Detailed Overview
The Small Business Toolbox Overview
This program is a highly customized integration of both credit and marketing skills training for bank employees who have responsibility for marketing to small business owners. The presentation works within the context of your market, your sales management system, and your unique small business products and services.
This program’s participants finish the course with enthusiasm and the confidence it takes to make them want to knock on the small business owner’s door.
Program Outline
A typical presentation of The Small Business Toolbox includes these four sessions:
Session One
Your Small Business Strategy – a brief presentation of your bank’s small business strategy, philosophy, and structure.
Introduction to the Entrepreneur – a fun yet insightful discussion of what makes entrepreneurs “tick.” The material includes an entrepreneur aptitude test, followed by a discussion of the traits of an entrepreneur. The overall focus of this module is to portray a picture of a business owner consumed with daily business issues, not an expert in financial management, willing to take calculated risks but savvy enough to know when to ask for help when outside expertise is needed – such as from their banker.
Session Two
Understanding Financial Statements – a basic but effective presentation of financial statements and tax returns, including what they measure, and their limitations. This section can be taught as a full-day, more detailed program, or it can be limited to three hours plus a pre-session reading assignment.
The focus of this portion of the program is to teach what the participants need to know about financial statements, in clear terms and with explanations that require no prior accounting knowledge. This material is concise, and yet it is highly effective. Just as important…it’s fun.
Your Bank’s Approach to Small Business Lending – a presentation and explanation of your bank’s small business underwriting guidelines, including a Quick Assessment tool that enables the participants to get a quick feel for a case study credit. The purpose of this material is not to teach the participants to underwrite deals. Instead, they learn to “size up” a potential deal to help decide if it’s worthy of investing additional marketing time. Most important, the entire session – including the Quick Assessment – delivers a turbo-boost of self confidence to individuals who may have been reluctant to broach financial topics with small business owners.
Session Three
Small Business Credit Products. This part of Session Three consists of a pre-session assignment to review and study your bank’s internal product features and benefits.
Identifying Small Business Borrowing Needs. After reviewing your internal material that told them what your credit products are supposed to do for the business owner, participants spend classroom time discovering how and why your products really do “deliver the goods.” Through guided discussion of why small businesses need to borrow, and by practicing with case study companies, participants make the connection between borrowing needs and appropriate product solutions. They learn to look for need cues and identify more opportunities than are disclosed through traditional training’s role-play scripts.
The Loan Approval Process – a quick review of the information required to initiate a small business loan request, and the steps taken to analyze and approve the loan at your bank’s loan approval center or other administrative location.
Session Four
Talking with Small Business Owners helps the participants recognize that they need no special knowledge about a company or industry to be able to ask good questions that will uncover credit needs.
Participants learn a specific questioning technique that is comfortable, yet effective. Several fun exercises help them discover just how far a few good questions can take them, even if they know virtually nothing about a prospect company.
Audience
This course is designed for bank employees who have responsibility for marketing to small business owners, but who have little or no background or training in small business credit. The course assumes no prior knowledge of accounting or financial statements.
Objectives
This course enables participants to:
Understand their bank’s small business strategy, philosophy, and structure.
Understand basic accounting and financial concepts, as well as their bank’s loan approval steps and underwriting guidelines.
Understand why small businesses need to borrow, and why their bank’s credit products meet those needs.
Practice identifying small business credit needs, within the context of the bank’s own sales management system.
Formulate specific questions that will help the participant converse with business owners and assess their borrowing needs.
Become more confident, comfortable, and enthusiastic when working with small business owners.
Format
The program consists of four modules that range between two and three hours in length. The program can be presented either in four separate sessions, or as a two-day program.
The Small Business Toolbox is a highly customized program, incorporating each client bank’s proprietary small business philosophy, strategy, products, and procedures, and so can vary in length depending on topics the client bank wishes to incorporate in the program.
Delivery Options
The program can be delivered by either a Midwest Consulting Group facilitator, or by a designated individual or group of individuals at the bank.
Leader Guide materials are comprehensive and designed specifically to meet the needs of small business line personnel who are best qualified topically to deliver the materials in-house. A comprehensive train-the-trainer program is an integral part of any program to be delivered by line officers.
To Learn More
If your employees need tools to market your loan products to small business owners, either send us an E-mail or call us at 616-399-8036. We’ll be happy to discuss customizing an on site course and teach them to work more effectively with small business owners.
