their brand values and then encourage customers to share those values organically.  

They launched “ Holidays for Heroe s ” a campaign that provides travel vouchers to celebrate the sacrifice and commitment of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 crisis.

The call to nominate a friend or family member for a hero’s holiday leads to a dedicated CIBC microsite that raises awareness of the brand’s social contribution. But, the key component of the campaign is a series of videos that highlights each worker and documents the moment they receive the holiday vouchers. The emotional videos give a face to the brand’s values and involves them in promoting the initiative.

The most successful advertising (no matter the medium) facilitates word of mouth in two ways: 1. It makes your audience talk. 2. It tells them what to say. Josh Mabus, The Mabus Agency

While a large budget campaign is great for branding, you don’t need to run a large scale campaigns to get good reviews. Build in excellent customer support in your company culture and be sure to capture emails from your customers so you can ask them for reviews on your Yelp or Google My Business page. Be sure to keep those pages updated with accurate business hours, holidays, and promotions. It all adds up to support a good customer experience.

5. Digital Signage

With digital signage, your displays do the selling for you so you don’t have to. Use well-placed displays to show graphics and videos that promote your latest services or tutorials for your latest products. Take fun photos of your best employees and pair them with a call to action like, “Ask Tracy for more information on consolidating your student loans.”

Giving customers something to engage with while they wait to be serviced will improve your branch experience. Show content like the local weather, public transportation routes, traffic updates, live news feeds of top financial blogs, or your own blog feed.

You can leverage digital signage in your branches to support many of the marketing ideas covered in this post. When launching online campaigns (such as Fifth Third’s “Retweet to Reemploy,”) use those same assets for content on your displays. This reinforces your overall brand image to your customers, while also positioning you as a tech-savvy financial institution.

6. Non-Traditional Rewards Programs

When designing a rewards program for your customers, consider these three primary goals:

• Increasing customer loyalty
• Extending retentio n
• Cross-promoting services and products

Chime offers a unique rewards program that aims to achieve these objectives. For every amount that you spend using your debit card, Chime rounds the total up to the nearest dollar, then automatically deposits the difference into your Chime savings account .

This system achieves customer loyalty by encouraging consistent use of your debit card, which most customers in 2018 do anyway. Retention is influenced because the longer you stay with the bank, the more free money you earn. Lastly, this rewards program provides the perfect opportunity to cross-promote both their checking and savings accounts.

Banks have a broad choice in their marketing plans: Attract and acquire customers with price-based promotions, or develop new customer relationships with a more brand-based strategy. Peter Jacobs, Shark Communications

7. Strategic Partnerships

Partner up with organizations that share the values of your customer base. This could be through entertainment companies, real estate agencies, or nonprofits.

For example, Citi partners with concert promoter Live Nation to provide pre-sale concert tickets and special offers to popular shows. You simply use your Citi credit card during checkout to redeem the perks .

Connecting with partners and crafting strategic programs like this positions your bank distinctively among competitors.

Banks must realize that they offer parity services and potential customers have an extremely difficult time differentiating between banks. Josh Mabus, The Mabus Agency

Tip: Use compelling graphics on your digital signage to communicate current partnerships and promotions with branch visitors 24/7.

8. Customer Data

Data will give you clear insight into your existing customer base. With data you can better understand behavior patterns and offer relevant deals that fit within your customer’s daily lives.

Instead of worrying about checking off their social media to-do list, or jumping on board with the latest and greatest technology, banks need to leverage their data to better understand and serve their existing client base. We see an incredible opportunity for banks to deliver much more personalized, relevant and timely messages to their current customers. We often get so excited about using technology that we forget about the human beings on the other end. Better to understand and nurture what you have than to always be looking for more. Dan Brill, Creative Evangelist

Here is an example of how banks can effectively use big data to improve the customer experience, increase retention, and create new streams of revenue.

Pro Tip: Internally display your data synopsis using digital signage and keep your employees informed and aligned with bank goals.

9. Community Initiatives

Customers look to their banks for ideas on how to manage their personal finances. Instead of simply offering a pamphlet with this information, organize monthly workshops open to the public. Here are a few topics that would be interesting:

• Financial Planning For New Parents
• Smart Savings to Homeownership
• Getting The Most From Your Credit Cards
• Wealth Management and Investing

Connect with county administrators to bring financial literacy courses to local high schools. Become a part of the national movement to educate students early on finances to position your bank as a community leader.

Washington Federal Bank took their initiative a step further, offering online courses in consumer fraud, renting vs owning, and financing higher education. Their Financial Scholars Program comes at no cost to schools or taxpayers.

With the expert insight from Josh Mabus, Dan Brill, and Peter Jacobs, we’ve covered 9 ideas you can use to structure your marketing efforts around memorable brand experiences.  With these concepts you can get started targeting new bank customers and strengthening your relationship with existing ones.

“The challenge is creating a brand that shows separation from the competition. Brand isn’t the logo, signage, and building design — it includes those things, but brand is the essence of the business.” Josh Mabus, The Mabus Agency

For more on how Enplug’s display software helps banks communicate with their customers, see Enplug for Banks .

About Brill Creative

With offices in Blue Ash, Ohio, Brill Creative provides full-service branding and design services already enjoyed by a strong roster of B2C and B2B clients including Fifth Third Bank, AAA Allied Group, Transitions, Inc., and US Bank.

About HyperDrive

Headquartered in Northeast Cincinnati, HyperDrive is one of the nation’s leading direct-to-consumer digital marketing firms. We’re experts in digital marketing strategy permission-based email marketing, CRM systems, online demand generation, web development and creative branded experiences. The HyperDrive client roster features LaRosa’s Pizzerias, AdvancePierre Foods, Rent-2-Own, Dreamfields Pasta, Sysco Foods, and Crystal Deodorant.

About Mabus Agency

Josh Mabus founded Mabus Agency in 2008 with the intention of raising the creative bar in Tupelo, Mississippi, and the Southeast. The Mabus Agency mission is simple. We retain the best talent Mississippi has to offer, while recruiting across the country with one goal in mind: providing businesses with nationally competitive marketing strategies, brands, websites, videos and print services. Our nationally recognized work speaks for itself.

About Shark Communications

Shark Communications is a creative and digital marketing agency led by award-winning Creative Director Peter Jacobs. From waterfront, dog-filled offices in Burlington, Vermont, Shark serves clients in a wide variety of industries with a strategically-planned mix of branding, marketing, web, SEO, and digital solutions. With award-winning design and marketing for the 1998 US Winter Olympic Trials, to numerous radio, web, television and film awards for clients large and small, Shark’s creative excellence has received widespread recognition and continues to provide the core for delivering a higher level of marketing across both traditional and digital media.

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Bank Sales Management – Balancing Growth and Retention to Reach your Sales Goals

For sales teams, the key to balancing new business development and retention of existing accounts is a clear “flight plan” and active, focused sales management.

How would your sales teams respond to this challenge?

• Grow loans and DDA balances 10% (for the third year in a row) in a fiercely competitive market (never mind the recession),
• Retain 100% of the customers designated as “high value” when customer attrition has been averaging 17%, and
• Maintain current sales team head count – no additional resources.

Many small business and commercial market sales teams face challenges like this. If they don’t panic a little, they probably don’t understand the goals. And, since (typically) 85% of sales people have no documented plan and 73% have no plan for their top 5 accounts, serious panic and fresh resumes might be more likely. Whether you divide your sales teams into “finders and minders” or you ask relationship managers to acquire new business while deepening existing loan and deposit relationships, the key to reaching your sales and retention targets is a good guidance system that starts with picking the right targets and choosing the right flight path.

Choose the Right Targets

The most important element of any flight guidance system is the target. “My people are heatseekers,” a sales manager once told me. “Once we set targets, nothing distracts them.” So, you have to make sure you’re setting clear, unambiguous targets.

First, sales team members must know what success looks like: What’s the balance of account retention and account acquisition that makes the business model work?

Once the balance is set, targeting must include four elements:

• Target market segments and ideal customer profiles.
• Priority-tiering criteria for customers and prospects.
• Value propositions for target segments stated in words the target customers would use.
• A limited and specific customer base so that relationship managers mine deeply.

Establish Guidance Parameters

With targets established, Mission Control (sales managers) must establish guidance parameters – clear expectations and standards that tell heat seekers what acceptable flight paths look like. The standards tell your sales people exactly what’s expected and when they’re off track from an activity point of view, as well as from a results point of view. The relationship managers will incorporate these expectations into their planning.

The critical areas for standards or bench marks include:

• Activity levels,
• Product mix, and
• Forecast accuracy.

Discuss Annual Flight Plans

Once you’ve established targets and flight path limits, relationship managers and sales team leaders must plan their flights precisely. The more audacious their goals, the more important the planning… and it’s the last activity in the world the relationship managers want to do.

“Forget about this,” they say. “I need to be calling on customers.” The truth is: If they don’t plan, that responsibility falls on the team leaders’ shoulders. Since sales team leaders simply cannot call all the plays and manage eight, 10, or 15 active sales people, the whole team and the growth – retention strategy is put at risk.

We recommend that sales team leaders ask RMs to develop plans focused on accounts, activities, expected results, and resources needed, just as if they were managers of independent businesses:

• Annual territory plans.
• Relationship plans for critical “must keep” or “must expand” relationships.
• Personal development plans that are tied to the specific results an RM is asked to achieve. Once the RMs have developed their plans, managers and RMs should discuss the plans as if the RMs were independent businesses (franchisees) and the sales team leaders were the franchisers.

Start the conversations with a discussion of goals — the relationship managers’ goals for themselves and their businesses, for their compensation, for their markets. Then, focus on their strategies to reach their goals and the measures they will use to assess whether they’re on track. This information enables you, as a sales coach, to look for disconnects between their goals and their activity plans, giving you opportunities to catch potential problems early.

Mid-Flight Check Points

After initial discussions of the annual plans, we recommend a consistent pattern of team leader –

RM mid-flight check points that provide a forum for inspection, feedback, and resetting course:

• Weekly – focus on deals, activities, field observation, behaviors, and skills.
• Monthly and quarterly – focus on “managing the business”, tracking progress against business plans and making adjustments needed for upcoming periods.
• Semi-Annually – a formal performance review.

These coaching disciplines drive sales results and ensure the appropriate balance between new business development and account retention activities. Sales managers’ expectations, coupled with feedback and consequences, change sales behaviors. In each weekly, monthly, and quarterly conversation, the manager and RM compare “business planned performance” from the written plans with “actual performance,” identify problems, and reset plans for the period leading to the next meeting.

Further, effective RMs and managers use the monthly and quarterly meetings to plan responses to “surprises” such as unexpected requests from senior managers so that such requests doesn’t cause instant circuit overload.

The Ultimate Benefit

Challenging sales goals should create a sense of excitement, a little panic, some nervousness. Just as we’d expect our customers to plan, sales team leaders should expect their RMs and themselves to plan. Since time is so precious, the plans should focus on the most important leverage points —target customers, critical activities, resources needed — to reach the sales goals.

The regular conversations about the plan between sales team leaders and their direct reports are the most important aspect of the planning process. The conversations must be frequent (at least monthly), consistent (there’s no avoiding them), and valuable to both parties. For relationship managers, in particular, the conversation time must ultimately lead to clear priorities and commitment of resources that the RM or sales team needs to make its numbers. These conversations leave the direct reports feeling focused, energized, and well supported.

In the words of one sales manager: “If you don’t plan, and we don’t talk, I can’t help you.”

Nick Miller is president of Clarity Advantage, Concord, Mass., a firm that helps banks generate more profitable relationships faster with small- and medium-sized companies, their owners, and employees. He can be reached at [email protected] .

