Cross-selling at community banks and credit unions doesn't have to feel like sales—it should feel like service. In this episode of the Hit Record Podcast, FI GROW CEO Meredith Olmstead and Director of Sales Danielle Fancher unpack real-world strategies for creating authentic, high-impact cross-selling efforts. From live chat and automation to frontline staff training and data-driven segmentation, this episode is a deep dive into how to serve more deeply, not just sell more.
Key Takeaways:
Sales Is Service: Effective cross-selling starts with building trust and solving real problems, not pushing products.
Automate and Personalize: Use automation tools to respond instantly and personalize messages based on behavior and product use.
Celebrate the Wins: Daily team huddles, open discussion, and performance dashboards keep cross-selling goals aligned and team morale high.
Transcription:
Meredith:
Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmsted, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales coaching and service consulting agency. Gosh, that's a mouthful. We work exclusively with banks and credit unions, and I am here with our Director of Sales, Danielle Fancher. Say, hi, Danielle.
Danielle:
Hello.
Meredith:
So Danielle and I were just having a long conversation about cross-selling and helping clients with cross-selling at banks and credit unions. We've had this conversation many times, but it's always good to revisit this topic and talk a little bit more about what we're seeing in the marketplace. So I was like, let's hit record and talk about how marketing and sales or just really your institution in general can better drive more authentic cross-selling of additional products and services, because it's a huge piece. Everybody's got these goals around deepening their share of wallet with their new customers, new members, or existing members and customers. So Danielle, where do we start? I mean, if we're going to just start anywhere, let's think about if brand new people are coming into the website or coming to calling, emailing, whatever, contacting your institution, how do you authentically sell and then cross-sell to those leads?
Danielle:
Yeah, absolutely. So there's several ways. I always think about banking in relation to anywhere else that I do business. So how do I want to be served at my favorite places? Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, the list goes on and on. And so whenever we're on their websites or interacting with their mobile apps, I want to be able to talk to someone. If I have a question that I need answered or I want information on a product or service, I want someone to be there live that's able to answer my questions. And so I know AI is so big these days, but we can identify where there's AI, artificial intelligence, or a real person responding back to us. So I do think it's important to have someone that's available there to answer those questions whenever you do have a question.
Meredith:
Yeah, I think real-time responsiveness, especially during business hours. We're talking about banks and credit unions, community banks and credit unions that are typically regionally based. So they're probably open five days a week, maybe Saturday mornings. Nobody expects you to have somebody online at 9:00 P.M. chatting with them on your website. Now, if you lose your credit card, your credit card gets stolen, there is a phone number on the back of that card that you can call and get a human to report your lost or stolen credit card. That's great. That's an essential part of customer service, of member service. If you didn't have that, you would lose members. You would lose customers to places who did have that kind of service. But in terms of sales and cross-selling, absolutely, real-time. So having your chatbot up at nights and weekends on your website and have it meaningful information or be connected to meaningful answers on your website.
And then if it doesn't surface an answer for that person, get their information and have somebody follow up as soon as possible the next day. Very important. But we love to see people slotting in for live chat when they can. So during the week, during Monday through Friday especially, you've got people working in branches who probably aren't super busy all the time. Why not have those people spend an hour or two manning live chat or from your call center or wherever so that they can be having those frontline interactions and making the service a little better, a little more personable and human. It definitely is what sets aside smaller financial institutions from the big guys. How do you make sure that people are on your team, I know you lead lending teams or you have in the past, how do you make sure that those people are following up quickly? What kind of goals do you set?
Danielle:
Yeah, so I think we all are aware that response time is extremely important and I also know that credit unions and community banks typically keep leaner lending staff or staff. And so it's important that there's some type of automation in place because it is not realistic whenever you have a lean team to have immediate responses whenever people apply for loans. However, you definitely want to set some goals and expectations within two to three hours of receiving an application. But there's also automation. So as soon as an application is submitted or even abandoned, we go in and we set up some automation so an email is going out immediately, "Hey, did you forget about this?" Or, "Thank you, we received your completed application. Someone will be in contact within two to three hours."
