How to Never Become a Vendor in the Eyes of Your Customers

I believe the world is full of abundance—a field of diamonds is in every back yard. You just have to mine your share.

In this episode, I’m going to show you how to find and bring in all the deposits you want in YOUR market without paying up.

If you’re the kind of banker:

• Who has all the deposits you want already, you’ll love this because you’ll be able to bring your cost of funds down even more.
• Or if you are the kind who can’t seem to find enough deposits and has resorted to having to fund through alternative sources or pay up for CDs, you’ll love this.
• Or perhaps you’re the leader who is standing on your head screaming from the mountain to your team to go find deposits, and it’s just not happening. It’s your lucky day.

I’ll admit there are some roadblocks you have to overcome:

• The people and organizations that have the low-cost deposits RARELY fall into your lobby like accounts that rob your profits do. This causes an endless cycle of low volume, high-cost deposits… and it’s NEVER enough.
• Also, it seems that most bank team members love the “cush” of their chairs and don’t really want to step out of the bank to call on the right people—people are scary. They figured out a long time ago that the best way to avoid getting rejected is not to play.
• Or, maybe IF they are calling on folks, usually their approach is a scattered or a “down the street” approach—it’s like fishing for tuna in the local pond. You can work pretty hard at it, but it’s just not going to work well.

EVERY bank has these same darn problems. But you can overcome counterproductive attitudes and ineffective approaches.

With these four steps, you can inspire change within weeks in your team and arm them with the knowledge they need to close deals consistently.

Step 1: UNLIKE so many sales training programs that just teach people to “just get out there,” you need first to know exactly where to start: A clear diagnosis of the next best customers by getting clear on their psychographics and firmographics.

Step 2: In contrast to the mindless and time-wasting cold calling process, you first need to build reputational equity so that prospects are in love with you BEFORE you start talking.

Step 3: Understand that NOBODY wants to change. So analyzing how to save money for the prospect is out—if you save them money, then you are probably losing money for your bank. You can’t make that up in volume, as they say. Instead, you need to bring your Level 4 USPs to the table (in the proper way) that makes pricing irrelevant in the very first minute of the conversation—customized to that target market. It will keep you from positioning yourself as a vendor and all the disrespectful attitudes and behaviors that come with that.

Step 4: Stop talking about your stuff. Through skillful questioning, get the customer to tell you how much, in dollars, your USP will mean to them. The price you charge is irrelevant because they’ll see at least a 10:1 return (minimum!) for your additional fees and pricing.

That’s four simple steps for landing the customers you want for your bank:

1) Target the people who have large balance deposits.
2) Create a process that builds reputational equity so they can’t wait to talk to you.
3) Properly use your targeted Level 4 USP as the hook.
4) Use your USP question in a way that gets the prospect to tell YOU how much more they’ll make when they switch all the deposits and other accounts to you!

When you take yourself out of the vendor role and take on the expert status that delivers far more value than the extra you charge, you not only win all the business but also position yourself as the trusted resource that you are and get paid what you’re worth.

Be sure to check out the next session. We’ll be discussing how to use psychographics and firmographics to find your next best customers—the ones who are delighted to pay more for your services.