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Specific Action Plan and Steps Taken by Bank Management

After a number of intensive brainstorming sessions attended by the new management and the board of directors the new management recommended (and the board of directors approved) the following list of actions:

1. Continue to develop a sound corporate image and reputation in the local community, with the business community, and with the regulators.

■ Better and professional facilities.

■ Socially responsible, educated, experienced, friendly, humble, and professional staff.

■ Deeper community involvement by communicating with civic associations, faith-based organizations, and surrounding universities.

■ Training bank staff on bank regulations, RF banking and finance, RF credit, business development, communications, appearance, and customer service at the newly innovated RF Bank of Whittier Open University.

2. Develop strong roots and community relations to increase the bank's client base and its RF credit (loan) and deposit activities.

■ Call on existing bank holding company shareholders, friends, and our network of customers and potential customers to bring their business to the bank.

■ Call on medical doctors and professionals in our building and surrounding buildings, including Whittier Hospital, Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital, churches, synagogues, and neighborhood fast food restaurant franchises.

■ Call all existing deposit and loan clients and bank shareholders.

■ Actively ask for referrals.

■ Hold in-person meetings with existing clients and prospects, in order to act as their trusted bankers.

■ Hire staff from the bank's immediate service areas and through neighboring universities and business colleges.

■ Participate actively in the local chamber of commerce.

■ Develop personal working relationships with city and county elected officials.

■ Broaden and stress the offering of diversified RF banking services. Cross-sell bank products and services.

3. Review all bank policies and develop a new set of bank policies and train staff through the new and innovative training program administered by the Bank of Whittier Open University. The following is an abbreviated list of policies developed by the new management team and reviewed and approved by the board of directors:

■ Employee handbook

■ Credit policy

■ Consumer compliance policy

■ USA PATRIOT Act policy

■ BSA policy

■ Customer identification program, used to open new accounts

■ Anti-money laundering policy

■ Large currency transactions and kiting detection policy

■ Availability of funds policy for out-of-town and area checks

■ Audit policy

■ Funds management policy

■ Liquidity policy

■ Wire transfer and automated clearinghouse policy

■ Investment policy

■ Information technology and information security policy

■ Emergency preparedness plan and procedure

■ Disaster recovery plan

■ Privacy policy and procedure (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act)

■ Vendors' management policy

4. Improve and enhance the security of the bank facilities, systems, and operations.

■ Equip the bank with the most up-to-date alarm and security systems.

■ Run drills and emergency tests for different disaster scenarios, such as fire, earthquake, loss of power, loss of computer connection to the central computer processor, loss of server, and loss of Fed-line connection, which connects the bank with the Federal Reserve System.

■ Continue to implement frequent risk-based outside audit programs in all bank operations, loans, consumer compliance, BSA activities, accounting and finance, and technology.

5. Continue to improve bank quality of services and operating efficiency.

■ Assemble a strong team of RF bankers and instill a conservative, highly analytical, professional, helpful, and friendly operating culture.

■ Continue to hire highly educated, computer-literate, and professionally sound team members.

■ Hire part-time trainees from surrounding business colleges to prepare candidates for future employment at the bank and to fulfill the bank's social responsibility of training future generations.

■ Train staff on systems and on high ethical, moral, and professional standards.

■ Streamline management by focusing on specific job functions and the measurement of staff achievements against the board of directors' approved budget, joint planning, goal setting, and comparing results with budget.

6. Improve the computerization and automation of bank operations and services.

■ Start using a standard client and prospect management information and communications maintenance system on all staff's computers, to keep track of customers, prospects, loan renewals, and reviews.

■ Improve the quality and security of the bank's computer network.

■ Improve the quality of the hardware used by staff.

7. Increase bank deposit base.

■ Continue to improve facilities to increase efficiency and attract new customers.

■ Continue to improve service quality.

■ Tap existing network of community members and friends to open new accounts and to add new RF credits (loans).

■ Diversify bank RF products and services without having too many products that would confuse customers, using the “Keep It Simple Stupid” (KISS) approach.

■ Expand customer base through better involvement with family, including children and grandchildren, to keep an evergreen book of clients.

■ Expand customer base through asking for referrals.

■ Continue to carve and deepen a unique corporate image and culture and promote social responsibility in lending and services.

■ Continue to advocate, enhance, and implement a bank policy of cultural diversity among employees and bank customers.

8. Continue to reduce bank operating expenses.

■ Control expenses on all fronts by paying attention using a microexpense review approach.

■ Motivate and reward team members by using productivity-based and bank profitability-based salary and bonus review programs.

■ Insist on thorough and prudent credit (loan) analysis to reduce loan losses.

■ Develop steps to achieve close scrutiny and follow-up of existing credits (loans) in order to solve any problems and fix them, if possible, before they occur and become seriously troubled and nonperforming and become a loss.

■ Conduct weekly comparisons between actual expenses and budgeted expenses.

9. Increase bank income.

■ Actively pursue the prudent growth of the credit (loan) portfolio through deeper penetration of current depository customers and cultivation of new customers through referrals and community involvement.

■ Introduce RF mortgage financing based on the long years of experience gained at LARIBA finance company.

■ Preserve and retain existing credits (loans).

The following includes strategic steps that were implemented to improve the management process of bank operations.

1. Open and review all incoming and outgoing mail and faxes. The first step taken by the new management was to find out where the bank was, and what was going on in its day-to-day operations. It is important that we share our management experience with the reader, because this was one of the important steps that helps in understanding what is going on in a newly acquired institution. The new chief executive officer (your author) asked that all incoming and outgoing mail and faxes be brought to his office so that he could open the incoming mail with another bank manager, review the incoming faxes, approve the outgoing faxes before they are sent, and read the outgoing mail before the envelopes are sealed, stamped, and mailed. This is done always in the presence of another officer. The management needed to know how the bank was connected to the outside world by, for example, reviewing the incoming invoices and engagement contracts with various vendors to know who the bank is dealing with. This step gave us — in three months' time — a great and comprehensive feeling for the bank, its pulses, and its operations.

2. Hire new employees. We started looking for new employees to build our team. We needed at least two tellers, a highly qualified credit analyst, and a good accountant to start with. We contacted some of the tellers and loan administration officers who had resigned from the bank before we took over, to see if they would come back. Only one teller accepted our offer; all the rest declined. In fact, some of them did not care to return our calls.

We then started thinking about a way out of this dilemma. One of the management team came up with the idea of hiring business school students from the surrounding colleges and training them on the job. This proved to be a great idea. We appointed juniors at the business schools of the colleges and universities surrounding the bank as tellers and administration personnel. Later, these part-time student workers became candidates for full-time positions as operations manager and supervisors. As part of our training of these new employees and the existing staff we thought that if we engaged high-quality qualified outside auditors of bank operations would give the staff a useful hands-on and on the job training. We started looking for a high-quality and experienced auditor of banking operations and compliance. We wanted an auditor who would critique and at the same time coach and train the new staff as he audited the bank. We found an experienced and dedicated retired banker who was passionate about compliance, regulations, and quality of bank operations. We engaged him with instructions to play the dual role of an auditor of our bank operations to uncover deficiencies that need to be fixed and to provide hands-on training for our staff. We asked him to come on a quarterly basis and to make himself available for consultation. We instructed all employees to be open to any comments and recommendations on lack of compliance discovered by the auditor. We also instructed the staff to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of the auditor and not to be defensive and quick to justify why things were not done right. We assembled the staff before the audit started and asked them to look at the auditor as a teacher and a coach and to be truthful and open when answering any questions. The management team also had a meeting with the auditor and told him that the management and the board of directors wanted to learn in great detail what was wrong in the bank, not simply what was done right at the bank. We also assured the auditor that we intended to promptly fix any problems he found as soon as they were recognized.

3. Familiarize management and staff with computer systems and outside service providers. Management also started to familiarize the staff with the computer operating system and with the bank check processing and technology providers in order to know how the business is conducted.

4. Review all financial ledgers and financial operations. On the financial front, the new management went through the bank financial statement and ledger in great detail with the chief financial officer (CFO) and asked a lot of questions. This step was the most important, because we discovered many violations and nonposted transactions. For example, every time the CFO had not been able to balance the financial statement (assets and liabilities), he had assigned the discrepancy to a new bank control account. We discovered more than 30 such accounts and many tens of thousands of dollars that were not properly accounted for. It took us many months and long hours to try to reconcile these accounts and we still were not able to reconcile all of them. That meant that we had to add such discrepancies to the bank losses.

5. Evaluate the quality of the bank auditors. After discovering the unfortunate state of affairs of the treasury function and the professional quality of the financial officers involved at the bank and the fact that the auditors/CPA of the bank never questioned it or mentioned anything about it in their annual audited financial report, management was very disappointed in the quality and authenticity of the CPA audits. We contacted the chief CPA auditor of bank's CPA firm and complained about the unprofessional way the bank accounting and auditing system had been handled. He did not have the time, he said, because he was busy with bigger and more important banks. He relied on two young accountants who would come to the bank to pick up the statements from the CFO and leave without even spending a few minutes to discuss these statements with the officer. This shows what happens when the culture in an organization is to operate on “automatic pilot” and hopes for the best to happen. In fact, the worst happens because the quality of the operation deteriorates quickly as it did with the bank. Management conferred with the board and the bank's lawyer. We had some concern about changing the bank CPA auditor. We were worried that the regulators, the shareholders, customers, and people in general might suspect that the CPA auditor may have been in disagreement with bank management on some issues and that is why the bank management and board of directors were motivated to change the CPA auditor. Management finally decided to push hard to change the auditing firm. It took us a long time to find an audit firm that would accept a bank that was losing money and had a new unproven management. I called Mr. Findley, and he helped us to find a CPA firm that accepted the job. He kindly put in a very good word about the bank's new management. However, the new firm had a condition: they first wanted to review the bank's condition and then contact the existing audit firm to make sure that there is no irregular activity involved at the bank. They did. After numerous contacts and interviews, they decided to become our auditors. We were all very impressed by the quality and depth of their work, and we felt comfortable about this most important bank activity.

6. Develop the unique RF niche at the Bank of Whittier. One of the most important steps in rescuing and restructuring the bank was to develop a strategic vision for a niche that would characterize that bank. The following gives a summary of the process we used to articulate our RF finance system under difficult and challenging conditions.

• Team/Partners
• Differentiate
• Bank Merger Marketing
• System Conversion Communications
• Thought Leadership
• Blog + Insights
• Net Zero Now
• In the News
• Marketing Guides + Reports
• Videos + Best Practices
• Bank M&A Newsletters
• LET'S CONNECT

Featured Article

Enhance Your Bank's Sales and Marketing Initiatives: 5 Tips

Part three of a three part observation series

In  my last post  we examined a few ways that banks can elevate the role of data in their marketing programs to begin the process of gaining better alignment to overall strategy. This post will focus on the sales aspect of sales and marketing campaigns – what can be referred to the execution channel. But a word of caution: sales and sales people are no longer synonymous.

As with our data post , you will find five areas of focus for bank marketers to enhance sales activities. Since we emphasized the critical nature of list development driven by strategy, we would be remiss if we now veered back to traditional sales activities to execute the program. Modern marketing programs should create buyers - not just serve as a ‘warm lead sheet’ for field staff.

[5] Tips to Enhance Your Bank's Sales and Marketing Initiatives

1. assess your sales channel capabilities and capacity (honestly).

The pressures on marketers to maximize the opportunities for bank sales channels to deliver positive results are significant. Let’s face it, the number of internal business units lined up to leverage every possible sales channel within any given bank often requires an air traffic controller to manage. While we primarily think of bank sales channels as branches and business development officers – supported with direct mail, digital marketing or other messaging platforms - the increasing use of call centers and outsourcing firms are also gaining greater demand for their services. 

