A disclaimer, and that is that I am much more of a banker than a techie. I'll be explaining this in layman's terms, but that is mostly because those are the only terms I have for it. I work at a software company, but the only code I've ever written was a couple of very buggy macros for Excel. So instead of the techie angle, I am tackling this issue from the business perspective, which is generally where bankers are coming from.
We think of pricing as your steering wheel for the bank.
It should be the mechanism by which you are guiding production onto the books, but a lot of times it just doesn't feel that intentional.
The car itself is doesn't feel attached to that steering mechanism. The lenders are just going about their business pricing deals the way they've always priced them, or they're coming in after the fact and putting in the terms that they've already promised into the pricing system and then we're giving them a report card on how well they did in that pricing discussion, or often how bad poorly they did.
There's a better way.
As we've asked bankers about topics and ideas that we should be covering with these podcasts, there is one answer that is almost universal, and that is HELP US WITH SALES. Every bank out there is thinking about growth, and loan growth specifically. Even those that are hitting their numbers have to work really hard to get there. Banking is a highly regulated and seemingly commoditized business, so those that win have to do so with a purposeful and well executed sale strategy. So, to that end, we've talked about business development, we've talked about building relationships, and today we are going to talk about managing a pipeline.
Today, we're going to take a little bit different approach. PrecisionLender has a customer success team, which happens to be where my role fits. Our job is a little more low-tech. Specifically, we spend big chunks of every day on the phone with lenders. Those conversations cut a wide swath, as they range from talking big picture strategy with management teams to talking through the mechanics of individual deals. But, a recurring theme is looking for ways that banks, especially lenders, can build stronger relationships with customers. Obviously ours is often pricing focused, around what we call "weaponizing the math" to find a workable deal that is hand crafted for a borrower. But, we also hear a lot of tips of the trade, which is our topic for today: we're going to talk about some specifics on building stronger relationships.
High-performing banks are making significant investments in integrated systems that push the focus upstream, toward the lender-borrower relationship.
Integrating your bank’s pricing with leading CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.) create richer opportunities for lenders and allow comprehensive reporting for management. This significantly increases the “R” in your ROI for each one of those systems.
This week, we’ve stolen one of the PrecisionLender Development podcasts (from May, 2015) that talks about how we think about integrating our specific solution with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.