They focus on products, scripts, and sales goals. The best-performing banks focus on something entirely different: becoming indispensable to their customers.

In this week’s video, Roxanne Emmerich shares a powerful story from her banking career that reveals why customers stop shopping rates, deepen relationships, and view their banker as a trusted advisor rather than a vendor.

In this video, you’ll discover:

• Why conversations—not products—drive meaningful cross-sales.
• How trusted advisors eliminate rate shopping and strengthen customer loyalty.
• Why cross-sales are a lagging indicator of relationship depth, not a sales tactic.

The banks winning today aren’t pushing products. They’re solving problems, creating value, and building relationships that competitors can’t easily replace.

Watch now. 

I attended my very first bank CEO conference quite a few decades ago. And you know what the theme was when people were talking about cross-sales? They said these words: “My people are still order takers.”

Fast forward a few more decades, and I can tell you now, when I talk to CEOs, the first thing they say to me is, “My people are still order takers.”

How could we not have made progress within decades on such an important piece?

Because cross-sales is a measure of trust.

When you are the only bank they’ll ever need or want, they bring the entire relationship to you, and that’s called cross-sales.

So cross-sales isn’t about sales and slugging things. Cross-sales is about being such an expert at what you do, crafting each question so beautifully as a trusted advisor, and seeing the opportunities so that at the end of this questioning process, you can say, “Based upon what you’re telling me, I think I can help you.”

“I’m going to recommend this because you told me that you had a challenge with that.”

“I’m also going to recommend this because this will fix the challenge that you mentioned about whatever.”

“I’m also going to recommend this because you had whatever.”

And then you take them through that and say, “Do you have any questions, or would you like to get started?”

That’s essentially the process.

But the key here is: Do your team members know how to ask the right questions, and do they know how to be in the listening?

Are they listening soul to soul, or are they in their head?

Are they connecting with that person in a way that makes that person feel like, “Man, I feel heard, and this feels good”?

I’ll never forget. I had a woman who came to me when I was in banking, and she had a PhD in a very challenging topic. She and her husband had two children. She far out-earned her husband, and she was a saver while he was a spender, and they were this close to divorce.

So they came in, they shared all of this with me, and they said, “How can you help us work through our money issues?”

And I took them through a process that I now teach our Trusted Advisors as I certify them. I basically teach them how to have the kind of conversation with people whereby you can make a meaningful difference in their lives.

When I left full-time banking to start this firm, she came to me and said, “I’ll never find another banker who can do what you did. You saved my marriage. You saved my savings.”

“I’m never going to find another one.”

I said, “Oh yes, you will. I’m off to teach hundreds of thousands of people how to do this.”

And now we have lots of Certified Trusted Advisors who actually bring expertise and value to their customers such that they will say, “You’re the only banker we’ll ever need.”

One Trusted Advisor said to me the other day, “Roxanne, ever since I discovered this process, none of my clients bring up rate anymore.”

Yeah. That was the point we were talking about all along.

It’s never supposed to be about rate.

If they’re talking about rate, you are a vendor, and they have proclaimed you as such.

You are never to be a vendor.

You are to be their partner and trusted advisor well beyond lip service.

That’s the game.

Cross-sales is just a number that lets us know we’re getting that job done.

The post The Power of Cross-Sales: How to Grow Relationships Without Being “Salesy” appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

In this week’s video, Roxanne Emmerich cuts through the industry’s most dangerous habit: thinking expense‑cutting is a performance strategy. She exposes why efficiency ratios stay stuck, why cost‑cutting crushes culture at the exact moment you need discretionary effort, and why the top 5% of banks outperform—year after year—without layoffs or fear tactics.

You’ll discover how to:

• Shift from cost‑cutting to profit expansion by driving revenue and productivity per employee.

• Give every role a direct line‑of‑sight to profit with stage‑appropriate accountability that creates consistent wins.

• Build an extreme learning organization focused only on what ties directly to bottom‑line improvement.

If you want a team that drives profit instead of consuming it, this episode shows the system high‑performing banks use.

Watch now. 

Does your team know how they tie to profit? Really? Well, when a study was done of six thousand people, where they were asked, “Do you perform in the top ten percent?” over ninety percent of employees said that they performed in the top ten percent. So yes, we do have a problem. And yes, people do not understand how they tie to profit, but they think that they do.