As marketing investment returns continue to be heavily scrutinized, it is time to look at all of your sales channels and honestly assess both the capability and the capacity for all of them. Branches serve as an effective channel for many activities due to staffing models and periodic downtime to facilitate campaigns, but they shouldn’t be used to support every initiative – for a variety of reasons. Nor should a dedicated sales force be the only source through which a business unit should promote its offerings – it is more expensive and requires differentiated segment expertise to be effective. 

Emerging technology has enabled greater levels of channel diversity to support a bank’s sales and marketing campaigns – knowing how effective and available these channels are should create a more dynamic set of "selling" tools for you to use that can better align with your target segments. Taking advantage of these channels allows you to push your sales messages out to the market with less conflict and noise.

As an aside, I recently read an interesting piece from the UK highlighting the preferences for SME’s for sales and service.  No matter the geography, it is never a good idea to assume that you and your customers assign the same value to what your institution offers.

2. Measure the value of each channel in your omnichannel programs

Yes, I realize a key marketing buzzword had to make it into this post. While a daunting term, omnichannel ( click here to read a very academic definition of omnichannel if you are not already familiar with the topic)  has become a marketing darling lately with the introduction of so many devices and access points for customers to interact with their financial institution. As one who is very interested in the topic of payments, I am sensitive to not only the advancement in device and technology capabilities but also the fluid nature of how the market finds new ways use them that may not have been intended by the provider or the bank.

It is a stretch to ask that a full blown omnichannel approach finds its way into every bank’s strategy - but the aspiration of the topic - and expectations of your target audience - cannot be ignored. At a minimum, begin to develop a digital strategy for your institution – starting with your web presence. If you can market an offer online, shouldn’t your customers be able to take advantage of the offer online? Seems pretty simple but those that have thought through and delivered on this alignment are differentiating themselves in the market, particularly with business segments. Maybe you don’t call it omnichannel – call it whatever you like – but you have to have a plan for it because at some level isn’t a branch just another device?

3. Invest (more) in sales and onboarding automation

Despite the title, many banks appear to be heading in two different directions with respect to technology investments to support sales activities. On one hand, the piggy bank has been smashed open to fund KYC/BSA/AML initiatives over the past five years. On the other, investments into leveraging that investment into a better customer experience seem rare, if not nonexistent.  

It is fascinating that while blank checks have been written to support the ever changing world of compliance – believe me when I say that essentially no two banks have the same interpretation of the same commentary on the same day – banks don’t seem to realize that most of the current compliance language was written before any of the current technology existed and aren’t really consistent with today’s technological benefits.

Rather than succumbing to the ongoing maintenance of antiquated processes to address these compliance issues, why not look to leverage your bank’s investment into this robust set of tools to enhance your sales and onboarding process. There is no reason that I have read that you cannot undertake this effort - and the robust nature of these tools (such as real-time predictive transaction reporting and behavioral modeling) can truly differentiate your customer experience from the frustrating process it is for many today.

4. Stop just selling banking products...sell your brand

If there is one mantra that I have held close for years for bank marketing, it is this: stop just selling products! For most institutions, almost everything you offer is a commodity. While some may argue that their features and benefits or prices may be subtly different, you are still providing a highly commoditized set of financial products. But we all still do it, don’t we? Why? Primarily because focusing on products  seems to work - with an emphasis on seems here. We outlined a number of data driven themes in our previous post which would on the surface seem to support more granular capability to target offers to prospects – all true.

I am not naïve thinking that this will change anytime soon. But what I do hope is that your selling efforts are able to transcend this. Focus on what your institution can offer that your competitors cannot – true competitive differentiation . Besides your location and name – apologies to all of the First Banks out there – what do you have that customers and prospects cannot get anywhere else? Most likely your answer is not much. Bank marketers don’t help matters by continually reinforcing messages that are based on features and benefits that customers can find anywhere (and expect) - starting with service.

Note: I have worked with both the largest banks in the U.S. and very small Credit Unions and truth be told, you can receive outstanding service from big banks and lousy service from small Credit Unions. There is no universal ownership of service culture in smaller institutions. Let’s take a page out of the consumer packaged goods playbook and start to sell your brand first; the products are a given.

5. Incent sales on more than widgets

The topic of incentive in sales has been long lamented and hashed and rehashed. We don’t mean to do it again on this post but it would be irresponsible to not highlight the recurring challenges for how sales is evaluated. As the final item to recommend for an honest assessment, it is past time to measure sales effectiveness - regardless of channel or channels used - based on widgets.

Every banker knows that the value of each customer is not the same, and multiple product relationships are certainly stickier than single relationships. So what is the value of an unutilized line of credit or a low transaction account that meets minimums and generates no fees? If you look at some of the scorecards we have seen over the years, you would think they are all worth the same. Not to mention, fully loaded some banks are paying out incentives for these dormant relationships because a widget is a widget. If you haven’t taken on this topic recently, please begin to do so. If you have invested in a strategy and chosen to align your data activities to that strategy, this should be fairly easy.

If you like selling stories,  click here to read one of my favorites from a recent BKM prospect meeting. 

Bank Marketing , Financial Marketing , Community Banks

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Creating an Action Plan to Increase Sales

Sticking to dated methods and old strategies can prevent a business from ever increasing their sales. Especially in the current state of the economy, reaching sales goals is a strenuous challenge. If your business is doing poorly, it’s time to start working on solutions to fixing performance levels. Here is how you can create an action plan to increase your sales.

Analyze Your Situation

Before you start implementing changes into your business practices, analyze your situation. Analyzing the state of your business will help you understand why struggles are occurring in the first place. Whether problems are arising because of poor planning, minimal employee performance, or other harmful reasons, identifying issues is important. Reflect on how your workplace is functioning, so you can come to conclusions for why you are having a decrease in sales. “Maintaining a business is a taxing role, and due to the many implications involved, it’s easy to experience failure. By identifying problems early on, it’s easier to start fixing issues before they get too severe,” shares Jay Bates, marketing blogger at Lucky Assignments and LastMinuteWriting .

Start Developing a Sales Strategy

If you are not reaching the desired amount of sales, you need to rethink the strategies you are using. You can begin correcting the flaws within your sales strategy after you analyze the entire situation. Here are some milestones that you can use to curate a more efficient sales approach.

Create Structured Goals

Although you may have goals, without structure, it’s difficult to obtain them. Creating structured goals will help you have a better chance at achieving success. Structured goals force us to think realistically about how and what things we can actually accomplish. You may want to jump from a sales goal that’s low to one that is extremely high. Over ambition backfires on many employees in the business and sales industry. The best way to reach greater goals is by making little ones along the way. Overtime, you can edit your sales goals after reaching past ones. SMART goals are perfect to start off with; SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Using this template will allow you to create structured goals that you will be capable of obtaining.

Update Your Sales Team

When making changes to your sales approach, continuously update your sales team. Depending on if you are manager, associate, partner, customer service member, or have another role in a business, always keep the integrity of the entire sales team in mind. All members of a business should be putting in immense effort to reach sales goals. Here are some ways you can improve your sales team.

• Hire new employees
• Offer raises for effort and success
• Provide extra training
• Ensure that your employees create their own goals

Client and Consumer Connection

One of the most essential parts about sales and marketing is the relationship between a brand and customer base. Lack of sales happens for a variety of reasons, but a poor connection with consumers will always be part of the entire issue. If your business is client based, focus on consistently giving quality service to those individuals. If your business is product based, use incentives, memberships, and mantras to reinforce the importance of your customers. Appeal to your consumer audience by treating them genuinely, and by providing services/items that are of use or interest. “Look at your reviews and see how people view your customer service. This can reveal the buffers that are preventing a brand from establishing genuine connections with their customer base,” claims Amy Burnett, business writer at Research papers UK .

Executing Your Plan

Sticking to your action plan is going to be tricky initially. Consistency is key to having your newly adapted sales approach pay off. Each month, reflect on how your sales plan is performing, and edit errors along the way. The truth is, marketing is an ever changing part of business. Certain approaches will be effective for longer periods of time than others. When you do reach your sales goals, don’t forget to analyze strategies on a regular basis. Executing your plan is a possibility that relies on awareness, teamwork, and reflection. Even if you have to create multiple action plans, this dedication to the growth of sales is a long-lasting benefit.

Business analyst and writer Jenny Williams works at Term paper writing service and Law assignments. Jenny also works for Gum Essays service.

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Six Actions Banks Could Take to Improve Their Performance, but Won’t…and Why

Excuses. Many bankers, including senior managers, are extremely good at coming up with reasons not to take action. Some examples: “It’s been tried before and failed.” “It does not fit with our culture.”  “Our customers wouldn’t like it.” “Banks don’t do that sort of thing.”

In some instances, these objections have substantial validity…in some instances. More often, however, they provide management with a reason to avoid actions that rock the status quo and could cause friction with internal staff. Our client experience convinces us that there are revenue and cost related actions that banks can take today that will likely result in a positive near-term impact. With the industry uniformly expecting a tougher 2007, now is the year to take actions that might have been avoided in a stronger macro-environment.

Insist on consistency. At many banks, relationship managers, branch personnel, and others define their own jobs. If they like to focus on customer service rather than sales, that is what they do. If they view themselves as credit experts, they focus on the sale and structuring of credit, largely ignoring other products, such as deposits, even if those products are more profitable to the bank and more important to certain target segments. Within the same bank, inconsistency results in bankers with the same title spending less than 20 percent of  their time selling while others spend 60 percent or more doing so (unfortunately, the 20 percenters dominate).

Typically, inconsistency exists despite the existence of clear and detailed job descriptions. Instead, senior management in effect agrees to ignore its own requirements and encourages a kind of free-for-all among its employees.

Why does inconsistency continue to exist at many banks? Management fails to stand up to “push back” from employees who prefer to do things as they always have, indicating either a lack of courage or conviction that their approach makes sense for the bank’s bottom line and the customer.

The best banks are consistent and disciplined in how they approach the customer and their markets.

Make sales people sell. Related to the above, bank “sales people” are different from sales people in most other industries. In many cases, they spend a minority of their time selling. Instead, they administer, although banks offer admin support, or underwrite, and increasingly banks have dedicated teams to do so.

Rarely do we work with a client whose sales people spend more than 30 percent of their time selling, even if they say they do. Getting sales people to sell may be the simplest and the most effective sales-productivity opportunity available to banks.

Why don’t they sell? Many sales people (RMs, branch bankers, wealth management personnel) view sales as a minor component of their job. In some cases, management needs to develop a team approach to sales and service so that more time is available for selling. In more cases, however, bankers need to be forced to use the infrastructure that already exists.

Improve the staff. Too frequently, banks tolerate mediocre performers. Why? Some employees seem to obtain tenure, whereby removing them would be an unusual and anti-cultural action; instead, they may be transferred to another internal group. Management views replacing even mediocre staff as a challenge since strong new people are difficult to find; basically, this philosophy follows the view that the “devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” In other cases, salary levels are simply too low to attract and retain top performers; banks that do not want to pay for top talent condemn themselves to mediocrity.

To this day, at most banks the variance between the salary and total compensation of mediocre and top performers remains insignificant. That is a mistake.

Exit losing businesses and products. In recent years, many banks have allowed products to proliferate while also entering new businesses and/or geographies. The aim was to increase revenues/profits per customer (wallet share) and market penetration (market share). This results in banks offering products that fail to make economic sense, perhaps due to being sub scale or simply having picked the wrong area of focus. Ironically, offering too many products and/or serving too many markets may get in the way of sales success rather than promoting it.

