Does bank culture really matter? Gallup is telling us that if you have an average amount of disengagement, it will rob $3,400 from your bottom line for every $10,000 of payroll.
So YES, culture is a big deal.
And if your bank’s culture is broken, it can be fixed. In fact, that’s some of the easiest and fastest money to bring right to the bottom line—but only if you know what you’re doing.
Let’s think through profitability for a second. Profitability has different meanings to different people because profitability by itself doesn’t mean much. When I first wrote the Profit-Growth Banking book before the last recession, I talked about how I’m not impressed by banks that grow fast. I’m not impressed by banks that are profitable.
What is your opportunity cost per inbound call?
In other words, how much profit is lost per mishandled call that doesn’t turn into a lead, then a customer, then a full relationship?
I’m going to show you some math that’s going to make you a little bit crazy as an executive of a bank. (more…)
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.
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 do the team-selling process correctly, right?
We all got away in 2020 with not having to be out there calling on people all the time because we’ve been waiting for things to go back to normal.
For customers to walk into our lobbies again…to go back to the way it was.
But it doesn’t seem to be going back very quickly and certainly is never going to go back to the way it has been.
In every recession, the same things happen. Deposits get difficult. Everyone’s fighting over those same dollars. They all need deposits. Regulators are coming in. They’re cranky, and they’re writing up banks. There are liquidity issues. Everybody gets desperate and tries to find deposits, just when they’re hardest to find. That doesn’t seem like a good strategy to me. (more…)
Low-cost deposits are “it.” Having large, sticky, low-cost deposits with a large amount of cross-sales solves a plethora of problems.
When you increase your core deposits as a percentage of total deposits and have that metric continue to move up consistently and stay up, well…in the banking world, we call that the meaning of life.
As rates go back up and as the world gets a little bit crazier, it’s important to make sure that your bank has all the deposits it needs, and that you’re not paying through the nose or having to match rates as they’re going up.
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. (more…)
Challenging times can be overwhelming. They can also be times of great opportunity for those who stay awake.
First, we have to change our way of doing things and discover—or rediscover—the ability to systematically pull in the very best new customers at premium pricing.
Taking Ambitious Community Banks to a 
