Without Goals, You Are Just Wasting Your Time

Each year, we take some time to do long term planning. By long term, we basically plan for 2-3 years out. Everything from finances to metrics – we look at them and set a goal. During our quarterly update meetings with clients (on the consulting side of our business), most of our clients set financial goals, some set HR goals, and fewer set Treasury Management goals. In our opinion, without goals, you are just wasting your time.

In most business settings, what gets monitored, gets done. That is also true for your Treasury Management department. We encourage you to set goals, share them with the team, and push toward them.

In that spirit, we’ve got some ideas on goals to set.

Number of New Treasury Management Customers Onboarded per Month

This goal focuses on increasing your customer base by setting a target for the number of new customers (net new) to be onboarded each month. Net new customer growth is essential for community banks looking to expand their market presence and increase revenue. To effectively implement this goal, consider the following strategies:

Target Market Identification: Clearly define the target business demographic for your services to tailor marketing efforts more effectively.

Marketing and Promotion: Utilize various marketing channels such as social media, email marketing, and digital advertising to reach potential business customers. Offering promotions or discounts for new account openings can also be a powerful incentive.

Sales Team Incentives: Motivate sales teams with incentives for reaching or exceeding the monthly onboarding target. This could include bonuses, commissions, or other rewards.

Customer Referral Programs: Encourage existing business customers to refer new customers by offering them incentives, thereby leveraging satisfied customers to grow your customer base.

Tracking and Analysis: Monitor the number of new business customers onboarded each month and analyze the data to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities for improvement. Use this data to refine your strategies and processes continuously.

Number of New Services Used by Customers

Also referred to as “customer penetration,” this goal aims to increase the number of services that existing customers use. It's a measure of how deeply a customer engages with your offerings, which can enhance customer loyalty, increase revenue per customer, and improve overall satisfaction. Strategies for achieving this goal include:

Cross-Selling and Upselling: Implement strategies to promote additional services or upgrades to existing customers. Training sales and customer service teams to identify and seize cross-selling and upselling opportunities is crucial.

Personalized Recommendations: Use data analytics to understand customer behavior and preferences, then provide personalized service recommendations. This approach can significantly increase the likelihood of customers trying new services.

Onboarding and Education: Ensure that business customers are well-informed about the full range of services available. Educational content, webinars, and personalized onboarding sessions can help customers understand the value of additional services.

Customer Feedback: Regularly gather and analyze business customer feedback to identify needs or desires that could be met with new or improved services. This insight can guide the development or enhancement of services to increase penetration.

Incentives for Service Adoption: Offer incentives for trying new services, such as discounts, free trials, or loyalty points. These incentives can lower the barrier to trying new services and can lead to increased customer penetration.

Dedicate Staff to Servicing Business Customers

Focusing on providing specialized support to business customers by dedicating staff to this segment can significantly improve the quality of service. Here's how to implement this goal effectively:

Hiring and Promotion: Identify the skills and qualities needed for staff who will serve business customers, such as problem-solving abilities, knowledge of your services, and excellent communication skills. Hire new employees or promote from within based on these criteria.

Training and Development: Invest in comprehensive training programs that equip your dedicated team with the knowledge and skills they need to effectively support business customers. This includes understanding the specific challenges and needs of businesses.

Specialized Support Teams: Consider creating specialized support teams within this group, such as technical support, account management, and billing inquiries, to provide more tailored and efficient service.

Performance Metrics: Set clear performance metrics for the dedicated staff, such as response time, resolution time, customer satisfaction scores, and retention rates, to monitor their effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.

Reduce Service Ticket Resolution Times

Speeding up the resolution of service tickets can significantly enhance customer satisfaction. Here's how to tackle this goal:

Measurement and Analysis: Start by measuring current ticket resolution times to establish a baseline. Analyze the data to identify common reasons for delays, such as lack of information, insufficient training, or workflow bottlenecks.

Process Improvements: Based on your analysis, implement process improvements to address the causes of delays. This might include streamlining workflows, enhancing communication channels, or providing additional resources or training for staff.

Technology Solutions: Consider adopting or upgrading customer service technology solutions to improve efficiency and speed up resolution times.

Continuous Monitoring: Regularly monitor resolution times and other key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure continuous improvement. Solicit feedback from both customers and staff to identify further opportunities for enhancement.

Develop a System to Track Customer Service Ratings

Tracking customer service ratings provides valuable insights into customer satisfaction and service quality. Here's a strategy for developing an effective tracking system:

Feedback Channels: Implement multiple channels for collecting customer feedback, such as post-interaction surveys, feedback forms on your website, and social media monitoring.

Quantitative and Qualitative Measures: Use a combination of quantitative measures (e.g., ratings on a scale) and qualitative feedback (e.g., comments) to gain a comprehensive understanding of customer satisfaction.

Real-time Analytics: Utilize software that provides real-time analytics and reporting on customer service ratings. This allows for timely identification of issues and trends.

Actionable Insights: Develop processes to regularly review the feedback data, identify actionable insights, and implement changes to improve service quality. This could involve staff training, process changes, or service adjustments based on customer feedback.

Transparency and Accountability: Share feedback and ratings with the entire team to promote transparency and accountability. Recognize high performers and use positive feedback as learning opportunities for the whole team.

Transition from Free to Fee for Treasury Management Services

Many community banks initially offer TM services for free to attract customers. However, to improve profitability, transitioning to a fee-based model is crucial. Here’s how to approach this:

Value Proposition: Clearly communicate the value of your TM services to justify the transition from free to fee. Highlight the benefits, efficiencies, and cost savings these services provide to your customers.

