The Seven-Step Formula for Creating a Franchisable System

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So you’ve built your bank into a thriving, successful business. Nice work! But now you’re looking to expand—sending other branches out into the world like beloved children.

Can you give them what they need to succeed? Not unless you’ve created a franchisable system to help them duplicate your success.

Here are the seven crucial elements of building a franchisable system in your own bank:

1. Critical Drivers

In every business, there’s a checklist of goals and targets that—when reached, surpassed and improved upon—continually drive revenue into the business and drive up profits. We call these targets “critical drivers.” They drive the revenue and bottom-line numbers more than any other numbers. Every position has them.   Identifying, tracking, measuring and meeting the critical drivers defined for each position of your bank will make it a top-performing institution.

It’s safe to say that most banks either don’t have defined critical drivers by position or, if they do have them, have critical drivers that worked (barely) when parachute pants were all the rage. Drivers like “number of calls” get you nowhere fast. What you really want is “aces on Top 1000 prospects” to know that calls are going to the right people—and following a Profit-Rich Sales™ system, instead of one where you get dragged into matching rates.

(What? Are you STILL matching rates?)

Today, top-performing banks focus on key initiatives tied to critical drivers that boost net interest margin and deliver an ROA that was once thought inconceivable.  These leaders concentrate on getting core deposits, pinpointing A+ credits, landing this quality business at premium pricing, and differentiating their bank from the competition with compelling USPs, smart marketing, whole-team sales, and culture training.

They establish systems within their bank to replicate these powerful strategies anytime they open a new branch, hire a new employee or take advantage of a merger or acquisition opportunity that lands in their lap.

By giving your people a clear understanding of critical drivers that really matter, you can start to move things forward in ways that make some sense. For instance, instead of a personal banker caring about the number of new accounts they have, they should really care about how many Top 100 prospects they’re bringing in. Is their cross-sales ratio on new accounts going up every week? What’s the number of cross sales to Top 100 customers, for example? THESE are goals that matter to your bottom line.

Do you really need more customers losing money for you? Didn’t think so…

2. Weekly Sales Meetings

Research across all industries has proven that the highest ROI activity that happens in sales meetings is teaching skills and asking people to use and report back on those new skills.  Whether it’s a meeting of your retail sales team or your trust, investment or commercial sales teams, a sales meeting agenda that is focused on celebrating wins is good, but learning what part of the sales system CAUSED the win to happen matters just as much.

In the sales meeting, make sure every person is properly using the right system to get premium pricing.

3. Hiring Right

Let’s face it. Hiring has never been more difficult. With up to 40 percent of the population experiencing mental health and substance abuse disorders at some point in their lives,* how do you avoid the pitfalls of hiring people who are destructive to your culture, unwilling to do your required behaviors or otherwise unable to follow orders or demonstrate a good, honest work ethic?

With so much at risk, hiring the wrong person to be a part of your sales culture can be disastrous.  As you hire and move people to different roles at your bank, it’s important to use powerful interview strategies and carefully worded job-performance plans that outline the activities and results required at every stage of the job—as opposed to the antiquated “job description” that was never all that effective.  Hiring astutely also requires tools that measure emotional intelligence—the thinking behind a candidate’s behaviors that strongly suggests whether they can do the job.

A human-capital audit that outlines the 43 different positions within banking—and specifies the appropriate ranges for each—has proven to be the cornerstone of helping many banks lower their turnover from the current average of (yikes!) 40 percent annually. More importantly, people who are considered “low risk” for a position have a 90 percent chance of still being in that position one year later. High-riskers have only a 10 percent chance.

4. Daily Huddles

How do you get people focused on the right things such as cross-sales scores raised, big deals closed, and clients who are raving (in a good way)?

Well, nothing sharpens focus like “success stories”—thus the Daily Huddle.

Learning, accountability and celebrating wins are the hallmarks of high-performing sales cultures.  The Daily Huddle—a brief morning meeting—is a tool that smart banks use to advance learning, keep teams motivated and make sure everyone is focused on those critical drivers that make your organization successful.

5. Strategy Circle Process

Every one of your 5 key initiatives and 5 key results deserves a strategy circle—a miraculous process that assures that things happen.

The Strategy Circle process forces you and your team to create strategies to overcome each obstacle before you even encounter it. Using the process on every project—whether buying new software, developing a new training program or reorganizing part of your company—will save tremendous time and create far more efficient results. Most important, it must be used on every identified key initiative and key result per the one-page Strategic Plan. It’s what makes the Plan happen and what moves it beyond a pipe dream.

6. Hoopla Team®

Every time you roll out a new standard, new vision or new way of operating, it’s important to be sure that your people are on board with full buy-in.  As you work toward becoming a top-performing bank, you’ll be rolling out hundreds of reforms and culture upgrades.  A Hoopla Team is a cross-sectional team representing different locations and levels—a team who can keep the enthusiasm level high through celebrating, encouraging, rewarding and making bank-wide “wins” visible everywhere.

A Hoopla Team makes improving standards FUN. Quarterly all-staff award ceremonies insure that both individuals and teams are working toward goals and being rewarded for it.  Awards should be tied into key areas of your culture: customer-service standards and values—along with critical drivers such as sales, cross-sales, profitability, prospects in the funnel, quality of loan processing and other drivers that are critical to your bank.

As people create mastery in the basics, the things your Hoopla Team measures and celebrates should get elevated every few months. For your bank to be better, your people must be better. There’s no way around the need for constant improvement. Choosing the right things to roll out next—and knowing at what pace you can advance these rollouts—is critical to success. Make sure the Hoopla Team masters the fine art of getting advanced critical drivers measured and celebrated. It ties everything together.

7. Sales and Marketing Tools

No sales or marketing tool that exists will overcome an internal culture that has an “order taking” or “rate quoting” mentality.

When your people commoditize what they’re selling by quoting rates, they give prospective customers a chance to price-shop you. Instead, they should proudly represent your bank as an institution where people want to bank—even if it costs more—because customers have done the cost-versus-return analysis and know the payoff.

Before you even THINK about expanding or acquiring, make sure your own house is in order with a fully franchisable system for success.

One of the most valuable things The Emmerich Group has taught us is to become disciplined in putting processes and systems in place. When you have a solid system, it makes execution a whole lot easier. We’ve grown from $180 to $250 million in two years.
—Dale Blachford, President | Liberty Bank

Basel III is coming up fast, making 2013 the most important “get-ready” year in recent history for the banking industry.

pgbSmart banks who focus on growing assets and net interest margin NOW through proven sales and marketing strategies will not only survive under new compliance rules—they’ll also become strong enough to capture the best A-credit customers from failing banks and earn premium pricing to boot.

At the Profit-Growth Banking™ Summit I’ll deliver a hands-on marketing, strategy, culture and sales management “boot camp” dedicated to giving you REAL strategies that I’ve used to help banks double cross-sales and customer service scores regularly within 3 to 6 months. It will literally transform the working culture of your bank—with systems, strategies, accountability and workable sales dialogs that re-focus EVERYONE on bringing in better margins, better quality accounts and better performance in every area of your bank.

Register Your Team Today and Save Up to $7,140!

Click Here for Details or Call (952) 820-0360 to register.


*As reported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute of Mental Health.

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