Do you hold the entire relationship for every one of your bank account holders? 

I hope you do. But maybe you don’t. And maybe your people don’t know how to get effective cross-selling done.

If you’re not averaging five, six, or even seven cross-sales on every new relationship that is opened up in your bank, somethings just not right yet.  

And it doesn’t mean you have bad people. It just means they don’t know what to do for effective cross-selling. But they’re going to need to figure it out.

Think of it this way. I’ve watched bank after bank after bank move their cross-sales and new account figure from 2.2 up to five in less than a year.

At the end of the year, they’re always surprised. “Oh, look at that. Our efficiency dropped by 10 points. We weren’t even cutting expenses.” Oh, no, you don’t have to. It’s dealt with on the revenue side. And look at the equation here. How beautiful is this, that we didn’t have to hire more people, and we didn’t need new buildings. 

All we had to do is that every time a customer, or a new potential customer, walks in that person knows how to turn them into a customer and create an entire relationship using tried and true cross-selling strategies that work. 

That takes some skills, that takes some distinctions, it takes some understanding, and it takes some repetition. Most banks have given this lip service for decades. They’ve talked every year about how they’ve got to get past the order taking. 

Saying so doesn’t seem to get it done. What is your defined action plan? The one where you know with great certainty that you will, within a year, be up to five, six, or even seven cross-sells? If you say it can’t be done, look at the case studies on our website, and you’ll see hundreds of banks that have pulled it off. So if they can do it, you can do it—but you have to do things correctly. 

Is this the year that you own the entire relationship for your bank account holders? I hope it is.

– Roxanne Emmerich

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board.