Tweet This Post

I’ve often pondered the need for a business model revolution in the banking industry. Until now, I always thought the problem was that bankers wouldn’t know how to evolve (or completely change their business model). But now, the book has me realizing this question is only half of the real issue.

The other half of the question is:  ”If a bank knew how to evolve or change its business model…would it?” In other words, would it have the guts? Would it have the resolve to stick out a painful transition? Would it be willing to go against the grain and be a champion of change?

This is an entirely different question. Deep thoughts.

Tweet This Post

I agree with Bryan. But his comment also got me wondering: how many MEMBERS really understand the difference between being a member and a customer?

As you know, I’m all about helping bank and credit union folks think like entrepreneurs. And I believe great entrepreneurs are experts at exploiting marketing opportunity.  There is a a huge, exploitable marketing opportunity in the following:

Making the difference between a customer and a member strikingly, painfully, ridiculously, unmistakably clear.

Note: As you may have heard me argue before, the question is not “how is a being a member BETTER than being a customer?” It’s simply “how is it different?”

Today, I don’t believe this difference is clear at all, nor is the experience of being a member noticeably different from the experience of being a customer. So here are three quick ideas of ways credit unions could make members really feel like members, not customers:

1)  Difference: Members own a part of the CU; customers do not.

Making it Clearer:  Make them act like an owner and be accountable to that responsibility. Don’t give members the option to vote; require them to vote.

2)  Difference: Members are co-owners with other members

Making it Clearer: Connect members with each other. Introduce 5 members to 5 other members tomorrow. Facilitate them getting to know each other. Bond them together.

3)  Difference: A member must qualify to join

Making it Clearer: Emphasize exclusivity:  put more focus on who can NOT join.  Make it clear who is not lucky enough to even qualify, and you will make the value of membership seem higher.

Now it’s your turn: what other differences can we make clearer?

Tweet This Post

“Don’t try to be smarter than your competitors, because any competent competitor will be working just as hard to be smarter than you.  The trick is to have no competitors”

Warren Buffett

CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Bankers tend to ask themselves “how can we make our bank better than the competition.” Entrepreneurs, rather, ask “how can we make our bank so different than it has no competition?” That’s a decommoditized company.

Tweet This Post

Positioning is everything.  At CBC, I obviously preach the virtues of good brand positioning to my bank and credit union clients. So when it comes to marketing ourselves as a company, I obviously try to practice what I preach.  It’s always tougher to see your own situation, though. The cobbler’s children often have no shoes, as they say.

This year I’ve attended two conferences/seminars from ReCourses, a management consulting firm specializing in small creative services companies like us.  Hearing their content about brand positioning for small agencies not only helped me think about CBC’s own positioning in a fresher way, it has actually even given me some cool new ways to articulate my philosophies to my bank and credit union clients as well.  It’s given me lots of great food for thought. That’s one of the things I love about business and entrepreneurship.  When you learn about new things, you find many ways to apply it all over your life and business.

To reflect our newly refined positioning, we’ve developed a new site, still at www.creative-brand.com.  It was a lot of work for my team, and for me personally, but I’m excited about it.

Our primary goal with the site is to better distribute our unique educational content about our one-of-a-kind expertise in experiential brand development, multi-sensory marketing and word of mouth marketing for entrepreneurial banks and credit unions.

Our second goal is to give our prospective clients a good sense for what it’s like to work with CBC, so we’ve developed a New Client Orientation Guide (which was particularly fun to write).

Tweet This Post

Post More Often. Not just writing more posts here at www.jeff-stephens.com, but I mean truly being totally engaged in all my social communities.  2009 really showed me that social media is not an optional marketing channel, it is just another required part of doing business successfully.  Just like a phone or email, it’s a tool we can no longer live without.

Live the Getting Things Done Lifestyle. If you haven’t read Getting Things Done, by David Allen, you need to.  He’s the master of personal productivity.  GTD is brilliantly simple but truly transformative…if you give yourself to it.  So far I’ve dabbled heavily in GTD, but haven’t completely given myself to it like I want to and need to.  My current tool of choice for GTD software is OmniFocus, so my goal is to really lean on it as hard as I can and make it part of my lifestyle.  This leads me to…

Start Each Week, and Each Day, With Focus.  I have said before that I believe that each day, the world conspires against you to prevent you from getting the stuff done that you want to get done.  More realistically, though, I think it’s that we don’t start each day with the level of focus and clarity we really need.  I will start each day and week not with a list of “to-do” items, but with a list of accomplishments I want to achieve.

Get Coached. I’m proud to say I am pretty much always learning new things, but it’s usually mostly on my own.  This year I’m reaching out for help that will provide structure, accountability and a fresh perspective.  I’ve started working with Mark Shapiro from Emergent Business, am attending a seminar through David Baker’s ReCourses, am signing up for guitar lessons and am even considering a personal trainer to help whip me into better physical shape.  Plus, of course I’ll continue my both-feet-in participation in EO.

What are your resolutions?  I’d love to hear.  Plus, if you put them on the Internet like I did, you have to follow through or else the whole world will know!

Tweet This Post