Appropriately, the top performers are evaluating products and business with an eye to investing further in those that are top return generators and exiting businesses that fail hurdle rate minimums. Why are not all banks doing this? Lack of strategic direction, poor internal data, and politics all play a role.

Avoid over-servicing. Not all customers are created equal, some provide value to the bank while others destroy it. Banks need to do a better job of differentiating service levels and cost to serve. This type of differentiation can lead to problems if some customer segments are treated in a substandard fashion. However, the banks that effectively segment their servicing levels maintain a strong minimum level of service (albeit encouraging self-service whenever possible) while highlighting more profitable customers.

Banks continue to misalign service levels versus customer profitability and potential due to factors that go beyond limited data (the factor most often cited by banks). Most banks have spent insufficient time evaluating delivery channel options and how to match them with customer requirements. It is easier to continue to follow the same path rather than rethink traditional approaches. And, while clear payoffs exist to doing so, there are also risks attached.

Rethink the branch. Much has been written in recent years concerning the branch explosion. However, the inverted yield curve, higher interest rates, sophisticated customers, and tougher competition combine to erode branch profitability. Management needs to take a particularly hard look at additional branches versus other investment options.

In fact, many banks have too many branches rather than too few. At a minimum, banks should evaluate both branch profitability and strategy and be willing to confront past biases in favor of branch expansion. Branch closing should not be viewed as an admission of defeat, but rather, a recognition of the new economic reality that banks face.

Concluding Thought Multiple options for positive action exist; turning the opportunity into analysis and the analysis into implementation remains a major challenge and a key differentiator in management excellence from also-rans.

7 Ways to Improve Your Sales

Table of contents.

• The most important aspect of sales is a strong sales plan that you can continuously improve.
• To be an effective team leader, build relationships with your sales reps and provide coaching and encouragement.
• Make sure you have a contingency plan so you can quickly address issues that arise.
• This article is for small business owners and sales managers who are looking for simple steps for improving their sales. 

Even though the sales process is an essential part of every business, it’s no secret that it is challenging. It requires perseverance, a strategy and an understanding of human psychology, and it changes often as your business grows.

But it can be difficult to know how or what to change to increase your sales, other than making more calls or finding more leads. Business News Daily spoke with sales experts to get their top tips on how to improve the sales process.

Tips for sales managers to meet set goals

These four strategies can help you get the most out of your sales team:

1. Develop a sales plan.

If you are a new business owner or sales manager, the first and most important thing you must do to determine how you can improve sales is to write a sales plan .

• What is a sales plan? A sales plan is an outline, often broken down into monthly segments, of how a business aims to reach its sales goals over a full year. As opposed to a marketing plan or a product strategy – which focus on raising awareness of a product or service and improving its features, respectively – sales planning is entirely dedicated to selling the product or service to your target market . However, a sales plan does use a marketing plan and a product strategy as guides for creating realistic forecasts.
• Acquire new customers
• Create or expand relationships with prospective customers
• Continue to sell your product or service to existing customers
• What should I include in a sales plan? When creating your strategy, you should do the following:
• Define your target audience and craft an ideal customer profile or buyer persona.
• Decide your method of lead generation .
• Create revenue goals.
• Develop a team budget.
• Forecast your desired conversion rates.
• Determine your market position.
• Assign specific roles and goals to each member of the sales team.
• Perform a SWOT analysis .

Your sales strategy serves as a road map for your sales team, guiding them through any future changes you make, so it is vital to be thorough and meticulous. If you already have a strategy in place and your sales performance is not where it should be, it may be time to make some changes.

2. Identify your sales funnel.

To fully build out your sales strategy, you should also have a good understanding of your sales funnel , which is a term used to describe your buying process.

A sales funnel has two main stages. You’ll typically start with marketing strategies during the initial “awareness” stage, where you introduce your products or services to potential customers – or raise awareness about your business – and build relationships with leads.

Once you have generated strong leads, you’ll move into the middle or sales stage, where you execute your sales strategy and highlight your differentiators from competitors to successfully sell your product.

3. Have a contingency plan.

When you develop your initial sales strategy, you should also create a plan that details what actions you will take if something goes wrong; for example, if you lose a key sales rep or you don’t meet your sales goal. Your contingency plan should denote who will be notified of the problem, as well as what steps you and your team can take to fix the problem and, in some cases, avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

When your team encounters an obstacle, you can turn to your action plan and know exactly what to do to fix the problem rather than waste time developing a new plan to improve sales performance.

4. Effectively manage your sales staff.

Your sales strategy is only as good as your team, so you must cultivate well-trained and motivated sales reps. The best way to do this is to learn as much as you can about the people on the team and what motivates them as individuals.

“The more you can have a strong personal relationship with your team, the more effort and energy they’ll put into not wanting to let you down,” said Sarkis Hakopdjanian, director of strategy and principal of The Business Clinic. “Every person is motivated by different goals.”

Without effective management, your team might resort to poor sales techniques and run your sales goals into the ground, or your team may become susceptible to high turnover.

“Sales is tough and it is a grind,” said Jim Guerrera, managing director of Search Consulting Network. “But people are people, and they need encouragement and coaching to keep them on the beat for the next sale.”

During sales training, be transparent with your sales reps about goals, metrics and the way their performance will be judged. Set up monthly one-on-one meetings with each salesperson to see what they need from you and where they are struggling.

You can also use this time to garner honest feedback from your sales reps about where they think the company can improve the sales strategy. After all, they are the ones on the front lines of implementing the strategy, so they often have great insight into its weaknesses.

Sales managers should implement a sales plan to identify major goals, use product and marketing strategies to aid their sales teams, develop a contingency plan, and ensure good management practices.

Tips for sales teams to meet sales goals

Following these three tips can help you improve sales teams and the individual performance of salespeople.

1. Break down your sales goals.

Looking at your monthly or yearly sales goals all at once can be overwhelming. Break down bigger goals into manageable chunks. For example, you might decide to accomplish specific tasks each day, such as making five phone calls, finding two new business prospects and scheduling one new appointment. Create a prospecting plan to outline how you’ll generate new leads.

“Making sales is a lot like dieting,” said David Mattson, CEO of Sandler Training. “You may be overwhelmed when you think of the 50 pounds you need to lose, but when you break it down into realistic daily goals – run two miles and skip dessert today – you’ll lose a pound or two each week.”

Smaller tasks add up, allowing you to reach that bigger goal.

2. Reverse the sales funnel.

It makes sense to follow the traditional sales funnel as part of your sales strategy, but if you find that something isn’t working, try working backward.

Let’s say you need to close five deals to hit your revenue goal. To accomplish that, you’ll have to make 15 presentations. To get in front of those 15 prospects, you might need to make 60 follow-up calls, which would depend on first making 90 initial calls. When thinking “up” in this way, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed about what you need to do, which negatively colors your sales approach and can counteract what you’re trying to accomplish.

Instead of focusing on your revenue goal, concentrate on customer service . Reach out to your customers and find out what they need from you. Next, develop your sales strategy, breaking down each step into manageable daily tasks.  

3. Use emotional intelligence to build customer relationships.

Sales is just as much about understanding who you are selling to as it is about selling the product or service. The rapport you build with your customers can be the key factor in whether you make the sale.

Emotional intelligence is awareness of your own and others’ emotions and adapting those emotions to your environment. Hakopdjanian said that emotional intelligence is the key to developing a relationship. He recommended these four strategies for building rapport:

• Start with the basics. Be relaxed, smile, listen attentively and use your client’s name.
• Have empathy. Ask open-ended questions and give your client the space to share their thoughts and concerns.
• Seek commonality. People tend to be more comfortable around those who are similar to them, so look for things you have in common with your client.
• Try mirroring. Try coordinating your verbal and nonverbal behaviors with your client’s, like crossing your legs or using a basic phrase, to build on commonality.

Sales is a people business and maintaining a strong relationship with customers will empower a sales team to build stronger connections that will yield consistent results.

Ready, set, goals

Once you’ve set realistic sales goals for your team, you’re halfway there. The next part of the process is taking all the necessary steps to turn your ambitions into realities. With the above advice, you should have no trouble doing exactly that.

Additional reporting by Max Freedman and Jordan Beier. Some interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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Fed declines to hike, but points to rates staying higher for longer

• The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, while also indicating it still expects one more hike before the end of the year and fewer cuts than previously indicated next year.
• Along with the rate projections, the Fed also sharply revised up its economic growth expectations for this year, with gross domestic product now expected to rise 2.1% this year.
• In addition to holding rates at relatively high levels, the Fed is continuing to reduce its bond holdings, a process that has cut the central bank balance sheet by some $815 billion since June 2022

The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady in a decision released Wednesday, while also indicating it still expects one more hike before the end of the year and fewer cuts than previously indicated next year.

That final increase, if realized, would do it for this cycle, according to projections the central bank released at the end of its two-day meeting. If the Fed goes ahead with the move, it would make a full dozen hikes since the policy tightening began in March 2022.

Markets had fully priced in no move at this meeting, which kept the fed funds rate in a targeted range between 5.25%-5.5%, the highest in some 22 years. The rate fixes what banks charge each other for overnight lending but also spills over into many forms of consumer debt .

While the no-hike was expected, there was considerable uncertainty over where the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee would go from here. Judging from documents released Wednesday, the bias appears toward more restrictive policy and a higher-for-longer approach to interest rates.

That outlook weighed on the market, with the S&P 500 falling nearly 1% and the Nasdaq Composite off 1.5%. Stocks oscillated as Fed Chair Jerome Powell took questions during a news conference .

"We're in a position to proceed carefully in determining the extent of additional policy firming," Powell said.

However, he added that the central bank would like to see more progress in its fight against inflation.

"We want to see convincing evidence really that we have reached the appropriate level, and we're seeing progress and we welcome that. But, you know, we need to see more progress before we'll be willing to reach that conclusion," he said.

Projections released in the Fed's dot plot showed the likelihood of one more increase this year, then two cuts in 2024, two fewer than were indicated during the last update in June. That would put the funds rate around 5.1%. The plot allows members to indicate anonymously where they think rates are headed.

Twelve participants at the meeting penciled in the additional hike, while seven opposed it. That put one more in opposition than at the June meeting. Recently confirmed Fed Governor Adriana Kugler was not a voter at the last meeting. The projection for the fed funds rate also moved higher for 2025, with the median outlook at 3.9%, compared with 3.4% previously.

Over the longer term, FOMC members pointed to a funds rate of 2.9% in 2026. That's above what the Fed considers the "neutral" rate of interest that is neither stimulative nor restrictive for growth. This was the first time the committee provided a look at 2026. The long-run expected neutral rate held at 2.5%.

"Chair Powell and the Fed sent an unambiguously hawkish higher-for-longer message at today's FOMC meeting," wrote Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst. "The Fed is projecting inflation to steadily cool, while the labor market remains historically tight. But, in our view, a sustained imbalance in the labor market is more likely to keep inflation 'stuck' above target."

Economic growth seen higher

Along with the rate projections, members also sharply revised up their economic growth expectations for this year, with gross domestic product now expected to increase 2.1% this year. That was more than double the June estimate and indicative that members do not anticipate a recession anytime soon. The 2024 GDP outlook moved up to 1.5%, from 1.1%.

The expected inflation rate, as measured by the core personal consumption expenditures price index, also moved lower to 3.7%, down 0.2 percentage point from June, as did the outlook for unemployment, now projected at 3.8%, compared with 4.1% previously.

There were a few changes in the post-meeting statement that reflected the adjustment in the economic outlook.

