It’s Saturday morning and I’ve just received a phone call from a woman at Dime Savings Bank with whom I’ve done some banking business. I was pretty happy to hear from her just on a personal level. I’ve been in to see her three or four times over the past two years about my retirement fund and we’ve had a few conversations about nothing in particular, but it’s always friendly stuff.
Just for background, I’m one of those people who will move a CD account out of a bank when it’s matured if the guy across the street is promoting a rate that’s half a point higher. It can be a pain sometimes, waiting on line to see a bank adviser on a Saturday morning can actually take up to an hour in some establishments and then sitting with them to compare rates and then perhaps finally decided to remove your money from said bank and having the check cut before you’re on your merry way can take even longer. Then, going across the street or across town to redeposit the check in another CD account can be its own challenge, since most banks close at noon or one on Saturday. There’s always another line to stand on to see that bank adviser and then filling out that paperwork for the new CD is another issue. But I do it to get the best deal.
Matesh called me this morning because Dime has just gotten rates for CDs that she said were pretty good for this economic scene; 3.25 percent for an 18-month CD. I found the fact that she called me to be so charming and innovative—she’s a banker for goodness sake, not a salesperson—that I actually felt bummed that I’d recently put my money into Astoria Federal. After I told her that that was the case, we chatted for awhile about our families and our travels. All the while I was racking my brain to see if there were some other type of account I could open with her today, that’s how good I felt about her calling.
Travel agents should be doing the same thing these days. Amazing deals are coming through your pipeline and you shouldn’t be afraid to call clients to let them know about them. Deliver the news simply, that you’re checking in with them to see what their needs are and that the actual reason for your call is that you’ve got a very enticing deal that you’ve just come upon. They might not bite immediately but they’ll likely think about the call throughout the day and may creatively come upon a travel need they didn’t know they had when they woke up that morning.
I’ll do that with my banking needs
today, and even if I don’t bite at the CD rate Matesh was talking about
I’ll be sure to visit her when my Astoria Federal deal expires in six
months. She values my business and that counts a lot to me.