In our previous blog, “Capitalizing on Commercial Credit Cards,” we explored the many benefits of offering commercial credit cards, including increased leverage for buyers, relief for suppliers, and improved security. These benefits are significant for banks and their business customers, helping banks strengthen their most profitable relationships. After implementing a credit card program, the next critical step for continued success is effective promotion.
Embracing a Sales Culture: How CorServ’s Turnkey Program Enhances Credit Card Promotion
It’s crucial that banks foster a strong sales culture to promote their cards in today’s competitive market. With a credit card issuing program such as CorServ’s turnkey program, you benefit from having direct control over the P&L (profit and loss) and can achieve an impressive ROA (return on assets), averaging over 6% without additional investment in staff or infrastructure. Your bank participates in making credit decisions for your credit card applicants. These advantages will motivate your team to promote sales compared to the passive referral structure, low ROA, and lack of input to credit decisions in the Agent Bank programs many banks contract with now.
Leveraging Customer Relationships and Targeted Strategies to Maximize Sales
When it comes to promotion, focus on your relationship customers. CorServ offers opt-in marketing campaigns to maintain consistent customer outreach. Relationship-based credit card programs experience significantly lower credit and fraud losses than national card programs and yield higher response rates to marketing offers. Incorporating your proprietary customer relationship data into your underwriting process can give your bank a competitive advantage.
It’s also important to know which cards will perform the best in marketing efforts. Start with the most profitable commercial cards to larger business relationships that can yield as much as 13% ROA. Next, focus efforts on business and consumer cards that address market needs through a range of products, from a low rate (Prime + 2.99%) to a rich rewards card for high spenders. Offering long-term relationship products with low APRs and no penalty rates can further improve customer loyalty.
Best Practices to Establish a Successful Sales Culture for Credit Cards:
- Automatically offer a commercial card to your business customers with a line of credit.
- Sell on commercial card features like reduced cost and time to pay suppliers and more efficient employee expense management before offering a rebate to a company.
- Measure and compare branch sales to identify and promote best practices, but ensure compliance through training.
- Monitor data to identify relationship customers paying balances on competitors’ cards, and offer your card.
Revisit the most recent blog posts in this series that detail the key steps to creating a successful credit card program tailored for your relationship customers. Each blog provides valuable strategies and insights designed to help you build and promote a program that not only meets customer needs but also enhances your balance sheet with high-yielding credit card assets.
Download the full guide for “5 Steps for Banks to be Successful in the High Margin Credit Card Issuing Market”, or contact CorServ for more information about starting a credit card program.
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