Banks Can Improve Sales to Commercial Clients with Analytics

Competition is heating up in the world of business banking. New entrants such as Square, Wal-Mart and PayPal are serving notice to traditional banks—evolve or die—and the board has taken notice. Business banking sales is now a board-level issue.

In order to compete with non-banking competitors, banks need to be able to consistently recommend and sell products through any channel to truly understand potential sales and profitability.

American National Bank of Texas, Comerica Bank, Sovereign Bank (now known by its parent’s name, Santander), SunTrust Banks, Central Bank and Rockland Trust are just a few of the banks that are using Ignite to improve their sales process so that it is consistent and measurable.

Ignite’s solution consists of product recommendation guides and robust analytics. Recommendation guides personalizes a customer’s banking experience. It can be used directly by the customer on the website or via a mobile device or by banking personnel in the branch and call center as an interactive tool to provide a consultative, direct touch experience for the customer. The recommendation guide conducts a needs assessment by asking a series of questions to understand the prospect’s current situation. The guide uses the collected information, banking thresholds, and eligibility analytics to evaluate the responses to recommend product bundles to meet the specific needs of the customer. Recommendation guides help banks:

• Shorten the sales cycle by automating selling, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
• Create a consistent multichannel sales experience—whether online, mobile, at the branch, or in the call center.
• Produce high quality leads by using demographics, bank eligibility and bank-defined thresholds, in real-time, at the point-of-sale.
• Increase the average number of accounts opened.
• Decrease user frustration by making banking products easier to find and select.
• Increase customer loyalty to obtain a three-product loyalty threshold.
• Easily integrate credit risk management solutions including Salesforce, FIS Customer Relationship Management, and Avidian Profit.
• Increase customer profitability.

Data collected using Ignite’s recommendation guides, web traffic, product eligibility, bank threshold criteria, as well as from a unique and specialized banking database developed from over three million data points on purchasing behavior is used to produce customizable reports that are presented in secure, customizable, graphical, interactive, and easy-to-use dashboards. These reports can be run weekly, monthly or quarterly and help banks:

• Determine lost profitability.
• Understand profit gap. Ignites’ profit gap analysis will show you what was sold, what could have been sold based on the customer’s eligibility, potential profit, and the resulting profit gap per product.
• Manage sales effectiveness in the branch, online, and within the customer service center.
• Justify and target marketing spend.

Rockland Trust Finds Success with Analytics
Rockland Trust implemented Ignite’s solution both online and in their branches as part of their overall omni-channel strategy. Rockland had been looking for tools to help their branch sales staff sell more effectively to business clients. With Ignite’s solution, Rockland increased new business account openings significantly within the first three months.

Rockland has also learned that most business prospects qualify for up to seven income-generating products. Ignite’s analytics performs a real-time analysis, during the consultation, that matches Rockland’s products with business customer needs and eligibility. This can be done on a computer or a tablet and gives the branch sales staff the information they need immediately at their fingertips so that they can provide a higher level of service for their customers. As a result, Rockland has seen an increase in cross sales at the initial account opening when using the tool.

“At Rockland Trust we’ve been meeting the financial needs of the business community for more than 100 years and we’re constantly searching for ways to enhance our service,” said Jane Lundquist, executive vice president and director of retail banking, business banking and home equity lending at Rockland Trust. “We looked for a solution that would help our branch staff effectively identify all the services that could benefit business clients. Ignite’s recommendation guides and analytics proved to be the tool that works best.”

Rockland was able to see measurable results within 90 days of implementation.