The committee characterized economic activity as "expanding at a solid pace," compared with "moderate" in previous statements. It also noted that job gains "have slowed in recent months but remain strong." That contrasts with earlier language describing the employment picture as "robust."

In addition to holding rates at relatively high levels, the Fed is continuing to reduce its bond holdings, a process that has cut the central bank balance sheet by some $815 billion since June 2022. The Fed is allowing up to $95 billion in proceeds from maturing bonds to roll off each month, rather than reinvesting them.

A shift to a more balanced view

The Fed's actions come at a delicate time for the U.S. economy.

In recent public appearances, Fed officials have indicated a shift in thinking, from believing that it was better to do too much to bring down inflation to a new view that is more balanced. That's partly due to perceived lagged impacts from the rate hikes, which represented the toughest Fed monetary policy since the early 1980s.

There have been growing signs that the central bank may yet achieve its soft landing of bringing down inflation without tipping the economy into a deep recession. However, the future remains far from certain, and Fed officials have expressed caution about declaring victory too soon.

"We, like many, expected to see the hawkish hold that Powell nodded to at Jackson Hole," said Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, deputy chief investment officer of multi-asset strategies at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. "However, the release was more hawkish than expected. While a share of past policy tightening is still in the pipeline, the Fed can go into wait and see mode, hence the pause. However, the main risk remains tarnishing their largest asset, anti-inflation credibility, which warrants favoring a hawkishness reaction function."

The recent rise in energy prices as well as resilient consumption is likely why the median dot moved higher next year, she said.

"We don't see a singular upcoming bearish catalyst, although strikes, the shutdown, and the resumption of student loan repayments collectively will sting and drive bumpiness in the data between now and their next decision. As a result, we believe that their next meeting will be live, but not a done deal," Wilson-Elizondo said.

The jobs picture has been solid, with an unemployment rate of 3.8% just slightly higher than it was a year ago. Job openings have been coming down, helping the Fed mark progress against a supply-demand mismatch that at one point had seen two positions for every available worker.

Inflation data also has gotten better, though the annual rate remains well above the Fed's 2% target. The central bank's favored gauge in July showed core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, running at a 4.2% rate.

Consumers, who make up about two-thirds of all economic activity, have been resilient, spending even as savings have diminished and credit card debt has passed the $1 trillion mark for the first time. In a recent University of Michigan survey, respective outlooks for one- and five-year inflation rates hit multiyear lows.

Correction: The Federal funds target rate is a range of 5.25-5.5%. A previous version of this story misstated the end point of the range.

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How to develop an Action Plan to increase your sales

Selling more and increasing your income is not an easy task.

As much as we often believe it, just presenting your product or service to the public and wait for them to buy it is not often enough.

Nor, although it sounds harsh, it will be worth trying hard if the effort you make is not put in the right place.

A detailed Action Plan is the key point to be able to sell more. If you have not yet thought of an action plan to improve your sales, it is time for you to get down to work and start preparing your own.

An efficient action plan is crucial to your business income increment positive outcome.

As per every successful process, it does not happen by accident. It only comes from putting the right effort in the right place. And this comes from exactly an action plan.

In this article, I will walk you through some of the guidelines and steps that will help you have an efficient action plan to take your own business towards the achievement of your short and long-term goals.

So, what are the steps to create an efficient action plan specific to your business?

Here are the steps that can help you create your own action plan example to increase sales and start working on your business in a more methodical and organised way.

1. Balance of your starting point

It is important that you know exactly the position your business starts from and where it was previously. Having a solid foundation will make your company grow with guarantees of success and thus avoid making avoidable mistakes.

For this, you not only have to analyse your positioning as a business, the number of clients you have, and your sales. You have to think about how much you have invested to get to the point where you are right now. And how much was your ROI? How much are you earning right now and how much have you earned in the last year?

This last part is important: don’t just take into account your current situation, also think about what the situation of your business has been during the last year.

In addition, just as you must take stock of your company, you must also make an analysis of the current market, the changes that have been taking place in the last year and what you think will be the next trends that it will follow in the future.

To develop good action plans to increase sales, knowing how your business works on the inside is just as important as knowing how your market works.

2. Set reasonable goals

The next step to take is to set the goals you want to achieve with your business. Once you have clearly in mind your starting point, it will be much easier for you to realise what needs you must cover and also find new ambitions.

In other words, you must create goals such as: “to have 5 more employees at the end of the year”, “to have sold a third more than what we have sold”, “to invest 1000 in the quality of the service I offer”.

It is recommendable that you establish them based on the following aspects:

Income you want to get at the end of the year

Increase in customers

Image of your brand

The communication

Size of your company when your action plan ends

3. Create well-established goals

Knowing how to choose your goals is not as easy as it seems and, if you do not want to fall into frustration, you have to worry about creating well-established goals within your action plans to increase sales.

Therefore, a very clear goal must be SMART .

Specific – Measurable – Assignable – Realistic – Time-based.

Here are some examples:

Get a total of 500 leads within a year

Increase sales by 10% in 3 months

Increase website visits by 30% for Christmas

How much should you invest in Digital Marketing?

4. make it about your target audience and take action.

You know where you are and where you want to go, but how can you do it?

Once you have the points placed, you will only have to start to join them strategically. This means that it is time to plan.

What short and long-term projects do you plan to carry out to achieve this?

Bear in mind that the projects are not your goals, but those actions that will guide you towards the goals that you have settled.

When it’s time to take action towards increasing your sales, the best way is to put your target audience at the centre of this process.

Your ideal clients are the ones who will be responsible for increasing your income, as you need to reach and convince them that your offer is what they were looking for.

So, plan all your actions towards your goals’ achievement keeping in mind who your ideal clients are, what they want to see, and how they feel.

The more you get to know your target audience, the more efficient your Action Plan becomes.

Make it more about them.

What are their biggest desires and problems?

Where do they look for information?

Where do they hang out?

How do they look for information?

What’s their behaviour? And why do they behave like that?

What are their main driving emotions?

How do they feel with regards to their desires and problems?

A deep audience’s knowledge, alongside your business goals, will lead you to generate the right action plan for your business in this specific moment of time.

If you want to learn more about how to get to know your target audience at a deeper level, click here to check our audience analysis guide.

5. Track your progress

Measuring your progress is just as essential as having clear and concise goals.

Why? Because it is what will allow you to know if the decisions you have made are the right ones and if you are on the right track.

If your objectives are measurable, you can therefore measure your action plans to increase sales and know how you are doing it, add new changes, adjust the projects you are carrying out, and know if you are going to achieve your goals.

To achieve this, remember to plan monthly reviews of each aspect of the company. Hold meetings with your team to discuss the improvements that are being made and the failures that are being occurred.

It is also a good idea that you keep strict control of all the data of your business such as the profits, the money you are investing, the leads you get, the customers you get, etc.

Tips For Making Good Action Plans To Increase Sales

Now that you have an idea of what an efficient action plan to increase sales has to consider, I want to share below with you a series of tips that will help you elaborate it in a more precise way.

Where to focus on to take action and increase your sales?

There are many points that you can focus on when you are developing your action plans to increase sales. A business is not able to sell more only by focusing on the product or advertising, there are many more aspects that you must take care of as well.

What are your strengths and weaknesses? How can you empower some and strengthen others?

Seek to add value to your customers

Manage to increase sales

Create a strong and reliable brand image

Find the right audience you are going to address

Meet the needs of your audience

What should you take into account in your business plan?

When you are developing your action plan, several aspects come into play and that you should assess before you start. These can make a real difference when you start working on your project.

You must take into account the growth of your business, how you want it to develop and improve in terms of the quality of the service or product you provide, and your brand image.

On the other hand, how is your communication? Do you think internal or external communication processes are effective?

A company needs to transmit its message in a fast and powerful way to its audience, but it also has to make sure that the information is being handled correctly within it.

Finally, the last two factors that we recommend that you consider are the income you are achieving and the income you intend to achieve or increase. This is also related to knowing if you are really meeting the needs of your customers.

Further tips

Since the goal of this post is to help you sell more, here are two additional tips that will help you focus on it and achieve your goals more easily.

First, never forget about those clients you already have. One of the ways to increase your sales is through customer loyalty. They will either rehire your services or count on you again in the future, which adds to your sales.

On the other hand, the prices you set will also be key. Behind them will be the profits you make, the value that your customers give to your product and you will establish a limit of what they would be willing to pay for it.

Do you need further help to design an efficient Action Plan for your business?

Serendipity Marketing is a leading full-service digital marketing agency London specialised in delivering bespoke and efficient action plans to any business industry.

This internet marketing agency London has a unique methodology that, thanks to the mix of marketing strategies with psychology science, allows them to get to know any business target audience at a deeper level and design the right action plan they need.

This makes Serendipity Marketing a leading digital marketing agency London and makes their services requested internationally from businesses all over the world.

About the Author

SM Agency is a full-service digital agency specializing in psychological marketing. We rely on the newest neuroscientific methodology and technology which allow us +97% precision in audiences’ emotional understanding and +250% campaigns performance growth. If you’d like an experienced team helping your brand connect with customers at a deeper level and get the most out of your marketing campaigns

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Action Plan

10-step action plan to increase ‘offline’ sales.

It’s easy to confuse Action Plans  and To Do lists? From one angle, they both have the same objectives. What I find is that I often end up with lots of to do lists, which are really hard to keep track of. And, it’s very difficult to see if they’re working or making any real difference.

After all, as soon as you complete one to do list, you start another one. So, it becomes a bit of a vicious circle. You’re creating, doing, and deleting tasks . While that’s fine – and it has its place – but it’s not a plan. It’s just an activity, right? A way of keeping tabs on different tasks.

However, an action plan, for example for your next product launch, is more strategic.

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The 10 Step Sales Action Plan

One way to look at a sales action plan is to think of stepping stones. After you complete one task, you move to the next step. And then the next step…

With this in mind, here’s a ten step framework for developing an action plan.

Action Step 1: Identify your top 10 customers

Remember the 80-20 rule? Most of your sales, contracts, or freelance work will come from this 20%. For this reason, shortlist your top ten customers and see where and how you can provide better services to them.

For example, I write white papers for B2B clients.

After they know me a little better, I may suggest that I can help with other writing projects, for instance, developing web content, landing pages or email newsletters.

So, what often starts as a simple white paper (i.e. 3 days work) turns into a longer working relationship. Maybe you can think of something along the same lines.

Download the Action Plan template

Action Step 2: Identify your top 10 prospects

Next, look at the ten prospective customers you’d like to work with. If you run your own business, it’s easy to fall into the trap of spreading your net too wide.

“I’ll give them a try.”

“Why don’t I send them a brochure?”

“It’s not my area but why not…”

The problem here is that you dilute your efforts. Instead of focusing on where you’re strong, you expand into new areas where you have less expertise…  and usually get fewer results.

• Focus on areas where you can generate real business opportunities
• Look at micro niches that are under-served
• Identify sectors where you could add more value that your competitors

Action Step 3: Identify your top 5 team members

To do this, you need a strong team.

There’s a saying in Holland: “ If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person .”

Your business is probably the same. You have a handful of really committed team workers that you can rely on. When writing your action plan, see if you can get these on board. Getting the right people is essential. It doesn’t matter how great your product is, if your team aren’t up to scratch, it won’t work.

Action Step 4: Create a plan of attack

The next step is to work out a plan that’s concise and easy for others to follow. Don’t make it so complicated that you have to teach people how it works.

