Do you agree that high quality customers love high quality attention?

Let’s explore how you can transform your safety and profitability by creating the kind of differentiation that attracts the highest quality credits and makes price irrelevant.

If you think that the best customers get the best pricing because everyone wants them, then you have to watch this episode because it can and is being done. 

Pay close attention if you feel overwhelmed because your team is stuck. Because they do the same thing year after year with the same results, but don’t know how or what to change even though you know deep down there’s a way to get those best customers in your market and get them to pay more.

Or maybe you’re the kind of leader who rallies the troops to focus on the best quality loans, but still have several who believe they need to lower them with rate, and when they do, they squeeze all the profit on the deal.

Or you’re worried about how to get your entire team to buy into the idea that they can get the best quality credits, and at the same time get substantial premium pricing.

I’m going to show you how to overcome the mountain of evidence that your team leans on to hold up their old beliefs. I know you’re thinking who wouldn’t want top shelf pricing on top shelf customers, but if it’s that easy, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

First you have team members who have been doing their job as well for decades, creating an okay result, but not tapping into the real goldmine opportunity. It’s not their fault. They’re doing everything they learned at conferences and lending school. It’s just that it’s outdated and inefficient. They don’t feel that what they offer is different or worth more than the bank down the street, so they typically ask for 20 or 25 basis points more tops. And they’re probably right. They don’t have a game-changing unique selling proposition that shows the extremely unique value that you offer.

Let’s cover how to create USPS that are permanent game changers:

Step one – forget the powder puff attempts at USPs and get your people to stop saying them. “We have good people”, “We have great service”, “We’ve been around 89 years.” Really, who cares? They expect you to have great service and great people and experience. That’s just the ticket to the dance. Never in the history of time has a person said “Oh, great, you have good people. I’m switching everything. Oh don’t worry about price, charge what you want right?”

Step two – build USPs that matter to the customer. By definition, a unique selling proposition, or USP, has three elements: 1) it must matter to the customer 2) it must be dramatically different, and 3), it must be stated as an explicit benefit to the customer. Tons of top banks dump a few $100,000 on branding every year. Sadly, after all of that, they get one really weak level one USP, such as how fast they close loans, when what they’re really needing is at least 40 USPs, all of which can be used in their sales process. And, those A+ quality credits that we want flocking in are not going to flock in until you give them a level three or level four USP, the kind where they tell you that’s worth $100,000 or more, or maybe even a million yearly, I can’t live without you. Let’s get everything switched over right away. Oh, did I mention they don’t even ask your pricing? If you have three or four USPs that total up to be worth over 10 to 20 to 50 times more than the amount of additional fees or interest that you charge, pricing doesn’t matter anymore. I’m guessing they’re pretty good at math. That is how they got to be an A+ quality credit. And you need to get your head wrapped around that you deserve extreme premium pricing. When you deliver that kind of value. It’s not too good to be true, it’s just too good to be free.

Step three – start developing level one USPs for each of your top three target markets. I believe the best way to get something accomplished is to achieve some small wins fast. So start with level one USPs and get about 20 to 30 of those in place. Level one USPs are the ones that prove that you have differences that matter to the customer. At our events for elite banks and their ambitious executive teams, we go through exercises together to do this right there at the event. Each executive carries home over 20 to 30 USPs that are just right for their bank, and we make sure that they state them as an explicit benefit. In less than an hour, we make more progress than they made after six months and $200,000 or more of branding. Don’t blame your marketing department, it’s not their fault. They just haven’t been exposed to a better way.

Step four – optimize how you use your USPs. That’s right, USPs do no good whatsoever in a binder. Although they can be transformative to marketing results, when used correctly in your marketing, the real magic is in the sales process. The magic happens when your team uses them in the right type of question format that allows for the prospect to tell you how much it is costing them not to have your USPs. Oh, that’s so fun. It’s like printing money legally.

I had a bank that on their first deal after they learned us nailed a $5.4 million loan without the prospect ever asking how much. Their CEO said that they charge 150 basis points more than any of the 100 banks located between the prospect and that bank would have offered. Wouldn’t you like to do that all day every day? What’s it costing you this month with your current pipeline to know that you’re missing 100, 150 or 200 basis points on every deal?

Step five – do a backflip. Once you figure this out, and you get the system in place to do it over and over, you should do a happy dance because you just protected your bank from the ups and downs of the economy. Which means that while other banks will be crushed by their belief that NIM compression is a thing, you will be there to pick off their best customers. It’s supposed to be fun, isn’t it?

Stay tuned much more great content coming your way next week.  

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

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