How do you, as an executive, build a  performance culture that attracts top talent, retains top talent, and allows your bank to thrive?  Top performance culture is easier said than done—but it can be done You just have to know the magic performance culture formula that works for other banks and apply it within your bank for the same results. But finding that magic formula is the key.  I've had...

When I started as a lender, I got a briefcase, got in my car, and went up and down the street calling on folks hoping that they would bring their commercial and agricultural relationships to me. Well, sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t. I thought I was doing the best thing possible because I watched what everybody else was doing. I did the same thing and got the same...

I wonder what the sales fundamentals are of banks that command premium pricing and achieve their loan growth goals. Are they different from other banks?  You see, what we put into a system creates the outputs we pull out of that system. And sadly, many banks aren’t achieving their loan growth goals with the loan caliber, quality, and premium pricing they need because they don't have the right...

What if you're going about loan growth in all the wrong ways? Now, you're probably not doing it all wrong. But there might be some ways that you could be doing it a whole lot better. That’s because all loan growth is not the same. The quality of the deals that you're bringing in and the desirability of those deals—because of their creditworthiness and their willingness to pay premium...

I bet your strategic plan does not have anything in it that says, “We want to match rates. We want to shrink our net interest margin. Oh, what can we do to match the rates of our desperate competitors?” Of course, those words aren’t in your strategic plan. And yet have you noticed that the way your plan is being executed demonstrates a reliably predictable pattern? One which basically means your...

Do you ever think you're worth more? Yeah, you probably do. We all do. So doesn’t it feel like a violation whenever somebody says, “Hey, we can do business with you, but you're going to have to match the rate.” That never feels okay. As soon as we match the rate, our net interest margin squashes. We don't want that to happen. Why would we when we don't even have the profit built-in? Instead,...

“If you want to reach people no one else is reaching, we've got to do things no one else is doing.”  Andy Stanley said that, and it starts my chapter on debunking the five biggest myths of loan growth in my Breakthrough Banking Blueprint book.  Those five biggest myths, sadly, are crushing net interest margin and loan growth for too many banks.  Myth Number One: You can match the rate to get the...