3 Important Questions to Answer in Preplanning

In many of my credit union training classes I ask, "How many products and services do you offer to your members?" Typically even the executives don't even know exactly. A few months later when I come back for another training installment they are quick to tell me how many they offer. I've heard from 30 to roughly 80 products and services. My next question is this: "If you offer 50 products and services how will you ever have a good sales culture expecting your employees to know how to talk about all that you offer?"

Trying to be all things to all people usually ends up making you nothing for nobody. A strategic plan needs to be focused not arbitrary. Ask three specific questions to guide your planning process.

1. What are you going to sell?

Just because you can offer a product doesn’t mean you should sell the product to your members. It's better to effectively sell fewer products than to offer many products and services your staff is not equipped to properly inform members about their benefits and features.

Knowing what you can sell effectively, that meets the needs of your market, is the key to knowing how to structure your approach to maximizing those offerings. Your preplanning homework should involve product analysis to determine what are your most frequently used products, what are your best margin or moneymaking products, and what are the products you want to be known for as the best in the market for your membership field.

2. Who are your target members?

As credit unions grow in their membership bases or even go more community charter it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to serve everyone. The first determination you must make is whether you want to be a commodity credit union or a credit union best known for a specific couple of products that are the best in the marketplace.

No one has an unlimited budget for marketing and even if you did would people believe you are good at doing everything? McDonald's has a huge marketing budget and have been in food service for decades but that doesn’t mean I'm ready to order a NY Strip Steak at their drive thru if they offer it. Why? Because great steaks isn’t what they are known for in the marketplace; no matter how much they market it.

Target marketing provides you with a narrow niche to maximize your investment of your marketing dollars and products you offer. It also makes research easier to determine what their buying habits are and what the best way to reach them is.

3. How can you beat the competition?

This is the big question isn't it? Avoiding the competition was the historical way that credit unions kept from bumping into each other. You had your SEG's and they had theirs. Those boundaries are dropping so not only are we still bumping against the banks, but now other credit unions as well.

So now it's time to explore ways to out-serve the competition in specific products and services, with locations or with marketing savvy and uniqueness.

To learn how to beat the competition you have to study the competition and the marketplace. Research into leverages, market gaps, under-performing products and find the weakness that presents the best opportunity to beat your competition.

These three basic questions will provide your board and executive team with clarity of the vision you have for the credit union and the strategic plan you expect to implement with resounding success. The upfront work on these questions will make the entire following process simpler and more focused.

-- Russell