Cash flow management problems still occupy the top spot for why small businesses fail. Doing everything we can to help small business owners secure their cash flow is why Space Coast Credit Union and FINSYNC have formed a promising partnership.
SCCU’s Business Advisors are a valuable asset to the community. Vanessa Sablon manages this team, and their job is to help develop small business owners. Vanessa has been with SCCU for over three years, and she loves what she does. Learn more about Vanessa’s journey with FINSYNC below.
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
I enjoy that I get to create the tools our team uses to support our Business Members. We started conducting workshops last year on the most popular topics business owners need help with. Some of these topics are successfully launching your small business, branding your business, taking on new employees, and hiring a bookkeeper.
These workshops are free and open to all business owners, whether they have a membership with us or not. These workshops and our coaching program showcase how SCCU is passionate and dedicated to serving our members. We help many start-up business owners who are great at providing their services but may not be familiar with all the aspects of being a business owner, such as managing their cash flow or tracking their expenses.
What is your favorite part of being on the Space Coast team?
I love that we are really passionate about helping and developing our Small Business Members. You always hear financial institutions say they help small businesses grow through financing or merchant processing, and we do that as well; however, what is unique about SCCU is we also help small businesses grow by providing coaching and consulting to give structure for not only growing the business but developing the business owner. I like that we listen to what our business members need through Business Advisor interactions to collaborate with the business owner and develop a strategy for growth.
How do you locate business owners who may be a good match for FINSYNC?
Our Member Service Specialists, the equivalent of a teller, and Business Advisors take a consultative approach, seeking to learn about our business members to understand their needs and how we can help meet those needs. If we see a need for any financial services FINSYNC offers, we help get them signed up or get them in front of our FINSYNC team, whichever is appropriate.
What is your approach like?
We take a more personal approach that is specific to the member we are working with at the time and intentionally avoid using blanket statements to make a referral. Our Member Service Specialists are great at this. They ask high-impact questions to learn about the business during transactions instead of just small talk to pass the time. They already have relationships with our Business Members, so their conversations are more natural. Recommendations come from an identified member need instead of company goals.
Also, we have five Business Advisors in our entire footprint. We have 65 branches throughout the east coast of Florida, from Flagler and Volusia County down to Miami/Dade County. They use a consultative approach with members to learn about the business owner and how their business operates and transacts to ensure they only make appropriate recommendations.
Do you think your customers struggle with other software solutions, such as QuickBooks?
Absolutely! Of the four workshops we have conducted, our bookkeeping workshop had the highest attendance so far. This area is a huge struggle, especially for those without a bookkeeping or accounting background.
We know many business owners are intimidated by QuickBooks and similar software. We used to recommend WaveApps because they had a free tier, but similar to QuickBooks, it can be intimidating. Now that we have FINSYNC, we can refer our members to a much more user-friendly software that we will recommend going forward.
What do you like best about FINSYNC?
It is a user-friendly, reasonably priced, all-in-one solution to help the majority of our membership. When our Advisors see a need where someone has struggled with their bookkeeping or payroll processing, we will use FINSYNC as a tool to refer.
FINSYNC allows entrepreneurs to run their businesses on One Platform. They can send and receive payments, process payroll, automate accounting, and manage cash flow. To learn more about how we can help businesses start, scale, and succeed, contact us today.