The challenges facing the banking sector are widely acknowledged. Banks are facing a new business environment, which encompasses regulatory pressure, customer volatility and higher macro-economic risk.

Having dealt with internal processes to cut cost, banks are now focusing on adapting their customer-facing activities, in order to boost their revenue streams.

Banks and their customers demand value

Customers are demanding simplicity and transparency in banking products and services. They have easier and quicker access to numerous competitive alternatives, and can easily move from bank to bank, depending on where they see more value.

In order to protect their customer base and avoid churn, banks may tend to resort to aggressive customer retention policies and unnecessarily surrender revenue and profit, which could otherwise be attainable.

One-to-one targeted sales

If banks want to realize their revenue potential, they need to implement personalized, one-to-one strategies not only in marketing but also in sales. Attracting customers with precise, personalized marketing methods is very important, but turns out to be only a half-baked approach, unless prices and discounts are also personalized.

Offering the right products to each individual customer should be complemented with the right price or discount. Banks can customize their offers to better address each individual customer beyond segment-based tiered pricing and according to each customer’s willingness to pay and other criteria.

This level of sophistication, attained by a combination of analytics and optimization algorithms, can empower and support relationship managers to quickly customize offers with the appropriate confidence and close deals without sacrificing revenue.

Sales optimization remains a largely unexploited lever

While revenue from margins and fees are pressured by the competition, sales and quote personalization is a largely unexploited lever. Selling more efficiently can eliminate revenue leakage and boost revenue.

Such projects have a very high ROI and a quick time-to-value and should be a priority for banks looking for ways to pragmatically boost their revenues without significant investments.

What are your thoughts on targeted sales improvement for the banking sector? How can banks optimize their sales efforts, exploit growth opportunities, and maximize revenue potential? Feel free to share and add your comments below.

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