Melanie Jordan | Future Branches Austin

Building for Growth - Human Centered and Innovative Branches

9:40 AM Keynote: Equipping Branches for Small Business Conversations

As small business expectations evolve, branches are increasingly becoming the front line for conversations that once sat primarily with treasury or specialized business banking teams. For many institutions, that means rethinking how branch bankers identify more complex business needs, ask sharper questions, and confidently connect owners with right-sized solutions that match real operational challenges.

In this session, Melanie Jordan of Zions Bank will explore how to prepare frontline teams to support small businesses in a more consultative way—without overwhelming junior bankers or relying on disconnected tools that never fully take hold. From training staff to recognize needs beyond basic transactions to embedding prompts, workflows, and product guidance into everyday systems, the discussion will focus on what it takes to operationalize new capabilities in practice.

Special attention will be given to how technology can improve conversation quality, support more targeted recommendations, and reinforce behaviors through daily use—while leadership plays a critical role in making adoption stick. Because even the best-designed tools or new processes only deliver value when they become part of how teams naturally work every day.

Audience takeaways:

Identify ways to prepare branch teams for more nuanced small business conversations.
Embed technology and prompts into existing workflows to improve adoption.
Strengthen consultative selling skills through targeted training and reinforcement.
Align leadership practices with frontline behavior change to sustain results.