Season 2, Episode 33: Sandy Hanson

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Jack Hubbard: So, as I mentioned in the introduction, I met Linda O'connell and John Barlow, probably close to 30 years ago, and we became fast friends. Linda is an ex-banker, and John, who is chairman emeritus at Barlow Research, and I really hit it off. And as I mentioned, too, Barlow is my go to when it comes to doing research.

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Jack Hubbard: They were always and always have been, so kind to send slides about their various studies that we're going to talk about today so that I could present it at speeches and banking schools. And we have their small business program manager with us today. Sandy Hansen. Sandy. Thank you so much for being with us, and so great to have you on the show.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, thank you for having me.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, let's let's dive into Barlow research. But I want to start with you. You've had a great career at Barlow, and so just talk a little bit about your background. And what got you to Barlow, and what your role is today.

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Sandy Hanson: Sure. Well, I've been with Barlow research for over 20 years. I started as an analyst after finishing my master's program, which was in applied psychology applied. Psychology is heavily focused on research methods. So it was a really good fit to come to Barlow research. Over those 20 years I have worked pretty much in every arm of the company. I've worked on our middle market program small business that I'm still working in today, and our custom research arm as well.

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Sandy Hanson: In 2016. I think it was. I took over the small business banking program as the the manager of that program. So I've been doing that for almost 10 years now.

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Sandy Hanson: and in 2020 I took on some more roles. I took on a role as a managing partner of the company, and as the treasurer for the company, so you know, over the last 5 years, and what a challenging and interesting time to become a business owner, you know, that has really deepened my understanding of how do small business owners think and operate because I'm doing it myself? Now.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you are. And you know your degree in psychology is probably proving quite beneficial, not only inside the company, but outside the company. This has been a really challenging time, Sandy. What are you hearing from Banks around? What's going on in the economy and the world in general?

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, I mean, it is an interesting time, for sure. I feel like everything is cyclical, you know we we've before my time at Barlow. We had obviously 9 11, so we heard about the ups and downs from that. During my time at Barlow we had the 0 8 crisis, the great recession we had, Covid. We've been through. And now we have this other thing happening with some of the tariffs that are coming out. There's a lot of uncertainty

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Sandy Hanson: in the marketplace for small business owners as well as for our bank clients as well, and I think we just have to wait and see what's going to happen with the new administration.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, one thing that we do know is that, regardless of good times, bad times all the time Barlow research is going to be there to help talk a little bit about your amazing history and what you do, and how you help your clients.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah. So the company is focused on b 2 b research so we do not do consumer, we're strictly b 2 b, and really focus on the financial services industry. We really, our primary goal is to help our customers. The financial providers out there understand what their customers are thinking. So what do they think about the economy that we just talked about? How do they bank? What products are they using, and what are their expectations for digital capabilities.

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Sandy Hanson: We've been doing this since 1980. And, as I said, our goal is, it's pretty simple. We bring the voice of the business customer to the table so that our clients can make better, more informed decisions when they're working with their customers.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you've been at this for 45 years. That's that's amazing, isn't it? To think about that.

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Jack Hubbard: you know. And I was a banker back in 1980. So I used Barlow research when you just started. But you also specifically do research. But I also want to talk about your podcast and your newsletter and other things. What other kinds of resources beyond the research, Sandy, do you bring to the table to help your clients with.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, our syndicated programs which we're going to talk some data from some of the data from that program today. But they offer a suite of deliverables and some of those deliverables are available outside of the program. So, as you mentioned, our analyst journal articles and our podcast those are 2 things. The podcasts are actually free. So go onto our website and make an account. And you can watch our podcast they're on linkedin, too. You can get them there.

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Sandy Hanson: But those podcasts are great events. We release them every other month. The 3rd Thursday of every other month. And we feature a either a industry, expert or a business owner themselves, and talk about a variety of topics from, you know their cash flow management that those business are doing, or we'll look into banking industries, and you know how they're expanding into different markets, things like that.

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Sandy Hanson: So those are a great resource to really see, both from the inside banking. What are those industry experts saying about what they're doing today as well as outside? What are the actual business owners saying?

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Sandy Hanson: And then our analyst journal articles you mentioned, those those are available outside of the full subscription and those we feature our data because we're in the field quarterly with these studies. So we're always getting fresh information, and we will dig through that information. And we find out what is new, what's changing? What are the things that people need to know, and we write an article on that information and those come out once a week. So there are a lot of them to look through.

