What you'll learn
- How to cultivate meaningful connections and relationships
- Best practices for enhancing sales processes
- How to build successful financial education and literacy programs – and the results you can achieve
Transcription:
Stu Richards (00:10):
All right, well, the mic is on, so it must be time to go. Good morning everybody. And my name's Stu Richards. I'm the CEO of Bredin. We are a B2B research firm that helps clients to better understand and engage the small business audience, and I'm really excited to be here with two fantastic panelists, Fred Castrovinci and Courtney Williams-Theis. What I wanted to do is ask you if you'd be willing to introduce yourselves, your organization, and your role there. Fred, we'll start with you.
Fred Castrovinci (00:42):
Hi Stu. Great to be with you and everyone else today. Fred Castrovinci Regional President for Valley Bank in New Jersey. I run all of commercial middle market banking and business banking for the state. I'm with the organization for 23 years and I've evolved with the organization as we've grown. We're over 60 billion in assets. We have branch presence across five states, and as we continue to grow, it's nice that we are seeing and experiencing a lot of the same challenges and opportunities as everyone else has been talking about the past few days. So great to be here and share.
Courtney Williams-Theis (01:19):
Awesome.
Stu Richards (01:20):
Courtney?
Courtney Williams-Theis (01:21):
I'm Courtney Theis. I'm with Pinnacle Financial Partners. I'm a Financial Advisor in our Franklin, Tennessee market. We are a $50 billion bank and I have 3,500 employees, about 150 office locations. My primary role within the bank is focusing on small to medium sized business owners, their families and their employees.
Stu Richards (01:43):
That's great. And Fred, I'm going to ask how does Valley define small business?
Fred Castrovinci (01:49):
Small business banking for us are businesses with revenues between 3 and 25 million loan amounts that are typically up to 5 million in size. And everything above those revenue and loan sizes go up to the middle market teams. Courtney, how about Pinnacle?
Courtney Williams-Theis (02:06):
Anywhere from a startup to about a $10 million business would be the best way to describe it for us as well.
Stu Richards (02:13):
Great. Good, good. No, it's always fun to ask because it varies quite a bit from bank to bank. What I wanted to start with in terms of talking about sales strategies is when we were talking about this conversation, Fred, you mentioned that Valley really makes an effort to differentiate itself and I'd love to hear what your approach has been there.
Fred Castrovinci (02:35):
Thanks too. So being local for us is really important
(02:39):
And we've got local leadership, local credit teams in every market territory that we have. So with that presence, it gives us speed to market, it gives us market intelligence. We're able to network and really be connectors in our communities, not just driving loans and deposits. We're really able to connect people together and provide additional value add services. And I'm really proud to say that our people really care and give back to the communities that we serve in and through multiple efforts. And we could talk a little bit more about that later, but that's really big part of what we do.
Stu Richards (03:16):
Yeah, and you mentioned you have a pretty robust sales process. You mentioned using tools like Repro and NS codes and Salesforce. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Fred Castrovinci (03:26):
Yeah, and to take a step back with that, we really started a higher level during sales process, and this is for both the middle market and the business banking space. Our bankers out on the road are tasked with different geographic territories, and they'll start with those territories defining by zip codes where they can find the most C and i penetration the highest opportunities, and then they'll build business plans around that. So they'll take two or three zip codes, they'll run RelPro. Happy to say we've been using that service for several years and it's helped us define businesses by revenue size, makes codes. So we target the industries that we're looking for that we have high probability of success with in each zip code. We'll narrow that down and we'll create prospecting strategies around that. And it's not only just going in with a strategy cold to businesses, but it's also working with our branch partners. It's working with our local community groups, centers of influence and trying to have as much overlap between all those areas as possible.
Stu Richards (04:38):
That's great. Yeah. And mentioned you have some pretty specific programs. You'd mentioned women in business kinds of initiatives and financial literacy. We'd love to hear more about that.
Fred Castrovinci (04:51):
Sure. So the way we also have our segmentation with our business development folks, we have a community banking group that is focused on everything below the business banking threshold. So as Courtney was saying, from startups, women and minority owned businesses, anyone that is starting their journey to gain access to capital, those groups are out there providing financial literacy, they're partnering with our branch market managers, they're out there volunteering and they're running seminars, whether it's a journey to home ownership, whether it's building a business plan, connecting them with local SBDCs. And our goal is to really be with them on that journey to grow from community banking to business banking to middle market. And we're out there constantly every week, whether it's at community event, whether it's financial literacy, whether it's holding an event in our branch that is providing value add content, and it's proven successful for us.
