That's according to Vice President of Business and Wealth Services Dana Gray, who is the chief driver of BECU's sprint into business lending. Gray joined BECU in 2012, when the credit union had about 24,000 business members, as well as a basic business lending program that had been in place since around 2004. The unit had been operating without a growth focus for years, but management know there was strong potential to re-tool and reinvest in business members.

"We knew we had a strong business member population, and didn't feel that we were giving them the attention they deserved," Gray recalled.

To find out what was causing the attention deficit, Gray sent surveys to BECU employees, as well as to about 14,000 business members. One of the biggest findings: Employees were intimidated by business members and nervous about talking about business products. Employees weren't sure what questions to ask business members in order to uncover their needs, she found, and as a result, employees were uncomfortable interacting with business members.

"We didn't have the same work flows in opening business checking accounts as we did on the consumer side," she explained.

When business members did say something, employees weren't sure what to do, because they were unfamiliar with BECU's business products, she added.

"There was a deep fear of uncovering a need that they didn't know how to solve," she said.

The opportunity was clear, so Gray spearheaded the creation of a series of four online classes for employees. The required classes covered topics such as business deposit products, business credit cards, business loan products and how to make an effective referral. They were 20 to 30 minutes each and followed by an all-day classroom session aimed at helping employees understand the life cycle of business members, as well as their payment needs, Gray said.

"They really learned how to speak to the business member," she noted.

The class included practice sessions, as well as lessons about cues and clues that increased employees' comfort levels when talking with business members.

Gray also led the creation of what she called a member notes tool, which is a one-page document that guided employees through those conversations with business members. Among other things, it included cues to ask open-ended questions about the member's business and financial objectives, for example.

"Just giving them a member notes tool – something to guide their conversation – really helped a lot," she said.

Next came the business specialists. Gray hired four (there are five today), and each supported seven to 10 BECU neighborhood financial centers.

"Every time we got new employees, we literally had them sit with a specialist three separate times and we sort of certify them in a sense," Gray said. "We get them up to speed so that they feel very comfortable with our products and services and how to present them to business members."

BECU hired a business credit administrator with decades of experience, as well as senior underwriters mostly from regional or national banks. It added people on the documentation, operations and portfolio management teams. And BECU hired a consultant to review lending guidelines and loan review teams to ensure that it wasn't overweighting certain geographies or loan types.

Today, the typical BECU business member has less than $2 million in revenue, but Gray said she's looking forward to going after business members with revenue as high as $20 million. That will likely mean diversifying away from commercial real estate, which Gray said represents the vast majority of BECU's business lending portfolio. She also wants to add more products, especially on the treasury and cash management end.

Gray's changes may sound simple, but they haven't all come easily.

"One of the early mistakes that I almost made was my enthusiasm for growing this line of business may have been slightly ahead of our own internal capabilities to support it," she said. "You really, really have to have alignment across your credit union, including representatives from all the various areas. For instance, the contact center – who's going to get all the phone calls when your business members start having questions?"

She continued, "When you have big ideas of what products need to be out there, who's going to help you both create those products, integrate those products? It would have been a big miss had we not involved a key person from each area of business to sit with us on a steering committee, help us design our course of action and our strategic objectives, so that we didn't get ahead of ourselves."

Gray concluded, "There are so many people who feel true ownership in what we're building because they've been part of it every step of the way. I think that's been the key to success here. As we continue to grow our focus on serving business members, we have a whole team of people now who can call themselves experts in what they've learned over the last few years, creating a valuable internal resource pool."