I asked him one question: “Who is your ideal customer?”

He said, “Everyone in our community.”

That’s not a strategy. That’s hope.

I’ve now had some version of this conversation with dozens of banks — community banks, regional banks, credit unions, digital-first challengers. And I’ve started to notice a pattern. The ones that are growing intentionally — not just riding a rate cycle or benefiting from a competitor’s collapse — can answer a specific set of questions cleanly.

The ones that are struggling? They can’t.

Here are the 10 questions I ask every bank. They’re not gotcha questions. They’re diagnostic. If you can answer all ten with specificity and confidence, you’re probably doing the right things. If you stumble on even two or three, you’ve just identified your growth roadmap.

1. When you size a market, are you focused on TAM or TRM?

TAM — Total Addressable Market — is the seductive number. It’s the one that ends up in pitch decks and board presentations. “There are 30 million small businesses in the US.”

TRM — Total Reachable Market — is the honest number. It’s the subset of that market you can actually reach with your current distribution, brand presence, and product offering. For a community bank in rural Tennessee, the state I’m from, TRM might be 4,000 businesses. That’s fine. Work that number.

The banks that chase TAM end up building products for nobody. The banks that work TRM build relationships that compound.

2. How intimately can you define your ICP?

ICP: Ideal Customer Profile. Not “small business owners.” Not “families.”

I’m talking about: a woman-owned professional services firm with 5–12 employees, $800K–$2M in annual revenue, operating in a single metro, that banks primarily for payroll and line-of-credit access, and is currently underserved because her big bank treats her like a number.

That level. If you can describe your ICP the way I just did — with texture — you can build a sales motion, a product bundle, and a marketing message that actually lands. If you can’t, you’re just broadcasting into the void and hoping someone responds.

3. Do you perform a Product Investment Mapping exercise on a recurring basis?

Most banks have a product portfolio that evolved organically over 20 years. Products got added when a regulator required it, when a competitor launched something, or when a board member’s nephew pitched a fintech partnership.

Product Investment Mapping is a deliberate exercise: for each product, assess where it sits on the revenue-contribution vs. strategic-importance matrix. Some products are cash cows. Some are strategic loss-leaders for ICP acquisition. Some are zombie products keeping the lights on for 40 customers who’ve been here since 1987.

If you don’t know which is which, you’re making budget decisions in the dark. I’ve seen banks spending 30% of their technology budget maintaining products that serve 2% of their customer base. That’s a solvable problem — but only if you map it first.

4. Is your brand tone and voice unique, or do you sound like every other bank?

Go to any five bank websites right now. I’ll wait.

“We’re a community-focused financial institution committed to your success.”

“Building relationships that last.”

“Your trusted banking partner.”

Who said it? Doesn’t matter. They all said it.

Voice is differentiation. If your brand messaging is interchangeable with your competitor across the street, you are not competing on brand — you’re competing on rate and convenience alone. That’s a race you will eventually lose to a fintech with lower overhead who has nailed differentiation.

The banks I respect most sound like a person, I see you Incredible, not a press release.

5. Do you offer verticalized product bundles for your key ICP?

Generic checking accounts and generic loans are table stakes. The bank that wins the restaurant owner, or the construction contractor, or the real estate investor isn’t the one with the best rate.

It’s the one that understood those customers deeply enough to build a bundle that fits their specific cash flow patterns, their seasonal borrowing needs, their payroll timing, and their insurance requirements — and packaged it in a way that makes switching feel painful.

Verticalization is the move. Most banks know this. Few actually do it.

6. Beyond service and trust, what makes your bank different?

Every bank says service and trust. Those are not differentiators. They are the price of admission.

I push here because this question forces honest reflection. When a bank can answer it with something concrete — “we underwrite construction loans in 12 business days when the regional average is 34” or “we have a CFO advisory program for our business banking clients that no one else in our market offers” — that’s a bank with a real GTM story.

When the answer is service and trust with a few more adjectives, that’s a bank with work to do.

7. How quickly do new customers get to experience what makes you different — i.e., speed-to-experience?

This is one I rarely hear banks talk about, and it might be the most important one on this list.

If your differentiated thing is that you have a dedicated business banking advisor who knows your customer’s industry...when does a new business customer actually talk to that advisor? Day 1? Day 30? After the third upsell attempt?

Speed-to-experience is the gap between your promise and the customer’s proof. The longer that gap, the more your new customer is comparing you to their old bank. This is what the neobanks and cryptobanks have figured out. Close that gap, and you turn a new account into an advocate before they’ve had a reason to leave.

8. What strategies do you have in place to attract younger generations?

I’m not asking about a TikTok account.