Stu Richards (05:57):
That's great. And Courtney, you mentioned the mastermind program and it's pretty impressive. I'd love to hear all about that.
Courtney Williams-Theis (06:07):
Awesome. So basically with Pinnacle and the mastermind program, we all offer the same products. We all have checking, we all have savings, money markets, the business accounts, the lines of credit. So what makes us different, because we all are in the marketplace presenting with the same products. We have a series that we offer to clients and non-clients that is basically an educational series. It is based off of specific books, and it's not about us, it's about them. And it's about how to help small business owners grow their businesses and all the hiccups that they have along the way with their businesses. Anything from, honestly, it's shocking how many businesses do not have org charts, how many do not have projections. And we help them all along the way to build their business as if it was going to be a franchise they may never franchise and may never sell as a franchise in the future.
(07:04):
But we set up policies, procedures, structure within each one of these businesses and provide them with the tools that they need. And we have a 1.0 version of it that basically sets the ground of the overview of what we're going to do to help them grow their business and put these policies and procedures and structures in place as well as we have a 2.0 that we're actually doing it. We're building org charts, we're building business plans, we're helping them shockingly, so many do not know how to read their financials. We're helping them read their financials. And we have just started this month, our 3.0 version, which we are going to call the board of directors, that's going to have one topic a month for all the alumni that have been through the one and the two with that board of directors. It is once again, not about us, it's about what they want to know, so such as ai, all things marketing, branding, anything related to their business and their needs.
(08:07):
That's what we're putting in this financial program. In my 30 years of banking, this has probably been my biggest tool for prospecting and working smarter, not harder. We do not ask for business during this class because who wants to sign up for a series or a class and they're like, gosh, every time I go to the bank, they're going to wear me out about bringing our business over to them. I really just need education at this point because most business owners don't have that budget built in for their educational purposes. So we offer it as a free service to the community, any of the business owners that would like to participate, and honestly, we get organic growth from it without even asking.
Stu Richards (08:51):
That's fantastic. So how do you recruit folks? Is there any vetting in order for folks to participate?
Courtney Williams-Theis (08:56):
No vetting, just have to be a small business owner and one of it's up to the bankers to find people in the community that we are either somebody that we're interested that would be a great fit with clinical financial partners or some of our existing clients. And honestly, once we get them in the class, it's very organic that they start referring other people in. We're running two classes right now out of my office. One of 'em has 19 participants and nine of those are prospects this time. So we're slowly starting to flip the number of prospects versus clients because it's always been heavier on clients.
(09:39):
But probably one of my favorite stories is a business owner of mine that is a 30-year-old business. He does amazing. He really has great structure, policies and procedures in place. And on day one I looked at him and I said, Charlie, why are you here? You could teach this class. You are absolutely amazing. You've got a well run business. And he pointed across the room at one of the youngest people in the room that was a startup business, and that gentleman had already spoke to say that he was a startup and he said, I'm here for him. I'm like, okay, tell me more. He said, I'm here to be a mentor for him, but I am also here to learn from him. Charlie's maybe 60. And he said, but I'm old. I'm set in my ways and I need to do new things within my business that I think he could help me with. Also, it's very organic, the alumni and how they create their own culture together and feed off of each other and have their network and their community of people to connect with as well.
Stu Richards (10:44):
How long, if I signed up for the first session, how many weeks or months is that?
Courtney Williams-Theis (10:50):
So the first session is eight weeks. We do it on Wednesday mornings, an hour and a half, and we are very committed to that timeframe because who wants to sign up for something and it constantly run over or start late? We're adamant about starting at eight, we're adamant about stopping at nine 30 where they can plan their day as well.
Stu Richards (11:08):
This is a big commitment. How did you sell the program into your senior management in the first place?
