Should my bank take a more focused approach to specific industry segments?

You don't have to be all things to all people.

Opportunities vary greatly by geographic area. For example, the Atlanta market has a large number of consulting businesses. A bank could try entering a specific industry market for which it has more knowledge and then branch out from there.

Part of the difficulty is in trying to be all things to all people. In addition to sales size and revenue size, many agencies and banks currently believe that the number of employees a firm has is a good indicator to the type of customer they will be.

The number of employees can be used to approximate the type of firm and the type of banking needs. The key there is in using more than just one or two variables to make small business entity distinctions and make sure one of those is an industry segregation of some sort.

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