Competitive Pricing Strategy: Conduct a thorough market analysis to understand the pricing models of competitors. This helps in setting fees that are competitive yet reflective of the value you offer.

Tiered Service Offerings: Introduce tiered service levels, allowing customers to choose the service package that best fits their needs. This can range from basic to premium services, with pricing reflecting the level of service and features provided. Note that this is an advanced sales strategy that only experienced Treasury Management product teams can successfully implement.

Transparent Communication: Engage with existing customers well ahead of the transition, explaining the changes and how they will benefit from continued access to your TM services. Transparency is key to maintaining trust and customer satisfaction during this transition.

Understand the Cost of Each Service

Knowing the cost associated with delivering each TM service is fundamental to setting appropriate fees and ensuring profitability. Here’s how to achieve a comprehensive understanding:

Activity-Based Costing: Implement an activity-based costing system to accurately allocate costs to each TM service. This method considers direct and indirect costs, providing a clear picture of the total cost of service delivery.

Continuous Cost Analysis: Regularly review and update the cost analysis to reflect changes in your operational costs, technology investments, and service delivery processes. This ensures pricing remains aligned with costs over time.

Cost Reduction Strategies: Identify areas where efficiencies can be improved to reduce the cost of delivering TM services. This could involve automating manual processes, renegotiating vendor contracts, or leveraging technology to streamline operations.

Decide on Minimum Account Profitability

Establishing a minimum profitability threshold for each TM customer account ensures that all services provided contribute positively to the bottom line. Consider these approaches:

Percentage Margin: Determine a target percentage margin for TM services, which represents the markup over the cost-of-service delivery. This approach ensures that pricing is directly related to the cost, maintaining a consistent profit margin across services.

Raw Dollar Amount: Alternatively, setting a minimum raw dollar amount profit for each account can ensure that every customer contributes a specific minimum amount to your overall profitability. This approach might be simpler to implement but requires careful consideration of cost variability.

Profitability Analysis: Conduct regular profitability analyses at the customer account level to assess whether they meet the established minimum profitability criteria. This can inform decisions on pricing adjustments, service offerings, and customer relationship management strategies.

Training Outside Sales Staff on Selling Treasury Management Value

The objective is to empower sales staff with the knowledge and skills to articulate the value of TM services, emphasizing how these services can address specific business needs and contribute to a customer’s operational efficiency and financial health.

Value Proposition Training: Develop Treasury Management training modules that focus on the unique selling points of your TM services, including cost savings, improved cash flow, fraud prevention, and operational efficiencies.

Solution-Based Selling Techniques: Teach sales staff to adopt a consultative selling approach, focusing on understanding the customer's business challenges and demonstrating how TM services can provide tailored solutions.

Role-Playing and Scenario-Based Training: Incorporate role-playing exercises and real-world scenarios into training sessions to help sales staff practice and refine their sales pitch, objection handling, and closing techniques.

Product Knowledge: Ensure that the sales team has a deep understanding of all TM services, including features and benefits, to answer customer questions confidently.

Training Operations and Customer Service Staff on Customer Service

For Operations and Customer Service staff, the training goal is to enhance their ability to deliver exceptional service, ensuring that customers receive efficient, knowledgeable, and friendly support.

Customer Interaction Skills: Focus on developing effective communication skills, including active listening, empathy, and clear, concise responses. Training should also cover handling difficult customer interactions and resolving complaints gracefully.

Product and Service Knowledge: Equip staff with comprehensive knowledge of TM services to answer customer inquiries accurately and provide helpful information.

Process Efficiency: Train staff on internal processes and technologies to ensure they can resolve issues and fulfill customer requests quickly and accurately.

Feedback Loops: Implement training on how to collect, process, and act on customer feedback, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Training Bankers and Tellers on Identifying TM Prospects

Bankers and tellers interact with a broad segment of the customer base, making them well-positioned to identify potential TM customers.

Identification Skills: Train staff on the key indicators that a business might benefit from TM services, such as business type, transaction volume, and pain points related to treasury management and payments.

Soft Skills for Referrals: Teach bankers and tellers how to engage in conversations that can naturally lead to discussing business needs and TM solutions, without making the customer feel pressured.

Introduction Techniques: Provide guidance on how to effectively introduce potential TM customers to TM bankers, including understanding the best times to make referrals and how to communicate the potential value to both the customer and the TM banker.

Incentive Programs: Consider implementing incentive programs for staff who successfully identify and refer potential TM customers, reinforcing the importance of this role and motivating staff to participate actively.

As we wrap up this discussion, it's clear that setting concrete, actionable goals is not just a methodological approach to business growth—it's the backbone of strategic advancement and operational excellence. Without well-defined goals, your bank risks meandering through your fiscal years without clear direction, squandering both time and resources on efforts that may not align with their core objectives or market opportunities. The insights shared here underscore the importance of not just setting goals but setting the right goals across various facets of the organization, from Treasury Management to customer service and sales. By adopting a goal-oriented mindset, backed by actionable strategies and continuous monitoring, you can transform your ambitions into tangible outcomes.

This transformation is not just about improving the bottom line; it’s about cultivating a culture of excellence, efficiency, and innovation that propels your organization forward in a competitive landscape. In essence, goals are the guiding stars that direct your journey in the vast ocean of business opportunities. Without them, you're merely adrift, but with them, you chart a course to success and sustainability. So, as you move forward, remember the power of setting goals—it's the first step in turning the invisible into the visible, transforming potential into performance, and aspirations into achievements. In our opinion, without goals, you are just wasting your time.