Courtney Williams-Theis (11:14):
So it has been ingrained within our company since shortly after origination of the company. And we felt the need for more educational purposes for our business owners that it's a very lonely world sometimes as a business owner because if you've got a bunch of friends that are W2 employees, they're going to get paid regardless where that business owner has such pressure on themselves to make sure that they make payroll and that they have all these other families depending on them as well. So we saw the need there in the community to give small business owners their own community and alumni and groups of networking to say, Hey Bob, how would you do this, Sally, what would you do in this situation? And when I first started teaching the classes, I really tried to kind of match industries and I found out real quick that was not, it wasn't working organically. Let the industries be different, let them be very diverse because they all have the same problems no matter what. As a business owner, regardless of your industry, they all have the same hiccups, they have the same problems and the same challenges, and it works out to have such diverse industries together.
Stu Richards (12:32):
That's great. And what kind of results have you seen?
Courtney Williams-Theis (12:36):
So this year alone, we have received, and this is across the board and it hits several lines of businesses. We've had a little over $50 million in business this year just from this program. And when I say across the board we have life insurance policies, we received a full trust from our group. We have probably had north of 50 new accounts within these groups. And these are small business, low cost deposits for the bank, non-interest bearing. And even with the lending piece of it, I just closed a little over $3 million small business loan, but with the small business administration that strictly came from our mastermind group. So we've had millions of dollars of business in this of working smarter, not harder, and just given our business clients what they need and what they ask for to educate them not on, Hey, let's come in and talk about checking and savings and money markets and loans. Let's talk about what you need. It's all about them and their needs for their businesses and their employees.
Stu Richards (13:49):
That's great. And if someone was to ask you like, this program sounds great, how do I implement it? What kind of learnings would you share on creating an effective program similar to yours?
Courtney Williams-Theis (14:00):
I would say primarily somebody teaching. It needs to be in the business community. They need to be a small business banker. I don't think it needs to be, and this is my personal opinion, I don't think it needs to come from a learning and development. I think it needs to come from a banker because the banker can speak the same language as those clients and know what they need and what their business needs. And even to bring vertical IQ back into this, one of our sessions is all industry related, and we specifically talk about each industry that's in the room. When they arrive that day on their desk, there is a vertical IQ specifically for that specific company and their industry. And so to narrow it down and to say, wow, this is all about me. This is what my business needs and different things that I can utilize to compare in our local economy and the US economy. I think to go back to your question, I think that you really, really have to have somebody that's willing to dig in and to continue to learn about the small business community as well as the local economy that they're facing, but also keep up with the US economy. You've got to really have those resources and connections, and we have our leadership team is definitely super supportive of this because of the educational piece and the growth piece that it's helped us with.
Stu Richards (15:32):
That's great. And Fred, one of the things you mentioned the Valley is doing is really encouraging employees to be engaged in the community. For example, serving on boards or volunteering. Can you talk a little bit about how that has implemented?
Fred Castrovinci (15:46):
Sure. And I think the common theme here between Courtney and I is really giving before you get providing a real value add and caring, right? Being local and caring and providing something without asking for anything in return. So us being a community-based organization, although we're now a regional bank, right? We're in the regional space, we can deliver services at scale and like a money center bank can but still deliver it with a relationship and community feel. That's the goal, to remain in that sweet spot for a period of time. We encourage all of our managers and employees in general to serve on boards of local nonprofit organizations or committees beyond normal volunteering. So I can look across my universe of management teams, relationship bankers, market managers that run our branches. Probably 75 to 80% of them serve on a board of some sort, and they'll also work very closely with our corporate social responsibility group to identify local organizations to them that also resonate.
(16:57):
We don't want someone to just join a board because it's encouraged. It has to be an organization that resonates with you. I serve on two boards myself. They are local because it is a time, it is definitely a demand on your time. So it has to work into your schedule and be local and reasonable that you can actually attend and be present and engage in the board activities. But that activity in and of itself, when you combine that with all of our other business development activity, besides it being inherently great for the community, you now start to gain traction when you have overlap because now they see Joe serving on his board, he's had an event, they also see him at a chamber event. They also see him in the community with customers. He's out with a local CPA or an attorney who also happens to be supporting the same nonprofit organization. And so that's one of the things that we really encourage that live, work, play, overlap and traction in the same communities across a number of organizations and you being the same person just in all of those different capacities. And we really pride ourselves in doing that.
Stu Richards (18:15):
That's great. You'd also mentioned the use of heat maps as a part of the sales process. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.