I’m asking: have you done the research to understand how Millennials and Gen Z actually think about banking? That they distrust institutions by default? That they want transparency, not polish? That they’re carrying student debt that shapes every financial decision they make?

The banks winning younger customers aren’t out-marketing fintech apps. They’re offering financial coaching. They’re building credit products for people with thin files. They’re showing up in the moments that matter — first apartment, first business, first kid — instead of waiting for that customer to walk into a branch.

9. What products or services do you offer to attract younger generations?

Strategy and tactics are different questions. This one is tactical.

I’m looking for specificity. Do you have a student loan refinancing program? A first-time homebuyer product with a real education component built in? A small business starter account designed for someone launching a side hustle from their apartment?

If your answer is “our standard checking account” or “we meet them where they are,” that’s not a product strategy. That’s the absence of one.

10. Do you track CAC and CLTV?

Customer Acquisition Cost. Customer Lifetime Value. These are not startup metrics. They are the fundamental math of whether your growth is sustainable or not.

A shocking number of banks cannot tell me what it costs to acquire a new checking account customer. They can’t tell me what that customer is worth over 5 or 10 years. That means every marketing decision is based on instinct, not economics.

You don’t need a sophisticated data science team to start tracking these. You need someone with a spreadsheet and permission to ask hard questions. Start there.

These 10 questions aren’t the end of the diagnostic. They’re the beginning of a real conversation.

The banks that can answer all of them clearly are the ones I see growing intentionally — not just waiting for the next rate environment to bail them out. The ones that can’t? That gap is the opportunity.

Which of these questions would your team struggle to answer today? Start there.

P.S. I’m in the middle of building a GTM diagnostic tool for banks. Interested in being a beta? My DMs are open.

The banking industry is changing dramatically. The profit engine that was the Baby Boomer generation is aging out. In its place is a younger cohort—Millennials and Gen Z—who have completely different expectations about what a financial institution should be. They don’t want a marble lobby; they want a frictionless user experience. Paired with the aggressive entrance of neobanks and decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms that are winning the battle for relevance, traditional institutions are facing an existential crisis.

To stay relevant, banks must evolve. It’s no longer enough to have the best interest rates or the most branches. To survive banks must overhaul their Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies for the modern marketplace.

Moving Beyond “Business as Usual”

The traditional banking GTM strategy was often “be everywhere for everyone.” If you had a physical branch on the corner, you won the local market. But in a borderless, digital world, “everyone” is a recipe for mediocrity.

A modern GTM strategy isn’t just about marketing; it’s about alignment. It’s the process of ensuring your product, your message, and your delivery system are perfectly synced with the specific segment of the market you are best equipped to win. For growth-stage fintechs and traditional banks alike, this requires moving away from broad Total Addressable Market (TAM) metrics and focusing on precision.

I see six pillars that form the foundation of a modern bank’s GTM strategy. If you ignore these, you aren’t just falling behind—you’re becoming invisible.

The Six Pillars of Modern Banking GTM

1. Total Relevant Market (TRM) Over TAM

Everyone likes to brag about their Total Addressable Market (TAM). While a multi-trillion dollar TAM looks great in a pitch deck, it’s far too big to actually win. Modern banks focus on Total Relevant Market (TRM).

TRM is the specific segment of the market that you understand and are designed to serve better than anyone else. If you are a community bank with a deep understanding of commercial real estate in the Southeast, your TRM isn’t “all US businesses.” It’s the specific niche where your expertise provides a competitive moat. By narrowing your focus, you increase your authority.

2. Market Investment Mapping

Where are you deploying your capital? Not just your loan capital, but your GTM budget. Market Investment Mapping is the process of auditing where your dollars go versus where the resonance is happening.

Many banks waste millions attacking markets that are indifferent to their offering. A modern strategy requires data-driven mapping to see which segments are biting. If your “green energy” loan product is seeing 10x the engagement of your “standard small business” line, the mapping tells you where to double down. Stop subsidizing indifference.

3. Explicit ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles)

Within your TRM, you need to understand your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) intimately. Most banks stop at demographics: “Business owners, age 35–55, $5M in revenue.” That’s not an ICP; that’s a mailing list.

You need to know them in and out. What are their habits? How do they make decisions? Where do they go to find information? What keeps them up at 2:00 AM? This goes deep into psychographics. Do they value speed over price? Do they prefer self-service or high-touch advisory? If you don’t know the specific pain points causing them discomfort, you can’t position your bank as the aspirin.

