Stop Matching the Competition [VIDEO]

Rate matching is quietly destroying profitability at community banks—and it’s completely optional. In this video, you’ll discover how to replace “Can you match the rate?” with disciplined, believable USPs that command premium pricing and win bigger balances without discounting. Forget “great service” and “we’ve been here 132 years.” Those aren’t USPs; they’re table stakes.

What you’ll discover:

• The three USP must-haves: It must matter to your customer, be dramatically different in your market, and be worded as a clear benefit.

• The me-too traps to avoid: “Great people,” “great service,” and “we’re local” kill credibility and keep you stuck in rate wars.

• The profit mistake to fix now: USPs with no explicit benefit won’t move a dime—craft them to drive action and pricing power.

When your team installs credible USPs into the sales process, results show up fast. One community bank used a proper USP and turned a $250K checking opportunity into $5MM in deposits—overnight—without matching rate. If you’re ready to stop subsidizing your competition and start getting paid fairly for the value you deliver, this video gives you the blueprint.

Watch now. 

You deserve to get paid more. Rate matching is the most destructive force in community banking today. And because of it, as a community bank, you are underpaid for the value you deliver.

What if you could stop your prospects from asking you to match the rate to win the business—and start getting paid more within the next two weeks? Sound good? Great!

You’re going to love this if you’re the kind of person who has team members at your door saying, “Boss, we can do this deal if we match the rate!”—and you know that’s no good. If you’re the kind of person who has one team member already getting premium pricing and you want more, you’re going to love this. Or if you have team members who believe they have a moral obligation to match the rates—don’t worry, it’s not their fault. I’ll show you how to get them to come around.

In this video, you’re going to discover three things: the three elements of a unique selling proposition, or USP, that actually make it work; the most common banking USPs and why you should never use them; and the business mistake that we see banks make when creating USPs.

Let’s dive in.

Step One. Unlike so many branding efforts that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars but never really deliver the new profitable customers that you want, USPs act like magnets for the best customers in your market—if you build them right. For any of your USPs to be successful, each has to meet all three criteria. They must: (1) matter to your customer; (2) be dramatically different from anything else in your market; and (3) be worded as an explicit benefit.

Step Two. Get rid of the weak, lifeless, me-too USPs that most banks lean on, such as “We have great people,” “We have great customer service,” or “We’ve been in business for 132 years.” These don’t even meet the definition of a USP—and nobody cares. The only one of the three that carries any benefit for today’s customers is “customer service,” but it’s not unique, and saying it that way makes it not believable. It’s merely your ticket to the dance. It’s time for you to up the game if you’re serious about getting rid of rate matching.

Step Three: Finally, the big mistake—no explicit benefit in your USP. There’s got to be a benefit that matters to your customer—a reason why they should do business with you over the other 10 to 100 banks in your market. What makes you different in a way that actually matters to your future customer, and is said in a way that is believable?

When you put all of these things together and use them properly in your sales process, you can see big results within days and weeks. A few years ago, we had a bank that brought several of their executives and their president to our event. We took them through an exercise to develop their USPs. When they went back to their bank the very next week, the president wrote me excitedly to say that one of their CSRs had used the USP with a prospect—and the prospect pulled in an additional $5 million the next day after opening the account for what was supposed to be a $250,000 checking account. USPs unlock big accounts without ever having to match rate.

And by the way, not all USPs are equal. I’ll show you in our next video why you need a particular type of USP—a Level Four USP—if you want to get extreme premium pricing