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.
Conventional Wisdom Is Killing Your Bank’s Future Potential [VIDEO]
Isn't it fascinating how for years and years and years, people would fight wars by standing in line with red coats on, in formation, shooting guns, while the other side would come at them when they had guns standing in line, running with swords, thinking that they could win. That same thing is happening in banking today. The old thinking that we don't question. The thinking about how we get...
A State of Gratitude [VIDEO]
This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for you. And I hope that you're in a state of gratitude. Gratitude is the filter with which we take in life. At every moment in time, things could be a whole lot worse. And that's what gratitude is–seeing the good things. I constantly remind my team about when I was growing up milking cows, going to the barn in the morning when it was 20 degrees below zero...
Are You Properly Utilizing Your Team’s Skills? [VIDEO]
I'm always astonished how difficult we make the Chief Lending Officer’s job. Video: Are You Properly Utilizing Your Team's Skills?: A Chief Lending Officer Case Study We tell essentially this wonderful human being, who is probably good at credit, “hey, you're in charge of finding your team members”, “you're in charge of making sure you’re onboarding them and making them strong”, “you're in...
Keeping Your Top 100 in Your Back Pocket [VIDEO]
During challenging times, the one thing you can count on is that desperate competitors and fly-by-night organizations are going to come in and try to take away your best customers. Let's face it, your top 100 customers, for any bank under $2-billion asset size, account for anywhere between 50 to 140% of your profits. And you also can't be matching the rate. At the time of the inquiry,...
How to Manage for Profit in Challenging Times [VIDEO]
Challenging times require great transparency of information going to the executive team and also going to the board. For instance, if I'm a bank CEO, I want to know if the account managers who are assigned to my current top 100 and top 1000 customers are in contact with each one of them, or if they've just left a voicemail, or if they've actually had communication. I want to know if anybody's...
What You Should Be Communicating to Customers Right Now [VIDEO]
It's never been more important to make sure that you're talking to your customers in ways that matter. I bring this up because I just got done doing a live recording with some of the smartest marketers in banking across the United States, and I saw some tragic errors on their websites and some tragic errors in their press releases. I see things like great big notices saying the branches are...
Your Team-Selling Checklist [VIDEO]
Team selling is the new “it.” But most banks get it all wrong, sadly. They think team selling is “I send Joe out with Susie, and Pat goes out with Jane … and everything is good.” That is not team selling. Harvard Business Review had an instructive research-based article making the case that team selling is clobbering the traditional Maverick model. But, hey, to get better results, you’ve got to...
How to “Turn Off the Noise” and Finally Get Marketing That Works [VIDEO]
I believe accountable people make the world go around. In this session, I’ll show you how to get everyone in your bank thinking about how to go get the next best customers at premium pricing. If you’re the kind of leader who has the traditional marketing department and they do “their thing” and nobody quite understands the why or the how except those in the department, that’s very typical....
Why Bank Marketing Isn’t What It Used To Be
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...
The Single Most Important KPI for ROI in Marketing [VIDEO]
I was speaking recently for a bank marketing association and what occurred to me was that I made a big discovery. I asked them how they move net interest margin. And I got that “huh?” look. Video: Single Most Important KPI for ROI in Marketing Then I dug a little bit deeper to ask them, "Well, tell me what net interest margin is and how you, as a marketing department, tie into a net interest...
How to Create a Rockin’ Culture, During Difficult Times [VIDEO]
When times get a little challenging, people can wig out and the team dynamics get a little interesting. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Culture can be managed and culture can remain great, but you're going to have to pay more attention to your culture than ever before during challenging times. Video: How to Create a Rockin Culture During Difficult Times World events are impacting the level...
Who Made Up THAT Rule? [VIDEO]
Everyone has patterns of disbelief. Some people believe that in politics, there is one side or the other, and they're unwilling to look at the alternative. Still others believe that the moon is made of cheese. You may have a belief system that's true. You may have a belief system that's not true. And the question that we have to look at as an executive is, "what has to be true for us to...