Don't look now, but the sales model has changed. Let's face it, going onsite with one person, carrying a briefcase and being introduced through the door, is not working anymore. So, what an opportunity! You know that sales will need to continue, but if you go into reaction mode and only wait for them to call into your bank, you know where you'll be in two to three years. It's not going to be...

Loan demand has dried up. Boy, those are words you never want to hear. Not just because you don't want to hear that there isn't as much demand for loans, but when your people actually think that the only reason that they're producing loans is because there is a demand. In other words, they walk in for it. Now you know you've got a real problem because people don't understand that loan demand is...

The economy has gotten tougher. People are getting crankier. A lot of people are still unhealthy. Everywhere you look there seems to be a new problem, but how many new problems can we stack on top of each other and still keep your sanity as an executive? One of the things that's important to do is to ask yourself this. When the pressures mount, it's likely you're going to go into your head,...

Just today I heard about one of our banks where a quarter of their people are out with COVID. Hmm. These are challenging times. Imagine trying to run a bank with that amount of people who are sick, who we know will be out for at least two weeks, maybe longer, and think about the further contamination as well. These are challenging times when a lot is going wrong. We have commercial properties...

What are you pretending not to see? Hmm. That's a question that I asked The Council of bank CEOs, a round table of some of the highest performing bank CEOs in the country, just a few weeks ago. We all lie to ourselves about things we don't want to see. When I asked that question and I said, "Let's have a safe place to talk here and really bring some things up," I heard all kinds of things. I...

Rockefeller taught his kids, "Learn marketing and sales, and you will never go hungry." No more brilliant words were ever said. Even during the Great Depression, those who focused on revenue were the ones who survived and thrived. Those who were in sales and marketing were the ones that survived and thrived. So think about your bank as not being a bank anymore, but instead, a sales and marketing...

Marketing isn’t what it used to be. And for many banks, it's changing how we should be investing your dollars and the strategies that you should be using. In my new book, "The Breakthrough Banking Blueprint," I quote some of Tom Farrell's research in which he talks about, "Businesses think that 13% of their marketing messages are unsolicited, but contrast that to the opinion of consumers who...

I'd like to read you something, "If we want to reach people no one else is reaching, we've got to do things no one else is doing," Andy Stanley. The reason I bring that up is Steven Hovde was speaking at the Acquire or Be Acquired Conferences last year, and he talked about the trend line in banking. He said that if we continue the trend line we've been on for another 25 years, we'll be down to...

Your outcomes will be the result of your choices, but what kind of choices might you be making? Will you let inertia get in the way, or will you make bold choices to step forward? Are you looking for a life of ease, or are you willing to step in and do the hard things others aren't willing to do? Are you going to be afraid of criticism, or will you step out of your circumstances and create a...