Attributes of Successful Small Business Lenders
Successful relationship managers wear many hats, and are able to blend their credit and conversation skills, in order to drive sales for their managers, get the right information to their underwriting team and please their customers.
Here are some of the skills that successful small business lenders must have to help their financial institutions develop profitable loan portfolios:
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Planning
- Successful relationship managers plan their calls beforehand. They conduct research and decide what questions they will ask. Lenders are most successful when they have a checklist or other tools that help them consider the best open-ended questions they can ask to draw information from the business owner.
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Relationship Building
- The best small business lenders have ongoing, consultative relationships with their customers. They foster those relationships by taking the time to get to know their customers, building solutions that help their businesses thrive, and following up regularly once those solutions are in place.
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Credit Analysis
- Relationship managers may not require the same level of analysis skills as underwriters, but to be successful, they must be able to identify trends in a business’s financial performance and determine whether they are likely to continue. The most important job of a small business lender is predicting, understanding, and defending future cash flow.
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Storytelling
- Since the loan approval process is a centralized function, separate from the customer-facing lending process, at many financial institutions, relationship managers may be the only personnel who have direct contact with the customer. This places the responsibility of effectively telling a business’s story on the small business lender.
Want to learn more about how to develop these skills in your lenders, so that you can increase the number of profitable loans at your organization? Download a copy of our latest white paper, “Think like an Underwriter. Act like a Salesperson. Speak like an Advisor.” today!
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