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.
Shift Your Bank’s Performance Environment
Most banks are experiencing acceptable spreads, so they are holding onto their horses while financial services companies are moving on to four-wheel drive, turbo-charged tractors.
Branding for Growth:
Branding is a hot trend…but almost everyone has it wrong. A truckload of dough is wasted every year by missing out on what brand really means.
5 Ways to Have the Best Year Ever!
Time for a fresh start. And you already know that your destiny has more to do with mindsets, strategies, and skill sets than the outside economy. (Yes, that’s a lesson we keep forgetting, but we also keep getting more opportunities to relearn it.)
Here are 5 things to never forget this year to create a great year of seized opportunities:
Create a System for Follow-Up
The key to repeat customers is relationship. Relationships are established and maintained through communication and follow through. And in a “one to many” job such as yours, having a good system for customer follow-up is crucial to keeping your relationships healthy. Pursuing these four steps to create and maintain a follow-up system that will contribute to good customer relationships and increased sales:
Do Not Disturb: The Path to Sanity and Results
Does this sound like your life? You work from 7:30 in the morning until 7:00 each night and go home exhausted, thinking about all the unfinished work that continues to pile up nonetheless. You take work with you on “vacations,” and your ringing cell phone competes with the sound of the surf at the beach. And despite all this, you STILL feel like you’re falling ever-further behind. If this feels...
Best Practices for Leadership: Part Two
Last week we discussed the difference between leadership and management. Below are five specific best practices utilized by high-performing leaders within the industry. Accountability A mentality that “the buck stops here” creates a culture of accountability. The first thing leaders need to accept is that everything that happens within the organization under a leader’s direction—whether it...
Best Practices for Leadership: Part One
Before we get to the five best practices for leaders, there is a fundamental difference you must understand. Leaders and managers serve different functions within a healthy organization. Both roles must inspire and instill accountability but there is a profound difference between management and leadership. Managers use command and control techniques. They measure. They plan. They set goals. They...
Create a Top 100 Plan that Rocks
Create a “Top 100” plan for an extremely high level of giving and care for those prospects and clients who are most valuable. It’s your insurance policy to retain and grow business with top targets and to create referrals from those people. Your “Top 100” contact plan should: Provide value. Be a top-of-mind GIVE plan. Expand their knowledge of you—case studies, similar problems with solutions,...
Ax Attitude Problems
A new attitude invariably creates a new result. That is why it is essential to identify those employees within your organization that have an attitude problem and correct it quickly. Not only do they impact their own performance, but they suck the energy from everyone around them, too. Don’t doubt the power of one negative person’s toll on your entire team. In order to prevent this grapevine...
A Simple Rule that Assures You Win the Deal 94% of the Time
Research shows that the salesperson who presents last is guaranteed the sale 94 percent of the time. That said, the mark of a good salesperson is not ‘wheeling and dealing’ but rather mastering how to secure this profitable position. All too often, we hear heartbreaking stories from people who took their best shot, had an agreement to do business, did all the paperwork to put together the...
Every “NO” Brings You One Step Closer
Keep your sales funnel clean. Instead of accepting a weak “no” or “maybe later” and keeping that person on your prospect list, try using the prospect’s “NO” to get one step closer to “YES.” Take a lesson from kids who have set their sights on a treat. It’s pretty hard to negotiate with an eight-year-old’s sweet tooth when you’re approaching a Dairy Queen. “Dad, can I have a cone?” “No, not until...
Commonly Neglected Killer Marketing Tools
Of the hundreds of potential marketing tools available to help us get more customers and more deeply penetrate each relationship, the ones that are most commonly neglected which could create the biggest returns include: Mailing helpful information to current clients. Scheduled follow-up call to thank customer for opening a new account and find missed opportunities to help them with other needs....