4. Product Alignment and Bundling

The era of the “one-size-fits-all” checking account is over. Currently, 62% of consumers feel their banking recommendations are irrelevant. This is a massive failure in Product Alignment.

Modern banks must build product bundles that meet specific ICP expectations. For a SaaS founder, this might mean integrated venture debt, R&D tax credit financing, and automated payroll sweeps. For a real estate developer, it might be streamlined escrow services and bridge lending. If your product doesn’t make their specific financial life easier, they will find a niche neobank that does.

5. Speed-to-Experience

Friction is the silent killer of GTM strategies. Speed-to-Experience is the metric of how quickly a prospect can feel what it’s like to work with you.

If it takes three weeks and four in-person visits to open a commercial account, you’ve already lost the modern customer. You must remove every possible barrier. This is where AI and automation shine—not just for back-office efficiency, but for providing immediate value. Whether it’s an instant credit pre-approval or an AI-driven cash flow analysis tool provided during the onboarding process, the goal is to provide a “win” for the customer as close to T-zero as possible.

6. Brand as a Differentiator

Look at most bank websites today. You’ll see the same stock photos of smiling families, the same blue-and-gray color palettes, and the same “we value your business” platitudes. Products have become commoditized. With the democratization of AI, even the tools have become commoditized.

What isn’t commoditized is authenticity. Modern banks have a differentiated brand voice and a clear Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your brand should be a filter: it should attract your ICP and repel those who aren’t a fit. Whether you are the “Bank for Tech Disruptors” or the “Guardian of Family Legacies,” lean into a personality that stands out from the sea of sameness.

The Path Forward

The dual threat of demographic shifts and technological disruption isn’t going away. To survive, banks must stop acting like utilities and start acting like strategic partners. By focusing on your Total Relevant Market, mapping your investments to resonance, defining Explicit ICPs, aligning products to needs, prioritizing Speed-to-Experience, and building a Differentiated Brand, you move from being a commodity to being a necessity.

Audit your last 100 new accounts. Don’t look at their balances; look at their behavior. Find the common thread among your most profitable, least-needy customers. That is your ICP. Now, ask yourself: Does our current website and product list actually speak to that person, or are we still trying to be everything to everyone?

Ready to refine your GTM strategy for the modern market?

If you’re a growth-stage business or a financial institution looking to sharpen your edge, let’s talk.

While traditional banks are still offering 0.5% to 1.5% on deposits, stablecoin rewards have surged into the 4% to 7% range. This isn’t just a trend; it’s a structural shift. The question is no longer if banks will lose deposits, but whether they have the tools to win them back.

The Yield War: Why Banks are Losing

To understand why your local bank can’t compete with Coinbase’s 3.5% yield, you have to look at the “hidden tax” of being a federally-licensed financial institution.

Banks are historically SLG (Sales-led Growth). Their cost structures are weighed down by:

• Physical Branches: The overhead of brick-and-mortar real estate.

• Sales Organizations: FSRs, BDRs, Branch Managers, etc.

• FDIC Insurance: This safety net comes at a high premium paid by the bank.

• Capital Reserves: Strict regulations require banks to keep massive amounts of cash idle to ensure stability.

• Lending Risk: Banks make money by issuing loans (mortgages, auto, commercial) which have default risks.

In contrast, a platform like Coinbase can take user funds and sweep them directly into U.S. Treasuries—currently paying around 4.5%—with almost zero overhead. When they do lend, they often utilize over-collateralized crypto loans at 8% to 12%, leaving plenty of room to pass a 4% reward back to the user.

The Neo-Bank Counterattack

The “Cryptobanks” are no longer outsiders. In a landmark move this year, the Brazilian giant Nubank received conditional approval from the OCC for a US-based national banking charter. They are bridging the gap between the wild west of crypto and the security of the federal framework. Then came Revolut’s application for a US banking license, on the heels of receiving approval for a UK license.

Nubank and Revolut are juggernaut’s in their respective countries, who are going to bring modern banking go-to-market strategies to the U.S.

They aren’t alone in stirring up competition.

During a recent 83-day period, 11 different fintechs received National Trust Charter approval.

The barbarians aren’t coming down the road they are at the gate and if banks want to stop the bleeding, they can’t just compete on yield—they have to compete on the Experience.

The path to an amazing experience is through Product-Led Growth.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a business methodology where the product itself serves as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion.

Unlike traditional sales-led models—where a sales rep convinces a lead to buy—PLG relies on the user experiencing the product’s value first-hand, often through a “freemium” or self-service model.

For growth-stage tech and SaaS companies, this is the gold standard. For banks, it represents a massive shift from relationship-based selling to value-based discovery.

