How An Operations Staff Redeployed To Marketing In A Bank Can Easily Meet Assigned Deposit Targets

By Anayo M. Nwosu

I was compelled to write and publish this to guide and assist many distraught formerly operations staff newly posted to sales and marketing functions in Nigerian banks in their search for deposit liabilities. It may also be useful to a budding marketing staff.

All bankers should know by now that the marketing terrain has changed. The cheese has moved! New approach or modification of existing methods are required to succeed.

The economic situation in the country coupled with certain government policies have limited the deposit generating scope of banks from their customers. Customers are now wiser; they are even more informed with insatiable service taste buds.

A senior banker charged with supervisory role should have dimensioned and characterized his/her target deposit customers and marshaled out effective strategies that would make achievement of targets easier for his marketing team.

Beside your bank’s enhanced capacity via enhanced deployment of the latest technologies like POS, m-Cash, Payment Solutions, Internet & Mobile Banking etc., a retail or consumer banker saddled with immediate delivery of deposit targets should do the following:

1. Draw a prospects list of all the people you know starting from family members, other relations and friends. The list must include your former boyfriends and girlfriends; and should contain the phone numbers of the prospects.

2. Meet all your friends or relations that are economically stable and ask them for the names and phone numbers of their friends, business partners, colleagues or associates to populate the prospects list.

3. Begin to call a minimum of 15 persons on your list daily for a meeting appointment. Many would refuse or disappoint you but don’t be discouraged. Persistence is the key virtue here. Don’t take “no” for an answer. People naturally yield to the determined and consistent marketer.

4. Assume that your prospects already have bank accounts, therefore offer to open savings account for them. Note that it is easier to open a savings account than current accounts whereby bank references must be received before a customer can withdraw own funds.

5. Ensure that your willing customers are onboarded unto Internet and Mobile Banking at account initiation stage. Also issue a debit card or any other card as may be required by the customer. This will ensure activity or usage of the account and of course some income.

6. Ensure that you get a referral from anyone that agrees to open account with you. Ask for your customer’s friends or colleagues.This will increase your prospects’ list.

7. Your prospects’ list should at all times contain a minimum number of 250 names.

A banker in a branch desirous of a deposit growth should focus on the following areas :

1. CHURCHES: Even though, their collections have decreased, they still get seeds as tithes and offerings. Beg the pastor to help you meet your target. The bigger churches have established Microfinance Banks or centralized accounts. Keep pushing. You can go through the Mummy in the Lord.

Do not be a dormant member of a church. Become a member of a finance or harvest committee. By so doing, you can influence the choice of your bank to house a particular collection.

If other all the collections have been given to other banks before you pitched, why not suggest other collections head like “Widows Support Fund” account? The church leaders like ingenious ways to raise money. Hence, be the think tank.

Smart bankers know that they can meet their targets through the savings account of the wives of the general overseers of pentecostal churches. They are also big time spenders in apparels and ornaments. They have to look good for the Lord.

ROAD TRANSPORT OWNERS: You will be marveled to discover how much the chairman of a particular park around you take home daily. Bank that money. You can provide a POS or do cash pickup.

DRINKING & ENTERTAINMENT JOINTS: When economy is bad, many people drink away their sorrows. That’s why drinking joints and night clubs survive even as national income is dropping.

OPEN CHARGES-FREE ACCOUNT: Offer other banks’ customers waivers on Account Maintenance Charge subject to maintaining a negotiated minimum account balance. The cost of doing business in Nigeria is very excruciating hence, most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) would latch on to any opportunity to reduce their banking or finance costs .

The above recommendations are not the only methods to achieve deposit targets in banks but they are foundational. They don’t fail. The supervisors need to feel your traction before the big corporate accounts start coming in.

An intending super marketer should never be judgmental and must be ready to mixed well with saints and sinners alike.

The deposit you are looking for is innocent of the sin or the holiness of the owner. Therefore, you should open account for native doctors, tax collectors, police officers, prostitutes, strippers, nightclubs, gays, lesbians, PDP & APC, liars and politicians. Just ensure that you meet all the account opening documentation requirements.

Building and sustaining a big deposit base depends on how you are able to acquire business supporting skills and excellent relationships management. There is a limit to how far the begging and emotional banking could get you.

Sex for deposit is not also an enduring skill. How many customers can a marketer sleep with to achieve and ever changing deposit targets?

Long lasting achievers in marketing are those trained by masters and those who took their time to learn how banking can benefit their customers who in appreciation, dump sales, savings and working capital with them. They also understand their customers’ value chain and devise ways to trap their cash.

The marketing gurus also understand the importance of having a widened base of many high net worth customers. This ensures that a banker’s deposit position also known as CASA is not decimated by withdrawal of funds by one key customer.