Pub. 1 2013 Issue 3

www.uba.org 10 T hat’s how culture change works. It’s something that requires consistent, everyday focus. Whenever something gets in the way of the leadership team’s commitment to CRM everything stops. When the CRM strategy is eliminated from each day’s conversation, it stagnates. If senior management fails to promote, discuss, and display commitment to CRM for two consecutive days, the entire strate- gy begins to decline. Focus Every Single Day It’s not easy to consistently demonstrate the importance of excellent client relation- ship management every single day. Some days there really are other very important things to be handled. What’s a manager to do? Enlist others in the organization to be part of your every-single-day communication strategy. Identify the ways that each mem- ber of the management team can consis- tently communicate the organization-wide importance of the CRM strategy. CEO – The CEO is the primary service and sales leader. Without highest level definition of the CRM strategy and with- out consistent highest level demonstration Great lending managers accept their role as CRM leaders by helping to forge the CRM strategy to best serve their clients and to support how their lenders work with clients and prospects to build and grow relationships. Outstanding lending managers clearly communicate that the bank will make loans and grow broad relationships with clients and prospects. The bank identifies ways to expand relationships, even beyond lending to include deposit, trust, invest- ment, and insurance products. Members of the manager’s team must stay focused on CRM every single day. Branch Administration – The EVP- Branch Administration often accepts the first-line CRM cheerleader role after the CEO. The retail associate’s role as service provider and sales person is often most clearly defined. The branch administra- tor’s greatest challenge may be to share CRM leadership duties with every front- line branch manager. Branch administra- tors must be certain that every manager in the system is clearly communicating every day that the CRM strategy is alive and well and they’ll implement it today and every day to give clients the best service possible. Every Manager – The CFO, the IT Manager, the Marketing Manager, and the HR Manager are CRM leaders, too. Every day, without fail, they must find a way to communicate the critical value of excellent execution of the CRM strategy. Without their support and participation, management gives an inconsistent mes- sage. Without every mid- and senior-level manager’s support, the few skeptics on the front-line will see cracks in the organiza- tion’s commitment to CRM. Senior-level inconsistency will be read as uncertainty. Pull the String Bring your management team together today to very clearly identify the ways each team member can and will walk the walk and demonstrate commitment to the CRM strategy. Without conscious daily commitment, the front-line rightly believes “this too shall pass.” You can’t push a string. Get out front and pull every day. n of the value and importance of the CRM strategy, all else will fail. CRM is not a grassroots strategy. It is definitely a trick- le-down strategy. When every member of the organization sees every day that the CEO believes in the CRM strategy and is walking the walk, every member of the organization will do the same. Operations – The EVP-Operations is in an excellent position to reinforce the CEO’s CRM message or to negate it. To send a clear message to every employee, opera- tions leaders should consistently work to review and revise client process to make “the way we do business” increasingly client-friendly. That message: I agree with the CRM strategy and am working to make every operation part of the solution for our clients, not part of the problem. When the CEO must shift focus away from CRM for a few days the EVP-Oper- ations’ support of the CRM strategy helps to fill the leadership void for those days. Lending – The EVP-Lending gets a bad rap in some organizations. Lenders can be the prima donnas who resist changing the way they work with the client and chang- ing the way they document their workto share information organization-wide. A wise and very successful banker in Alaska once said about the bank’s sales and service culture, “If I leave it alone for one day we stop making progress. If I ignore it for even two days we begin to slide backward.” Pull the String: CRM success requires a proactive, daily commitment from your bank’s managers By Barbara Kempf Synapsys Consulting Manager Jack Henry Banking Barbara Kempf manages consulting and training for the SynapsysCRMsolutionatJackHenryBanking,adivisionof Jack Henry &Associates. She can be reached at bkempf@ jackhenry.com.   Enlist others in the organization to be part of your ev- ery-single-day communication strategy.