• Monday – Email, Telephone, Call, Visit in person
• Tuesday – Email, Telephone, Call, Visit in person
• Wednesday – Email, Telephone, Call, Visit in person
• Thursday – Email, Telephone, Call, Visit in person
• Friday – Email, Telephone, Call, Visit in person

Create a simple schedule and identify who you will call each day of the week. How are you going to contact them and what steps need to be in place to follow-up?

Action Step 5: Generate Publicity

Don’t be shy about promoting yourself . Your competitors aren’t!

Look for ways to generate publicity both offline and online:

• Offline Publicity – run training courses, setup local events, join chamber of commerce events, write for the local newspaper, sponsor an event
• Online Publicity – use webinars, setup Facebook business pages, join online business networks, engage with others on Social Media media, develop a blog that shows your expertise, write guest posts and share useful information with others

Action Step 6: Build Your Brand

Branding doesn’t have to be complicated. Instead, get the following in place:

• Define your message – what do you offer in one sentence? Avoid jargon, clichés and buzzwords. Focus on the benefits you provide.
• Create a business identify – hire a graphic designer (I use ODesk) and get a nice set of logos developed.
• Create a marketing kit – develop a set of case studies, white papers, success stories and other sales documents that you can share with prospective clients.

Action Step 7: Network! Network! Network!

For example, your success as a freelancer isn’t only based on the high quality of your work (that comes later) but on the network you create to find leads and build goodwill in the business community.

Without a network (offline and online), it’s very difficult to get on your customer’s radars. Look for opportunities for get more “face time” with prospects.

This can be offline, i.e. at Chamber of Commerce events, or online in LinkedIn or other business networking sites.

Action Step 8: Grow Ears

Grow ears! What does that mean? It means you find ways to ‘listen’ and hear what’s going on in your industry.

I used to buy trade magazines and journals but stopped the subscriptions.

Action Step 9: Refine the Plan

Don’t be afraid to change the action plan if you feel it needs tweaking. Listen to your customers, get feedback from your team and refine it as needed. Sometimes a small change is all that’s needed to correct things.

Likewise, if you run a website, use Google Analytics to setup goals. Add these to the timeline and monitor the results. Did you get more traffic to the landing page as expected? If not, what do you need to change? Text, images, or call to actions?

Action Step 10: Reward Yourself

Look for ways to rewards yourself every now and then. It doesn’t have to be something very big, just a reminder that you’ve done a good job and deserve a little treat.

One way I do is to give myself a few hours off every Friday morning and walk by the sea. It’s a chance to calm down after the hectic week and gain a little perspective. It also helps to get away from the computer, phone, email and other attention grabbers.

Leave them alone and go for a long walk. Your email will still be there when you get back.

Instead of seeing your action plan as something fixed, think about action planning as a process. What can I do to improve the process?

When you see it in these terms, the action plan template is the building block upon which you develop your business.

Does that make sense? Let me know what you think.

Anna Thompson

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Top 10 Sales Action Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

Deepika Dhaka

Black Friday is around the corner, the busiest shopping festival that gets its name from the fact that it turns retailer’s accounts from being “in the red” to being back “in the black.” Marking the start of the Christmas shopping season, most consumers have started planning and creating their list of purchases for Thanksgiving 2022.

As a business owner, however, are you prepared to capture their attention and fulfill demand? If not, begin now, or you might lose business to your competitors. Planning for Black Friday Sales is the key to standing out in a large crowd of retail businesses. Think about it! Every store, whether brick-and-mortar or e-commerce, is already coming up with promotional activities. Customers are busy searching for these. How do you catch their attention?

You can turn this Black Friday sale into significant profits for your business with the creation of a Sales Action Plan to help you prepare and roll out some effective sales tactics. And yes! Don’t let creating your Black Friday Sales plan frustrate you. It’s easier than you think to brand yourself as a class apart. All you need is a definitive Sales Action Plan that helps your business draw in the crowds and have cash registers ringing.

Sales Action Plan Templates

Before, we tour the PPT Templates, are you looking for a comprehensive module to train your sales team and improve their performance? Access our Sales Training Curriculum with content-ready, well-researched slides that will make your training program a terrific success!

Click Here to Download our Comprehensive Curriculum for Sales Training

SlideTeam presents the most popular Sales Action Plan Templates that global marketing leaders have found indispensable. The Black Friday Sale is just one instance of the application of these PowerPoint Templates, you can use these content-ready samples for all sales campaigns of the year.

Let’s explore these customizable templates!

Template 1: Sales Action Plan PowerPoint Presentation

Boost your top-line revenue growth and increase profitability with this Sales Action Plan Template, which is packed with content related to components, steps, and types of sales strategies. It will educate you on the benefits of sales strategies and the costs involved in the implementation. This PowerPoint Presentation also includes a strategic action timeline and guides on digital tools for enhancing the effectiveness of your sales strategies. Here you will also find slides to display statistics related to sales and a dashboard for your busy CEO. Grab it today if you are looking for a consolidated PPT Presentation on Sales Action Plan!

Download this template

Template 2: Yearly Sales Action Plan Template

This one-pager PowerPoint Template will help you hone in on tactics that will define how you can reach your set objectives. With this consolidated layout, you can talk about key sales channels, including online, wholesale, and in-store channels. Present your revenue targets, target customers, and budget allocation with this content-ready PowerPoint Template. At the top of the slide, you can mention your sales goals and the plan year, along with its budget. Display the products and services you offer to your customers along with the budgeted sales and the devised distribution strategy. You can download this pre-developed sales planning one-pager PPT Template instead of wasting time writing any presentation from scratch.

Template 3 : One-Pager Sales Action Plan Sheet

Are you struggling to develop a sales plan that can enrich and empower your business? This sales action plan template is the easiest and most graceful way to lay out your objectives, strategies, and tactics to optimize your sales channels. The strength of this one-page sales plan is that all your team members can understand it. It can help you identify potential obstacles and roadblocks so that you can come up with ways to overcome challenges. It includes six key parameters that will help you understand and study your sales channels. These are products and services, budgeted cost categories, projected sales, distribution strategies, proposed deadlines, and KPIs.  Download it today!

Template 4 : Yearly Strategic Sales Action Plan Template

Peppered with eye-catching graphics, this Bi-Fold Yearly Strategic Sales Action Plan Template is a remarkable visual communication and promotion tool to bring attention to your business offerings. Use it to devise a successful sales campaign that speaks volumes about your products and grabs consumer interest. With plenty of industry-specific customizable shapes, visuals, graphics, and many more, this A4-size bi-fold design will help you create strategies and improve your customer engagement. Grab it today!

Template 5: 30-60-90 Day Sales Action Plan Template

Sales managers and new sales representatives will benefit from this stunning 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan because it documents the progress, challenges, and victories you record as you do business, day in and day out. You can use this PPT Template to ensure members of the sales team are growing in their roles and to identify any need for additional training or guidance. With this PPT Template documenting goals and accomplishments, it becomes easier to carry out the sales performance review process. Managers and their team members can see details of their work that they might have otherwise forgotten over time. Get it now!

Template 6: Sales Action Plan Steps Template

Presenting a six-step Sales Action Plan Template for an easy understanding of the concept and providing directions to the entire team. The first step is defining the sales objective, evaluating the current situation, listing barriers to success, assessing strengths and assets, creating a sales call strategy, and outlining an action plan. This complete and comprehensive process is presented here in a foolproof manner. Download it today to get started!

Template 7: Sales Action Plan with Brand Development and Advertisement

Use this Sales Action Plan Template to create a strong brand presence and reach the maximum target audience. This PPT Slide highlights vital elements of developing a brand. These elements focus on identifying top customers, advertising, increasing networks, and updating and developing a plan. It also offers suggestions on how to identify prospects and create a personalized approach plan. This presentation template also includes appealing icons to help you recall all these stages when needed. Download it now!

Template 8: 10-steps to Develop an Effective Sales Action Plan

Deploy this 10-step sales action plan template to give your employees direction and purpose. It will ensure that your staff have everything they need to achieve their goals when it comes to sales quotas and prospecting. The more detailed your action plan is, the less likely it is that your team will end up confused and struggling to make decisions for themselves. Using this foolproof plan, then, becomes a necessity. This PPT Slide entails activities that are a must-have for any sales plan. Grab it now!

Template 9: Sales and Marketing Action Plan Sample

Are you looking for a well-structured and easy-to-use sample to display your sales and marketing action plan? This PPT layout is an ideal pick to chart your online advertising and market research action plan. Use this template to track performance and make informed decisions for future sales planning, as it offers you the option of adding sub-categories. This table will help everyone stay on the same page and suggest necessary changes to bridge the gap between potential and performance. Download it now to speed up the process!

Template 10: Sales Action Plan T emplate for Online and Offline Channels

Increase your sales with the help of this strategic sales action plan for online and offline channels. It includes a comprehensive layout to tabulate the products and services to offer and the budgeted costs of in-store, online and wholesale channels. It will help you make informed calls regarding who you want to sell to, what your revenue goals are, and how you’re going to structure and prime your teams for success. Download it today to futureproof your business!

SALES SPELL SUCCESS

A sales action plan is the easiest way to draft your objectives, strategies, and tactics in a way that your team can understand and work effectively to achieve success. It helps you identify likely obstacles and roadblocks so that you can come up with ways to bridge the gaps and overcome challenges.

Now you are aware of how to create a compelling and practical sales action plan, it’s time to put your knowledge into action by downloading these powerful PPT Templates.

FAQs on Sales Action Plan

What is a sales action plan.

A sales action plan highlights your tactics to achieve your sales goals, focusing on transactions and relationships that you can develop with customers. It gives information about who you want to sell to, what your revenue goals are, and how you’re going to prepare an effective team to achieve success. An effective sales plan should communicate your sales objectives and goals and outline the roles and responsibilities of the team. It should also be able to deliver strategic direction to your sales team.

What are the steps of preparing a sales action plan?

The ten crucial steps of preparing an effective sales plan are:

• Identify yourself to customers; what do you stand for, and what do you offer
• Identify prospects; who will or should buy from you and why? Be clear on this
• Identify team members
• Create an approach plan
• Use the power of advertisements well
• Invest in brand Development
• Increase Network
• Take Feedback
• Update and develop Plan
• Track Performance

Why having a Sales Action Plan is important?

A Sales Action Plan helps you give your sales team the guidance that they need to make smart business decisions. With a Sales Action Plan, you support your sales team members by addressing issues that are within your direct control, such as a lack of guidance and direction. Once you are in the game, improved results are a given.

A sales plan includes a strategy that works for your representatives and ensures that they have everything they need to follow to achieve the targets that are handed out. With a robust sales plan in hand, you’ll find that the meetings, demos, and closed deals will be natural results that will help enter the success cycle; most importantly, you will be able to stay there as well.

Related posts:

• How To Draft A Yearly Sale Plan With Sample Templates To Boost Your Annual Sales! [Free PDF Attached]
• Top 10 Sales Strategy Plan Templates with Samples and Examples
• Top 10 Sales Growth Plan Templates with Samples and Examples 
• How to Design the Perfect Service Launch Presentation [Custom Launch Deck Included]

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4-Step Action Plan to Achieve Sales Targets

As we round out the first half of the year, it’s a great time to regroup, recalibrate, and prepare our sales teams to hit the year-end sales goals we’ve set for them.

Maybe your sales team has veered slightly off track since the target was set? By assessing your current situation and creating an updated action plan, your team will have a roadmap to follow and a renewed motivation for how to achieve your sales target.

Follow this 4-step action plan for sales target achievement:

Step 1- Analyze the Past

Analyzing trends in your results up to this point in the year allows you to pinpoint challenge areas and determine the next steps for improvement. (It also reveals what is working well.)

