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.
Outcome-Based Thinking Gives a Clear View of the Road Ahead
Getting a clear framework in place BEFORE you hit the road matters more to the outcome than anything else. Unaligned teams, fuzzy objectives, and a lack of common goals often bog down strategic planning sessions.
Leave Traditional Advertising to the Mad Men
I get a kick out of watching Mad Men. There’s something captivating about being transported to another time like that.
Slightly less fun is the feeling I get when I see banks in the real world and the present day throwing money away on traditional advertising like it’s 1965.
Succession Planning: How smart banks are securing future growth
If you saw that title and immediately thought, “Uh…succession plan?”—we need to talk.
A recent survey across all industries showed that leadership succession planning, or the lack thereof, was the most pressing area of concern among CEOs.
5 Keys to Unlock a Profit-Rich Commercial Loan Strategy
Improving the commercial loan portfolio means bringing in high-quality business customers who are in growth mode or who have some other financing needs—while minding the good loans that you already have. It's just that simple. But, unfortunately, many banks (perhaps yours) are dead wrong with their strategy for bringing in commercial loans. Have you ever had a day where you left exhausted, but...
5 Easy Steps To Creating Internal Cultures That Rock
Try this as a 30-Day Turnaround: Why is it that a $450 million bank with nine years of flat organic growth suddenly had an annualized growth rate of 35 percent within 30 days of one culture intervention? Why is it that a $920 million bank consistently ranked in the fourth quartile—a fact which they blamed on their low-income, shrinking market—eventually moved into the first quartile after...
Really Stupid Things Smart Bankers Do
One of the attendees at a bank CEO conference came up after my speech and began to lecture me. “There’s one distinction you’re missing, Roxanne. We bankers, we’re like sheep.
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...