Build Your Mindset, Build Your System

It’s all about franchise thinking. How are you going to attract those who have the largest low-cost deposits?

Let’s start with a key question. Who has them?

The service industry is filled with large, low-cost deposits. Banks rarely call on service businesses but, instead, the lenders focus only on businesses that also have loans.

Many say, “We pay our lenders to make sure that they bring in the deposits.”

That is not a brilliant strategy because if that small business has loans, by definition, they likely don’t have too much in deposits. Although it helps to bring in the deposits with the loans, that is not the answer to your problem.

The key is knowing who has those large, low-cost deposits and building a system to:

• Obsess over how you can be of service to those in service industries once you identify your best “suspects” and then,
• Use the right sales process…one designed to get a closing ratio over 85 percent.

That means that even if they aren’t looking for a new bank and even though it’s going to be difficult to change their banking relationship, you’re pulling them in with an 85% to 90% close rate.

The Magic of the Franchise System

That’s the magic of a franchise system. It integrates sales and marketing—let’s call it “smarketing”—and pulls it all the way through by identifying those who have the large deposits that you want and by building a sales system that puts your bank into a category of one.

You are not competing against anybody else because you are de-commoditized in a way that they love you and can’t do anything but say, “Yes. I want you. I’m sending all my business to you.”