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.
Dear Banker: A Message from COVID to You
Dear Banker: A Message from COVID to You I go by many names: Co-Ron A. Virus, Coronavirus, COVID, COVID-19, ‘Vid, “The Big One.” Some of my names are downright hurtful. The 2020 Plague. The Dirty ‘Rona. Those are actually some of the milder ones. And yes, for some, I was devastating in every way. I don’t feel bad about that because I have no feelings, remember? I’m microscopic. But I did help...
How to Pull Away Your Bank Competitors’ Very Best Customers
How do you—with great certainty—pull away your bank competitors’ very best customers? Now there's a question that should stimulate some really good thinking. Because let's face it, you can go buy a branch someplace else, but that's expensive. Or, you can set up a new branch someplace else. But that’s very expensive too, and often isn't profitable for a very long time. You can do all kinds of...
Bank Loan Growth Strategies for Steady, Sustainable Growth in 2022
Loan growth in your bank has never been more important. And it's probably never been harder. There have probably never been more desperate competitors who are willing to undercut your best customers. Competitors who will take that business away at a profit margin that you can't even understand—at a margin that you're sure it is a ticket out of the business. But if they become lunatics...
Community Banking Trends for 2022
There are many new trends that are hitting us in banking. Let's face it, it's not like it used to be. So, let's talk about some of the many things that are happening. And let’s also talk about how to make sure that you're successfully managing some of these banking trends. Banking Trend Number One Culture remains much more challenging than it's been before. Yes, we've just seen the great...
How Can Your Bank Create Brand Insistence?
Way too many banks have spent a lot of money on brand awareness. And yet, can you even point to one customer who said I came to this bank because I just love their brand? In fact, most money spent on branding has a negative return on investment. Sadly, we've all been sold a bill of goods that is not producing. However, there's something to be said for branding. And that is in the conversation of...
Higher Net Interest Margin With Less Risk—Fact or Fiction?
Net interest margin. Three of my favorite words. Why? Because it is such an important component of what takes a bank to the top of its peers. And if you’re tired of being average and competing on rate, I’m going to tell you that there is a way out of that mess. And, in fact, I would suggest that the banks that don't figure out how to avoid matching rates soon are probably not going to maintain...
Happy New Year!
Listen, I don't know about you, but I think everyone's pretty much tired of 2021. But what's going to happen in 2022? Well, first of all, what did we learn from 2021? 2021 Lesson Number 1 As community bankers, we’ve learned we are tough and that we can withstand a lot of pressure from putting in PPP loans into the system at three o'clock in the morning and working around the clock through the...
Wishing You and Yours the Happiest of Holidays
Merry Christmas to you, your team, and your family. At a time like this, we should stop and reflect on what this holiday is all about. It's all about family, and we know it—because having the love and the ability to impact other people in the world and the ones that we brought into the world is a wonderful thing. But listen: Our family extends beyond the family that we've given birth to and...
How to Increase Bank Profits in Challenging Times
How do you increase your bank's profits, and replace PPP revenue, when your desperate competitors are doing crazy things, and it has never looked harder to create profit within your bank? Well … Here's the reality There are circumstances outside of your control that you can't do anything about. But there are things within your control that you can do a lot about—by just being very systematic,...
How To Improve Cross-Selling in Banks
There's been a popular question around for decades: How to improve cross-selling in banks? Yes, some people don't like to use the word “cross-sells” after what happened with a certain large bank that got into some trouble. But the reality is that bookkeeping is bookkeeping, and revenue per day producing items are sales, and cross-sells is not a dirty word. It's just a measure of trust. And it...
Profitable Bank Differentiation: How Top Banks Rise Above the Rest
This last year was brutal for NIM compression at most community banks. And yet it was understandable, and it reconciled with some nice PPP fee income that drove up the profits of many banks. However, bank boards are now more than a little concerned. Since fee income from PPP won’t be there in 2022, they are wondering how you intend to bump NIM back up without sacrificing loan quality or growth....
What is a Bank Franchise System?
Find out the surprising things the franchise system of banking can do for your bank revenue What if you thought about your bank as a franchise? Seriously, any business should think of itself as a franchise system. And everything in your bank should be thought of as a system. And of all the bank franchise systems, the most important of those is the revenue system. Let's face it. Revenue solves...