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Jack Hubbard: And they are phenomenal. And what I really like about them is that you tie research the research that you do into some action items. Okay, here's a few things you might want to consider doing, which I absolutely love. But you mentioned the data that you have, and you were going to talk about that. Let's go up a little bit. 30,000 foot. How do you gather the information to report to your client, Banks?

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah. So we are a full scale research house. We do both syndicated, as I've kind of mentioned as well as custom, and we use a variety of research methods. So we're doing online surveys. We're doing mail surveys. We have our own panel. If you need a quick hit, we also do in-depth interviews and our data. You know what we're doing for our syndicated programs. We're getting a list from Dun and Bradstreet is our list. Source. And we're surveying

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Sandy Hanson: thousands and thousands, 7,000 on an annual basis for small business and around 2,000 on an annual basis for middle market, plus our digital business banking program plus our economic pulse. So we are getting thousands of responses every year from these business owners via those mail surveys, online surveys from the Dun and Bradstreet list, and then the custom side of the house. If you have a research need, you can come to us, and you can

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Sandy Hanson: say, I want you to survey my customer list, and I want to know specifically, what did my customers say about banking with us? We can do that. We've done that for years we have a great product called AR

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Sandy Hanson: Cra. Our customer relationship audit, where we are able to really drill down to look at a specific bankers book of business, and we report out and give bankers kind of scorecards on. How did your book of business say about working with you? Where do you need to improve and roll that up to to the team, to the region, to the bank as a whole.

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Jack Hubbard: Stay with the data a little bit. You talked about a panel. Discuss that a little bit. What does that mean?

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah. So our panel we call it our flash panel. And once somebody responds from from our larger syndicated studies or from the Dun and Bradstreet list. We will ask them if they are interested in joining our panel, and if they join that panel, then we have them available. They're ready to take additional research studies from us. And what that means is that we have them at the ready, so we can send out surveys and get responses very, very quickly

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Sandy Hanson: within 2 to 3 days, and we can get, you know, a good response rate on a topical question that our clients might have. We use it internally as well if we see something, and we say, Oh, we need a little bit more information on this. We'll send it out to that flash panel, and we'll be able to get responses very quickly.

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Jack Hubbard: It's fascinating.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, when I was in graduate school of banking as an instructor, and in other banking schools that I teach at you were always kind to give information, and one of the things always fascinated me was, you've divided small business that we're specifically talking about in May into 3 different segments. So talk about those segments, how they use their banks, and just riff on the 3 segments a little bit.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, well, small business, you know. We define it as companies, a hundred 1,000 to 10 million in sales. And there's 7 million businesses across the United States. So that's a large number of businesses.

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Sandy Hanson: So we do feel that they operate within that range very differently at the low end versus the high end. So we do break it into those 3 breaks. Our 1st break is we call micro businesses. Those are companies 100,000 to 500,000 in sales. And that is about 80% of all small businesses. So that was really driving the average small business

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Sandy Hanson: while they're smaller in sales. Size and employee count on average, they only have 5 employees. So that means that the owner is not only doing the finances, doing the strategy for the company, if you will. They're running the day to day.

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Sandy Hanson: They are, even though they're small on scale size and employee. They are established companies. So they've been in business for about 25 years. We're not talking to new startups once they've reached that $100,000, Mark and the owner is in their sixties. So they've been through a lot of these ups and downs that we've been talking about.

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Sandy Hanson: They're using a lot of products already. They use on average 9 business products. But they're sharing the relationship already. So they are sharing that across multiple institutions, they actually award about 80% of those products to the primary. But they will go outside the primary for some of them.

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Sandy Hanson: And those micro companies they are, you know, looking for more reactive service. And I think we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But they're really in the branches, and they're on the digital channels, online banking and mobile banking.

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Sandy Hanson: Now, the next segment that we have is what we call small enterprise.

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Sandy Hanson: Those companies have 500 to 2.5 million in sales. So a little bit larger. But it's just 15% of all 7 million companies across the Us. Now, their employee size doubles. They go from 5 at the low end to 10 in this segment is the average. So a bit more employees, they're probably using some payroll products, a little bit more advanced products. And in fact, they do use one more product on average than the lower end. They're up to 10 business products.

