When such a large part of growth is new customers, it pays to be proactive. That was the approach a major Australian bank wanted to take, in order to meet the challenge of significantly growing their new customer base and on-boarding one million new customers within the next two years. The bank briefed us to deliver a program that would up-skill lending managers to be more proactive in business development, grow home loans and increase the share of new to bank leads.
We started this major project by conducting widespread interviews across all the bank’s brands. Talking to more than 50 people through out the different businesses, we gained key insights into the differing approaches to business development, lead generation and onboarding new customers. We followed this deep research with a high-level design day. Working with senior stakeholders from all the bank’s brands, we presented back our findings and approach, gathering more information for the project’s final design.
Testing and refining our design, we ran three pilot experiences. These two-day workshops were facilitated, with acting and demonstrations of proactive sales calling, and referral source conversations. This provided a simple model for proactive calling to new prospects. In addition, live calling opportunities gave participants the chance to test the techniques they’d experienced, so they could see evidence that the model worked, and develop the belief that they could achieve their ambitious new targets.
Before the rollout of the main program we also ran a leaders conference. This up-skilled team leaders on the role they would need to take before, during and after the program launch, ensuring lending managers could embed new processes and behaviours, as well as facilitate with coaching.
The enthusiasm for our program started with the pilot, where it was a huge success. 740 contacts were contacted, 362 leads generated and 28 new loans were recorded at a value of over $10m. The client was so keen to give the business exposure to the program at this stage, they requested two additional pilot sessions. Since then nearly 500 bankers have enjoyed the program. Carried out over 23 two-day sessions it’s delivered a significant ROI. As well as an overall NPS rating of 9.7 out of 10, average appointments have risen from five to eight per person, per week. The workshops have also delivered 4000 new contacts and 2000 meetings, with over $30m in loans to be settled.
In addition our client is using this project as a case study for how learning and training programs within the bank should be delivered in the future.