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.
Time for a Radical Obligectomy?
Something's gotta give. New research shows that employees are exhausted to the core. The stresses of the workplace are so far beyond the good ol' days. Remember when we used to take lunches together every day off site? Me neither. Well, it's been a long time, anyway. And trends have a way of, well…trending. The load isn't likely to lighten anytime soon. As a leader, how do you help keep your...
5 Biggest Myths that Hold You Back from Seizing Today’s Opportunities
It’s party time…that time you’ve been waiting for to pick off the top loan customers’ key deposits from the weak banks around you. You don’t need to buy them IF you know how to pull in all their business with ease. To do that, you must shatter the myths that will keep you in a state of inertia: 1) "Our people know how to sell." In fact, they are excellent rate quoters. Most don’t even know...
The Counter-Intuitive Secret to Attracting Better Customers
Fortune cookies and horoscopes are miracles of marketing. They predict something that happens to almost everyone every day (“You will meet someone new”) and somehow make you feel like it was written just for you.Well, sometimes. That worked a lot better when I was ten. Nowadays I’m not likely to be impressed unless every Sagittarius on Earth is run over by a guy named Keith on the same Tuesday...
Why Should They Choose YOUR Bank?
Why would you buy a Volvo? Safety. Why would you drive a Mercedes? The prestige. Why would you buy a BMW? The driving experience. Last question. Why would you drive a Pinto? Price.Now for the reality. Volvo is not the safest car. For many years, Saab actually had a better safety record. Mercedes is only considered a prestige car in the United States. In other countries, is a taxi. It has been...
How to Eradicate Low Performance
How do you get people to do what they’re supposed to do—not sometimes, not sorta, but consistently and for real? This month I met an executive who said something that shocked me. He said that only 40 percent of their people are achieving their goals. FORTY percent!!! Yikes. Imagine what it does to the bottom line to let 60 percent of people off the hook from doing what they are expected...
Five Steps for More Profitable and Higher Quality Loans
Who hasn’t seen a salesperson, fresh from a seminar on cross-selling, suddenly spread a dozen different account options like a Japanese fan in front of the poor customer, whose expression falls into a blank and frightened stare?
Confusion to Conviction – Creating the Mind that Buys
Who hasn’t seen a salesperson, fresh from a seminar on cross-selling, suddenly spread a dozen different account options like a Japanese fan in front of the poor customer, whose expression falls into a blank and frightened stare?
Reversing the Risk
We’ve all been there. The car salesman slides the paperwork across the desk at you, pointing at the signature line. Just this one last step, he says, and there’ll be no way out.
Creating the Ultimate Strategy
You’ve decided to create and implement a killer strategy. So where do you look for ideas?
There are hundreds of tried and true strategies out there. Some have taken companies from just marking time to the big time in no time. But which ones should you consider?
When Purple is the New White : The Art of the Zag
one company does something different and effective, then everyone imitates it. Then you’ve got yourself a field of purple cows. That’s when it’s time to go white. Or brown. Or zebra-striped. If they zig, you zag.
Secrets to Catching the Hungriest Fish
Here are three of the seven most effective secrets to finding and catching the hungriest fish—the customers who will add to your bottom line instead of nibbling from it:
Do you have a “sales prevention” department?
Are you playing the wrong game?