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Sandy Hanson: but they're still in the branches. They're still on. Digital but again, using those a little bit more complex products like maybe the payroll solutions. They're also more likely to use traditional bank lending once they get to this segment.

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Sandy Hanson: And then the last segment is what we call business banking. Those are 2.5 to 10 million in sales. This is only 5% of the market. So it's a very small sliver when we're talking about all of the companies across the Us. But a very important segment, even though it's small in the number out there they produce a lot of revenue for their banking provider because they are definitely using traditional bank lending products at this point. And that is where a lot of that net potential revenue comes from.

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Sandy Hanson: Now again, in addition to their sales size being higher. Now, we're talking about employees in the thirties. So around 32, I think, is the average number of employees. And again, they've added another business banking product. So they're up to 11. And this is a segment that wants proactive service. They want advice from their bank and their banker. They really would like an assigned relationship manager.

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Sandy Hanson: That doesn't mean they're always going to get it. And I think this is a segment where we see a lot of competition for large banks which we categorize as banks with assets over 50 billion. We're seeing a lot of competition for the large banks from what we term the medium sized banks, those with one to 50 billion in assets. That's because medium banks are much more apt to offer

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Sandy Hanson: that personalized relationship that these companies are looking for versus a large bank. You know, they may not be able to offer that to all of their customers that they have just based on the number of customers they have in their books of business.

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Jack Hubbard: It's interesting. And you look at the like 1011 products that a that a company might use.

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Jack Hubbard: I don't know if you have any data on this, but I've seen is that banks have as few as 3 services from their primary from a primary customer. There's a lot of cross-solving that can be done, and I talk to bankers all the time, and I always say.

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Jack Hubbard: if you did a great job of being a fully banking, every one of your clients, or as much as possible. You'd never have to worry about prospecting. You'd have all the business that you that you need.

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Jack Hubbard: I'm curious if you found in your studies at all, that if a if a company uses 1011 products, 8 products whatever it is, how many products a primary bank actually has with those small businesses.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, regardless of the sales segment. So we're talking about the smaller companies or the larger companies. They are sharing that relationship. As you said, it's around 80%. So 80% of the total number of products they use, they award to the primary. So they are shopping some of those products. Many times. It is the traditional bank lending products that they're shopping. So they'll go outside for that. Some of the merchant services type products as well

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Sandy Hanson: well as business credit card is an easy one, where they'll get that outside the primary as well.

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Jack Hubbard: Okay.

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Jack Hubbard: Every year you you do a small business annual report. Your 2025 report will be out soon. Talk a little bit at a high level, because we'll take a little deep dive into some of this talk about the annual report and what you're trying to do with that.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah. So the annual report takes all the data that we collected over the last year. So again, we're in the field Quarterly. So we're taking all that information, and we are drilling it down to show you really in small business, how do these companies feel about banking with their primary bank we look into the channels they use. So are they using a banker? Are they using the branch? Are they using online banking? And if they are the satisfaction level with those channels

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Sandy Hanson: we look into, how they think and feel about their bank. So the brand of the bank do they feel you're easy to do business with? Do they feel that you appreciate them? Things like that we touch on management of relationships which we're going to dive into today? But are they assigned to a banker who's their primary contact? How important do they feel? It is that that person understands their company's objectives that they make effective use of their time. And then performance levels on those things as well.

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Sandy Hanson: And we dig into products. So those products we were just talking about, what products are they using? How many are they awarding to the primary bank? What ones are they giving away as well as a whole? Slew of demographics, primary bank market share. Are they planning to leave? Are they adding providers? It's well over a hundred pages, this report. So we dig into everything.

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Jack Hubbard: And so that I don't leave this obviously as a Barlow member, you would get that. But if I'm a bank and I'm not a member. Can I purchase this separately.

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Sandy Hanson: You cannot. You do have to purchase the full program to get access to that annual report. It's kind of the jewel of the program.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, it's a really good idea, too, because the other things that you provide at Barlow on a regular basis are so valuable. And here's just another example of a value. Add living your message of what you're hearing from customers about banks that they want value. You're providing a lot of value with the report. So we can't dive into everything.

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Jack Hubbard: But we can answer a few questions. You you talked about products.

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Jack Hubbard: How how about products compared to the relationship with the bank or the banker. Where does that all stand?

