A href="http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=9411041698&site=ehostlive">Integrated communication offers competitive edge.</A> Database: Business Source Complete 17.02.12 10.12 a.

INTEGRATED COMMUNICATION OFFERS COMPETITIVE EDGE

Continuously working to understand your target audience, refine your sales efforts, and communicate your bank's offerings can lead to greater profitability. As once docile depositors become sophisticated investors and quality assets become scarce, banks are having to find new ways to compete and gain market share in the financial services industry. Today's financial marketplace extends beyond traditional banking boundaries, as evidenced by the unprecedented explosion of bank mutual fund sales--a $186 billion revolution in the American banking industry. But change can be perilous. Savers do not instantly turn into investors, nor do branch managers turn into financial planners just because a bank decides to jump on the alternative investment product bandwagon. Sure, a bank's products and performance are important. But if those are the only elements of your business strategy, then chances are you're losing depositors. Competing successfully today for your customers' business requires more than a popular product and a friendly smile. Competitive change has created new rules in building customer relationships. Building lifelong customer relationships today requires bankers to:

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Approach their sales process both internally and externally as a business of "people" rather than "products;" Understand that marketing and sales activities are dynamic, concurrent, and synergistic with the bank's total service and selling environment; Implement a strategy in which everyone in the bank, not just the sales team, participates in satisfying customer needs and expectations. Key to this strategy is communicating a coherent message to frontline employees about the right sales effort, with the right service delivery, to the right customer, at the right cost. Selling complex investment products is tough enough; communications not tied to marketing and sales greatly impede satisfying customer needs, helping bankers sell, and building relationships of trust between the customer and bank. Breaking New Ground With Integrated Marketing Communications Creating a total environment to support the marketing efforts of alternative investment products involves identifying the bank's sales process and linking it to customer requirements, organizing and establishing a business focus with measurable objectives, and determining key communications objectives for each audience. Essential to the success of this effort is a strategic concept called Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). IMC is a continuous process based on understanding your target audience, your sales process, expectations, and results, and then applying that understanding through all your marketing activities to communicate to three key audiences: the people involved in your direct sales efforts, your customers, and your employees. An effective IMC methodology focuses on:

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Positioning your bank and understanding your competitive advantage; Developing a unified image that speaks through one voice and one look; Reaching your customers and prospects through communications that offer solutions to their needs and expectations; Generating response using targeted promotional tools to qualified customers and prospects; and Maintaining relationships that engender customer loyalty and turn your prospects into long-term customers.

A key point to remember for the long-term success of your IMC approach is that there is always an overlap between the

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Reach, when you are creating an awareness among your customers and prospects about the bank's position and its new product offerings; Response, when you are motivating your customers and prospects to buy; and Relationship, when you are adding value to build customer loyalty. Selling From a Position of Strength To distinguish your bank from its competition, you need to highlight not its specific products, but its ability to offer overall banking solutions--a "benefit" bundle or "value" package that includes a strong distribution network, processing technology, and service and sales skills. To create a market position, you must develop linkages between everyone bank, from product managers to the chief financial officer. short, positioning means deciding how you want to be perceived by your most important audiences: your employees, your customers, and your potential customers. Once a positioning strategy is developed, the challenge is to use the appropriate communications tool to build and sustain the desired position in the minds of those who matter. When a bank's position is combined with an IMC process, influencing "suspects" (people you would like to do business with) to become qualified "prospects" (people who want to do business with you) and, ultimately, bank customers is significantly improved. A wide array of communications tactics is available to build visibility and enhance credibility to reach the broadest audience. For instance, a bank's community relations program can produce a qualified target audience for crossselling efforts. Or a branch referral program can produce more than qualified prospects, it can reinforce and demonstrate the bank's professionalism. Empowering Your Sales Team Positioning your bank and creating awareness about your products and services is an important first step in building the banker-customer relationship. To turn suspects into prospects, your sales team must be equipped with two-way communications tools that allow them to develop relationships with qualified prospects. Whether you are trying to reach people who are unhappy with the rates offered on deposit accounts, customers who rely on one bank for all their financial needs, or potential first-time investors, your focus must be people selling to people, not people selling bank products. Focusing on your sales process is essential to an IMC approach. If your sales team is not excited about the bank and its business, you can't expect your customers to be either. Today, your sales team must be equipped to present complex information in a simple, accurate, and compelling way to cross-sell customers or close a sale with a new customer. To accomplish this, they need sales communications tools that are well designed, clearly state benefits, and are carefully linked to specific steps in the selling process. Persuasive communications can be a powerful tool to help your customer during an opening interview. And, in the hands of an effective salesperson, targeted brochures or product sheets are an effective way to explain the complicated processes of planning retirement or selecting the right mutual fund. If you use a single-objective strategy approach for each communication tool, so that one brochure isn't trying to do the work of many, you'll find that your communications will have more impact. For example, you may decide that you need a new brochure to prompt your customers to consider mutual funds as the basis for a savings plan for their children's college education. The goal is to take very complex charts, graphs, tables, and technical information and translate them into terms easily understood by the target audience of parents and grandparents.

