An Unlikely Combination.
Posted on June 7th, 2007 by Simon ChenA bank and the web. Now thats an oxymoron.
But here’s an interesting story. I met a young guy this week, Dan Payne, sharp as a tack and a sales managers dream - he loves picking up the phone and calling people. He loves selling stuff he’s passionate about.
Thats nothing new. Well, maybe it is in this day and age.
But what got me is that Dan works for a regional bank as a core member of their web team. Let me say it again. He sells online solutions to small to medium sized customers that come into the bank for money and walk out with a website.
They have a simple offering. Chocolate. Vanilla. Or Strawberry. For a little more money, they’ll add a shopping cart. For the same again, merchant facilities. And once a year, you’ll get a modest hosting bill plus the offer of 1-2 hours support. Oh, and the solution also includes setting up and hosting your email. The bank even takes care of the initial domain registration.
Talk about lateral thinking.
I love it.
Imagine the big banks with something like this. They would sit around a boardroom, with key stakeholders from every department. Legal. Finance. Marketing. IT. Compliance. HR. PR.
“Lets get into providing our small to medium sized customers with online solutions. Like websites, web hosting, email management and online payment solutions”.
“Are you nuts?”
“What about the brand of the bank? Where would we put the logo?”
“How would we make money?”
‘”What would the value proposition be vis a vi the synergistic ratio to the cost of capital”. Or something equally as idiotic.
At the Bendigo Bank, on other hand, someone said “You know what, I reckon our customers would buy websites and web services from us if we offered it”. “After all, they keep asking for them”.
“Screw it then, lets do it”.
And they did. See for yourself.
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June 8th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Nice Idea. And must say am blown away, that an actual aussie bank is offering such a concept. WOW!
June 14th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Brilliant! Consider the value you could get if, as a bank, you could get access to your small business customers metrics! I was reading a Harvard Business Review article from a while back yesterday titled “Manage Your Human Sigma”. It talked about the importance of understanding activity on a local level. Imagine the leverage you could get from these stats! A “mini-Google” as such (most of us would have guessed they were keeping their data anyway, so its a shame its exploded into such a mess).
“Screw it then, lets do it”, is right! Heck, you’d have to be missing the point completely to not see the value in such a proposition!
November 20th, 2007 at 8:05 am
[...] for all the local community groups receiving Bank grants and there was a presentation from young Dan Payne of Bendigo Bank Web Partner about the community portals Bendigo is providing free to help with long [...]