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Sandy Hanson: Well, about 41% of all small businesses say that the relationship that they have with their bank and banker is as valuable as the products and services that that bank offers. So relationships matter even at the small end, they matter now what that relationship looks like for the smaller size company is going to be different than the upper end. But regardless that that relationship does matter to these businesses.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, who who's their banker? Then, if you, if you look at the different segments

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Jack Hubbard: when you talk to people who talked about their primary bank and their relationship. Who is that banker.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah. So at the low end, when we ask, Who's the primary contact for those companies? They're gonna say, more likely it's somebody in the branch. So it's a branch manager. It's a teller, maybe a customer service rep when you get to the upper end. Then they're saying it's a officer. So a senior officer or an account officer?

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Sandy Hanson: You know, even at the end, even though that person might be somebody in the branch. I say that relationship matters, because when they have a problem or an issue, they need to know that they can go to a real human person to get a resolution for that issue.

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Jack Hubbard: All right. So we have a primary contact at the bank. It could be a branch manager could be a relationship manager, whatever the case might be. Talk about the attributes. What are your survey respondents saying about what they're looking for from their banker?

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, I think you know, regardless of who they're looking for, but especially when we're talking about going up market to those bankers.

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Sandy Hanson: They really are wanting that personalized attention and that proactive service. So when we talk about the primary contact attributes, and we ask about a lot of them again, we're looking at. How important are these different attributes as well as the performance level of that person on those attributes. And and that changes if they're if it's somebody in the branch. They're not going to expect them to really be proactive, necessarily in suggesting solutions.

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Sandy Hanson: but they're going to expect them to be accessible when needed. So it's a difference of importance depending on the size of the company. Now, when we're talking about the larger small businesses who are wanting that proactive service we always talk about. The banker has to know the Abcs.

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Sandy Hanson: It's a really easy acronym. They have to a be accessible. So that doesn't change small company, large company. You need to be accessible. They need to know how to get a hold of you and have a backup, you know, if they can't get a hold of you or

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Sandy Hanson: and B, you need to know the bank. So you need to know the bank's products. You need to know how things work. You need to know how to connect them to different people when they need to be connected. And C, you need to know the customer. You need to understand their objectives. You need to know how their cash flow works. And it's really not until you can prove that you know the Abcs. That a customer is going to listen to your suggestions.

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Jack Hubbard: That's interesting. Well, listening to my suggestions really smacks of advice. Where are small businesses going to get advice about their financial situation?

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, we ask a question that's about general business advice. So not necessarily specifically looking out for banking advice. But just where do you generally go for business advice.

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Sandy Hanson: and small businesses do not usually seek out their bankers for business advice. They will go to their accountants, they will go to their lawyers. They'll even ask other business owners or family and friends depending on the sales segment searching the Internet or Google actually comes up higher as a source of advice than the banker.

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Sandy Hanson: Again, you know, we have to really demonstrate those Abcs before we're going to be seen as a trusted advisor.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, there's no doubt. And and when I looked at the

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Jack Hubbard: preliminary report that you were kind enough to send to me, and I looked at past reports that I've received. It really hasn't changed very much, Sandy. What are they not getting here about this? What are what are bankers missing in this.

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Sandy Hanson: Well, I think they're just some of it probably comes down to. They're busy. It's, you know, when we talk about the number of accounts that a lot of bankers have assigned to them. It's probably a bit hard to do some of those basic things, but I think we really do need to go back to the basics and just make sure that our customers know how to get a hold of us, and we need to make sure we've done our due diligence, and we understand all the products that our bank has.

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Sandy Hanson: and and then dig into the customer, too, I think, call prep planning is a big one. Obviously, before you meet with a customer, you have to take some time to sit down and really look at. What are they using with us. What do companies like them.

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Sandy Hanson: you know in general, what are they using? Is there a gap? Our most, for instance, if it's a dentist office, our most dental office, using, you know, Xyz product. But my customer is not using that with us. Why not kind of have open up that conversation, and and we have some tools that can help bankers do that.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, for sure.

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Jack Hubbard: I'll go on my rant here now, Sandy, it's fascinating to me that if you put all this data together it absolutely smacks of.

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Jack Hubbard: I'm a banker. I got to get face to face with my customers

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Jack Hubbard: now. That could be virtual, could be on the phone, could be face to face.

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Jack Hubbard: and I hear branch managers tell me all the time. Well, I don't have time to do this. Well, you need to make the time this data would tell you that your relationships are potentially at risk, especially the important ones. So I always say to bankers, branch managers. Especially do you have to open a branch every day.

