We Believe
“We’ve grown from $238 million to $368 million… a 54.49 percent increase, net income grew from $2.1 million to $4.1 million… a 95.2% increase, and earning assets grow from $213 million to $332 million-a 55.66 percent increase.”
G. Majors
President and CEO,
The Hardin County Bank
No Organization Has Helped More Banks
Get to—and Maintain—
Top 5% Performance Than The Emmerich Group
Hundreds of community banks across the United States have trusted The Emmerich Group (TEG) to transform their systems and people, leading to levels of performance they once thought impossible.
Going from bottom quartile to top quartile (and knowing how to stay there) IS achievable-—in fact, most TEG clients get there in as little as three years.
TEG is the ONLY company that works at the intersection of strategy, culture, marketing, and sales process to help community banks:
- CREATE radical and sustainable market differentiation,
- DELIVER massive results,
- LOCK IN brand insistence.
“We haven’t encountered a bank yet that couldn’t break through to even better results…even if it’s already a top 5% performer. Many of our clients are—in fact, that’s our specialty.”
Roxanne Emmerich,
Founder and CEO,
The Emmerich Group
Only TEG offers a custom-to-you, tested, and PROVEN “franchised” approach that addresses every system in your bank.
With TEG, your bank can finally unlock the secrets to:
Attracting the very best customers, reliably closing them, owning the entire relationship, and having them happy to give you premium pricing;
Implementing cultural systems that create ever-increasing culture survey scores and catapult your bank to Best Places to Work status;
Tying every employee at every level to profitability on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis with stage-appropriate accountability systems they actually love;
The systems to bring altogether
Strategic planning designed to shift effectiveness, measure and move the right KPIs, and create better and better results;
There's much to tell about The Emmerich Group! Use the menu below to navigate:
WHO WE ARE
WE BELIEVE IN
HOW WE WORK
WHO WE WORK WITH
WHERE WE CAN HELP
ARE WE A FIT?
Who We Are | Our Founder Roxanne Emmerich
and The Emmerich Group Team
A Founder’s Farming Roots
Our founder and CEO Roxanne Emmerich didn’t grow up among the wealthy or elite. She wasn’t born into a banking dynasty. She grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, milking cows and plowing fields. Over the years, she saw neighbors and family friends lose their farms to foreclosure from the big national banks. Even at that young age, it was clear to her that community banks are key to strong communities. She understood that when a community bank leaves, small businesses and jobs go with it.
Someone Who’s Been Where You Are
After earning her undergraduate degree in agricultural business, Roxanne began her career in banking. As her career evolved, she ran a de novo bank that set records in terms of growth and profitability, then went on to be a lead investor and founder of two banks. Each step she’s taken since then has been grounded in this belief: communities benefit when they have strong community banks that understand how to help their communities grow and prosper.
Impacting Hundreds of Banks and Millions of People
From her humble beginnings, Roxanne’s impact has been felt by millions around the world:
- She is the New York Times, #1 Amazon, Businessweek, and international best-selling author of Thank God It’s Monday!®. Her latest book, The Breakthrough Banking Blueprint, is 5-star rated on Amazon.
- She has been seen on Fox Business, CBS, CNN and has been interviewed for over 900 radio shows and podcasts.
- As a speaker, she has been listed by Sales and Marketing Management magazine as one of the top 12 most requested speakers in the country for her ability to profoundly transform profit and growth rapidly and sustainably.
- Roxanne has been inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame and has given more than 4000 speeches to banking and business audiences including the leadership teams of Lockheed, Merck, Upjohn, and Verizon and has spoken in virtually every industry.
- Roxanne was selected from over 30,000 in the industry for both the state and national “Entrepreneur of the Year” award before she turned 30.
- She was the top-rated adjunct faculty at the University of Wisconsin Management Institute, teaches at the Graduate Schools of Banking, and was singled out by the University of Wisconsin as their 2003 Distinguished Alumna.
“We’ve grown from $238 million to $368 million… a 54.49 percent increase, net income grew from $2.1 million to $4.1 million… a 95.2% increase, and earning assets grow from $213 million to $332 million-a 55.66 percent increase.”
G. Majors
President and CEO,
The Hardin County Bank
“I’ve attended 24 years of high-performance networks and affiliations. They all have magic formulas and calculations to tell me how much more money I can bring to margins and profit. The missing ingredient was “how.” We finally found an integrated system of both numbers and understanding with Roxanne Emmerich’s system. We have a real program that has translated to high energy and commitment for every single employee. It works!”
