A survey of fifty retail financial services executives, conducted by Profitable Channels, uncovered that the phone, web and branch assets can make a tangible impact on sales today, and how industry leaders are capitalizing on these assets to significantly improve sales effectiveness and generate organic growth.

This report is designed to help sales and marketing executives in the retail financial services industry understand the potential of their phone, web and branch assets to drive growth, and to provide investment guidance on how to generate the most growth from these assets in the short and long term. The findings, based on interviews with 50 executives, an analysis of industry trends, sales benchmarks and best practices, found that:

• Phone, web and branch channels are regarded as a top growth option. The majority of executives view these channels as essential to organic growth and competitive advantage. Customers are now comfortable doing business through these channels, and select industry leaders have aggressively and effectively converted these channels into engines of growth.
• Phone, web and branch channels are regarded as an untapped growth opportunity. But most executives agree their organizations are “behind the curve” in terms of tapping the potential of these assets to drive top line growth.
• Industry leaders have proven these channels can be effective: Capital One, Wachovia, Quicken Loans, Intuit and Net Bank are now using their phone, web and branch channels to originate qualified leads, book more transactions, grow deposits and expand “share of wallet” through a wider range of products and services.
• Growth investments should be focused on four sales process “hot spots”. These include speeding the approval process, fixing the booking process, building simpler products that are easier to try and buy online, and applying phone and web resources to deliver virtual relationship management for better exit barriers
• There are seven “quick hits” that can generate real top line impact in the next 12 months by expanding the front of the sales funnel and keeping leads from falling out of the back during the contract execution and funding process.

If you manage a retail financial services business line, channel or product, you should care about selling through your phone, web and branch channels because they represent your best – if not only – opportunity to drive growth. Many companies lack the resources to dramatically expand sales capacity by hiring expensive and scarce relationship managers or grow through acquisition. But most institutions have vast untapped growth potential that exists in the millions of web interactions, hundreds of call center agents and the 95% of retail customers assigned to the branch, phone and web as a primary channel.