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.
Making a Difference This Thanksgiving With Gratitude
This Thanksgiving holiday, I give thanks for you. And I hope that you're in a state of gratitude. Gratitude is the filter with which we take in life. At every moment in time, things could be a whole lot worse. And that's what gratitude is–seeing the good things. I constantly remind my team about when I was growing up milking cows, going to the barn in the morning when it was 20 degrees below...
Improve Your Bank-Customer Relationship
What are your customers saying about you? Do they have brand awareness? Or do they have brand insistence? You see, the degree to which you create a customer relationship with every customer at your bank is the degree to which you become their only banker that's necessary. Now those words are easier said than done. And in fact, most banks have been trying to improve bank customer relationships...
Escape the Bank Employee Turnover Tsunami!
How do you protect your bank from the new “I Quit Culture” known as the Great Resignation of 2021? And how do you combat the upcoming exodus caused by headhunters calling your best team members weekly with outrageous offers—promising the moon, including upfront money and significantly higher salaries? The research shows that we’ve never seen a time quite like this—you are more vulnerable than...
Build Up Your Bank’s Customer Loyalty
Quite a few decades ago, I remember going to bank CEO conferences and hearing this line uttered: “Our people are order takers, we've tried everything, we don’t seem to be able to break this problem.” Guess what? Well, now here we are two-three decades later. Yet, out of the 4000 or so banks that remain, most of them still haven't figured out how to move into a relationship where they’ve built...
The Transactional To Transformational Model for Community Banks
The days of transactional banking are over. Yes, there was a day when the customers would walk into our lobbies. Yes, there was a day where they came looking for us. Yes, I remember those days, too. Those days are long gone And it was a rapid turn. Yes, the amount of traffic coming into our lobbies had been declining. But boy, when we closed the doors for COVID, that changed everything from...
Why Loan Pricing Can Be An Extreme Differentiator
I don’t think we’ve ever seen loan pricing competition like we’re seeing right now, and I don’t think it’s over. I think it’s going to get much worse through 2022. So, what do you do in terms of creating some loan pricing strategies that allow you to command premium pricing when others are undercutting your pricing on your very best customers AND the prospects that you’re going after? Why...
Loan Growth Strategies for 2022: Insights for a Post-PPP World
It’s unprecedented. In talking with a few dozen CEOs these last two weeks, almost all used the exact same words… “I’m very concerned about 2022. How are we going to replace the income from PPP and the other programs? AND ALL I HEAR ARE EXCUSES FROM MY TEAM…” “We’re making new loans… but the payoffs are killing us.” “The competitors have gone mad with their low-ball offers—how do we compete...
Why Bank Marketing Isn’t What It Used To Be
Marketing isn’t what it used to be. For many banks, it’s changing how you should be investing your marketing dollars and the strategies that you should be using. Video: Bank Marketing Isn’t What It Used To Be In my book, “The Breakthrough Banking Blueprint,” I quote some of Tom Farrell’s research about marketing that has a lot to do with bank marketing: “Businesses think that 13% of their...
Volatile Economy Exposes Mistakes [VIDEO]
Challenging times can be overwhelming. They can also be times of great opportunity for those who stay awake. First, we have to change our way of doing things and discover—or rediscover—the ability to systematically pull in the very best new customers at premium pricing. Video: Volatile Economy Exposes Mistakes In the past, a good economy covered up mistakes. It has since been revealed that maybe...
The Single Most Important KPI for ROI in Marketing [VIDEO]
I was speaking recently for a bank marketing association and what occurred to me was that I made a big discovery. I asked them how they move net interest margin. And I got that “huh?” look. Video: Single Most Important KPI for ROI in Marketing Then I dug a little bit deeper to ask them, "Well, tell me what net interest margin is, and how you as a marketing department tie into a net interest...
More than a feeling—how bank culture drives profit [VIDEO]
Does bank culture really matter? Gallup tells us that if you have an average amount of disengagement, it will rob $3,400 from your bottom line for every $10,000 of payroll. So YES, culture is a big deal. And if your bank’s culture is broken, it can be fixed. In fact, that's some of the easiest and fastest money to bring right to the bottom line—but only if you know what you're doing. That begs...
How to tie everyone to PROFIT [VIDEO]
Does every team member on your team know how they tie to profit? I mean really know? When a study published in Businessweek revealed they had asked 6,000 employees, "Do you perform in the top 10 percent?" more than 90 percent said they performed in the top 10 percent! Whoa. So yes, you likely have a problem. And no, your people don't really understand how they tie to profit—but they certainly...