Secrets for Stealing Share of Wallet for SME and Corporate Bank Clients

Shhh! Don’t tell anyone…listen closely – I am about to tell you some valuable secrets to stealing share of wallet from your competitors. If you are like many other banking executives, you may be shocked to learn how much information is readily available that will empower you to win more business.  The secret lies in looking for the messages that are within all that data.  For example, the information you have about your customer’s payment history could be turned into a campaign that your sales team can use to win back parts of the banking relationship you have lost, or never had.  Here are three key elements to successfully mining your data for wallet share.

1 — Analyse the Payment History Data

Start by looking at the last 3-6 months of transaction history—not just ACH and Wire, but your small business online bill pay history as well. Look for payments to other banks, finance companies, equipment leasing payments and the like. Do simple queries for the names of your major competitors or product names like loan, line, and commercial mortgage. Look for the average payment amount over the period which can be translated into the loan and line amount  as well as any transfers to other banks or foreign currency payments which may indicate an FX or trade finance relationship with another bank. This will show you where additional opportunities are.

2 — Create a Campaign That Fits

Once you have the data and a good idea of which products and accounts present a great opportunity to steal wallet share, create a significant campaign. For lending , try pre-qualified programs for small businesses using the amount you found in the payment history with attractive rates for clients that fit your risk profile. For commercial, include other terms or pricing that benefit the overall relationship if you cannot commit to rate breaks. For services like FX or Trade Finance, come up with pricing or rebates for transaction volumes that make it a good deal for the client. Don’t forget to give your sales team plenty of coaching and a detailed reporting about the relationship the customer has with other banks. Think of it like you are providing a comprehensive dossier of your clients’ banking activities so your sales professionals can feel like James Bond empowered by MI6 data and coaching from M.

3 — Track,Track,Track

So now that you know where your clients’ other banking business is, track how well you can win it:

• What are your key sales objections?
• Do you need different offer(s)? Can you utilize powerful decisioning and predictive analytics to make the next-best-offer to our clients?
• Compare sales wins to reduction in volumes of payments to other banks on the next few monthly transaction reports. Are you reducing the overall amount of payments for loans/lines and other services to your competitors?

Once your reporting and tracking are in full swing, it’s like an infinite loop where each time your campaigns, offers and sales execution get better (and you provide feedback to the product team on gaps you cannot win), and your wallet share should begin to improve.

While this three-step process is meant to win share of wallet, it can also be used with some portfolio analytics to help coach customers on industry dynamics and  competitor’s trends and actions, providing them with information that is relevant and useful to them—and increasing the value of your bank to their business. Now that you have secret information, you can become the James Bond of cross-selling.