R.L. Harmon, Jr.
Chairman & CEO,
Bank of Tennessee
“We paid for the full three-year program in the first month with a fee from a single client by following the new sales process we learned. We then went on to replicate those same results over and over again. But the real miracle is the transformation of our workplace culture.”
J. J. Blake III
President and CEO,
Peoples State Bank
And before you get the idea that The Emmerich Group is all—and only—about Roxanne, you should know that we’ve curated a team with depth and breadth. These are people who have previously been exactly what you aspire to be… high-performing executives leading their organizations to never-before-seen heights. Each team member has used and mastered the systems, so you can have confidence in their guidance and advice.
It’s no surprise, then, that over the past 30 years,
The Emmerich Group has guided more ambitious community banks to elite
performance, long-term success, and sustainability than any other industry advisor.
AS SEEN IN
WHY WAIT?
The Emmerich Group’s mission is simple yet significant—we’re out to save community banking because of the unique value it contributes and the unique role it plays in our local, state and national economic systems.
We work with the most elite, ambitious, results-oriented banks with aspirations to be the best of the best. We do that by working at the intersection of high-performance culture, sales system and skills transformation, and high-ROI marketing to bring in the most-desirable prospects with over an 85% close rate-even though they love their current bank—and tie other elements together to maximize the ROI from every activity and dollar.
There isn’t a bank that can’t double its performance—at least, we haven’t met one yet. WE TAKE BANKS TO A LEVEL OF PERFORMANCE THEY NEVER DREAMED POSSIBLE.
We grew 21 percent while decreasing FTEs by 11 percent and raising net interest margin 52 basis points since working with you. 100 percent of our new loan customers are referrals from current customers or centers of influence. Not a week goes by when I don’t get a call from a client complimenting my staff. I don’t even remember it happening before we made this shift.
K. Miller
President & CEO,
The Farmers Bank
Every quarter comes around, and we’ve hit every single metric that before we never thought we would actually hit! In just one year, we had almost 18% Core Deposit Growth, totaling $20 million. Of that, $15 million was low-cost deposits. It is no longer a fight to get things done. All of a sudden we are having a blast coming to work every day!
Charlie Holland
Chief Executive Officer,
Farmers State Bank
We do that by:
Helping banks create the "franchise systems"
We show banks how to tie every person to profit on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis—along with teaching them how to double and triple the outcomes they get from their payroll dollars.
Helping banks solve their biggest problems
Whether it's never having to match rates again; creating a system to attract the very best customers your competitors currently own; moving beyond lip service to own the entire relationship; transforming deposits to low-cost sticky deposits; or transforming the culture, we have tools, templates, secrets, and solutions.
Providing free and fee-based education to the industry
We host conferences, webinars, and livestream events; publish Extraordinary Banker® magazine; share blog articles; offer Thank God It’s Monday!® University (TGIM U); operate our Trusted Advisor Certification™ Program; host The Best Banks in America™ Annual Super Conference; offer the Accredited Banking Professional™ Certification Program; and more).
Serving as an extension of the banks' executive teams
We have a proud 30 plus-year track record of taking ambitious banks to elite, top-of-industry levels of performance they only dreamed of... and so much faster than they could have imagined (see our Testimonials and Case Studies).
Continuously supporting, recognizing, and celebrating banks and bankers
We honor banks for achieving new levels of service and contributions to their communities via The Institute for Extraordinary Banking™ and its Banky™ Awards.
Bringing "intentional congruence" to the bank
Our systems align everyone and everything to the "utopian dream” — so effectively that many of our banks have hit EVERY single element of their utopian dream in less than three years. (Intentional congruence means that we tie performance culture, marketing, sales and service systems to the strategic plan and utopian goals.)
REACH OUT WITH NO RISK
We Believe In | These Foundational Beliefs Drive Everything The Emmerich Group Does to
Strengthen and Celebrate Community Banking
We believe in community banking and what it represents:
- in a firm handshake and a direct look.
- that your banker can be your best friend and your business’s most valuable partner.
- in farmers, working moms, and bake sales on the weekends.
- that banking never means boring and selling always means serving.
- in the potential of people and the joy that comes from a job well done.
- there’s nothing nobler than helping people feel safe and secure.
- that dreams come true on Main Street.
