What We Did

To support the five-year growth strategy for its commercial banking division, a multinational financial services institution wanted to improve sales processes for expanding current client relationships and attracting new clients. We were ready to help, with experience and an undeniably different approach that was well suited for the bank’s goals. 

Our team helped the bank design and introduce an effective, sustainable sales and service process for:

• Targeting high-opportunity client segments
• Expanding relationships with existing clients
• Accelerating new client acquisition
• Providing effective coaching and upskilling for sales professionals
• Creating new insight into client segments and purchasing behavior
• Analyzing data to optimize internal processes and operations 

The benefits are already adding up.

The Challenge

To meet commercial banking revenue goals, the bank needed to elevate relationship managers’ ability to develop existing and new client relationships to their full potential. That meant equipping relationships managers with the skills and data to:

• Identify opportunities within existing relationships
• Define specific sales targets
• Create relevant strategic plans for achieving their targets

This was a challenge tailor-made for West Monroe—and one the bank knew it could count on us to deliver. We’ve been there for the bank many times in recent years, whether improving its technology infrastructure, its credit process, or its efficiency by introducing robotic process automation. 

An Undeniably Different Approach

We rapidly mobilized a multidisciplinary team with commercial banking, technology, customer and employee experience, and organizational change management expertise. In particular, we brought deep knowledge of commercial banking front-office operations, including roles and processes for delivering solutions to clients. 

After collaborating with bank leaders to define a vision and goals, we set to work on bringing those goals to fruition. Together, we redesigned processes – using data and technology to segment clients and create a standard approach that relationship managers can use to identify and act on cross-selling opportunities within their portfolios and to recognize optimal new prospects in the broader market. 

We also know that success requires equal attention to the human and technology sides of change. So, we paired our Salesforce expertise with internal knowledge of the bank’s culture and best ways to engage and interact with system users. Together with line-of-business leaders, we:

• Reimagined how relationship managers can perform their roles using Salesforce technology
• Developed a new managerial sales process that increases accountability for results and growth
• Mobilized a network of change champions
• Employed existing and trusted communication channels to reach employees and leaders at the right times
• Delivered sales effectiveness training in “sprints” to 33 relationship managers across commercial lending teams

The Output

• Detailed client segmentation analysis with engagement models that define frequency and nature of client interactions
• Account planning process for existing client relationships
• New client prospecting process that guides activity and accelerates lead and referral generation
• Managerial sales process with expectations for areas such as sales call frequency
• Sales management and coaching processes 
• Detailed recommendations for aligning front-office KPIs with sales behaviors 
• Salesforce tools for measuring progress against client relationship plans 

Returns You Can Measure

The project is transforming the bank’s relationship managers into true trusted advisors, ready to help the bank achieve its revenue growth goals.

The multinational bank expects substantial impact:

• 25% greater revenue per customer relationship
• 56% increase in share of wallet product, per client   
• 3 to 4 net new clients per relationship manager, per year
• 30% increase in Net Promoter® score 

The tangible results are growing by the day. Already, the bank has realized $3.6 million in incremental revenue by originating $46 million in new loans and $9 million in new deposits. That is just the start: During account planning workshops, relationship managers identified more than 330 specific revenue-generation opportunities, including 273 cross-selling opportunities for interest rate swaps, 401k employee benefit plans, private banking, wealth and investment management, and foreign currency exchange services.

The new processes are working. Relationship managers are consistently completing high-quality sales calls, often in conjunction with product partners to improve cross-selling results. And Salesforce tools and dashboards are providing leaders and relationship managers with a more complete picture of their customers, allowing them to manage sales effectiveness proactively.