Seven Ways to Bolster Marketing.

• Author: Bexley, James B.
• Position: Banking industry

Threatened by competition? Your bank is not alone. One of the most effective ways to enhance your position is through more aggressive marketing.

Here are a few simple, direct ways to boost your efforts.

You can gauge your bank's current competitiveness by taking this short quiz. Answer the following questions honestly:

Are your bank's officers and employees salespeople rather than merely order-takers?

[] Yes [] No

Do they seek to determine their customer's needs?

[] Yes [] No

Are they encouraged to sell the services that will yield the best profit margins?

[] Yes [] No

Do they seek to establish long-lasting relationships with customers by promoting new products or cross-selling existing services? El Yes El No

If you gave affirmative answers to all these questions, your bank should do well in the years ahead. If not, your bank could be headed for trouble--faster than you may realize.

Times are changing. Competition is on the rise. This is especially true with the recent repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the passage of the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act.

The bank industry has changed more in the past five years than it has in the prior 50 years combined, Many of these alterations have been brought about by evolving technology, such as the increased use of the computer and the Internet. Other changes have been caused by evolving lifestyles and heightened global competition.

How can a bank succeed in today's new, highly competitive world' The first thing that a bank-needs to do is to understand the new realities, particularly the altered techonological landscape. According to Bill Gates of Microsoft, some 43. million households now own personal computers. Probably about 40 to 50 percent of households are currently online.

Computers today are providing more processing power for less money. For example, in the early 1970s, Bank of the Southwest in Houston purchased the first third-generation computer mainframe used to process a bank. They paid $1.3 'million for that computer. Today, most laptop computers costing some two or three thousand dollars are more powerful than that state-of-the-art computer from the 1970s!

This is the information age. The improvements in connectivity through fiber optic cable led to over 10 million households with DSL (digital) technology in 1998. The Internet with its worldwide Web has changed and is changing the way Americans conduct their business. American lifestyles have shifted and so have the assumptions that banks used to make about their customers. Today, the customer expects to get things done instantly, efficiently and, in many instances, without human mediation. Such factors as distance and time are no longer viewed as obstacles to the service that customers demand.

When it comes to technology and banking, the market paradigm has been transformed. Today, banks have online banking unattended telephone balance response and automatic bill payment.

Bank consolidation is another reality. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the number of banks declined to fewer than 9,500 last year from an industry high of 14,500. Banks that survive will be those that offer an array of products and services to meet the consuming public's needs, and--at the same time--pay attention to technology and...