ABA Banking Journal - September 2007 - (Page 44)

BANK MARKETING 5 higher for your front-line personnel, while keeping your technology personal. Become an expert at small business Recent surveys have shown that many boomers will retire and then start their own business. They will be looking to banks for advice, loans, and other business services. Will you have enough trained staff to help guide this process? Keep in mind that these clients will be seasoned veterans of multiple industries. They will eat a fresh-faced business banker alive if that banker is unprepared. Bankers who invest in strengthening their small business lending, and communicate this effectively to their boomer clients will benefit greatly as boomers become entrepreneurs. In the eyes of boomers, small business lending should be face to face and personal. Don’t give boomers a form and then credit-score it. They will see right through this process. Remember, if you are on top of small business lending, seeing a boomer’s balance sheet is a great tool for cross-selling your products and services. Show them you know business and their relationship is yours for the asking. Prepare the next generation Many boomers will leave the workforce in droves over the next five to ten years. Several of my boomer friends will leave before they turn 60 if the economy treats their investments favorably. To fully understand the magnitude of this, have your HR department conduct a demographic census of your staff and match the results with hierarchical job titles. This should give you an insight as to what your organization will look like five years from now. While technology may replace some of the boomers, our huge branch networks will keep us in the people business for many years to come. Will your younger staff be prepared to accept the boomer’s roles? Smart bankers will begin to strengthen their mentoring programs while the boomers are still in their prime. Let boomers pass on their skills and job knowledge to the next generation while there is the luxury of time. Banking is a unique industry and must be learned through practical application. Simultaneously, be on the lookout for good young talent. Bankers who are 44 SEPTEMBER 2007/ABA BANKING JOURNAL 7 relentless in their pursuit of talent will fair much better when the exodus begins. 6 “Can you spare a job?” Those boomers who do want to stay gainfully employed into their 70s will not want the shackles of a full-time job. Many will opt for lower-tier jobs on a part-time basis. Banks who begin to understand this and reengineer their thinking about traditional job structure will suffer less as the boomers begin to leave the work force. Banks who embrace job sharing and flextime employment will not only keep their organizations more balanced as the younger talent is seasoned, but will maintain crucial intellectual and operational talent longer. Allowing two boomer-aged loan officers to share one job annually, for example, could meet both corporate and personal needs. For the bank, it keeps seasoned veterans in jobs that must be learned hands on. For the boomer, it allows them the freedom of six months of down time. Additionally, both win because the boomer maintains their everimportant health insurance, while the banks loses the obligation for vacation time and 401(k) contributions. The elephant in the room Much like the boomers changed the size and scope of suburbia over the years, we bankers have been building brick and mortar facilities at a breakneck speed. A great deal of this expansion has been fueled by the upward mobility and purchasing power of the boomer generation. Boomers have been conditioned to utilize our branches in a very traditional manner—with high levels of walk-in and drive-thru traffic. Will this continue as the boomers begin to see their lives change and become more adept with our online technology? As an exercise, walk into your lobby or drive-thru on any busy day and count the number of twenty- and thirty-something customers you see. Now count the numThe author in Mexico, practicing for boomer-style retirement. ber of boomer-aged customers in contrast. If your bank is like most, the boomers outnumber the younger crowd. It is sadly ironic that the “elephant in the room” that we keep ignoring as bankers is the juxtaposition of pushing our clients—including boomers—headlong into our online technology and delivery systems, while continuing to build expensive brick and mortar facilities. This becomes more poignant considering the fact that we sell a product you cannot put in a sack and carry home like a pair of jeans. We sell a product that is ideal for internet delivery. The boomers may be important lifelines to our industry until we find ways to leverage the hidden sales potential locked away in our branch networks. As the boomers age, we must keep them coming into our branches to not only support overhead, but to begin to experiment with alternative products and services that we can sell. This may buy us precious time while we try to understand just what the branch bank of tomorrow will deliver to our customer base—if and when—they choose to walk through our door. 8 There is still time… I think With the first concentration of boomers turning 60 this year, we still have an adequate amount of time as an industry to prepare for the next segment of the boomer’s lives as it relates to our products and delivery systems. Time may not be as generous when it comes to tapping into the boomer’s psyche about preparing for retirement. Likewise, replacing the boomers in our ranks and strengthening our small business skills may necessitate a longer time line. At minimum, our industry must understand that a great many of our boomer-aged clients—both business and consumer—will face life-changing milestones in the not-so-distant future. Will our industry be prepared to face these with them? And, will we add value? The future of our banks and many of our jobs may depend on it. BJ www.ababj.com/subscribe.html http://www.ababj.com/subscribe.html

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ABA Banking Journal - September 2007

Contents Editor's Column Briefing: Why Money Sense is a Top Priority Briefing: Sleight of Mind Briefing: Snapshot: What the First Half Tells Us About the Second Half Briefing: ABA Resources ABA Chairman’s Position Briefing: Get Away and Get Ahead: ABA's Banking Leaders Forum Community Banking: Trim the Fat: Winning the "Battle of the Buck" Community Banking: Pass the Aspirin Cover Story: Meeting the Challenge of the "Unbanked" Bank Marketing: Don't Miss the Boom! On the Job: Time to Power Up Your Presentations? Insurance Sales: The Art & Craft of Cross Selling Tech Topics: The Price is Right? Tech Topics: Security: Protect Information First Tech Topics: Hackers for Hire? You Bet'cha Tech Topics: Case in Point: Tellers Scan, Too, at First Federal Compliance Clinic: Adverse Action Clarified The Economy Banker’s Mart To Advertise/Index of Advertisers

ABA Banking Journal - September 2007

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