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Jack Hubbard: and the branch manager will say, I open a branch every day. So that's not the question. Do you have to? And they say, Well, no, I don't have to do you close the branch every day. I don't have to say those days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is the best days to call.

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Jack Hubbard: Go make a call or 2 on your way to the branch

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Jack Hubbard: and make a call on the way home.

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Jack Hubbard: Because if you're not at the branch. Nobody's gonna call be calling and maybe need you unless there's an emergency. And then they can always get a hold of you. That's the accessibility I'm talking about with my our customers, and if if we're

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Jack Hubbard: not going to be a dinosaur here, we're not going to go out of business as a bank in as an industry.

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Jack Hubbard: we need to. We need to get to our customers. And that doesn't mean email. You know, I here's the other thing that really bugs me about email.

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Jack Hubbard: I'm getting a lot of emails now from people. And they don't put their phone number in their darn email. And so now, the only way to get back to them is

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Jack Hubbard: send them another email. Well, we get billions of emails every day. Put a darn phone number in there so I can. I can get a hold of you. Accessibility doesn't mean that. The second I call you have to be there. It means that you're going to get want to get back to me. And you've done some research on this about how quickly clients want bankers to get back to them. Can you talk about that just a little bit.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, that's a huge one. As we talked about the lower end versus the upper end, this is something that it does not matter the size of the company. If they have called you, or they have emailed you, they expect a response in 2 to 3Â h. Now, as you said, that that doesn't mean that you have to solve their problem in 2 to 3Â h, but you need to acknowledge it in 2 to 3Â h. Hey? I got your voicemail. I heard your problem, your issue. I'm gonna figure it out. I'll get back to you by X,

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Sandy Hanson: and just that accountability, that accessibility and know for them to have the the know that you're working on it for them, and that that is just sitting there somewhere, and no one's ever going to hear that message.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I I'll call it the Sunset Rule. This is very simple. So a customer calls with a challenge and you say, Look, I'm gonna get back to you, and I'll let you know by the end of the day. If I had a still don't have the solution, because some are complex. All I gotta do is pick up the phone and say, Look, I wanted to let you know that I'm continuing to work on this, and I will get back to you tomorrow and let you know where I am with it. That's all a customer wants, that's all. You know. We just built a house.

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Jack Hubbard: and it was fascinating to me.

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Jack Hubbard: The the and people say, Well, did you negotiate with your subs? No, no, I want them to do a good job, but the only thing I want them to do is to follow up with me.

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Jack Hubbard: Just tell me where you are. I don't care if you can't put the cabinets in tomorrow, but tell me so that I'm not sitting around for 3Â h at the house waiting for you to put the darn cabinets in. And so we have every tool that we need

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Jack Hubbard: to make sure that we're following up with with our clients. Whether it's, you know, phone email text, Linkedin, you name it, but but we don't do it, because sometimes the customer is not the priority, because my manager called me. And oh, I got to do a report. Well, the whole idea around the report depends on how you well you do the customer. Your report is going to be 0. If you don't have customers.

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Jack Hubbard: There are some banks, I'm sure.

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Jack Hubbard: that are doing really really well, and I know if I'm a member of Barlow I get to know some of the names of these folks.

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Jack Hubbard: so you can't give us all.

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Jack Hubbard: But give us a couple of names of banks who you find that are doing really well in small business.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, I definitely can definitely can touch on that. I want to go back, if you don't mind, just to add one other thought on that response. Times, you know, I think people are very well aware today of work-life balance, and I don't think anybody is wanting.

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Sandy Hanson: you know. For the most part people don't expect everybody to work 24Â HA day. But again, you know, just get back to them, hey? I am acknowledging this, and I'm going to work on that you had the example of building your house. I have an example of shopping insurance, so I've been shopping insurance, and I had one company who? I sent him an email on Friday afternoon. He got back to me right away. He said, oh, I have some other questions for you

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Sandy Hanson: answered those questions on Saturday. Never expected to hear from him until Monday morning at the earliest, and he wrote back right away, you know. Okay, great. I'm going to have something for you this afternoon now. I didn't expect that at all, and I would have been completely fine with not hearing from him until Monday, but he blew me out of the water by not only answering me on a weekend, he got me a quote on a weekend.