The Core Pillars of PLG

To implement PLG, a product must meet three specific criteria:

1. Low Friction: Users can sign up and start using the tool in minutes without talking to a human. I call this “speed-to-experience.” The quicker you can get a new customer using your products the better.

2. Short Time-to-Value (TTV): The “Aha!” moment (the point where the user realizes the product’s benefit) happens almost immediately.

3. Viral Loops: The product becomes more valuable as more people use it (e.g., Slack, DocuSign, or Venmo).

How Banks Can Leverage PLG

Traditional banking is notoriously “high friction,” involving long applications and manual underwriting. To leverage PLG, banks must transition from being “service providers” to “platform providers.”

1. The “Sidecar” Strategy

No, I don’t mean a side core, I mean sidecar. Instead of lead-gen forms, banks can offer free, high-value digital tools that solve a specific problem.

• Example: A “Cash Flow Forecasting Tool” or a “Burn Rate Calculator” for SaaS startups.

• The PLG Play: The user gets value for free. Once they see their cash flow projected in the tool, the “expansion” is a seamless prompt to open a high-yield treasury account or apply for a bridge loan directly within the interface.

2. Embedded Viral Loops

Banks can lean into the transactional nature of their business to drive growth.

• Example: Invoicing and Payments.

• The PLG Play: If a bank provides a small business with an integrated invoicing tool, every invoice sent to a vendor is a “referral” for the bank. When the vendor clicks to pay, they interact with the bank’s interface, creating a natural entry point for them to open their own account.

3. Self-Service “Sandbox” Environments

For fintechs and tech-heavy startups, the “product” isn’t just the money; it’s the API and the infrastructure.

• The PLG Play: Banks can provide a developer sandbox where founders can test API integrations for BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service) or payments before ever signing a contract. If the integration is seamless, the product has already sold itself to the CTO.

4. Data-Driven Upselling (The Product-Qualified Lead)

In PLG, we don’t look for “Marketing Qualified Leads” (MQLs); we look for Product Qualified Leads (PQLs).

• The Play: A bank notices a business’s account balance is growing at 20% MoM, or they are frequently hitting their credit card limit. Instead of a cold call, the product triggers an automated, in-app offer for a specialized growth credit line.

5. UI: The Retention Engine

Morning Consult’s recent survey showed that 76% of people would switch banks for a better experience. For Gen Z and Alpha, a clunky web portal is a dealbreaker. A clean, intuitive UI is no longer a luxury; it is a requirement for retention. If a user can’t move money or see their “rewards” in two taps, they’re gone.

Your bank’s online presence is your digital front door. Younger generations, that every bank I talk to wants to win, expect a digital front door that looks and acts like the apps they are using every day (Instagram, Snapchat, etc.).

6. The Power of PFM (Personal Financial Management)

Data shows that banks integrating robust PFM tools see a 20-30% lower CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) and 2x higher retention. When a bank helps a user budget, save, and visualize their goals, the relationship shifts from a “utility” to a “partner.”

Unfortunately, 62% of Zillennials (Gen Z + Millennials) say that the recommendations they get from their bank are irrelevant.

7. Hyper-Personalization

Banks that use data to personalize offers see a 15% lift in revenue. Instead of a generic credit card offer, imagine an app that sees you’re spending $200 a month on gas and automatically offers a card with 5% cashback on fuel—or better yet, an auto-invest feature that sweeps that cashback into Treasuries or stablecoins.

The Shift to PLG

That’s PLG (Product-led Growth), and its how fintechs are acquiring new customers, engaging with them to cross-sell products, and retaining them through that engagement.

To effectively transition to a Product-Led Growth model, banks must stop viewing their digital interfaces as mere “account portals” and start treating them as a growth engine.

This shift requires a fundamental cultural pivot: moving away from the “call for a quote” mentality and toward a “click to experience” reality.

By prioritizing a low-friction user experience and immediate time-to-value, financial institutions can transform their core products into self-sustaining acquisition tools.

In this new paradigm, your most successful “loan officer” isn’t a person in a suit—it’s a seamless, embedded application that solves a founder’s immediate cash flow crisis at 2:00 AM, when they are panicking.

The competitive advantage for banks will no longer be determined solely by interest rates or physical footprints, but by the elegance of their integrated workflows.

When you provide a business with a dashboard that doesn’t just show their balance, but actively predicts their runway and offers a pre-approved bridge loan the moment they need it, you aren’t just a utility; you are an essential partner in their growth.

The future of banking belongs to those who can bridge the gap between financial services and software, creating a product so intuitive and valuable that the user sells themselves on the next level of your relationship.

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