If you are hired to sell software to accountants what do you do? You pull a list of all accounting firms in your territory and begin to market and prospect to that set of potential customers.
But what do you do if you’re a bank? Who are your customers? Is it everyone who might need money? Does a bank that is interested in growing simply load every resident in their given footprint into their CRM and march through it?
The traditional way a bank conquered this problem was by trying to cross sell to depositors. A bank’s depositors are their current customers, the ones who have money, enough money that they need a place to store it. The problem is a bank’s customer is someone who needs money, not someone who already has it. Because of this there’s a mismatch between who they are marketing to and who their ultimate customer is.
To solve this problem lending officers have relied on “centers of influence.” A center of influence is a person in a related industry, an accountant, a lawyer, a consultant, who has industry connections and can refer prospects that need money to a banker who has money.
The problem is relying on centers of influence is reactive, a bank is waiting for demand to appear before they can react and provide prospective financing details. The second issue is that banks end up marketing to centers of influence instead of directly to potential customers. It becomes the job of the center of influence to pitch the positives of a bank verse the bank itself. And lastly the relationships are between individual lenders and these centers, not the bank itself. When a lender leaves to work for a competitor, they take those relationships with them along with subsequent referrals and their book of loans.
CompleteBankData has taken a different approach. We believe that banks should be able to identify their ideal customers, market, prospect and own that relationship themselves.
We do this by taking data from a number of different sources including deed filings, mortgage originations, assessor data, real estate listings, commercial financing transactions, and demographic data and then creating links and relationships between these entities.
By having this large connected store of information, we can proactively define a bank’s ideal customer, and then put customized details about all prospective customers in front of them in real time. But that isn’t all, we can predictively unearth leads based on the profile of a bank’s ideal customer that a bank might not know about.
For example, if a bank specializes in owner occupied commercial real estate to businesses with more than $1m in revenue we can alert them when a business that fits their profile purchases a new property for cash.
Another example of actionable and targeted information is the ability to show a bank loans in their market that fit their ideal customer profile that are set to mature or balloon within a given time period.
Let’s take another example, a banker who specializes in financing landlords and their property profiles. It’s very difficult to discover non-corporate landlords, but in many cases these “hidden” landlords own substantial portfolios. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania there are over 1,000 individuals who own 12 properties or more, with one individual owning more than 600 properties. The majority of these landlords have no website and no information outside of a few “For Rent” signs on their properties.
What our system can do is alert a banker when one of these landlords purchases a house for cash in an area they desire to lend into. The banker can then discuss with the landlord the potential for providing liquidity by financing the most recent purchase, or potentially refinance their entire portfolio. The icing on the cake is that a lender can use CompleteBankData to evaluate the real estate property profile of a prospective landlord all without ever having to speak to them. Through the system they can see what properties they own, the property on a map and details on the liens associated with the properties.
Of course, these are just two examples of many possibilities.
The real key is that we enable a bank to discover, contact and interact with their prospects directly instead of having to rely on a center of influence relationship to sell for them.
What this means for a bank is they can control their own destiny. A bank can decide to chart its own course, build a prospective sales pipeline and then follow those leads through the pipeline from discovery to loan origination while measuring and reporting on their progress the entire time. These relationships we help banks discover are their own, not owned by the centers of influence, or a star banker, they are the bank’s.
By enabling banks to proactively discover their customers we also help banks reduce risk. Typically, when a bank enters a market, or attempts to grow aggressively they end up taking somewhat marginal business because all of the good customers are already financed. With CompleteBankData customers can “shop” for new relationships by looking at customer lists, loan terms and contact details for competitor banks. The risk is that competitors with good underwriting might find their clients walking out the door, whereas for our customers they can grow their portfolio with quality loans without taking undue risks.
Let’s consider what this means for branch expansion. In the current world a bank will hire a set of loan officers, build a building (or purchase one) and hang their sign on the roof. They now have a shiney new branch, and little to no business at that new branch. The bank spends an outsized amount of their marketing dollars attempting to attract retail deposits at their new branch. In turn the bank then markets to their depositors hoping to drum up new loans. At the same time their commercial bankers are hitting the business networking circuit attempting to build new relationships around this branch outpost.
What we offer is a more efficient approach. CompleteBankData can be used to pre-emptively evaluate the lending market even before opening a branch. A bank can evaluate the number of borrowers, size of existing loans, and look at who they are competing against. After they’ve settled on a soft spot in the market then they can establish a physical branch. But what’s different is instead of opening with a few relationships on day one the bank can proactively work to build excitement even before the branch opens. They can do this by building marketing lists of prospects from CompleteBankData and marketing to them digitally and traditionally via the mail months before the branch opens in their location. Commercial loan officers can be proactively working on building relationships ahead of the launch with target customers. With marketing and direct relationships ahead of a branch launch a bank can ensure that when the doors open they will have a sizable customer presence ready to bank with them.
Is this for you?
If you are a banker, primarily in a community bank sized $1b-$50b in assets we want to speak with you. You can schedule a demo here, or give us a call at 1-866-591-8315. We are familiar with the challenges you face and believe that we an tip the scales in your favor. Email Nate Now
If you are an investor in banks and have an investment in a bank that might be able to use this. Would you be able to introduce us to the CEO or CLO (Chief Lending Officer)?
We are always looking for introductions and connections with others in the industry. If you know someone who might be worth talking to please drop me an email at: Email Nate
Recent Press
We were recently profiled in the Pittsburgh Business Times about what we're doing.
New to banking? Check out The Bank Investors Handbook
And of course if you're new to banking or would like to understand how banks work better I'd suggest you check out my book, The Bank Investors Handbook. The book is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle format.