Relationship Selling: Make the Intelligent Call

Cindy Heximer, Credit Union Magazine
September 27, 2007 | COMMENTS

“Know me. Hear me. Help me.'

These are the foundations of successful relationship selling. This approach to sales is founded on a dialogue with clients and prospects. It allows you to use their needs to set up a requirement for your products and services.

How do you know what your members need? Chances are you already do. You'll find the foundation for those needs in your own member files—you just need to know where to look and what to do with what you find.

Think of the information you have about members as “intelligence treasures.” These treasures help lenders increase their mortgage and home equity sales volume faster and more cost effectively than traditional channels.

This is information that, when analyzed correctly, will help you strengthen your member relationships and minimize defections. The key to achieving this level of performance is the skillful application of analytics.

While the role of analytics as a “back-end” campaign tracking tool is well understood within sales and marketing disciplines, their role and value as a strategic driver of comprehensive campaign management often is misunderstood.

In the sales process, analytics can serve as the basis for strategy creation and campaign planning. Use them to:

• Drive contact strategy
• Identify target audiences
• Develop and time offers by segment

In short, analytics help lenders deliver the right offers to the right audience at the right time.

We've heard the insider stories of misguided home equity loan offers to student renters or mortgage pre-approvals to the deceased. Using a “spray and pray” approach to campaign management is at best inefficient and, most often, ineffective. Using analytics to create strategy and plan a campaign greatly enhances your ability make a campaign work.

Campaigns based on analytics do more than drive business through the door. They allow you to connect with your members and establish trusted adviser relationships. They also help you establish a level of brand loyalty that endures in today's unpredictable marketplace. Analytics help lenders identify “lessons learned” to improve campaigns today and tomorrow, and build relationships over time.

Lenders that excel at relationship selling profit because they learn to consistently meet members' needs. They use their data to understand what members want and anticipate their needs.

That's different than pushing product indiscriminately.

Relationship selling is a way of doing business through conversations and relationship-building. It's based upon information, knowledge, and trust. This translates into powerful selling and long-term relationships with members.

Remember: the greatest assets credit unions possess are loyal member relationships. They're the lifeblood of your organization. When you make your data work for you, you build relationships, credibility, and value with your members and the marketplace.

Cindy Heximer is vice president of business development and marketing for the relationship selling and analytics business unit of Fiserv Lending Solutions in Lake Mary, Florida. Contact her at 716-564-4631. This story first appeared at www.creditunionmagazine.com and is reprinted with permission.