Business Development success is essential regardless of your credit union’s field of membership. BD success requires focusing on three critical measures: growing members, assets, and balances; the first 3 of the 3X3.

Generating sustainable growth of members and assets is the key to a credit union’s survival. Even if one of your credit union’s key growth strategies is a merger, it is a lot easier to find prospects and negotiate a merger if your credit union is a highly successful and growing organization.

Balance growth of loans is essential to a credit union’s long-term success and having a large pool of low-cost deposits to fund these loans will drive ROAA and Capital growth, and sustainability.

This important growth work requires three functions: a Rainmaker, a Relationship Manager, and an Account Facilitator; the second 3 of the 3X3.

The Rainmaker
This person’s job is to source and close new B2B relationships that bring significant opportunities to the table. Significant is defined as companies with 500 or more employees. Bringing a business partnership with under 500 employees will create more challenges and expense than member or balance growth opportunities. Even with 500 employees at a 25% penetration (typically, this penetration takes 3+ years) will only yield 100 new members and $10-20K in balances. This kind of growth is too incremental will not impact the key performance drivers. The skill of sourcing and closing large employers are found in highly trained sales professionals with experience accessing and selling at the C-suite.

The Relationship Manager
This role is to deliver on the service promises made by the Rainmaker, allowing him/her to continue hunting. These sales professionals are skilled at discovering and meeting the ongoing business needs of the partner company while keeping watch on the SEG’s business successes and stumbles. In addition, the Relationship Manager should look for opportunities to partner with HR and Benefits for credit union products and services that will make the SEG’s job easier (i.e., Payroll cards for unbanked employees, credit counseling for employees that have received garnishments, HSAs to support their High Deductible Health Plans). The Relationship Manager also coordinates branch days, lunch and learn sessions, and seminars. In addition, they need to keep a pulse on leadership changes and hiring bursts or layoffs so the credit union can bond with the new leaders, support new employee orientations or provide loan support/concessions for employees losing their jobs).

The Account Facilitator
This is typically a team of experts trained in membership/account opening processes, loan applications and processes, and problem-solving. Ideally, they should be equally adept at online and mobile banking systems and hardware. Their job is to “take the branch” to the employee. This work can be a product (auto loan special with a buying service or car sale), service (online banking, BillPay, and mobile banking training and tutorials), or solution-based (understanding your credit report, home buying class, or tutorial, and planning for college). During Lunch and Learns or seminars, they provide table support for attendees.

Having the right business development strategy with expertly executed tactics by the right team will improve your credit union’s growth and sustainability.

Share:
What is your credit union doing right?
Where do you need to improve your BD results?

Call me to talk about how I can help your credit union build a winning BD strategy, deploy the right tactics, select the right people, train them for success and install measurements to track, trend, and compensate the team for success.
Rich Jones
PRESIDENT/CEO
Leading2Leadership LLC
720.256.4936, rjones0747@gmail.com
www.Leading2Leadership.com