What's the incentive? Frontline employees aren't likely to buy in to your carefully honed marketing plan unless you make it worth their while. The National Banks of Central Texas asks branch managers to draft their own local plans, and then offers financial incentives to encourage employees to work together to achieve goals.

• Author: Townley, Brian
• Position: Marketing Plans

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Remember that fantastic marketing plan you wrote last year? The one in which you analyzed your bank's strengths and weaknesses and then identified areas of opportunity for revenue growth and enhanced profitability--as well as objectives and tactics for reaching them?

Your CEO praised it as one of the most brilliant marketing schemes he had ever read.

So how are things going this year? Have any of your frontline employees even bothered to read the plan?

Ouch!

If you have ever been involved in drafting a marketing plan, you know that one of the key challenges is getting management as well as employee buy-in.

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The National Banks of Central Texas (assets: $450 million), Gatesville, Texas, faced a similar problem in drafting its first marketing plan in 2007. However, we have managed to implement a system in which branch managers generate their own local plans and goals. Employees also receive financial incentives for working together to achieve branch objectives.

The result has been a high degree of employee/management teamwork and cooperation in attaining goals. In 2008, for example, the bank exceeded its marketing objectives and the bank's net income was 48 percent higher than it was the previous year.

In this article, I will explain how we achieved these successes.

It started with one branch

The National Banks of Central Texas was founded 120 years ago in the predominantly agricultural community of Gatesville. The original bank operated under the name National Bank. In the 1990s, the bank purchased two other troubled banks in adjoining towns as a result of the savings and loan crisis. The new banks were operated under the National Bank name. As a result of seeing how successful the new branches were, the bank became more expansion oriented and added two more branches beyond those that were purchased. Today we have six branches in four markets. Each of these markets is different. The second is near a military base; a third is heavily oriented toward retirement housing; and a fourth is located in an urban area (the city of Waco).

I have worked in the banking industry for 22 years, 18 at The National, where I have served in every area of operations and administration. In 2005, while acting as the head of branches, I was promoted to the job of director of marketing and director of human resources. Prior to this time, the bank did not have a marketing department.

One of my first assignments was to review the bank's name and brand. We changed the name to The National Banks of Central Texas to give our...