Cross-sell measurement for relationship managers: products held against the sector norm

Every commercial bank says cross-sell matters. Few can say, per client, which products the client holds, which products a client like that usually holds, and what the difference is worth. The ledger already has the first part. The bank's own book supplies the second. This guide sets out how to compute the third and put it in front of the relationship manager who can act on it.

The measure

For each client:

Products held = distinct products with revenue in the period Norm = the median product set for clients in the same sector and size band Gap = norm − held, valued at the bank's revenue per product for that size band

For each relationship manager:

Cross-sell opportunity = Σ valued gaps across the portfolio Capacity = clients in the portfolio against contacts logged

The second line matters because a gap list an RM cannot work is a report, not a plan.

The rows you need

• Ledger: revenue by client, product and period, from the core banking or product ledgers. Lending, deposits, treasury, FX, trade, cards, as the bank defines them.
• Client master: sector, size band and the owning relationship manager. From the CRM or the client onboarding system.
• Contact log: optional, for capacity. Client, RM, date.

Client identifiers throughout. On a deployment inside the bank's tenant, the ledger never leaves it.

Defining the norm from your own book

The norm is not an industry table. It is what the bank's own clients of a given sector and size hold, which is both more accurate and defensible in a room.

1. Band clients by sector and size, using the bank's existing segmentation.
2. For each band, count clients holding each product.
3. A product is in the band's norm if more than half the band's clients hold it. Or use a threshold the product team agrees.

A client in the band holding fewer than the norm has a gap; one holding more is a reference client for the band.

The roll-up

1. Client by product: revenue and held flag.
2. Client: products held, gap against the band norm, valued.
3. Relationship manager: sum of client revenue, sum of valued gaps, clients per RM, contacts per RM. Assert that client revenue sums to the RM's portfolio.
4. Region and bank: assert that RMs sum to regions, regions to the bank, and the bank to the ledger total for the period.

bank revenue = Σ regions = Σ RMs = Σ clients = ledger

When the identity holds, finance signs the roll-up once and every cross-sell figure downstream inherits the sign-off.

A worked example

Mid-market band, norm is lending, deposits, payments and FX. One client.

Products held: two of a norm of four. Valued gap: $0.6m at the band's average revenue per product. The client is worth $2.4m today and the ledger says the band's typical client of that size is worth $3.0m. The RM's list opens with the payments conversation, because it is the larger of the two and the client already runs its deposits with the bank.

Where it goes wrong

Product taxonomies differ by ledger. The lending system calls it one thing and the treasury system another, and a product held appears as a gap. Map every product code from every ledger to one hierarchy before the roll-up.

Sector and size stale. A client that outgrew its band is measured against a norm that no longer fits. Recompute bands from current revenue and headcount on a schedule.

Group structures. A parent with five subsidiaries appears as six clients with partial product sets each. Roll subsidiaries to the group the bank manages the relationship at, and measure the gap there.

Gaps that are not opportunities. A client whose sector norm includes trade finance but who does not import will never buy it. Let the RM mark a gap as not applicable, keep the reason, and exclude it from the value.

Every month, reconciled once

Mapped once, the ledger and the client master produce the same roll-up every month, reconciled to the ledger, with each RM's list ranked by value and capped by capacity. Covirage runs this inside the bank's tenant on an enterprise deployment, with client identifiers only. The commercial banking page describes it.