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.
The Glue to Keep your Best Employees… [VIDEO]
According to BambooHR®, one-third of your people plan on dumping you in the next six months. Yikes. This begs the question, what kind of glue do you need to make sure your very best employees stick with you during a time of accelerated “employee poaching?” To be clear… employee retention isn't just about the pay. Yes, extrinsic (financial) rewards matter—up to a certain level, according to...
How to Avoid the “Middle Management Meltdown” [VIDEO]
I believe that when middle managers master management, the resulting breakthroughs are profound and sustainable. In this episode, I’m going to share with you how to overcome what I call “the middle management breakdown”—the block that keeps executives’ dreams from being the reality executed by the front-line team members. If you’re the kind of leader who worries that perhaps your managers act...
Marketing Isn’t What It Used To Be [VIDEO]
Marketing isn’t what it used to be. For many banks, it’s changing how you should be investing your marketing dollars and the strategies that you should be using. Video: Bank Marketing Isn’t What It Used To Be In my book, The Breakthrough Banking Blueprint, I quote some of Tom Farrell’s research about marketing that has a lot to do with bank marketing: Businesses think that 13% of their marketing...
Boost Your Bank’s Bottom Line with One Change [VIDEO]
I believe in the unlimited upside potential in your team, and I believe that with the proper tools, they are capable of so much more! In this video, I’m going to show you how to eliminate the limiting beliefs that keep your team matching rates instead of going after substantial premium pricing on better quality clients. They’ll start getting bigger and better-quality customers within weeks. If...
Can You Retain And Win All Of Your Bank Account Holders’ Business?
Do you hold the entire relationship for every one of your bank account holders? I hope you do. But maybe you don't. And maybe your people don't know how to get effective cross-selling done. If you're not averaging five, six, or even seven cross-sales on every new relationship that is opened up in your bank, somethings just not right yet. And it doesn't mean you have bad people. It just means...
Do Your Salespeople Know When to Talk USPs? [VIDEO]
I believe that most of your salespeople have only begun to tap into their true potential. They just don’t have the confidence to go after large deals that are happy with their current bank and ask for premium pricing. In this episode, I’m going to show you how the right sales system can help your people get excited about and effective at pulling in the very best customers…without PRICE even...
The Transactional to Transformational Model for Community Banks
The days of transactional banking are over. Yes, there was a day when the customers would walk into our lobbies. Yes, there was a day where they came looking for us. Yes, I remember those days, too. Those days are long gone And it was a rapid turn. Yes, the amount of traffic coming into our lobbies had been declining. But boy, when we closed the doors for COVID, that changed everything from...
What is a Bank Franchise System?
Find out the surprising things the franchise system of banking can do for your bank revenue. What if you thought about your bank as a franchise? Seriously, any business should think of itself as a franchise system. And everything in your bank should be thought of as a system. And of all the bank franchise systems, the most important of those is the revenue system. Let's face it. Revenue...
“I Don’t Want to Work with Any Other Bank but You” [VIDEO]
If you don't care about premium pricing, you can stop listening right now. This is for bank executives who want to figure out how to command premium pricing despite the too-common assumption that banking is a commodity. Therefore, they cannot command premium pricing—or, at best, maybe 25 basis points more on the loan side. Well, here's the problem with that. Any bank that can only command 25...
The “New Math” to Measure the Right Things [VIDEO]
How much do you invest in your marketing budget every year? Now divide that amount by the number of calls or inquiries it generates. For most banks, the marketing budget is driven by shiny new ideas from conferences that marketing people attend or based on what was done the year before. From the newly attended conference “pitches,” they go shopping for new software, new branding, new social...
High Performance Accountability Secret [VIDEO]
I just did a seminar today where I asked people, "What's your biggest challenge?" Accountability always seems to be number one whenever that question is asked. No matter the bank—it seems to be universal. Video: High-Performance Accountability Secret There is one key concept often missed regardless of what level you're at on that continuum of accountability. Maybe you're just introducing it. Or...
How Most Banks Get Team Selling All Wrong [VIDEO]
There was a day, back when I started as a commercial and agricultural lender, that we did everything. We did the channel checks, we did the credit analyst work, we did the business development, and we did the account management. We did it all, and we collected the loans. Those days are over, and now we live in a world of specialization because, let's be frank, there are only a small handful of...