Why not consider a child's puzzle book as both a visual and verbal metaphor to depict the road from childhood to college? A brochure that integrates mazes, connect-the-dot pictures, and word games to help readers understand complex financial information and to get them emotionally involved in the solution can serve as both a motivational tool for the sales force and a selling tool to help educate customers. Considering and developing communications tools that have a response channel is essential to qualifying prospects. This can be as simple as ensuring that a salesperson's business card is in each communication, or as sophisticated as encouraging prospects to call a teleservicing line. Effective and efficient communications at this point in building the banker-customer relationship engenders dialogue. Your prospect gets to "talk back" and you have the opportunity to "actively listen." Building Life-Long Customer Relationships Bank marketers have learned the hard way that catchy slogans or premium giveaways are not the way to build long-term customer relationships and growth. Moreover, technology has made the business of creating and maintaining customer loyalty highly competitive. Today, establishing and maintaining customer relationships means knowing every customer interaction, from inquiries to complaints. Tom Peters, author of Thriving on Chaos and other business and marketing books, says it best: "Listening to customers must become everyone's business." Then you must analyze what this information means to servicing your customers, personalizing your communications, or allocating promotional dollars efficiently and effectively. One way to collect and analyze everything from product purchase histories, responses to promotional programs, profile surveys, to geographic, demographic, and psychographic information is by developing a database marketing system. Your system should allow you to store, retrieve, and analyze information on every customer so that you have the ability to create an appropriate dialogue with customers. Using the information in your database, highly personalized messages to particular customers can produce profitable results. Once you have established a profile of your customers, your efforts to solicit new customers will be more effective. Soliciting tools can range from teller-referral programs to newsletters. Communication with customers cannot be overemphasized. How effectively you communicate with your customers will ultimately determine whether they continue to bring their business to you. Targeted personalized communications build awareness, cultivate positive responses, and reinforce the relationship between your bank and your customers. Of course, all communications to your suspects, prospects and customers should be "visually" linked. One look, one voice builds credibility with all your audiences and equity in the investment you made in your communications program. Leveraging Your Most Valuable Asset: Your Employees In this environment of changing customer demands and expectations, the opportunity to boost service and increase profits by marketing through employees can no longer be overlooked. While much has been written about your customers' need for information, of equal importance is the broad range of knowledge required by your frontline sales and service people. To quote one banker, "Selling is serving, and serving is selling." Documenting your sales process is essential to effectively market through everyone. How do you propose to refer a prospect or existing customer to an alternative investment product? Your answer should take into consideration all aspects of customer contact: from the initial point of contact (teller, ATM, mail or telephone) right through to the closing sale with a branch representative. Employees must be educated about the benefits and rationale of needs-based selling. While they may not have to be economists or licensed brokers, they do need to understand the language of your selling process so they can recognize customer needs. Employees must

be shown a proactive approach to selling, which is supported by communications tools that present information in a practical, accurate, and compelling way. Designing marketing communications programs that value diversity, engender loyalty, and give employees the support they need to achieve excellence is critical to the initiative of making sure everyone contributes to the selling process. Without integrated communications in your selling process, you risk not identifying your customer or potential customer's needs and expectations. You risk not knowing how to influence them to do business with you. You risk not differentiating your bank from every other bank. And, most importantly, you risk not creating a productive environment where the banker-customer relationship can thrive. An effective sales communications program requires a total commitment to a multifaceted process that taps into your resources--your people--and communications tools to satisfy your customers' needs. ~~~~~~~~ By Dan Logan F. Daniel Logan is president of Trinity Communications, a Boston-based company specializing in integrated marketing communications solutions for clients in the travel, insurance, banking, and health care industries. He can be reached at (617) 578-6034. INTEGRATED MARKETING AND SALES PROCESS PARADIGM As banks realign marketing and sales to compete successfully with the inevitable forces of change in the financial marketplace, sales skill requirements are being redefined, sales management processes overhauled, marketing strategies reexamined, and communications, sales, and account systems reinvented. The dynamic of this integration assumes the product development requirements are responsive to changing customer needs and the competitive environment, and the company's marketing culture is transforming to a needs-based, customer focused organization. Operating on this framework of assumptions, the successful combination of integrated marketing communications with a sales process will be contingent upon strategically synergizing the communications, marketing, and sales team development efforts. When all three are designed and implemented together, the result will be a positive and significant impact on the company's efforts to build customer relationships, and increase revenue and market share
Customer Focus Sales Process

The People Sales management Sales Training Selection Recruiting Sales Competencies

Integrated Marketing & Selling Process

The Tools Marketing & Sales Materials Sales Process Meeting Customer Expectations

Customer Needs/Wants or Business Focus of Teams

Marketing & Sales Plan Implementation

The Plan Customer Focused Sales Generate Sales Opportunities Build Awareness Marketing Plan Development or Sales Plan Development Corporate Business Plan

REACH RESPONSE RELATIONSHIPS Integrated Marketing Communications is a bottom-up, building process that helps you focus your communications to reach the broadest audience of potential customers (suspects), motivate them to respond to you (prospects), and ultimately create a valuable relationship with them (customers). To reach a broad market of "suspects" (those people you would like to do business with in your target market), it's important to determine your bank's position, what benefits you can offer, and your competitive advantage in the marketplace. Then generate awareness and build credibility by using communications tools like sponsorship, event marketing, advertising, and public relations. Once you have gained a broad awareness among your bank's audience of suspects, your goal is to spend your time and effort to identify those "prospects" (people who would like to do business with you) most likely to respond and begin a dialogue with you. Targeted communications tools that allow you to customize and selectively send your message to highly qualified prospects are essential to your response efforts. Your choice of communications tools must be tightly coupled to the sales process and can range from direct mail and telemarketing, to trade shows and seminars so that your prospects will take a desired action. The objective of your reach and response efforts is to turn your prospects into customers. Then you can build and maintain your customer relationships. Your customers need to know and believe that they are important to you and your bank. Communication is key to letting them know you value them as a customer. The long-term success of all integrated marketing communication efforts requires measurement and continuous improvement. DIAGRAM: Relationships, Response, Reach

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