So just making sure that you communicate that to your team and make it an expectation. Make it part of your goals, make it even a part of your incentive plan. And so response time is extremely important, and that is something that you can factor into any type of incentives, response time via phone, via loan application. So it's definitely an important part of the process.
Meredith:
Yeah, I love having a good tool. So we use HubSpot, but there's lots of them out there that if you have a good tool that's really able to connect the dots between leads coming in and service follow up with those liens, it'll actually show you the average number of minutes that it takes for someone to respond to an email, to a phone call, to an inquiry farm, whatever it is. So that can be very, very impactful and it's easy stuff to monitor. Once a week, you put it on a dashboard, you have your consumer lending department head taking a quick peek and checking those average response times to make sure they stay within an acceptable range.
We also talked a bit about trying to incorporate, and you do this with some of our clients where you're training retail staff, like frontline assistant managers, managers, people who are frontline in person sometimes, not just online or not just on call centers with members, potential new members, customers, and really making sure that they are incentivized and trained on the breadth of products that you have, as well as creating a super seamless process to make a referral.
Because oftentimes we just, you can tell people about stuff, they learn it over time, they'll learn about your suite of products, but then there's not really a set way to get that referral from where they're having an authentic conversation with somebody to the very right person. So you'll have a lot of haphazard referring, which it can work really well. Like, "Oh, I'll send a quick email to so-and-so who I know over in auto lending or over in home equity, and they will follow right up with you." But wouldn't it be better if there was just a very streamlined process? So what do you see work best for those retail staff members that you work with?
Danielle:
Yeah, so a lot of core systems these days actually have the ability for you to go in, your marketing team or someone to put in your credit union, to go in and build out referrals within that core system. So we know that the frontline staff, they're the face of your financial institution, so they are often the most important part of your credit union or community bank because when you walk into the bank, you know Sarah at the teller line. Sometimes you don't know the CEO, you know Sarah. And so it's important to make sure that these individuals are trained. However, we also know there's high turnover rate, and so sometimes it's kind of difficult to get a frontline employee fully trained. So I think we have to keep the process very simple. So I always encourage to look into your core system, see if you can build out where it notifies the staff once they pull that account up, "Hey, this person is paying their Amex card every single month and they don't have a credit union credit card, so this would be a good opportunity to talk about that."
And so it makes it really simple if your core system notifies the frontline employee, but also they have to know how to talk to the individual about it. No one wants a pushy salesperson. In fact, I've been to a bank whenever I was in high school, and every single time they asked me if I wanted a credit card until I yelled at them, "Do not ask me about another credit card." But as long as you are role-playing with your frontline staff, which is so important, I would do this with my team, I'd walk up to the teller line, and sometimes I'd just role play with them back and forth for five minutes. And that's so impactful because the conversation piece is oftentimes the most uncomfortable part of it. And if you can get someone comfortable having a conversation, the rest is super, super easy. So and then-
Meredith:
I was going to say, I've seen you do really great work with listening in on calls, not in real time obviously, but then you'll pull a couple of calls for people that you're working with in coaching and listen to them with the staff member and then pause them at certain spots and be like, "So how did you think that went? What are some things you could have said in that spot that you didn't say?" So it's like, yes, it doesn't really change that one interaction, but it creates an opportunity for that staff member to learn from their actual conversations with the customer or the member for future interactions. Have you noticed really, I mean, in terms of motivating people to make a change or cross-sell, like you got somebody who comes in, they just opened a checking account or got a mortgage and you're trying to get them to open a checking account or refinance an auto loan, is there kind of a magic number or is there something that tends to be most motivating for people in those scenarios for cross-selling conversations?