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Sandy Hanson: Now, in contrast to that another company I've been shopping. They've been dark on me for 3 days. 3 business days. So

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Sandy Hanson: yes, price matters. But also, you know, some of that response. Responsiveness matters, too, in my decision on which company I'm going to go with.

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Jack Hubbard: In the absence of value.

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Jack Hubbard: price is always the issue. Now you may hear back from the other company, and you may end up going with them, but they're going to have to dig themselves out of a big hole in order for them to earn your business. And that's very true in banking as well. Well, we started this by talking kind of in general about some of the other resources that Barlow brings to the table.

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Jack Hubbard: Get specific with me. Talk about some of the podcasts that maybe you've done recently, or the few that that are coming up. Talk about your analyst journal, and specifically how that all works. You bring a lot of resources to the table, Sandy, and you need to. You need to tell Banks what you do here.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, we definitely do. As I said, our stick. A programs are a suite of deliverables. So we are in the field with that study quarterly. So we're updating those deliverables every quarter and the analyst journals every week

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Sandy Hanson: our tabulations are Updated quarterly. So if you're a member of our program, you get access to all the data. So that's every single question cut by a million different things. And if you have people on your teams that really love digging through data. We have that available for them to use analyst journal articles. We talked about those we're really looking into some of those hot topics and writing about those and connecting them with the why does this matter

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Sandy Hanson: our tools? We have a suite of tools online that are very easy point and click you're able to compare for some of the large banks. Compare yourself to your peers on a variety of metrics that are trended over time. We have a market share tool. We have a tool that looks into relationship management staffing. So if you want to service your customers at these levels, how many visits, how many calls

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Sandy Hanson: are they doing prospecting? It will tell you how many customers that banker should be able to handle at those service levels, you know, calculating in vacation hours and

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Sandy Hanson: holidays, and all of that as well. Other tools on those product tools that I talked about. The we have one called our

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Sandy Hanson: our banker edition for our customer profiler. That really shows you. If you're working with that dental office, what products is a typical dental office with these sales size? What are they using? So you can see product gaps between what your customer might be using and what the average customer might be using

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Sandy Hanson: our, podcast we talked a little bit about those, but an example of that is just the last one in April. Here was featuring Matt Smith from Veritex Community Bank, and Andrea Moore met with him. They talked about building strong strategies for those midsize banks, but really how to execute them by aligning them with the strengths of the bank.

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Sandy Hanson: the culture of the bank, and the customer base of the bank. How you kind of connect all those things! So those are great resources, as I said, to really dig into what are some of these financial leaders doing in their book, you know, in their worlds.

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Sandy Hanson: So.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you do. You do so much around that and various resources. And I know I've been on your podcast a number of times and it's been. It is great. The other thing that I've done a couple of times is to speak at your business banking conference, which is actually coming up in May 13th and 14.th Talk about that conference, who? Who are some of your speakers, and and where is it? This year.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, it's going to be in Chicago this year. May 13th and 14th are the dates we'd love to have you come, and everybody who's listening come and join us there. We have a great variety of speakers. At that event.

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Sandy Hanson: We feature panels on small business banking, middle market banking, and digital business banking. We're going to have some sessions on the economy as well. So some of the speakers that we're going to have there are for my panel. We're having someone from Comerica Brent. Harriman is going to be joining me as well as Rachel Castro from us bank. And there's, you know, a lot of other

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Sandy Hanson: really great speakers that are going to be at the event. It's a great networking event. Again, kind of like those podcasts. You can really see what these different institutions are working on. What are their challenges that they're facing right now? And how do they, you know, anticipate tackling some of those challenges.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. Brent's Brent's been in classes with me. He's a great sales leader. It's it's truly outstanding. So if if people want to get a hold of the the company, or you, Sandy, talk about how they do that.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, our website, barlowresearch.com feel free to get on there. There's places where you can just submit an inquiry through the website. Or if you want to contact me directly, my email is S. Hansen, that's SHAN. [email protected].

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Jack Hubbard: That's terrific. Well, thank you very much for being on with us today. Sandy Barlow research is such a great partner has been for many, many years, and you're great friends of us of ours, and you're great friends of banking. So thanks so much for all you do for the industry, sandy.

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Sandy Hanson: Oh, thank you, thank you so much for having me. It was really nice talking with you this morning.

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Jack Hubbard: Okay, we're good. I was going to ask you about AI, but we didn't prepare it, and I didn't want to blindside you. What are you hearing from Banks using? AI? I know you work with a lot of big banks, and I'm sure they're into it. But have you done any research around AI, and what banks are doing.

