How often are you maintaining contact with business customers? A critical part of managing your business customers is regularly meeting with them.

Time Together = Better Relationships

We’ve all been there before – you get annoyed with a colleague, and you stop talking to each other. After a few weeks you begin to resent them or start imagining things about what they are thinking. It happens the same way in customer relationships. The longer you go between discussions, the further apart your relationship is.

Is there a way to build relationships instead of breaking them down? Yes. It’s called the Business Review Meeting.

The Business Review Meeting

A business review meeting is a regularly scheduled meeting with a customer to go over a number of items. Here are the characteristics of the business review meeting:

1. It is a recurring meeting, scheduled a year in advance.
2. Depending on the customer size, complexity and revenues, it will be scheduled as short as every two weeks or as far a part as quarterly. We never recommend going over 90 days without having a business review meeting.
3. The business review meeting is done with EVERY business customer using business products. We don’t recommend meeting with business customers using consumer products as the time (and money) you spend meeting with these customers may not be recovered over the length of the relationship. They are just too small.
4. There is an agenda for each meeting. Your customer relationship team should be able to determine a standard agenda for every meeting, then the relationship manager for that customer can customize it depending on the needs of the customer.
5. Some samples of items to discuss are:
   1. How is their business doing? Look for places your treasury management services can solve their new needs.
   2. How is the institution’s team doing? You always need to ask this. Don’t be shy about asking for feedback.
   3. Review products in use and perhaps train the customer on a new feature or teach them more about that service so they can utilize it more.
   4. Review service tickets to make sure the customer’s issues got resolved in a timely manner and to their satisfaction.
6. Make sure you have the next meeting on the schedule. In advance. You need to get the customer used to regularly meeting with your team.

Remember, the goal of the meeting is to make sure there is a consistent dialogue between your institution and the customer – building relationships over time. Maintaining contact with business customers leads to better relationships and higher revenues per customer.

Looking for ideas to expand your Treasury Management reach to new business customers? Look into the TMClarity Framework, our comprehensive and transformative training and Treasury Management business management system that leads to greater sales success, higher margins, and increased customer retention in a competitive marketplace.

When reviewing your website during a maintenance period (either refreshing or completely replacing it), it’s important that you prioritize having a mobile version of your website.

Why a Mobile Version?

In the Mobile vs. Desktop Usage in 2020 study from Perficient, most website visits are on mobile devices. If your website does not dynamically convert between a desktop and a mobile version, you may be turning visitors away when they browse your site on a mobile device.

Don’t know if you have a mobile version of your website? You can test it from your desktop!

Determining if you have a mobile version of your website

To determine if you have a mobile version of your website, you can use the browser on your desktop or laptop computer. To start this test, you need to change your browser from “full screen” or “maximized” mode to windowed mode. Now, slowly drag the width of your browser window down until it is just about the same width of your smartphone.

If you see the site dynamically change the way it looks when moving from desktop width to mobile width, you probably have a mobile site. If your site shrinks down to something you can barely read, you probably don’t have a mobile site.

Building a Mobile Site

Building a mobile site is something left to your web development team. The developer will work with your marketing and product management teams to tailor the site to the needs of the markets you serve. 

If you currently don’t have a mobile site, my guess is that your site is over 8 years old and needs to be completely replaced anyway.

What is the typical cost for a new website?

In our experience, we haven’t seen a good website with about 20 pages cost less than $10,000. Honestly, 20 pages is very small for a community financial institution. Typically, most sites are 40+ pages, putting the typical budget easily into the $15,000 to $20,000 range.

Where does the money go? Designing and programming a great website that projects your vision on how your prospective customers will be treated at your institution. You see, your website is the first impression a prospective business customer receives of your institution. If the website is old, outdated or doesn’t have a mobile version, why would a business prospect want to do business with your institution?

If the website feels outdated, is the rest of the institution outdated?

Your business and treasury management customers have no patience for old or outdated vendors – especially business owners who are under the age of 50. It’s 2022 and they expect their vendors to be technology savvy and offer cutting edge services.

So let’s get going on a mobile version of your website. Set aside a good budget for website maintenance so you can continue to serve your community for years to come.

Looking for ideas to expand your Treasury Management reach to new business customers? Look into the TMClarity Framework, our comprehensive and transformative training and Treasury Management business management system that leads to greater sales success, higher margins, and increased customer retention in a competitive marketplace.