Danielle:
Yeah, I definitely think so. From the consumer's perspective, I think if you can start to talk about a savings anywhere between above 500 and $700, but also from the employee's perspective, there's a lot of value in helping them understand the impact as well. And that's the way that I was able to train staff to be high salespeople or have a sales culture in a credit union and be producing, because they understood the impact. So for us on a consumer lending team, GAP and warranty were extremely important for us. They make a lot of money for the financial institution, and they're really beneficial for the consumer as well. So what I did to help our team understand the impact that it has on the consumer is I pulled all of the warranty and gap claims from our vendors for the last two years, and we actually went through them.
And there were some of them where GAP had paid $20,000 where someone took their vehicle in and had a $12,000 repair. So now you've connected the dots. So it's not about making money for the credit union, this is really about serving your consumer and serving your customer. So it's definitely important if your team understands the full process, because a lot of times when people think of sales, what they think of is, "They just want me to make more money for the credit union or more money for the bank." That's not what sales is. And that's why I say sales is service because it's really about providing a service to your consumer and your customer. It's about the value that they get. I mean, imagine if you had a $20,000 deficit that you had to pay because your insurance didn't pay it and then-
Meredith:
Yeah, what a disaster for somebody.
Danielle:
Oh my gosh, yeah. So a lot of impact in numbers for sure.
Meredith:
Yeah. So last thing, well, what I wanted to mention is just that I'm seeing a lot more talk about data, and we're actually talking more about even incorporating core integrations into website projects going forward because it's such an essential part now of being able to segment very, very narrowly based on consumers' actual buying behavior like transactions. But you can really, there's some amazing tools out there, some of them we're using for clients that will build propensity models around actual current transactions for a consumer and tell you what percentage likelihood they might have to consider a new product or a service of yours. And so that can be a really powerful way to drive more relevant cross-selling, either digitally or with an individual, a staff member reaching out. But your final thing that you wanted to touch on, I think, was celebrating wins and measuring success.
And so sometimes it's hard because even if say you're an onboarding campaign, for example, isn't really trying to push any one specific product, but more trying to really just deepen the trust and the engagement and the relationship with that new customer. You still have to put something, you still have to figure out what are the metrics that you can measure those efforts against, so you're having an impact of some kind, and then figure out a way to celebrate those wins all the time with your team so that people understand the value of their effort. Is there anything that you've seen work really well in terms of celebrating wins?
Danielle:
Yeah, so something that I've seen at two financial institutions that I worked at that works very, very well that I like to do with teams, we would meet every single morning. And you have to remember, you're in office, you're not remote whenever you work at a credit union or a bank. So it is realistic to me every morning for 10 minutes, and we would celebrate wins there. So we had a dashboard with our goals for all of our systems that we had different products and services in, and we would look at those every single day, and we would do a high and a low. "Tell me yesterday, give me a high point and give me a low point. What did you do really, really well yesterday and what could you have done better yesterday?"
And we talk about that as a team. And so it was really impactful because if I was struggling with having a conversation or talking to someone about a loan or I felt like I didn't provide the best service, I could talk about that openly and then my peers could give me advice or say like, "Hey, did you think about it like this?" Or, "Did you think about it like this?" So not only does it foster a really solid team, but it also helps you to look at all of the numbers as well. It holds you accountable because I don't want to come to the team meeting tomorrow without anything to share. And so yeah, it just creates accountability, fosters a really positive team environment as well.
Meredith:
Yeah, and a sense of collaboration, which sometimes if you're working in silos and not kind of touching base on a regular basis, people tend to fall out of and not really have the sense that they have other people there sharing the load and so it could be really great for culture internally, for sure. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Danielle. These are great tips for really building a better service and sales cross-selling effort that's more authentic for banks and credit unions. If you want to learn more about marketing and sales for your financial institution, please visit us at figrow.com. Have lots of other great podcasts, blogs, eBooks, webinars, so we'd love to have you come and check us out. And otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.