- that true wealth is the love of family, the civility of home, and a vacation with your kids.
- that better banks deserve to be paid more.
- community banks drive the heartbeat of America!
“Since working with you, we have a Net Promoter Score of 9.5 while the industry average is 8.1. We were just amazed. The hoopla and huddle effort is phenomenal. Our team is amazed at the difference in the approach and effectiveness of this sales training. We put a sign on our door after the Kick Off that says, MetaBank, established 1954, reborn 9-14-11. Everybody that hit that back door had tears in their eyes. It was so moving because it was real to everyone. Like you said, the magic happens.”
B. Koopman
Senior Vice President of Retail Bank Operations,
MetaBank
“In the last three years, the ‘Blueprint’ has helped us have a breakthrough we never dreamed possible. Assets have grown 44%, loan growth is up 64%, net income has doubled, AND we were ranked #2 by SNL for banks under $1 billion. Best of all, we were named the 2019 Extraordinary Bank of the Year, and our clients are all thrilled to see what our bank in our small community has accomplished!”
Chris Floyd
President & CEO,
First National Bank of Syracuse
We believe in community banking and what it represents:
Roxanne Emmerich established The Institute for Extraordinary Banking™ in 2013 in response to the media treating “banker” as a four-letter word and The Gallup Organization having singled out banking as the least-respected profession in the country. In her keynote from the stage at the 2011 American Banking Association Community Bankers’ Conference, she declared that she would take on the challenge of changing those wrong-headed opinions. Her approach was simple—she would find and shine a bright light on the good work that people like YOU do every day. To support and develop the industry, The Institute enlists The Emmerich Group as its educational and certification arm. The Institute:
Sponsors The Council™ CEO Roundtable—a “brain trust” of some of the highest-performing bank CEOs to serve as an informal board of directors for qualifying banks
Established the Trusted Advisor Certification™ Program, which helps bankers build trust and rapport with clients by providing wisdom and a follow-up system that helps build a resilient relationship with them and helps clients thrive financially.
Started the Accredited Banking Professional™ certification—the program proven to help executives, commercial lenders, wealth managers, and top retail people identify and pull in the most affluent clients at premium pricing. (Some of our clients call them their “Super Bankers.”)
Created The Banky Awards™ to recognize and celebrate The Best Banks in America™ as measured by customer service, culture, philanthropy, financial literacy, and business practices. Just as the creators of great music are recognized at the GRAMMYs® and the creators of great theater are recognized at the Tony Awards®, The Bankys are the mark that smart consumers and businesses look to in finding the best bank in their area. And every year, the Institute makes a $25,000 donation in the name of the overall winning bank in support of The Unstoppable Foundation, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that not only builds schools in Africa but provides the entire community with access to clean water and sanitation, food and nutrition, healthcare, and alternative income training for parents. As of December 31, 2021, The Institute has made donations totaling almost a half of a million dollars in the names of Banky™ winners… funding 13 new schools.
Finally, we believe in always learning more, doing more, and sharing more. You’ll never find us resting on our laurels or hitting cruise control. We don’t just stay on top of industry trends… we stay ahead of them (and do our best to shape them whenever possible).
How We Work | The Emmerich Group Approach to
Transforming Community Bank Performance
In community banking, having good people is simply not enough. At The Emmerich Group, we place our faith in the power of good systems and have built our approach on them.
We believe because for more than 30 years, we have witnessed the power of systems to transform performance by transforming people and processes.
A bad system will beat a good person every time.”
– W. Edwards Deming, Pioneering Management Thinker
Strong systems are guideposts on the path that leads from your current state to your desired future.
Strong systems interconnect across disciplines to create a synergy that far exceeds its component parts.
Strong systems ensure everyone on the team knows what to do, how to do it, and why it matters.
To be clear, though, strong systems are far from static and carved in stone. They can and must adapt to environmental changes. But because the fundamental, foundational principles that underpin them remain clear and unchanging, the system is still recognizable in its new incarnation.
The Emmerich Group is the ONLY banking advisory organization offering a customized-to-you franchised approach that integrates and addresses all the disparate elements critical to your bank’s results.