Ideally, your team is regularly conducting post-sale analyses and documenting the findings. This sales action plan process is often overlooked as salespeople are eager to move on to the next business opportunity, but the results are extremely effective for creating a sales strategy moving forward. Make it a point to learn from your losses and repeat the things that have been successful in the past.

It’s also important to analyze your sales funnel by stage. That allows you to look back and see where your salespeople are losing opportunities. Is it in the early stages or in the late stages? Knowing the answer to that will show you where to focus on skills training and coaching.

Step 2- Identify Challenge Areas

Based on the information you gathered in Step 1, determine where skill gaps exist. For example, if conversion rates are low in the early stages, your team likely needs support with a pre-call investigation, qualifying prospects, questioning, or establishing trust early on.

And if conversion rates are low in the later stages of the sales funnel, you may need to focus on skills such as building value,  managing objections , gaining commitment, and  negotiating  price.

Metrics aren’t the only way to identify obstacles that stand in the way of maximum output for your team. One of the most effective methods is simply to ask them!

Ask each salesperson what challenges they’re facing out in the field with prospects and customers and get their input on what sort of tools or resources would help them improve their performance. Soliciting feedback  will also make your reps more receptive to any sales action plan training or coaching you move forward with.

SPEAK TO A SALES PERFORMANCE EXPERT ABOUT IMPACT SALES TRAINING TODAY

Step 3 – implement steps to help sales reps achieve sales goals.

Once you’ve identified your challenge areas, you need to decide the best ways to support your team to reach the sales goals you’ve set for them. Focus on the development areas that will lead to the highest return on your investment of time and resources and get you closer to achieving your sales target.

It may be that your team is struggling with a lack of qualified leads. If so, your first step needs to be improving sales and marketing alignment by discussing ways to align your marketing strategy with sales goals. Or, if your team is consistently struggling with price pressure, you may decide they need some sales skills training to help them build value and hold their ground with prospects and customers.

Whatever strategy your unique situation calls for, you should work with each salesperson individually to create a detailed business development plan. Work backward from the goal, and then decide and record the activities and objectives that need to be accomplished on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in order to achieve sales targets.

Step 4 – Sales Coaching for Ongoing Success

It’s widely accepted by this point that sales coaching is the activity with the greatest impact on sales effectiveness. But according to the Sales Management Association, formal sales coaching strategies tend to be poorly executed or non-existent.

Establish a regular coaching cadence with your sales reps and make the meetings about development, not inspection. You can use this time together to ensure they’re on track with their sales action plans, reinforce new skills they’ve learned, and look for trends in what they’re doing well and where they can improve. You can find more information about how to hold effective one-to-one sales meetings in this blog post.

And if an aggressive sales target is causing them stress, make it seem more manageable by breaking the goal into smaller, easier to digest chunks.

Let’s work together to achieve your sales goals.

When it comes to maximizing sales and meeting your company’s revenue goals, creating a sales action plan should be your top priority.

If you need help defining your course of action or setting it into motion, The Brooks Group has a team of sales effectiveness experts who can help you define and achieve your sales goals. Get in touch today.  

Written By Lisa Rose

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Sales Action Plan: Why & How to Create One?

Axel Lavergne

Axel is one of Salesdorado's co-founders. He's also the founder of reviewflowz.com, a review management tool for B2B SaaS companies

A sales action plan allows you to formalise all the sales strategy and methods that work for your organisation. It is useful for aligning your teams towards the same objectives, homogenising your processes and improving your performance, and better anticipating new recruitment & tools.

This article explains what a sales action plan is, why it is important to create one and how to create a sales action plan

What is a sales action plan?

Your business action plan is a roadmap of how you will achieve your revenue goals, who your target market is, the activities needed to achieve your goals and the obstacles you will have to overcome along the way.

An effective Sales Action Plan should communicate the following information:

• #1 Mission and positioning of the company: Why does your company exist and what is your position in the market?
• #2 Sales Organization Structure: What will your sales team look like? What expertise does it need to get results?
• #3 Goals and targets: What are your revenue goals? How will you break down these targets into quarterly and monthly quotas?
•   #4 Target audience and segmentation: What are the characteristics of your target market? Which target accounts will you focus on?
• #5 Sales strategies and methodologies : How will you prioritise sales activities? What sales methodologies will you put in place?
• #6 Sales Execution Plan : How will you act on this data? When will specific projects and activities be carried out?
• #7 Measuring performance and results: What indicators and KPIs will help to evaluate the performance of your team?

Why create a sales action plan?

Most salespeople are action-driven. As they strive to get the job done by any means necessary, planning is often neglected in favour of short-term results.

Although this may help them to reach their quotas, the disadvantage is that they are unpredictable. Sales processes should be treated as a system whose steps can be optimised. A good sales action plan can keep them on track by using repeatable systems.

Your sales action plan should also highlight the tools and talents you need to adopt and cultivate. Ask yourself the following questions to determine whether your team and tools are aligned with your goals:

• Who do we need to hire to carry out each step?
• Who will be responsible for managing these teams?
• Which CRM is best suited to organise each stage?
• What additional tools are needed to help team members do their work?
• How will we measure performance and results?

In order to answer these questions accurately, you need to collect the right information and data. Your plan is likely to fail if you make assumptions about customer needs and market conditions.

Should a sales action plan be created for each function?

What period should your Sales Action Plan cover? To which functions and services should it apply? Every organisation and every function is different. When creating your sales action plan, you have two options:

• #1 Create a single plan that covers the entire sales organisation
• #2 Dedicated PACs for each function (sales development, account management, etc.)

The focus you choose will depend on your workforce and the complexity of each function. For example, if you have a large sales team, a specific sales plan is warranted.

The content will vary for each function, but the framework will remain the same. With this in mind, let’s look at the seven components of an effective sales action plan.

How to create a good sales action plan?

#1. specify your organisation’s mission & your product.

Regardless of their position or seniority, everyone in your organisation should be working towards the same goals.

This means understanding what your organisation is trying to achieve and where you are positioned in the market. To become fully familiar with the company’s positioning, follow these steps:

• #1 Collaborate with marketing: Your marketing teams live and breathe your company’s positioning.
• #2 Interview customer service teams: Customer service teams talk to your current customers every day. Interview them to find common issues and friction points.
• #3 Talk to your customers: Knowing your customers is a fundamental part of any positioning strategy. Talk directly to your current customers to find out what they like about your product or service.
• #4 Read your company’s blog: Content managers have a good understanding of customers’ needs. Check out blog posts and ebooks to familiarise yourself with customer language and common themes.
• #5 Look for mentions on the web: How are other people talking about your organisation? Look for mentions in the press, articles and news stories that mention your products and services.

This information can provide a context for how your company is currently positioned in the market. You will see what influences this information, giving you your customer’s perspective.

How to communicate the mission and positioning?

In this section of the marketing action plan, enter the following information:

• Company mission: Why your company exists and what value you are determined to bring to the market.
• Competition: Include information on direct and indirect competitors.
• Value propositions: Present the features, benefits and solutions that your product offers.
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#2. Define the vision & goals of your organisation

Use data on sales activity and past performance to calculate sales targets. You need to break down this data by stage of the pipeline and by activity carried out by sales people in all areas.

For example, how many cold calling emails does it take to generate a deal? What is the average Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) of your customers? Breaking down these numbers allows you to accurately predict what it will take to reach your new revenue target.

How to communicate the vision and objectives?

Your sales action plan should clearly indicate the turnover target that everyone is striving to achieve. Break down this overall objective into more concrete objectives for each of your salespeople:

• 200 emails sent per day
• 200 cold calls per day
• 25 demonstrations per day
• 5 new sales appointments per day
• 100 follow-up emails sent per day

With this information, you can define service level agreements (SLAs) for each activity.

Activities are the specific actions that you and your salespeople can control, while sales targets are the results delivered by these activities. By setting targets for both, you can optimise each activity.

In this section of the marketing action plan you should include the following information:

• Sales targets: Break down your sales targets into several achievable goals and assign them to each sales team.
• Calculate sales targets: Use sales activity and past performance data to set quotas and metrics for each stage of the sales funnel .
• Identify the expertise needed for each activity: What qualities, skills and experience does your team need?
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#3. Set the organisation & structure of the sales team

Use the targets set in the previous section to identify the people you need to recruit. For example, if the sales manager can send an average of 20 emails per day and you need to send 200 to reach your targets, you will need about ten sales people to reach your targets.

How do you communicate about your sales organisation and team structure?

This part of your business plan should justify the people you need in your team and the budget needed to hire them.

Be specific by including the following information:

• Team structure: These are the functions that make up your sales organisation . The roles of the business development and account management teams should be well defined.
• Roles and responsibilities: Include the roles you need to hire, and the tasks for which they are responsible. This will help you produce job descriptions that attract talent.
• Salary and remuneration: How will your teams be paid? Your compensation plan will play a large part in your ability to attract the best talent.
• Timing: It is difficult to recruit dozens of people at a time. Prioritise hiring according to the importance of each role.

Include information about each team member in your Sales Action Plan. Visualising each role helps everyone understand who they are hiring and who they are responsible for. Although it’s typically used more as a project management tool , RACI matrixes can be useful here (Responsibility Assignment Matrix)

In this section, include the following information:

• Team structure: This explains why each team member is needed.
• Role specifics: This will allow you to determine the number of representatives you need to carry out each activity, as well as a competitive compensation plan .
• Timeline: Establish a hiring timeline so that you have a clear idea of who you need to hire first and how often you will bring in new employees once key positions are filled.
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#4. Characterise your targets & customer segments

Start with the criteria for your target account. Include the following information to clearly define the companies you are trying to attract:

• Industries: What are the markets and niches you serve? Are there certain sub-segments of these industries in which you specialise?
• Headcount: How many employees do your top accounts have in their organisation?
• Funding: Have they raised one or more funds?

Gather as much information as possible about their organisational difficulties. These may be barriers to growth.

How to communicate with the target audience and customer segments?

Well-documented buyer profiles, fed by your customer knowledge, will help you guide your sales action plan. Here are the criteria to be filled in to obtain a relevant buyer profile:

• Profile: Include basic information about their role, career path and common priorities in their personal lives.
• Demographics: Add more detailed information about their age, income level and living conditions.
• Attributes: What is their personality? Are they calm or assertive? Do they handle direct communication themselves or do they have an assistant?
• Challenges: What are the obstacles this person is trying to overcome? How does this affect their work, and what is the impact on them personally?
• Goals: What are the challenges that prevent them from achieving them? Why are these goals important to them?
• How we help them: Based on this analysis, explain how your product or service helps them to overcome difficulties and achieve their goals.

Pro Tip This information will change as your business grows. For start-ups, your target audience will change frequently as you find the right product or service for the market.

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#5 Detail your sales methodology & processes

This part of your sales plan may be the most important. It will describe every practical aspect of your sales strategy, including

• Sales methodologies: The different practices and approaches you will adopt to shape your sales strategy.
• The stages of selling : The different steps needed to convert prospects into paying customers.
• Your sales guide: The tactics and techniques needed to guide contacts through each stage of the sales process.

Start by mapping each stage of your sales process.

Traditionally, the sales stages are divided into nine categories:

• #1 Prospecting and lead generation: Marketing must provide leads, but salespeople must supplement this volume with their own prospecting efforts.
• #2 Qualify your leads : Measure these leads against your target account criteria and buyer persona.
• #3 Reach out to new prospects: Prospecting emails and follow-up activities to guide new prospects through the sales funnel.
• #4 Make an appointment: Schedule an appointment for a demonstration, discovery call or consultation.
• #5 Needs definition: After the initial meeting, you will understand your prospect’s problems and how your product or service can solve them.
• #6 Presentation: Reveal the solution. This can take the form of a proposal, customised service packages or a face-to-face meeting.
• #7 Negotiation : This stage is devoted to overcoming any objections your prospect may have.
• #8 Winning the deal: The contract is signed and your prospect becomes a customer.
• #9 Referrals: Retention is an organisation-wide activity. Please your customers and encourage them to refer their friends and peers.

