Helping Small Businesses Succeed
Helping Small Businesses Succeed
Posted September 21, 2010 l by Gary Stein
Typically, banks have provided assistance to small businesses by providing access to credit – a role which has become especially important during the current recession. Congress will soon be providing banks with extra incentives for this type of assistance in the form of The Small Business Jobs Act (see CPG’s view on this bill here ). According to this monthly survey of business owners by the National Foundation for Independent Businesses, however, the primary concern of small businesses is not accessing credit, but improving sluggish sales. Thus, now is a great time for banks to consider how they can help small business owners to meet their current needs and challenges in ways other than loaning money. For example, banks can help small business owners to:
Evaluate and Control Expenses
A number of consumer PFM platforms, such as Mint.com, enable users to benchmark personal spending against peers to help identify opportunities to save money. Now US Bank is doing the same for small businesses. The company’s new ScoreBoard platform is designed to enhance the presentation of spending data to enable users to understand expense trends better and compare activity levels to others within the industry.
Reduce Administrative Burdens
It is hard to generate revenues when your time and attention are devoted to activities other than sales and marketing. Bank of America acknowledged this fact when the company rolled out its Easy Online Payroll service, which is intended to reduce the effort related to payroll, benefits reporting, tax reporting, and similar tasks. However, you don’t have to be BofA to be able to help your customers. Banks should ensure that existing cash management products are marketed in a manner that clearly presents these products as solutions and aligns them with common needs of business owners. In addition, many technology costs have come down, making it possible for banks to offer services originally sold to large commercial clients to smaller companies.
We have long argued that banks should consider segment specialization – with unique products, marketing, and specialized advisory or consulting services – as a way to create distinction from competitors and provide more valuable guidance to customers. At a minimum, banks should look for opportunities to leverage the knowledge of lenders and treasury management officers that have accumulated expertise in specific industries for clients and prospects across the bank’s footprint.
Generate Exposure and Enhance Sales
There are many ways to help customers improve sales results.Knowledgeable sales and marketing staff can provide advice to small businesses on everything from generating referrals to using social media to promote the business. Banks should consider offering some of the available window or wall space in their branches to local business customers for marketing purposes. This would both help promote the small business’ services, as well as demonstrate the bank’s commitment to the local community and its economy.
