YOUR MARKET IS
A LIST OF
8,569 NAMES.
Most of them can never buy what you sell. I tell you which ones can, what has to be true before they will, and what is broken in the machine you are using to reach them. Twenty years selling fintech into banks and credit unions.
Two fixed price audits and one embedded revenue seat.
A conversation on a plane.
Mark Solano
Founder, Solano Advisory Group
A while back I sat next to a woman on a flight who worked at one of the twenty largest banks in the country. We got to talking about what I do for a living, and she asked why anyone would build a company to sell software to a bank with four branches.
So I got to explain it to her.
Community financial institutions are the lifeblood of small communities and towns all across our country. They are the ones that lend money to the local contractor that can't find options elsewhere, because he's grown up in that town and they know his work. They hold the deposits in the town they sit in, so the money stays close to the folks that built the town.
Here is the part that stayed with me. She has spent her whole career in banking, and nobody had ever laid that out for her.
If someone inside the industry has not heard it, the founders raising money on a story about serving banks and credit unions have not heard it either. They use a formulaic sales process for a buyer they don't know.
You cannot sell to a market you do not understand.
That gap is what I spend my time on.
There are 8,569 banks and credit unions left in America.
At the end of 2016 there were 11,854. Your whole market is a list you could print, and it gets shorter every quarter. Almost no fintech sells like that is true.
Banks and thrifts from FDIC BankFind, counted as open on December 31 of each year. Credit unions from the NCUA 5300 call report for the December cycle. Current column is the FDIC active list and the NCUA March 2026 cycle. Pulled 2026-09-13.
3,285
27.7 percent of the market, since the end of 2016
29:49:52
One institution every 30 hours, on average, since the end of 2020. A running average, not a countdown on any one bank.
18 to 1
Since 2019, 1,255 banks stopped existing and 70 new ones were chartered.
Four things.
Plenty of people will tell you they were operators. Here is what I bring that a general revenue consultant cannot put together, even with a year to try.
I know what has to be true before they can buy.
Every deal in this channel is held up by something structural that the CRM never records. Which one depends on what you sell. A core contract with four years left. An exam finding that just freed up money. A board that only meets quarterly and only votes above a dollar figure your rep never asked about. I find the one that governs your product and check every open deal against it.
Your market is a list, and I have the whole list.
Every bank and credit union in the country, with assets, branch count, staff, charter type and state, refreshed from the regulators. I score that list against what your product actually needs and hand you a number. Here is how many you can win. Here are their names. Here is the order to work them in.
Fintech selling into banks and credit unions.
Not B2B software in general. Not whoever walks in. Twenty years of carrying a number in this one channel, which means I already know how the buying committee is built, where the deal actually dies, and why the forecast your team believes is usually wrong by a quarter or more.
The stage where founder led selling runs out.
Between five and twenty million in revenue, a specific thing goes wrong. The founder becomes the ceiling. The first VP hire does not work. The pipeline math that carried you to five stops carrying you to twenty. Firms write five to fifty because they will take anyone. I work the narrow band because the failure inside it is the same failure every time.
Six steps, run in this order.
This is the whole thing. No framework with a name on it, no maturity model. The order matters, because counting the market changes every conversation about pipeline that comes after it.
Count the market
Every bank and credit union in the country, scored against what your product actually needs. Asset size, charter, branch count, staffing, and the conditions specific to what you sell. You get a number and a named list in priority order.
Find the gate
Work out which structural condition decides whether your deals can close. Then walk your open pipeline and flag every deal that cannot close inside the forecast window because of it, no matter how good the last call felt.
Score the engine
Twenty questions on the machine underneath the number. Where deals enter, what qualifies them, who owns the forecast, and what the CRM is actually recording. That last one is where the Method Check runs. You name the sales methodology your team was trained on (MEDDPICC, SPIN, Gap Selling, Sandler, etc.) and I check whether your CRM records any of what that method asks a rep to do. Usually it records none of it, and that is the first finding.
Measure the dead quarter
The stretch between a good demo and a decision, where your champion is writing a business case for people you will never meet. I measure how much of your pipeline is sitting in it, how long it has been there, and what share of it ever comes out.
Run the deal desk
A standing weekly session where every open deal gets inspected against how these institutions actually buy. Who signs. Where they sit in their contract cycle. What the board threshold is and when the board meets. Whether the champion has ever bought anything before.
Keep the record
Every lost deal filed in the same structure, so the reason it died stops being a story somebody tells once and becomes something you can count. After two quarters the pattern is usually obvious and nobody had to guess.
Twenty questions, about ten minutes, scored report back by email.
Two fixed price pieces of work and one ongoing seat.
The Market Count
Two weeks
I take your product and score every bank and credit union in the country against what it actually needs. Then I work out which structural gate governs your category and screen your open pipeline against it.
The Revenue Audit
Four weeks
Everything in the Market Count, plus a deal by deal read on your pipeline, forecast and CRM. I measure how much of your pipeline is stuck in the stretch between a good demo and a decision, and how long it has been there.
Embedded Revenue Leadership
Six months minimum, one year for the upside
I take the revenue seat and own the number with you. That means the forecast, the pipeline discipline, and coaching whoever is going to hold the number after I leave. On a one year term I put part of my own pay on the bookings number we set together after the audit.
The Engine Check is free and takes about ten minutes. Every engagement starts there, so we are both looking at the same picture before money changes hands.
Start itWhat a general revenue consultant cannot do here.
Most of them are good at their job. This channel just does not behave like the one their playbook came from, and the gap shows up in the same six places every time.
IS THIS
YOU?
You don't need someone to motivate your team. You need someone to open the hood, run the arithmetic, and tell you exactly where it stops working.
- You are scaling past founder-led sales and it is starting to wobble
- Your forecast has missed three quarters running and nobody can say why
- You sell into banks or credit unions and the cycles are eating you alive
- You have reps but no process, so every deal runs a different way
- Your CRM has numbers in it that nobody in the building believes
As VP of Sales, Mark wasn't inheriting an established organization, he was creating one. He developed the go-to-market strategy, built the sales playbook, recruited a strong team, and established the processes needed to create a repeatable revenue engine.
Ash Good
CFO, 3B Scientific | Apiture executive team
Mark brings deep expertise in the banking and credit union space, and can translate that market knowledge into clear, repeatable go-to-market playbooks that help sales teams sell with confidence and consistency.
Christopher Cox
EVP & General Manager, Digital Engagement Solutions, CSI
Whether it was standing up territories from scratch, building a structured pipeline, or driving accountability in forecasting, Mark produced results. I'd strongly recommend Mark to any company looking to scale revenue in a disciplined, predictable way.
Bob Jensen
Sr. Director, Partnerships and OEM Sales Channels
One of the most influential business partners in my latter years as COO at Alabama CU, now $2 billion and almost 40 offices. He earned our trust and exceeded our expectations.
Kayce Bell
Former COO, Alabama Credit Union ($2B in assets)
Ten minutes to a number. Find out where your revenue engine leaks.
Twenty questions about how your revenue actually runs. You get a score out of 100 and the specific areas costing you the most. Nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere.
Start with the count.
Ten minutes of questions gives you a score on your revenue engine and the gaps that are costing you the most. No charge and no obligation to talk to me afterward.