Map out your sales process to identify each step. Get together with other stakeholders to identify what needs to be done to close new business. Your sales map should look like this:

How to communicate sales strategies and methodologies?

Once you have defined your sales activities, you can research the techniques and methodologies needed to carry them out.

In summary, each step should be divided into several sections:

• Description: Explain why this stage plays an important role in developing leads and closing deals.
• Activities: Break down the tactics and techniques needed to advance opportunities in your sales pipeline.
• Stakeholders: Define who is responsible for each step and the activities involved.

Finally, use these activities and steps to build your sales manuals. This will help you structure your training plan, providing a reference point for your salespeople to draw on for advice.

• Setting up effective business processes
• 6 pillars for a successful commercial organisation

#6 Make your business plan operational

You have the “who” and the “what”. Now you need to determine “when” your sales plan will be implemented. A structured sales execution clearly communicates when milestones will be reached.

The order in which you implement your plan will also depend on your priorities. Many business organisations prefer to focus on the activity that will have the greatest impact on the bottom line.

For example, in analysing your current sales process and strategy, you may find that your current customers are a rich source of qualified leads. It would therefore make sense to prioritise account management activities that foster more of these relationships using a structured referral programme.

You should also consider how recruitment will affect the workload of the rest of your team. If you recruit too quickly, you may spend more time bringing new representatives up to speed and neglecting your existing team. This can have a significant impact on the culture and workflow.

How to communicate your sales execution plan

Break down each stage of your plan by month and quarter. Start with a rough timeline detailing approximate deadlines. This schedule should include key hires, process implementation and any one-off projects that need to be completed.

When applying this timeline to your sales plan, use the GANTT charts and tables to visualise projects and milestones.

In this section of the sales plan, include the following information:

• Key milestones: When should projects, activities and recruitment efforts be completed?
• Set strategies for short and long term goals: By setting a high level timetable, you can see clearly when you will achieve your goals.

#7 Deciding on performance indicators & calculation methods

Finally, your sales action plan should include details of how performance is measured. Describe your key sales metrics and activities, and the technology needed to track them.

Performance measures can indicate the effectiveness of your entire sales process. The measures you choose generally fall into two categories:

• #1 Primary measures serve as a guide to the “true north”. These are generally new commercial revenues generated.
• #2 Secondary measures are those that indicate how well specific areas of your sales process are performing. These include response time and average purchase value.

Each team needs its own sales dashboard to ensure that it is achieving its goals. Sales development managers will have different priorities to account managers, so it is essential that they have the tools to focus on what is important to them.

How to communicate on sales performance indicators?

Structure this part of your plan by breaking down each sales stage. In these sections, list the steps you need to take to ensure your sales pipeline is healthy.

Assign each measure to a member of your team, ensuring that they are measured against these measures as key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, a sales representative might be measured against these indicators:

• The average opportunity value
• Closing rate
• Number of new tracks
• Planned meetings

This will help you to run your operation successfully once you have implemented your new sales plan. Finally, research and evaluate the technology needed to accurately measure these metrics. A good CRM is the best system to use to gather your data.

• Performance measurement: Describe exactly how and what technology you will use to measure your team’s activities and metrics.
• Selected sales dashboard: Explain why you chose your sales dashboard technology and how exactly it works.
• Break down each sales stage: Identify the parameters of each specific sales stage and make sure they match your key performance indicators.

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How to Create a Sales Plan: Template + Examples

Published: August 18, 2023

Do you have a sales plan? Entrepreneurs, sales executives, and sales managers all benefit from writing sales plans — whether for their business, department, or team. You must know where you're going before you can hit your key targets, and from there, you must break down the strategies and tactics you'll use to do it.

All of this information can be included in a sales plan (and more). Read on to learn how to draft a sales plan that's right for your organization.

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In this post, we'll cover:

• What Is a Sales Plan?
• What Is the Sales Planning Process?
• What Goes In a Sales Plan Template

How to Write a Sales Plan

Tips for creating an effective sales plan, sales plan examples.

• Strategic Sales Plan Templates

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan lays out your objectives, high-level tactics, target audience, and potential obstacles. It's like a traditional business plan but focuses specifically on your sales strategy. A business plan lays out your goals — a sales plan describes exactly how you'll make those happen.

Free Sales Plan Template

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent sales plan.

• Target Market
• Prospecting Strategy

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Fill out the form to get the free template.

Sales plans often include information about the business' target customers, revenue goals, team structure, and the strategies and resources necessary for achieving its targets.

What are the goals of an effective sales plan?

Sales Planning Process

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that sales planning doesn't just encompass the creation of a sales plan document. For that document to be more than something that gathers dust on the bookshelf, a high-level strategy is required.

You should:

• Gather sales data and search for trends.
• Define your objectives.
• Determine metrics for success.
• Assess the current situation.
• Start sales forecasting.
• Identify gaps.
• Ideate new initiatives.
• Involve stakeholders.
• Outline action items.

Step 1: Gather sales data and search for trends.

To plan for the present and future, your company needs to look to the past. What did sales look like during the previous year? What about the last five years? Using this information can help you identify trends in your industry. While it's not foolproof, it helps establish a foundation for your sales planning process.

Step 2: Define your objectives.

How do you know your business is doing well if you have no goals? As you can tell from its placement on this list, defining your goals and objectives is one of the first steps you should take in your sales planning process. Once you have them defined, you can move forward with executing them.

Step 3: Determine metrics for success.

Every business is different. One thing we can all agree on is that you need metrics for success. These metrics are key performance indicators (KPIs). What are you going to use to determine if your business is successful? KPIs differ based on your medium, but standard metrics are gross profit margins, return on investment (ROI), daily web traffic users, conversion rate, and more.

Step 4: Assess the current situation.

How is your business fairing right now? This information is relevant to determining how your current situation holds up to the goals and objectives you set during step two. What are your roadblocks? What are your strengths? Create a list of the obstacles hindering your success. Identify the assets you can use as an advantage. These factors will guide you as you build your sales plan.

Step 5: Start sales forecasting.

Sales forecasting is an in-depth report that predicts what a salesperson, team, or company will sell weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. While it is finicky, it can help your company make better decisions when hiring, budgeting, prospecting, and setting goals.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, economics has become less predictable. Claire Fenton , the owner of StrActGro — a professional training and coaching company — states, "Many economic forecasters won't predict beyond three months at a time." This makes sales forecasting difficult. However, there are tools at your disposal to create accurate sales forecasts .

Step 6: Identify gaps.

When identifying gaps in your business, consider what your company needs now and what you might need in the future. First, identify the skills you feel your employees need to reach your goal. Second, evaluate the skills of your current employees. Once you have this information, you can train employees or hire new ones to fill the gaps.

Step 7: Ideate new initiatives.

Many industry trends are cyclical. They phase in and out of "style." As you build your sales plan, ideate new initiatives based on opportunities you may have passed on in previous years. If your business exclusively focused on word-of-mouth and social media marketing in the past, consider adding webinars or special promotions to your plan.

Step 8: Involve stakeholders.

Stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations with a vested interest in your company. They are typically investors, employees, or customers and often have deciding power in your business. Towards the end of your sales planning process, involve stakeholders from departments that affect your outcomes, such as marketing and product. It leads to an efficient and actionable sales planning process.

Step 9: Outline action items.

Once you have implemented this strategy to create your sales planning process, the final step is outlining your action items. Using your company's capacity and quota numbers, build a list of steps that take you through the sales process . Examples of action items are writing a sales call script, identifying industry competitors, or strategizing new incentives or perks.

One thing to keep in mind is that sales planning shouldn't end with creating the document.

You‘ll want to reiterate this process every year to maintain your organization's sales excellence.

Now that you‘re committed to the sales planning process, let's dive into the written execution component of sales planning.

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

Ready to write your own plan? Download HubSpot's Free Sales Plan Template to get started.

What Goes in a Sales Plan Template?

Of course, you'll probably have more than one goal. Identify the most important, then rank the rest by priority.

If you have territories, assign a sub-goal to each. That will make it easier to identify over- and under-performers.

Lay out your timeline too. Having regular benchmarks lets you know if you're on track, ahead, or behind in meeting your targets.

Suppose your sales goal for the first quarter of the year is selling $30,000. Based on last year's performance, you know January and February sales are slower than March.

With that in mind, your timeline is:

• January: $8,000
• February: $8,000
• March: $14,000

You should also write in the DRIs if applicable. For example, maybe Rep Carol‘s January quota is $5,000. Rep Shane, who's still ramping, has a $3,000 monthly quota. On a smaller team, this exercise helps people avoid replicating each other‘s work and shifting blame around if targets aren't met.

10. Set your budget.

Describe the costs associated with hitting your sales goals. That usually includes:

• Pay (salary and commission)
• Sales training
• Sales tools and resources
• Contest prizes
• Team bonding activities
• Travel costs

Compare the sales plan budget to your sales forecast for accurate budgeting.

If you want to take your plan to the next level, read on to learn some tips for creating a highly effective sales plan.

We've gone over what you should include in a sales plan, including some examples and mockups.

Learn some tips and tricks for creating a sales plan that helps you hit target numbers and exceed your higher-ups' expectations.

• Use industry trends to strengthen your plan. When presenting your sales plan to a stakeholder, use industry trends to highlight why your plan will be effective.
• Specify the technology you‘ll use to track success. You can do this for internal reference or let stakeholders know how you'll measure success. Some tools you can consider include CRM and dashboard software .
• Support your budget proposal with hard facts and data. If you're creating a budget as a part of your plan, support it with previous performance data and sales forecasts.
• Create different plans for each team. If you create a sales plan for business development, inbound sales, outbound sales, field sales, and so forth, you can get even more granular and specific in your goals and KPIs.
• Get marketing's input. Marketing and sales alignment is critical for the success of your sales plan. The more input you have from marketing, the more you can align your lead generation, prospecting, and nurturing efforts.
• Talk with your sales reps to understand their challenges. It might be easy to get lost in numbers and forecasts. But it‘s important to know your sales representative's day-to-day to understand what will and will not prove effective or feasible.
• Complete an in-depth competitive analysis. You must know what the competition is doing well to create a plan that nudges your company in that direction.

You can create a few different types of sales plans for your organization. Here are some examples.

30-60-90-Day Sales Plan

Download Now: Free Sales Training Template

This general sales plan is defined not by theme but by time frame. You'll create three goals: one for the 30-day mark, another for the 60-day mark, and the last for the 90-day mark. You can choose to focus on quotas or reduce customer churn by a certain percentage.

Marketing-Alignment Sales Plan

Download Now: Free Marketing & Sales Alignment Template

In many ways, a traditional sales plan is already aligned with marketing. Still, you can create a marketing-alignment sales plan if your organization has not yet aligned both of these departments.

Download Now: Free Strategic Business Planning Template

A strategic sales plan for business development will focus on attracting new business to your company by networking with other companies, sponsoring events, and doing outreach. In your sales plan, you'll want to choose the right KPIs that best reflect performance for these specific outreach channels.

Download Now: Free Marketing Plan Template

A market expansion plan outlines a task list and target metrics when expanding into a new market or territory. This type of sales plan is specifically concerned with addressing a target market in a new geographical area.

Download Now: Free Product Launch Kit

If you're launching a new product, create a sales plan specifically to generate revenue from the new launch.

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Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

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