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.
Are You Paying Millions for Loyalty to Underperformers?
Too many banks protect tenure over performance—and bleed millions in the process. In this video, discover how elite CEOs fix their net interest margin by rapidly developing young talent into trusted advisors.
Your Bank’s Culture Is Quietly Costing You Millions—Here’s How to Fix It.
Most banks try to fix productivity issues by hiring more staff—but that only inflates expenses. This eye-opening video reveals why your culture may be quietly draining millions from your bottom line and how one Top Gun CEO doubled his bank’s size with fewer employees by engineering a culture of clarity, accountability, and high performance.
How to Build an Accountability Culture in Banking | The Banky Award Difference
Most banks don’t have a performance problem—they have a pretending problem. When people pretend not to see standards or hear deadlines, accountability culture in banks breaks down, and execution turns into excuses. A nationwide survey revealed that 87% of bank employees believe their coworkers avoid ownership. The highest-performing institutions stop the cycle by implementing bank employee...
Your Marketing Isn’t Broken. Your Positioning Is.
Most banks never see it coming—the hidden sales leak that quietly kills momentum and stalls growth. Discover how top-performing banks fix it fast, triple cross-sales, and build teams that drive results without pushing harder.
How to Triple Cross-Sales, Light a Fire Under Your Team, and Finally Hit the Numbers You Know Are Possible
Most banks never see it coming—the hidden sales leak that quietly kills momentum and stalls growth. Discover how top-performing banks fix it fast, triple cross-sales, and build teams that drive results without pushing harder.
What the Top 1% of Banks Do That the Other 99% Still Don’t Get
In this video, I discuss how the top 1% of community banks are not working harder than their competitors—they’re working smarter. By leveraging a high-performance banking system, strategic execution in banking, and leadership alignment, these banks pull results like a magnet. This is not about vague best practices for community banks or watered-down customer service claims. It’s about installing...
How Top 5% Banks Drive NIM Through the Roof—Without Raising Rates [VIDEO]
Net interest margin is under pressure—and if your bank is still waiting on rate changes to save your profitability, you’re already behind. In this sharp, no-fluff video, Roxanne Emmerich lays out exactly how the top 5% of banks are outpacing the competition with bank margin growth strategies that don’t depend on rate specials or CD gimmicks. You’ll get a sneak peek of what’s coming in her next...
Deposit Growth Without Begging or Discounting—Here’s How the Top 1% of Banks Do It [VIDEO]
Bankers, let me ask you a brutal but necessary question:Why are you still playing checkers while the top-performing banks are playing 4D chess with deposit growth? If your team is still competing on rates, slapping up tired “Free Checking” banners, and praying your CD special brings in a few dollars… you’re not just falling behind—you’re being obliterated. In this video series, we’re going to...
Differentiation Value that Drives A+ Prospects [VIDEO]
Do you agree that high quality customers love high quality attention? Let's explore how you can transform your safety and profitability by creating the kind of differentiation that attracts the highest quality credits and makes price irrelevant. If you think that the best customers get the best pricing because everyone wants them, then you have to watch this episode because it can and is being...
Master the Four Levels of USPs [VIDEO]
What if you can use extreme differentiation to get 150 basis points or more on the loan side and improve your deposit pricing at the same time? If you're the kind of leader who feels strongly that you can’t follow the herd and believes that net interest margin compression is inevitable, you're going to love this. Or if you have some lenders who get premium pricing but are frustrated that others...
Stop Matching the Competition [VIDEO]
You deserve to get paid more. Rate matching is the most destructive force in community banking today. And because of it, as a community bank, you are underpaid for the value you deliver. Get ready because you could stop your prospects from asking you to match your rate to win the business and start getting paid more within the next two weeks. How does that sound? If you're the kind of person...
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...