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Sandy Hanson: We haven't done a ton on it. We did just do a digital payment study that I think I wasn't really involved in that I think they might have touched on it a little bit. There. But yeah, I think it's I, really. I'm glad you didn't ask, because I can't talk intelligently about it from what the banks are doing. That's kind of more in our digital program if they're touching on it at all. But I don't think we've really even touched on it. We did some conference, some speakers at the conferences last year on it.

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Sandy Hanson: And I don't know everybody's kind of all over the board. It feels like from, you know from the audience whether they think it's like this great thing that they need to invest in, whether they're scared of it. So I think it's kind of the jury's still out a little bit.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I think it's all of the above. I think you look at risk and and privacy and compliance, and you balance that against the power of of AI from a sales perspective. It's pretty interesting. I wanted to at least let you know

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Jack Hubbard: we're doing, and I don't know how you get involved with the podcast.

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Jack Hubbard: But I've we've been working for about a year on something that's so phenomenal. It's unbelievable.

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Jack Hubbard: It's called AI navigator and it connects salesforce

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Jack Hubbard: rel pro vertical IQ. All kinds of other outside 3rd parties with St. Myron Hubbard's training.

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Jack Hubbard: and it reduces call planning

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Jack Hubbard: from minute from hours down to seconds. It's unbelievable. And the guy that does it is not me. It's it's a guy named Ron Buck, and if you decide you'd like to have Ron on as a as part of a podcast or something like that. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me. And I'll connect you with Ron. He's a he's mit graduate. He's an absolutely brilliant man, works with Umpqua

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Jack Hubbard: at a lot of large organizations. So if you want to, if you want him on as a guest down the road. Let let me know, and I'll connect you.

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Sandy Hanson: Okay. What did you say? It was called AI? What.

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Jack Hubbard: AI. Navigator.

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Sandy Hanson: Navigator.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, we've we've been kind of under the radar with it. We're looking at doing. We've we've got pilots signed contracts for 3 very large banks and some community banks as well. So it's it probably probably aren't gonna do a whole lot of publicity on it till fall. But it's it's the next step of of call planning, because banks bankers just don't have a lot of time.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, what they're

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Jack Hubbard: doing. And you mentioned call planning. And I'm glad you did, because that's so critical, and if you don't have time, what you're going to do is doorknob planning, which is, I'm at the door of the business. I'm gonna turn the doorknob. Oh, God! What are we going to talk about today? And then the absence of planning you pitch your products, and that's just not. That's a horrible thing to do.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, because they have to. So I just worked on an onboarding study that's about to be released. And you know, they they're open to cross selling. They are once they add a new product. They're open to cross selling, but it has to be properly timed, and it has to connect with their the businesses, you know, objectives it has to be. It has to fit into. They really need to see how that product is going to benefit them, otherwise they don't want to hear about it.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, thanks, Sandy. This will be on and obviously anything we've talked about after we stopped will be edited out, but we'll we'll it'll be on May 7.th

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Jack Hubbard: What we do is we have a team that will send you a few days ahead of time, probably Thursday before May 7.th all kinds of links and things like that. You're welcome to put it on your website. You can, if you said Jeez, I want the full. I want the full program to to share with client you you whatever you want to do, Sandy, you're welcome. Just let me know what you want or what you need, and we'll go from there.

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Sandy Hanson: Okay, sounds good. We didn't, you know. I I went back to one of your comments because I wanted to add that thing in, and I didn't answer your question about who's doing well

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Sandy Hanson: too much.

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Jack Hubbard: No, don't worry about it. Okay.

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Jack Hubbard: it's fine. I think it's better sometimes if you just.

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Jack Hubbard: You don't mention the name of the bank. Sometimes it, you know, while you probably have permission to talk about chase and regions and stuff, it's probably a better thing that we didn't. It's okay, good enough. Well, thank you again.

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Sandy Hanson: Are you asking me.

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Jack Hubbard: Time. Say Hi! To Linda and John, and everybody, and all the best with your conference. I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it this year, but maybe next year.

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Sandy Hanson: Yeah, definitely.

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Jack Hubbard: Thanks, Sandy.

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Sandy Hanson: Okay.

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Jack Hubbard: I know.

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Sandy Hanson: Bye.