And that’s a problem to be solved—and solved quickly. For so many banks, efficiency ratio is an important thing, and they—and we—always solve it with the wrong approaches. “Oh, let’s see if your pencil is short enough before you can have another pencil. Let’s cut every little expense.”

“Let’s cut payroll.” Well, what if we got more revenue out of every team member? What if we got people to be far more effective and productive at what they’re doing and had them really understand what profit looked like for their particular jobs? Yeah, it’s tricky to get people to understand something when they’ve had a lifetime of experiences where they believe that they’re tied to profit.

And yet, it is something that, as a leadership team, will be very important during challenging times because it’s really bad for your culture to cut people just when you need them to be engaged and alive and passionate and doing better work than they’ve ever done before. So now is a good time to figure out how your people tie to profit, how you build the systems, and how you get them accountable by stage-appropriate accountability—never measuring anything until they are winning—and always making sure they have the right education that works, where they immediately have a lift up in performance every time they learn something new.

That’s the new game of banking. If you look at the highest referring banks in America, they have something in common: their people know how they tie to profit, and they are extreme learning organizations, learning the right things that tie to profit.

The post How to Tie Everyone to Profit [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

In this week’s video, Roxanne Emmerich exposes why “false-attempt” sales training fails and reveals what truly transforms performance.

You’ll discover:

• Why your people’s reluctance to “sell” isn’t the real problem—it’s confidence.

• The three steps to transform sales culture from transactional to transformational.

• How to permanently boost low-cost deposits and cross-sales without losing authenticity.

If you’re tired of spinning your wheels with programs that never stick, this video shows you how to create a winning sales culture your team loves—and your bottom line will thank you for it.

Watch now. 

I believe that people don’t like hassles. Who does? Whether it’s at work, home, or out shopping, it’s a dangerous attitude among your people because it causes them not to put one hundred percent into their sales conversations.

In this session, I’m going to show you how your people—like many bankers before them who couldn’t but now do—can get six to seven cross-sales and all the deposits in a way that never feels salesy.

If you’re the kind of leader who has been preaching to the point of losing your voice about the need to get cross-sales of deposit accounts to make sure those accounts are both profitable and sticky, and you’re a bit fit to be tied at this point, you’re going to love this.

Or if you have some people who are getting the full deposit relationship but also have many who are simply transaction people because they’re taking orders and not owning the relationship, then this is a can’t-miss episode.

Then again, maybe you’re really feeling good about your team’s ability to get deposits, but you know there is so much more potential profit available if you can boost your low-cost deposits as a percentage of total deposits.

If you just change a few things, then you’ll enjoy this as well. As always, there is some work ahead and three challenges in particular that you need to look out for. Most banks have been doing internal or external sales training for years. Now, after all that money and time, when they’re really truthful, they’ve realized that it just isn’t working. When they see other banks that are now averaging six to seven cross-sales and mastering attracting low-cost deposits away from competitors, they know they just can’t give up—but they just can’t have another false attempt because the team is now doing the slow walk, thinking management will soon give up.

Still others are finding that most sales training is, well… salesy. That’s why so many people flock from the big banks to community banks. They felt the bank was inauthentic and felt violated. With that belief system in the way, their heels are dug in, and they don’t want to sell—period. That is leaving you between a rock and a hard place because you still need to fix this to stay competitive in the future against those who are getting it. Also, many bankers lack the skill to be a trusted advisor. They do have the product knowledge, but they don’t know how to really bring the type of extreme value that is necessary to be that person’s trusted advisor.

Most importantly, they lack skills and confidence—but it’s not their fault. There just hasn’t been good advice and a good system that helps them win.

Every bank is facing at least one of these. Join the club. Now let’s work together to knock the issues down one at a time. I’m now going to give you three steps to create an effective sales culture system program and, if necessary, change the culture at your bank.

Incidentally, I don’t believe sales training works. Sales training teaches people what to do. Sales education teaches them how to be. You simply can’t expect a transformation with sales training. So let’s get going on this so you can get some sales breakthroughs in a few short weeks.

