Secret to RDC Success #3 – Aggressively and Proactively Market

Successful RDC FIs do not wait for customers to ask for RDC. They seek out current and potential clients that would benefit from its use. In particular, they look for the best, most profitable customers and promote their RDC service to them.  When you examine the FIs that have a significant numbers of RDC merchants enabled, you will see that these FIs all have these elements in common: a) they believe that EVERY business customer (and even some consumers) is an RDC prospect, b) they know that RDC is a “strategic” service, one that will bind a customer closer to the financial institution while raising deposits and fee income, c) are not giving the service away for “free”, and d) because of the points made in a through c, they aggressively promote their RDC service.  They go beyond, way beyond the traditional statement stuffer or lobby poster.  

One important reason that these FIs aggressively market is because they know that if offered an RDC service from a competitor, many of their customers will not call and ask them for RDC.  They will simply sign up with the competitor!  I cannot remember how many times I have had this type of conversation with a banker “Why didn’t our customer call us, we could have installed RDC for them”?  Well why did they need to?  If you have RDC and for all the reasons previously mentioned on this blog, it truly has a positive impact on any business that deploys it, what possible excuse do you have for not aggressively and proactively marketing it?
 

OK, enough brow-beating, lets say you agree with me that you need to be more aggressive and proactive in marketing but you don’t know what to do or where to start.  Here are some activities and marketing tips you should try: 

1. Make sure that all your customers know you have an RDC service – the fact that you have an RDC service should not be a secret to your customers.  You should use the aforementioned marketing tools of advertising, branch posters, statement stuffers and more to ensure that no customer is left untouched.  However, this cannot be the sole effort, you will need to exert extra effort to fully engage your customers on RDC.
2. Mine your existing customer base – You already have hundreds, possibly thousands of business customers.  This is your first target.  How many of these customers have multiple locations or are significant distances from your banking offices that it might be challenging to make deposits on time?  By polling your calling officers, you can quickly determine which existing customers are likely to be immediate prospects and you should implement an effective program to contact each and every one of them to let them know you have an RDC program and explain how it can reduce costs and save time.
3. Look for the types of companies that make good RDC prospects and target those business types in your community – Good RDC prospects are not always the ones that have the most items to deposit.   More important is distance from a deposit location and how difficult it is for a person to leave their office to make a deposit.  Using just those two criteria, it becomes easier to target the types of companies that are likely to be interested in RDC.  If there is a law firm a block from the bank that deposits 200 checks a week and a small business owner with self-storage buildings 10 miles from a branch that deposits 20 checks a week, the latter is by far the more compelling RDC prospect.  Similarly, someone with 5 convenience stores may be making 5 separate deposits, in some cases into different FIs.  By consolidating that process using an automated RDC deposit into a single bank can be a powerful cash management tool for that business.  Look for the types of businesses that make a good RDC prospect and then target these businesses to get additional customers using RDC as the hook.
4. Empower your employees for cross selling – trust me on this, your customer facing employees know which customers have challenges making deposits.  The business owner who complains about waiting in line, the drive up depositor 10 minutes after the deposit cutoff who begs to have their deposit credited today and other similar events that occur everyday are opportunities for your front line staff to cross sell your RDC program. They don’t have to be the experts in RDC, just know enough to recognize the opportunity, make a comment to a customer and then to refer them to the appropriate sales or operational staff member.

I could write for a year on how banks need to be more effective in marketing. Most FIs have nothing resembling a sales culture, a mistake in the face of well-funded, sales aggressive competitors.  But even the most reluctant banker should agree that the win-win proposition for both FI and customer makes RDC a product worth aggressively and proactively promoting.  So decide that you are going to make RDC deployment a standard for all business customers and form a plan to make it happen.  I can guaranty you that your deposits will go up along with non-interest fee income and you will more tightly bind your best most profitable relationships to your institution.  Doesn’t that sound like a good plan?

I’m just sayin’ ……