Your Bank’s USP Is Either Indisputable—or Invisible

Most community banks don’t have a branding problem. They have a proof problem.

In this week’s Grow Your Bank episode, Roxanne Emmerich exposes why a weak or generic “unique selling proposition” silently drains revenue—and why awards, recognition, systems, blueprints, and processes must be turned into credibility assets your people can actually use in the sales process.

Because if your differentiation can be copied, ignored, or dismissed as “me too,” it isn’t a USP. It’s expensive wallpaper.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why one credibility marker is useful—but three or four stacked together become nearly indisputable proof
• How to turn awards, PR wins, templates, blueprints, and internal systems into a revenue-driving sales advantage
• Why bank executives must stop outsourcing their revenue model to branding firms that miss the point

Your bank’s future growth depends on whether prospects believe you are meaningfully different before they ever sit across the table from your team.

Want to turn your bank’s performance into a credibility asset? Apply for the Banky Awards by May 20th and give your team a proof point they can use to stand out, open better conversations, and win more of the right business.

Last week, we talked about the power of using your Banky Award to promote and get new business with the very best prospects by having your people understand how to use it in the sales process. That’s one way to do a unique selling proposition, and there are others. You’ll want to look at other opportunities for the credibility type of unique selling proposition, such as maybe you’re voted Best Place to Work in your state, or you’re on the American Bankers Association list for Best Places to Work. Those would also be some additional great ways to define you as being different.

But here’s the real power when you’re talking credibility pieces. What if you had a whole bunch? What if you had three or four that you tied together? Oh, so you have the Banky Award, you have Best Places to Work on the ABA list, and you’re also on the Top 100 list for your state across all industries. Now we’re talking that you are an elite bank, that many entities are recognizing this, and it’s indisputable that something special is going on here.

The other power that you have is that series of PR hits. Boom, boom, boom. So that every time they hear of the next award, they think, “These people, they just keep being recognized everywhere. They’re really something.”

Now, credibility isn’t the only kind of USP. There are also the systems that you have that you can explain that make you different. And the systems, again, need to have credibility, and you do that by listing it as a template, a blueprint, or a process. What is the piece that has the credibility so that they understand that, in fact, you are something unique? But it’s not just a fleeting thing that one person thinks, “Yeah, maybe we could do this.” It is a system that is believed and implemented throughout the organization, and it’s beyond the person who’s in front of them.

Therefore, the person buying knows, “Oh, I’m buying a system. And during good times and bad times, depending on who’s in front of me, I know I’m going to have this system that’s going to allow for me to have more of my needs met.” And that goes back to one of the elements of a unique selling proposition. There are three important pieces.

Number one, it matters to the customer.

If you don’t win on number one, do not go to number two. You must win on number one. So it’s got to be of importance to them.

Then it must be dramatically different.

In other words, if there’s any chance of “me too” for any other banks in your area, it is not a unique selling proposition. So sure, you have some new doohickey that you just bought, and you’re ahead of some others in your market. Okay, but that’s going to be fleeting, and that differentiator will go away as soon as others add that new way of doing things. So know that that will go away quickly.

But the third piece is how you determine and say this piece in a way that brings that credibility. So is it the system? Is it the award? What is it that makes it real for them?

And most banks that spend a half a million dollars on a branding company miss that last piece, and I’m thinking, “You just got all of ten dollars’ worth of advice out of five hundred thousand dollars. How did you let that happen?”

As executives of banks, you must get your head in the game called marketing and sales. Why? It’s your revenue model.

Tell me what’s more important in your organization than your revenue model. I can’t think of anything. And so do you really want to abdicate that to people who you think understand that, who don’t know how you want that to be driven down as strategies? I don’t think there will be a place for banks like that in the future.

I think every great bank in the future will have executives who thoroughly understand revenue models and know how to put those in place. So get those differentiations in place quickly, understand what they are, drive that, and stop wasting money on branding exercises because we know how that goes.

Call me. I’ll share lots of horror stories.