Step One:
In in-and-out sales training, a training cycle lasts a few months, and then—if there was any increase—you can count on it going away within a few short months.
To generate sustained positive results in sales, you need a cultural transformation to get people winning and loving it. To do that, it needs extreme integration with a well-thought-out, long-term, intentional, congruent system. You’ve heard the sad story from thousands of bank execs who attempted sales training only to find it didn’t work—unless you define working as the carnage of losing a third of their team. It’s not their fault. Sales training companies keep selling as if it could work.

One sales training company actually put a client’s logo on their website after two years of losses in their sales training attempts. After just a few years of their process, they are now performing in the S&L top 100 performers. Sadly, unsuspecting bankers see the logo and think they can actually create good results with their sales training. Have you ever heard a bank executive tell you that sales training’s impact was doubling or tripling cross-sales while getting dramatic growth with premium pricing on better-quality customers? As they say—said no banker ever.

Step Two:
Unlike so many false-attempt sales training programs, you have to get your people to come from their heart space—a place of extreme caring for the customer. With that as a base, they can then learn to ask questions in the order of how people like to buy what they need. Until they get the impact of what they are really doing—saving marriages from divorce due to fighting over money, helping people retire with ease, and guiding businesses to good fiscal management—they are always feeling as if it’s salesy, and the client will feel it too.

Step Three:
Create an ever-increasing accountability and visibility system. Most sales programs end up causing at least a third of the team members to run for the hills. That’s completely unnecessary and very unproductive. The problem is that sales training must be integrated with a true understanding of cultural transformation at a deep level where people are learning how to be, holding each other accountable, celebrating successes, and learning to live their word by understanding that their promises and their commitments are how they reveal their character.

The key is that every day and every week, as the blended learning of online/offline coaching and practicing happens—integrated with a management system and stage-appropriate accountability—a predictable weekly improvement is imminent. Remember, you don’t have a sales training issue; you have a confidence issue.

Again, three steps to a solid foundation of community bank sales culture transformation:

Step One: Ongoing cultural transformation with extreme integration
Step Two: Get team members at cause to bring extreme value—from transactional to transformational
Step Three: Develop a progressive accountability and visibility system that builds confidence

By doing this, you can sleep at night knowing your well-educated team can connect with prospects and customers effectively, attract all the deposits that you need consistently, and unhook from the dependence on results based on the economy or rate environment. Instead, you can have a system that makes you feel like you know you can consistently win—and you’ll have the pride of making all of that happen quickly and sustainably.

The post The Dangers of False-Attempt Sales Training [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

In this video, Roxanne Emmerich dismantles the “rate-match or lose” myth and replaces it with a hard-edged framework for extreme differentiation that commands premium pricing on both sides of the balance sheet. She breaks down the four levels of USPs—from weak “we give great service” claims (Level 1) and easily copied features (Level 2), to elite expertise (Level 3) and, ultimately, proprietary, client-valued processes (Level 4) that buyers say are worth 10× your fee increase.

You’ll discover:

• NIM lift without apology: How Level-4 USPs enable +150–200 bps over competitors while holding deposit costs in check.

• De-commoditize on contact: A sales motion that monetizes your USPs and shuts down “Can you match the rate?” before it’s asked.

• Cycle-proof stickiness: Evidence, certification, and process that keep top customers loyal in any environment.

If you’re done subsidizing competitors with your value, this is your blueprint to escape margin compression and become the bank that top customers chase.

Watch now. 

What if you could use extreme differentiation to get 150 basis points or more on the loan side and improve your deposit pricing at the same time? If you’re the kind of leader who feels strongly that you can follow the herd that believes net interest margin compression is inevitable, you’re going to love this. Or if you have some lenders who get premium pricing but are frustrated that others still fall back to rate matching, you’ll want to watch this. Or maybe you’ve given up on getting premium pricing because you believed the conventional wisdom that banking is a commodity that you’ve heard at the industry conferences—and if so, this is for you.

Here’s why: When you get it, you’ll have a blueprint for catapulting yourself past the three biggest problems in banking right now. One: customers that love you and leave you for better rates. Two: customers believe you’re a commodity, and you might not be giving them a reason to think differently. And three: your people mean well and offer great service, but they don’t know how to sidestep the whole rate-conversation trap. Every bank is facing these three.

