A recent dinner conversation with a banker friend and former customer has gotten me repeating a piece of advice I’ve given to bankers for years: You can’t win a competition you’re not actually in.
Earlier that day, I addressed a conference my friend attended. Catching up that evening, he told me, “You know, I really liked your last slide today. You could have sold 100 shirts with that on it on the way out of the room.”
I laughed and told him I wasn’t in the merch business but appreciated the thought. When I began commenting on what I thought to be my last slide, he corrected me. He said, “No, not that one … the very last slide. The one with ‘Good People Win.’ When did you start using that? I like it.”
Knowing my friend was fond of sarcastic humor, I smiled and began to change the conversation. He interrupted, “No, really. I like that. Is it new?”
When I realized he was sincerely asking, I was both amused and astounded. I said, “Well, it’s been one of the first things you see on my website for six years. It’s on my newsletters. It’s been the last slide in at least 100 speeches … some of which you’ve seen … and oh, it’s been in my email signature forever.”
He shrugged and said, “Huh ... cool. Guess I never noticed. But I like it. You should do something with that.” It took me another minute or so of prodding and waiting for the laughter that never came to realize he wasn’t kidding. It also dawned on me that I hadn’t officially pitched business proposals to him in several years. We discussed business, but not “doing business.”
That conversation has stayed with me since that dinner. I’ve kidded with friends that I felt like a fitness trainer who suddenly had trouble fitting into their clothes.
I’ve long talked to others about the realities of business development but hadn’t had those realities personally hit me in a while. I had figured he kept up with me and my business. Finding out he really didn’t was a wake-up call.
Through the years, one of my favorite joking comments to make to bankers who may be struggling with business growth is that they should look on the bright side. Chances are they aren’t losing a comparison to the competition.
Most prospective customers — even those they may have interacted with before — aren’t considering them at all. So, they aren’t losing a head-to-head competition with another bank. In most customers’ minds, they’re not even on the field.
Sure, that realization creates as many grimaces as smiles, but it’s something worth remembering. People are busy running these things called “their lives,” and those are full-time jobs.
They can be forgiven if they aren’t regularly considering you or your offerings just because you’d like them to. That’s not being rude. That’s being a human in the 21st century.
There is debate about whether humans’ attention spans have shortened over the decades. There is no debate, however, that the options of products, services and providers available to most people have grown exponentially.
What has not grown exponentially over the millennia is the amount of time we humans have in a day, or the amount of time we have available to contemplate non-urgent issues. Simply, most folks are not spending meaningful amounts of time regularly reassessing the providers of the products they currently use, much less providers they are not using.
It’s important to remind our teams that a lack of immediate results does not in itself mean that our marketing and sales efforts are misguided. Over time, consistency of effort in our business development practices tends to be as important as creativeness.
It’s also important to understand that the person you had a conversation with a year ago or a month ago or even a week ago is a slightly different person now than they were at that time. They may have experienced new milestones, different life experiences, changes in needs, shifts in outlook — or all of these.
Or maybe they will simply be paying more attention today.
It’s possible that the same messages they heard before may be received differently now. But you must continue to send the messages.
One of the most common challenges of leading sales teams is helping them remember that there are stretches in which we do the right things but reap no immediate results. That’s just how business, and life, work.
A string of wins may be just ahead, but we must continually put in the efforts to truly be in the competitions.