For us at The Emmerich Group, “franchised” means a cohesive, coordinated, comprehensive set of… here comes that word again… systems that have been split-tested and validated. In fact, we offer 27 such systems for doing literally everything in your bank:
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- The best way to hire a lender;
- The best way to identify who will be your next 100 best customers—and systematically pull them from your competitors at premium pricing;
- The best way to differentiate your bank and create massive and meaningful value that your customers and prospects (and your competitors’ best customers) can’t ignore;
- The best way to command premium pricing and achieve a close rate of 85% or higher;
- And more in marketing, sales, strategy, leadership development, and culture, to list just a few of the areas
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Our franchised systems are responsible for taking many of our clients from bottom-quartile performance to Top 5%—even #1 in their state—in just a few years. And when you integrate these systems into your bank, you can expect to experience growth: positive–even dramatic—needle movement and unquestioned results and performance-cultural improvement within 30-60 days (and that’s just the start).
Who We Work With | Ambitious Banks and Bankers Aiming for Top-of-Industry Performance and Radical Results
The stirring breezes that began to move through U.S. community banking a decade ago have now built to hurricane force and threaten to level the industry. From more than 15,000 community banks in 2008, fewer than 5,000 remain today. Among those that are left:
Another sizable number of banks are headed by CEOs who cling to their “tried and tired” approaches, believing that simply expecting things to improve is a strategy. Their pride (dangerous, hubris-level pride) blinds them to both the situation and their power to change it.
Many are headed by CEOs who waste time “complaining about the wind” — the changes and challenges arising from big banks, FinTech, Congress, regulators, the economy, and more. They’re so stuck in the problem, they have no energy to look for a solution… and they don’t really believe that one is possible.
And then there are those few banks that are headed by CEOs who check their egos at the door, assess the situation, and commit to adjusting their sails. They know that just as fire refines metal, tough times can forge their team into something even stronger than before. These are the banks that will outlast this storm and sail on.
The Emmerich Group works with bankers in this last group. These are bankers who are:
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- Completely committed to finding ways to overcome whatever challenges come their way
- Driven and determined to be the first-considered, most-respected, and highest-ranked bank in their community
- Fiercely focused on the success of the businesses and individuals they serve
- Pumped and primed to take their team to levels of performance they’ve only dreamed of
- Ready for (and realistic about) the work it will take to get there
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The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
– William Arthur Ward (American author and speaker)
We select and approve our clients
We only want to work with the banks committed to being among the best of the best.
Click here to see if your bank might qualify to work with us:
Where We Can Help | With Emmerich, You Can Win in These 6 Critical Core Areas and Against These 7
Bank-Killing Threats
Over the last 30 years, The Emmerich Group has worked with more than 300 banks and thousands of bank executives as a rapid response team, giving them the tools, techniques, and templates to achieve consistent, predictable, replicable results in six critical core areas:
Core
deposits
Strategic
planning
Performance
culture
Net interest
margin
Loan
growth
Cross
-sales
As the saying goes, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” Quite simply, no industry advisor has helped more banks get to top-of-peer status (and stay there) than The Emmerich Group.
So grab a fork and get ready to dig in. There’s plenty of meat here to judge for yourself whether The Emmerich Group could be the right partner to help your community bank:
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- Identify and execute the precise steps that preserve and grow revenue and move your bank to top-of-peer performance
- Get your entire team committed to having the right people doing the right things right
- Become the trusted and valuable partner your customers can’t stop raving about (and your prospects can’t wait to start working with)
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You’re fighting for your bank’s life.
If that sounds dramatic, that’s only because we find ourselves in a dramatic situation. Only two options are open to you: fight to win, or keep losing your independence (only at an ever-faster pace).
External Threats to Community Banks
The Emmerich Group sees the blows coming at you from the outside.
PPP loans were a life preserver for businesses and community banks … but those days are gone. You know you need to ramp up production and grow assets and deposits safely and profitably.
Big banks and other competitors are trying to lure your best customers away with the twin siren songs of low rates and absurd terms. You refuse to chase rates downward because you know it’s a desperation strategy that always ends poorly.
Fintech firms are telling Millennials that banks are unnecessary … and many Millennials are listening. You know that technology is far from the only thing someone needs from their bank.
Congress and the banking regulators are constraining your ability to compete. You know that the key to dominating your market is making the value of working with your bank crystal-clear and undeniable to your customers and prospects.
LOAN GROWTH CAN’T WAIT
Internal Threats to Community Banks
We see the blows coming from within, too.
Your own people are contributing to your NIM compression. You know they need to have rock-solid belief that the community bank offers customers and prospects something unique, valuable, and uniquely valuable … so they can overcome the commodity mindset and be confident enough to reject the rate-matching game.