Today you will learn about four levels of USPs—and why you need dozens of these. But to get extreme premium pricing, you need to create level-four USPs. Level-one USPs offer basic differentiation. If you’ve ever believed that “great customer service” was your key differentiator, then you’re working with a level-one USP. Level-two USPs are gadgets and products. Your super-duper free checking, your nifty online banking site, your instant-approval mortgage are all level-two USPs. You need them, but they’re too easy to copy.

Level-three USPs are where it gets juicy. They are the special education and certifications that matter to discerning customers and put you in a league of elite bankers all your own. And level-four USPs are the pinnacle. They are the proprietary processes that clients tell you are worth at least ten times more than the additional amount that you charge. These take you way out of the commodity world.

Flex your level-four USPs with a sales process designed to monetize it, and you’ll pull away your competitors’ best customers at 150 basis points or more. Some of our banks regularly average at least 200 basis points more than what their competitors get, so don’t tell me it can’t be done. Also, you’ll have the peace of mind that you are profitable and safe during good times and bad.

What if you could use your USPs in your sales process to make sure you never hear those ugly words, “Can you match the rate?”—so you and your people can feel the confidence of knowing that you are an elite, prestigious organization worth more. Get your USPs right and stop worrying about what the economy or desperate competitors do to your profits. That’s for those other banks.

The post Master the Four Levels of USPs [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

What you’ll discover:

• The three USP must-haves: It must matter to your customer, be dramatically different in your market, and be worded as a clear benefit.

• The me-too traps to avoid: “Great people,” “great service,” and “we’re local” kill credibility and keep you stuck in rate wars.

• The profit mistake to fix now: USPs with no explicit benefit won’t move a dime—craft them to drive action and pricing power.

When your team installs credible USPs into the sales process, results show up fast. One community bank used a proper USP and turned a $250K checking opportunity into $5MM in deposits—overnight—without matching rate. If you’re ready to stop subsidizing your competition and start getting paid fairly for the value you deliver, this video gives you the blueprint.

Watch now. 

You deserve to get paid more. Rate matching is the most destructive force in community banking today. And because of it, as a community bank, you are underpaid for the value you deliver.

What if you could stop your prospects from asking you to match the rate to win the business—and start getting paid more within the next two weeks? Sound good? Great!

You’re going to love this if you’re the kind of person who has team members at your door saying, “Boss, we can do this deal if we match the rate!”—and you know that’s no good. If you’re the kind of person who has one team member already getting premium pricing and you want more, you’re going to love this. Or if you have team members who believe they have a moral obligation to match the rates—don’t worry, it’s not their fault. I’ll show you how to get them to come around.

In this video, you’re going to discover three things: the three elements of a unique selling proposition, or USP, that actually make it work; the most common banking USPs and why you should never use them; and the business mistake that we see banks make when creating USPs.

Let’s dive in.

Step One. Unlike so many branding efforts that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars but never really deliver the new profitable customers that you want, USPs act like magnets for the best customers in your market—if you build them right. For any of your USPs to be successful, each has to meet all three criteria. They must: (1) matter to your customer; (2) be dramatically different from anything else in your market; and (3) be worded as an explicit benefit.

Step Two. Get rid of the weak, lifeless, me-too USPs that most banks lean on, such as “We have great people,” “We have great customer service,” or “We’ve been in business for 132 years.” These don’t even meet the definition of a USP—and nobody cares. The only one of the three that carries any benefit for today’s customers is “customer service,” but it’s not unique, and saying it that way makes it not believable. It’s merely your ticket to the dance. It’s time for you to up the game if you’re serious about getting rid of rate matching.

Step Three: Finally, the big mistake—no explicit benefit in your USP. There’s got to be a benefit that matters to your customer—a reason why they should do business with you over the other 10 to 100 banks in your market. What makes you different in a way that actually matters to your future customer, and is said in a way that is believable?

When you put all of these things together and use them properly in your sales process, you can see big results within days and weeks. A few years ago, we had a bank that brought several of their executives and their president to our event. We took them through an exercise to develop their USPs. When they went back to their bank the very next week, the president wrote me excitedly to say that one of their CSRs had used the USP with a prospect—and the prospect pulled in an additional $5 million the next day after opening the account for what was supposed to be a $250,000 checking account. USPs unlock big accounts without ever having to match rate.

