Cross Selling In Banking Starts With Education
If your consumers don’t know all the products & services your institution offers, how are they supposed to ask about them?…or better yet, buy them!
Education will create value if you provide it in such a way that it is useful and timely. There is a lot of ‘financial information’ available in the market, mostly designed to tease you with bits of good information then go for the kill – the sell. Education is not a priority in these cases and cross selling is not a priority.
Institutions have the ability to create one of two experiences for their banking consumers: A Selling experience or an Educational experience. It is understood that consumers will be significantly more likely to purchase a product or service from an entity that provides them with good information when they are in the ‘evaluation’ process than just trying to sell them the sizzle. It is especially true when it comes to financially oriented products and services where there needs to be a level of trust before they purchase.If your bank or credit union decides to educate your consumers on a broad range of financial products & services that can either save them money or prevent them from making a costly mistake in the future, you will start to deepen your relationship and develop trust. Once this happens, let the cross selling, share of wallet, multiple relationship consumer – whatever you want to call it – begin!
YARDSTICK: Take an informal poll with some of your upper management and a group of your banking consumers and have them list for you as many products and services that their institution offers. If there is a large difference, greater than 10%, in the average number of products and services that your consumers list compared to upper management’s number, you might want to evaluate your process of education for your banking consumers.
