Build a strategy
For the merger to be successful, there had to be a strategy to move both organizations forward, so while Markham and Holt worked to create a unified organization, they also worked on building a strategy.
“Part of it is defined for you,” Markham says. “You can see the natural synergies when Jan. 1 came around. Then the other part of it is sitting down and taking a broad look at what the market has, knowing that you’re client-first, you’re going to be serving clients, so you have to back into, ‘What are our clients and what are our future clients telling us, and then you share that.”
What they found was that as the world had gotten more complex on the financial services business, they needed to be able to help clients meet their needs by listening to them and helping them create goal-based planning to take out some of the complications. They needed to provide more tools and a broader platform to service clients — both things the merger could help them do.
They looked at each company’s footprint and found that each organization held about 25 percent market share in their respective industries. Despite that, on Holt’s side, less than 10 percent of his CEOs and owners had a relationship with Merrill Lynch, and the number was similar for Markham’s clients having a relationship with Bank of America.
“That’s pretty easy to identify an opportunity, and so then you develop strategies and tactics around that,” Holt says.
So they got together and did a gap analysis to create those strategies to go forward.
“Where is there a gap where we have a client need or a client opportunity, and then trying to fill those gaps with those teams where we have someone from the commercial banks and U.S. Trust, private banking investment and the wealth management organization,” Markham says. “Many times we have relationships and are able to go out there and say, ‘Where could we provide value for this client?’”
Staying rooted in reality is one of the most important things you can do in creating your strategy, according to Markham and Holt.
“One thing I learned early on is to get the right facts,” Holt says. “Get the right facts so everything you’re doing is based on good facts and not intuition. Start there and come up with a good strategy and get the buy-in from the various teams, attack the market, and then stay with it. Too often, companies come up with the right strategy, but they give up on it after six months because they’re not seeing the results. Something like this is going to take years. You just have to stay after it.”
