Playing Against Type

Most bankers these days are simply breathing easier. The last 18 months have been a whirlwind, and the thought of soliciting new commercial banking business has got to be low on the priority list today.

But should you want to play against type and seek out new commercial banking business, CFO magazine’s newly released “Business Outlook Survey” offers a fine template.

First, bankers should know the economic forecast most business leaders are working from. According to the survey, 39.5% of all business executives in the nation foresee the economy beginning no later than in this current quarter. In fact, 26.2% say the “recovery has already begun.” And even among the remaining executives, who can be classified as pessimists, nearly half say the recovery will kick off in the first half of 2010.

Now what will these CFOs of Corporate America react to in a sales pitch? CFO asked the finance executives, “If you passed up projects in the past year due to credit constraints, are they canceled or does your firm anticipate pursuing them eventually?” The vast majority of the respondents — 58.4% — said the projects were “postponed indefinitely.” Another 28.2% said the projects were “temporarily postponed.” This is where bankers can engage in a dialog with finance executives in Corporate America. Bankers can once again be facilitators for corporate planning, perhaps even turned mothballed projects into reality. Sure, some of those projects deserve to be mothballed, and it is not easy to find an Asset/Liability Committee that wants to take on more risk, but if a bank should seek out more market share today, there’s a clear path to it.