Welcome to The Top 5 Percenter™ Blog
Dive in for concise, powerful insights on elevating community banking. Discover strategies and success stories for superior performance, from boosting financial margins to cultivating a dynamic culture. These posts literally contain the secrets of the Top 5 Percenters™. Sign up to the newsletter so that you don’t miss a single post.
Keeping Your Top 100 in Your Back Pocket [VIDEO]
During challenging times, the one thing you can count on is that desperate competitors and fly-by-night organizations are going to come in and try to take away your best customers. Let's face it, your top 100 customers, for any bank under $2-billion asset size, account for anywhere between 50 to 140% of your profits. That's a significant thing to understand. They are precious. They pay for all...
Predictable Revenue System During Challenging Times [VIDEO]
I don't know about you, but I loved the movie The Founder, probably because I've been a systems thinker all of my life, and I truly believe there's one way that's the best way to do everything. I believe that when you obsess over how to get the fastest way from A to B in everything that you do in your business, things begin to really shine quickly. Video: Predictable Revenue System During...
Biggest mistake made in strategic planning is… [VIDEO]
What's the biggest mistake made during a strategic planning day? That’s easy. Lack of intentional congruence. In other words, there's a whole bunch of stuff on the paper, but it doesn't match. I remember when I was a young mother, and my mother came to visit me. She was trying to make a meal and said: “You have a lot of food, but none of it matches. I don't know how to make a meal out of...
The Real Question Is, Can You Afford Not To? [VIDEO]
A dear friend asked me a question one time, “Oh really, can you afford not to?” And I thought that was one of the most brilliant questions I've ever heard. Let me pose it to you this way. Can you afford not to figure out how to increase your net interest margin by 100 basis points while bringing down your cost of funds and bringing up the quality of the loans you're making? Can you afford not to...
How To Command Premium Pricing for Your Bank
And hear your customers say, “I Don’t Want To Work With Any Bank But You.” If you don't care about premium pricing, you can stop listening right now. This is for bank executives who want to figure out how to command premium pricing despite the too-common assumption that banking is a commodity. Therefore, they cannot command premium pricing—or, at best, maybe 25 basis points more on the loan...
Forget Sales Training… You Need a Sales SYSTEM [VIDEO]
If your top 100 customers do account for 50 to 140 percent of your profits, like they do for most every bank with under $2 billion in assets, you have to ask yourself: Do you really know how to identify your next top 100 potential customers? Can you get an appointment and create a relationship with them, even though they love their current bank? Do you know that you can predictably have an 85%...
The Three Books That Can Move Mountains [VIDEO]
I am a nerd. I've always been a nerd. When I was a little kid, I used to go to the library every other day and I would drag books all the way up to my chin back onto the bus and back off of the bus, then back to the library. I'd fill up with books about twice a week. I've always had a passion for learning and discovering and finding out what other people know—rather than having to discover...
Step-by-Step Blueprint to Get to and Stay in Top 5% Performance
I believe that we all take great pride in legendary performance. In this episode, I’ll show you how you can have your best year ever and show you the system that doubled the profit in less than three years for over 70% of the stock banks that used it. If you’re the kind of leader: ...who is already in the top 5% of NIM, growth, ROA, ROE, and Efficiency Ratio, you’re going to love...
What Is Your Conversion Rate From Inquiry to Customer? [VIDEO]
What is your opportunity cost per inbound call? In other words, how much profit is lost per mishandled call that doesn’t turn into a lead, then a customer, then a full relationship? I'm going to show you some math that's going to make you a little bit crazy as an executive of a bank. Video: What Is Your Conversion Rate From Inquiry to Customer? Let's imagine for a second that you spend a million...
Create a Rockin’ Culture, Even in Difficult Times [VIDEO]
When times get a little challenging, people can wig out and the team dynamics get a little interesting. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Culture can be managed and culture can remain great, but you're going to have to pay more attention to your culture than ever before during challenging times. Video: How to Create a Rockin Culture During Difficult Times World events are impacting the level...
Make This the Year NIM Stands for Nothing Is IMpossible
I've been in banking for more than 30 years. Recently, I tried to estimate how often I've heard a community bank CEO say, “No matter what we do, we can't get our NlM out of the 3s. It’s impossible.” It turns out that I can’t estimate it. The number's so high I've lost count. Whenever I hear a CEO, CLO, or CFO declare, in front of the team, that banking is a commodity, I am never surprised to...
Heard of the “Challenger Sale”? Here’s What Works Even Better…
The past decades and even centuries have witnessed much banking innovation. Consider pneumatic capsule transportation (1799), the credit card (1950), and the ATM (1967). Those innovations were external—easily visible to everyone. But there is also a history of innovation that's internal to the industry, with bellwether changes to banking sales management and its increasing focus on the customer....