1. Introduction

The commercial productivity of a bank depends on many factors. The size of your network of managers, their training, their positioning, their culture, their internal processes and tools, etc. The business generated and retained by the branch network can have variations of more than 45% between different entities once the size is normalized. Cognodata, a company specializing in optimizing commercial activity through analytics, has successfully developed and implemented a methodology for improving the commercial productivity that allows improvements of between 25% and 35%.

Cognodata drives the customer view in financial institutions. With this focus, it has developed specific methodologies to optimize commercial activity with a customer perspective:

  • Increase in attracting new customers and bonding in their first year of life
  • Increased customer loyalty, maximizing its value in the medium and long term
  • Increased customer satisfaction, increased retention levels and reduced leakage

2. Increased business productivity supported by analytics

The differential value that we provide from Cognodata is that our approach combines the generation of emotions to improve the attitude of the sales network with analytics and, ultimately, direct the activity where it is most productive. In other words,  any decision or recommendation for action  regarding the levers of action  is based on the analysis of  customer data and commercial activity, and is contrasted with knowledge of the bank’s strategy and operations, and the context customer’s competitive

We improve commercial productivity through six action levers:

2.1. Customer and business intelligence

Intelligence allows sales increases of between 50% and 150% for a given campaign. It provides the knowledge for quick and well-founded decision-making on business strategy and tactics: what actions are appropriate, what customers are appropriate and what contact strategy should be followed. Cognodata has found that many times business managers do not take advantage of the capabilities of intelligence-driven campaigns, because they have not had the proper training/communication, or because they are not properly integrated into their business processes and incentives and ultimately, they do not know why. or why they have to change their habits.

2.2. Tools, processes and times

We define the key information that the manager must have before speaking with his client, the information that he must collect and how he must record it to improve the effectiveness of future actions.

On the other hand, we help managers organize their activity to balance their commercial activity in the most appropriate way between proactive or reactive actions, times of the day and days of the week for each action. And we collaborate in deciding what information they should receive, seeking simplicity and rapid execution. We also define the commercial intensity that each client requires based on the current and potential business that they can contribute to the entity.

2.3. Segmented relationship & supply protocols

We increase the effectiveness of commercial action with protocols and products/services defined based on their real impact in terms of short- and long-term customer value and differentiated by segment. It is considered key:

  • Regarding relationship protocols: adapt them to customer segments, their differentiated needs, preferred channels and most appropriate relationship styles
  • Regarding the offer: adapt it to the needs of the segment, its financial sophistication, its moment in the life cycle and linkage in the entity

2.4. incentives

We define incentives that lead to the generation of customer value, on a recurring basis, and attributed to management. In addition, we propose to introduce new incentives based on metrics such as current customer value and retention level, which drive the network towards generating recurring value. We collaborate in defining a culture of recognition that allows us to align with the change objectives set.

2.5. Goal setting and commercial monitoring

We carry out the complete process of setting objectives based on comparable metrics of potential and business, considering the time and management needs according to the type of client and the necessary manager profiles.

We define the commercial monitoring processes with middle managers for the deployment of the objectives in commercial plans at various levels: office, manager, short-term action plans and we organize their periodic control with the support of a control panel.

2.6. business training

We increase the productivity and efficiency of the sales team by developing their skills:

  • We enhance the underlying knowledge in the sales network in terms of best practices
  • We generate high impact materials
  • We encourage shared learning

The key instruments to implement these initiatives are:

3. Impact on the business and on customers, measured and contrasted One of our clients, one of the largest and most important multinational banking and financial entities, decided to face a complete adjustment of its commercial system, which would allow it to continue evolving in its customer orientation. Cognodata successfully developed a project that went through all the levers, emphasizing some that were considered the highest priority due to their importance to the customer, impact on the business or gap with respect to the competition. Among other levers:

  • We generated a segmentation that guided the optimization of segmented action protocols
  • We developed potential models and NBS that facilitated the definition of a new value offer and the focus of the commercial activity towards high-potential clients, which were not being exploited
  • We defined tools such as the client file or the follow-up of the commercial activity, which facilitated the commercial management of the client, etc.

This project had an immediate impact on commercial productivity, with measured and verified improvements in liability balances of more than 40%, increases in loan balances of 20%, an increase in the pace of growth in loan balances of more than 200% and improvements in customer recommendation levels of more than 20%.

4. Conclusion

The old method of increasing sales through greater homogeneous pressure on the branch network is no longer valid. Leading entities are significantly increasing their business productivity by using analytics throughout the process. This makes it possible to demand more from managers with portfolios with greater potential and give them tools to achieve superior results by targeting the best clients with relationship models differentiated by segments.