Fred Castrovinci (18:21):
So at a very high level, developing heat maps for our territories, whether it be New Jersey, New York, Florida, Alabama at a high level, we have a number of relationship managers that are out there trying to source new to new business in order to give them focus. The local leaders work on developing heat maps with them. And again, this comes back to identifying a concentration of, it could be commercial industrial businesses, it could be professionals, nonprofits. Those are all spaces that we target and do really well with. But in order for our weekly coaching to continue to work and that focus because we can all get distracted from time to time in order to keep that focus at the top of our business plans for each banker that they develop themselves, we're coming back to coach and say, Hey, let's look at your Salesforce activities. How consistent were you in this area of concentration for yourself within your heat map? What's taking you away from that? Maybe you're not in the right geography based on the target industry that you're looking to penetrate. So that's a constant coaching process. We constantly calibrate that, what's working, what isn't working, but it helps create focus for our people out on the road.
Stu Richards (19:45):
That's great. So at this point I wanted to see, we've covered a fair amount in terms of education, sales tactics, community involvement, and I wanted to see if anyone had any questions for these guys on anything regarding to business development?
Audience Member Mike (20:05):
I have a question. Sure. Mike, how do you
Courtney Williams-Theis (20:10):
Bring you a mic?
Audience Member Mike (20:14):
Thank you. Yeah, Mike, I raised with Nimbus. How do you go after, if you're looking at in the community itself, how do you constantly look at what's trending or going on to go after new markets, still community based, but do you sort of go through with your team on an annual basis or quarterly?
Fred Castrovinci (20:34):
So your question, I just want to make sure I understand your question. How do we identify new markets within the ones that we are?
Audience Member Mike (20:41):
Yeah, if things change along the way.
Fred Castrovinci (20:44):
It comes down to presence. We have a very robust branch presence within the state of New Jersey. So a big part of us developing traction is the fact that we have people on the ground. And my focus in New Jersey is to continue to drive further penetration within those markets. We'll identify people that are maybe in markets that are outside of our branch locations and if they've got networks, we depend on them to pull us in to let us know really where. So I would say it's less data driven in a sense, as much as it is people on the ground that really know those markets well that are bringing up their attention shifts that are happening in real time with real organizations and contacts.
Audience Member Mike (21:38):
Thank you.
Stu Richards (21:40):
Great question. Any others? Courtney, I had a question for you. So outside of the mastermind program, which sounds amazing, what other tactics are you taking to take advantage of the market opportunity where Pinnacle serves?
Courtney Williams-Theis (21:56):
I would like to piggyback off of what Fred said also about the community involvement. The community involvement for your bankers is huge. I love what you said about live, work, play because it needs to be the market that you live in and work in that you're giving back to the community from that aspect as well as something that you're passionate about that you have interest in. And some of these nonprofits in our area, we have 1800 nonprofits in one county. That's a lot of nonprofits. There's a lot of money in our county just in the giving of these nonprofits. And to be able to give back to them, I think that it definitely is another expansion of giving yourself to that community and who they recognize that you're part of that community and you want to be ingrained in it, that you naturally and organically can just earn business by being involved in your communities, being an expert in specific industries, if you will, learning as much as you can about specific industries.
(23:06):
One industry that I do not work with is contractors. We kind of divide that in our bank with some experts that just work specifically with contractors. I do a lot of manufacturers, a lot of, I have got several boutiques in town. I'm all over the board, dentists, doctors, I have a lot of chiropractors, but industry wise, there's not an industry that I don't touch. There's a few that I specifically feel like I'm an expert in, if you will, but to continue educating ourselves as bankers within each of those small businesses in the area, in your area specifically, and not try to branch too far out of that area. You want to be known in your specific area as the go-to person for small business. And even with the nonprofit piece, there's a nonprofit board that I serve as the president on and had asked my executive director to join the mastermind group.
(24:10):
And it's a conversation that comes up quite frequently, even with new business owners, like, I want you to join this group. This is very good for you to go through and define like-minded people. And we ended up choosing that group to kind of that specific nonprofit to break everything in the organization and build it up based upon the principles of masterminds. We put org charts in place. We helped them write their business plan, new mission statements, new branding, new marketing, because it was beneficial to us teaching that class to put ourself in their shoes on how it works. But it has really ingrained us in the community by doing specific things with the specific business owners and helping them and it not being about us.
Fred Castrovinci (25:00):
I have a question for you. You mentioned that your classes are industry diagnostic agnostic, I'm sorry.
