A New Model for Business Banking Growth: What Banks Can Learn from U.S. Bank.
Relationship banking has always been a strength for many banks. Business owners value bankers who know their business, understand their goals, and can provide advice beyond individual products.
Yet for decades, banks have struggled to deliver that experience consistently across every client relationship. Despite significant investments in sales training, CRM, data, and technology, too many client interactions remain transactional and product-focused.
Bankers still carry most of the responsibility for initiating conversations, uncovering needs, and creating opportunities. As portfolios grow and client needs become more complex, that approach becomes increasingly difficult to execute consistently. Even strong bankers can struggle to uncover every need, and too much valuable meeting time is spent gathering information instead of providing advice.
U.S. Bank needed a repeatable way to make every client conversation consultative from the start.
How U.S. Bank Reimagined the Client Conversation
U.S. Bank partnered with 9Lenses to create the Operating Cycle Review (OCR), a no-cost digital business review that helps clients assess key areas of their operations, including cash flow, receivables, payables, payments, fraud prevention, and treasury operations.
After completing the review, clients receive a personalized scorecard highlighting strengths, opportunities, and recommendations. Their banking team receives the same scorecard along with deeper insight into the business.
The Operating Cycle Review changes the traditional sales dynamic. Rather than relying on bankers to uncover needs in a brief phone conversation or in-person meeting, U.S. Bank offers clients a structured consultation designed to provide value around their business.
Clients come expecting advice and are more open to sharing their needs and challenges. Bankers come prepared with insight into the business. Instead of spending the meeting searching for an opportunity, they can focus on advising the client and recommending solutions that directly address the needs they’ve identified.
Turning Consultations Into Measurable Results
Thousands of U.S. Bank clients have completed an Operating Cycle Review, and the impact goes beyond a better client experience.
According to the U.S. Bank case study, the approach has:
- Shortened sales cycles by roughly 14 days, with one structured consultation replacing multiple discovery meetings
- Created a more consistent advisory experience across the business banking portfolio
- Helped new Treasury Management Consultants become effective faster
- Deepened client relationships through personalized insights and recommendations
As a U.S. Bank Treasury Management executive shared:
“The OCR has helped us create a more consistent and scalable approach to consultative banking. Our team spends less time gathering information and more time helping clients solve business challenges.”
The Bigger Lesson for Banks
Banks don’t need to become less personal to become more scalable.
The opportunity is to make valuable, consultative client interactions more repeatable. Instead of relying on bankers to initiate meetings and then search for needs, banks can offer purposeful consultations around issues their business clients already care about. Clients come expecting to receive value and advice, not a product pitch.
That creates a better starting point for both the client and the banker. Clients are more willing to share what matters, bankers can advise more holistically, and opportunities across Treasury, Credit, Merchant, Cards, and other areas can emerge from the client’s needs.
Growth becomes a natural outcome of delivering value rather than selling products.
How 9Lenses Helps
9Lenses provides a technology platform that helps banks make personalized advice a repeatable strategy for growth.
The platform creates a consistent process for understanding client needs, using AI to prepare bankers with relevant insights and guidance, and delivering valuable consultations that uncover opportunities across the relationship.
This helps banks deliver a more consistent advisory experience across more clients and bankers, while keeping the banker at the center of the relationship.
The result is deeper relationships and a more scalable path to growth.
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