Your own systems (or, rather, the lack thereof) drive NIM compression, too. They’re also at the heart of lackluster loan growth, disappointing deposits, and crummy cross-sales. You know you need an integrated marketing and sales process. One that creates extreme value for your customers and identifies your best next prospects. And you have to back it up with a “no excuses” target-driven management system built to maximize the depth of your customer relationships.
IT’S TIME TO STOP ACTING LIKE A COMMODITY
See Your Bank’s Map to Strategic Planning Success with Just 9 Questions and register to receive our
FREE Strategic Planning Blueprint audio training
And be sure to catch Follow This Step-by-Step, Play-by-Play Guide to Transform Your Salespeople into Cross -Sales Superstars and grab the
FREE Secret Formula for Doubling Cross-Sales in 90 Days mini-course
Dig into Steer Clear of Trouble in Your Core Deposit Strategy by Avoiding These Common But Costly Mistakes, then discover how to get out of the regulators’ crosshairs and attract profitable, sticky, core deposits in our
FREE video course
Read Get Clear on These 3 Rules to Score A+ Loans at Premium Prices and dig deeper in a
FREE 5-part video master class
You’re having to listen to (or worse, placate) execs and board members who demand you win the race but insist you do it while buried to your knees in concrete. “We can do it ourselves; we don’t need outside help.” “Old-school methods must be effective or they wouldn’t still be around.” “We’re just not trying hard enough.” “It’s the competition and the economy … we can’t win.” Sound familiar?
But …
What if you had a strong strategic plan under you?
What if you had a team around you whose culture has been transformed?
What if you had the right benchmarks and targets in front of you?
And what if you realized you can play the game YOUR way and WIN?
You’d have everything you need to be an unstoppable CHAMPION!
SALES TRAINING AND BRANDING CAMPAIGNS DON’T WORK
How to See If We’re a Fit for What You Need
| Taking the Right First Step
Just as you demonstrate to your customers that you understand their challenges and aspirations, we trust we’ve accomplished that here. And just as you can point to the characteristics common among your best customers, we’ve identified some as well. You’re not the right choice for everyone, and neither are we.
Although we specialize in taking good banks to great, we have many stories of banks that had been solidly 4th-quartile performers right across the board that–after working with us–got to 1st-quartile every single year and even hit #1 in their markets within two to three years. It’s not unusual for our client banks to hit every element of their Utopian dream, including net interest margins well over 4.5 (that jumped by more than 100 basis points) WHILE they improved the quality of their loans AND took their culture from train wreck to joining the ranks of best places to work.
So if …
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- You see a vision of the community bank that is, once again, the central business institution in the community … that is innovative and that attracts the best customers within the market because they receive such overwhelming value.
- Your gut reaction to being challenged to take your bank to the top 5%—and even to #1 in your state—is “Bring it on!”
- You are committed to following through on the uncomfortable but necessary culture transformation.
- You look forward to the day a few short months from now when multiple board members ask you with wide-eyed amazement, “Seriously … how did you accomplish all of this?”
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Ready to Start?
Call an Emmerich Certified Community Bank
Team Member Today
If you truly understand the scope and power of the “winds” that are gathering to take out the community banking industry, you won’t want to let another day go by before you contact The Emmerich Group. (We’ve had a few client banks with CEOs who told us they’d waited as long as 10 years to get started … mind-blowing!)
We’re making it easy, fast, and risk-free to get started.
If you want to get:
Targeted advice
From an industry expert
Specific to YOUR biggest challenge
for FREE … you can, in a private call with one of The Emmerich Group’s expert consultants.
To qualify:
Your community bank has assets between $200 million and $8 billion AND Your CEO and at least one other executive or board member must participate in the call
During your private call, you’ll have the opportunity to identify one key issue related to growing your bank. One of my team members will work with you to develop a battle plan specifically for that issue. Through this exchange, we’ll evaluate each other and determine if there’s a good fit for moving forward. (As long as the CEO and at least one other exec or board member takes part in the call, the call is complimentary; otherwise, there is a substantial charge.)
YOU CAN HIT YOUR GOALS (AND THEN SOME)
(If your bank’s assets aren’t quite there yet, don’t despair! We’ve built a multimillion-dollar education and accountability platform just for you. Check out TGIM UTM.)