Courtney Williams-Theis (25:07):
Right, right, right.
Fred Castrovinci (25:09):
What about sizes? Do you find that this class works better with certain revenue sizes more than others?
Courtney Williams-Theis (25:19):
Great question. And I like it to be all over the board. We have anywhere from a startup to about a $40 million business and anywhere from a startup to about a 30-year-old business. And it works because you've got the expertise across the board and the very green, but the very experienced. And when I first started teaching it, I felt like maybe it was just for startups, but I don't think that it is because we need everybody's opinion and expertise around the room to make it work.
Fred Castrovinci (25:51):
And that's a takeaway for me because right now we're just focusing more on doing that in the startup community banking micro business space. But I think that there's definitely opportunity after hearing everything you're sharing to expand that out in a different way.
Courtney Williams-Theis (26:08):
If you strictly focus on startups, startups are going to refer you other startups. And I need diversification across the board. I don't need a portfolio, all of startups, I need some good seasoned, experienced businesses also. So branching out and having the experienced business owners and that phone call is usually pretty easy. Bob, we're starting a new mastermind eight weeks, I really need somebody with your expertise and knowledge. And then they get in the class and they're like, I learned more than what I could ever give from everybody around the room. So I think really diversifying and having it all over the board is where it's at.
Fred Castrovinci (26:49):
Do you goal the bankers that run these classes in the same way that you goal others?
Courtney Williams-Theis (26:55):
Yes. Everybody has the same goals. I based on their portfolios and their expertise, I think would be the best fair way to say it, but they're not required to run a mastermind. We ask them to run a mastermind class if they want to. It's totally up to them.
Fred Castrovinci (27:14):
So their benefit.
Courtney Williams-Theis (27:15):
Right. But we have found that some bankers are like, I'm not a teacher. I'm not interested in doing this, but hey, what if I partner with Fred and we run it together? It's a slam dunk whenever you've got a partner running it together because you can divide and conquer on who you're pulling in to those classes and helping with expertise that you may not want to run it, but you may want to participate in it. And even having other bankers in the class with you, like your treasury management representatives, your investment advisors, most of these business owners, they need all of those people in their tool belt. So it helps to have them in the class and then that's that many more feet on the ground to say, Hey, I've got a business client that I'd love to refer. So works.
Stu Richards (28:04):
That's great. So I think we have time for one question, maybe two. Anyone?
Audience Member Nate Whaley (28:16):
Thanks. I'm Nate Whaley, also with Nimbus. I guess this is Nimbus's Day for questions. Yesterday in the opening segment with Amy from TD, she posited a thesis, which I really caught my imagination, which is that she thinks that small businesses are migrating up the food chain more rapidly or more readily than they have in the past. Her thesis was basically in the past they were always micros or they were forever in the s and b space, but with capital and maybe other things she sees businesses are progressing. I'm curious for both of you if you've seen that as well. I just thought that was a really interesting thesis and I've been asking everybody around whether they're seeing that. I think it's an interesting, if that's true, I think it's interesting. I'd like to understand more about why you think that might be happening.
Fred Castrovinci (29:15):
You want to take that first? I'll let you take it. Okay. So I am seeing more in our business banking space right now. It's a combination I think, of us moving up market a bit, us being a little more nimble on the credit decisioning side, and also a combination of borrowers listening more, having access to more expertise. And they, I am seeing a shift there in the business banking space. I think we're starting to see more borrowing based type lines that maybe we never saw in the past. We've increased exposures and they're manufacturing business might be buying the property they've operated out of, and the dollars on those properties are a lot higher than they used to be. So we are definitely seeing some upward movement for a lot of those smaller C&I businesses.
Courtney Williams-Theis (30:14):
I think it's very banker driven, and according to the advice that they're getting from the banker in 30 years, I've never declined a loan. And I know that sounds weird, but when I sit back down with a client to tell them we can't do this loan and here's why, but here's what we can do to be able to get you there and to be able to do the financing that you're looking at. It may not be the right timing, but educating them on how to get there is a huge part of our role as an advisor to the business owners. And the more that we as small business bankers can educate them, the more that we're going to see them grow and have a quicker pace, if you will, of growth within their business itself. Hopefully that answers your question.
Stu Richards (31:18):
That's great. Well, we're at time, but thank you for your participation. Great questions and thank you guys for fantastic insights.