And by the way, not all USPs are equal. I’ll show you in our next video why you need a particular type of USP—a Level Four USP—if you want to get extreme premium pricing

The post Stop Matching the Competition [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

In this video, you’ll discover how to:

• Define the roles, sequencing, and speaking order so every question and transition lands with purpose.

• Engineer a pre-call prep and practice that converts complexity into an 85–90% close rate.

• Build a repeatable team-selling checklist that turns top-100 prospects into lifetime profit centers.

If your “team” currently means “whoever is free,” this episode is your wake-up call. Deploy the right roles, the right choreography, and the right prep—and stop leaving seven-figure lifetime value to chance.

Watch now. 

Team selling is the new “it.”

But most banks get it all wrong, sadly. What they think team selling is… 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 a wonderful article talking about how team selling is clobbering the traditional maverick model. But hey, you’ve got to get it done right. So who goes on the team?

What are the roles on the team? How does the team that goes out and does the first call differ from the team that goes out on the second call? These are distinctions that are important to get this right. And to do that, it’s like: What position does each of them have?

Who knows who talks when? Who does what part of the questioning? Who does what part of the presentation? All of these are things to be thought out. Also, who does the pre-call prep plan? Who arranges the practice before the call?

Because here’s the thing: when you go out on a significant—like top-one-hundred—prospect (since the top 100 customers account for between fifty to one hundred forty percent of your profits), that prospect might be worth five to ten thousand dollars of profit per month for the entirety of their life. Your chance of blowing it is huge unless you are ready. So a good team should have an eighty-five to ninety percent closure rate, and that’s going to take some masterful connecting of how that team comes together and knows what they’re doing. The team selling model works, but now we have to figure out how to work it.

The post Your Team Selling Checklist [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

If your team is still competing on rates, slapping up tired “Free Checking” banners, and praying your CD special brings in a few dollars… you’re not just falling behind—you’re being obliterated.

In this video series, we’re going to dismantle the sacred cows, torch the outdated tactics, and hand you the exact playbook used by top-tier banks who’ve learned how to attract low-cost, sticky deposits without selling their souls or their margins.

If you’re counting on a great CD rate to save your bank, I’ve got some tough news—you’re about to be blindsided.

The truth is, you’re not just bleeding deposits. You’re actually training your customers to leave the moment a competitor waves a shinier rate in front of them. And the worst part? You’re doing it to yourself.

Stick with me for five minutes and I’ll walk you through how to grow low-cost deposits—the same way banks with half your budget are doing it. And they’re winning big without discounting, begging, or gimmicks.

Hi, I’m Roxanne Emmerich. Over the years, my team and I have helped hundreds of banks increase their net interest margin by 150 basis points, and triple their cross-sales in under a year. All while growing core deposits so fast their competitors thought they were fudging the numbers.

They weren’t. They were just following a system—a core deposit strategy for banks—and I’m about to hand you the keys.

But first, let’s talk about the slow death most banks don’t even see coming.

You roll out a CD special.

A few rate shoppers show up. Your cost of funds goes up. But there’s no real loyalty, no meaningful cross-sales, no long-term value. It’s like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom—while your competitors drill five more holes in the side.

So let’s pause for a reality check:

“Chasing deposits by raising rates is like trying to win a marathon by buying faster shoes for your competition.”

That’s not a strategy—it’s a trap.

Now imagine a different way.

What if your bank became magnetic?

Picture depositors lining up—without any rate gimmicks.

Your team isn’t just selling—they’re trusted advisors. Conversations feel valuable, not transactional. Customers are so bought in, they don’t even bring up the rate.

That’s not wishful thinking. That’s the actual system we install in best-in-class banks. And it all starts with shifting how your team talks, behaves, and thinks. Because culture? Culture is the ultimate deposit magnet.

This is banking marketing that works. It’s not theory—it’s proven, and it’s profitable.

Let me give you one small tactic—straight from the playbook banks pay six figures to implement.

It’s called the positioning question. One simple question your people can ask that gets prospects to turn around and say, “Honestly, the rate doesn’t matter that much.”

It sounds simple, but it’s powerful. One small bank used it to bring in $90 million in core deposits in under twelve months. No rate promo. No gimmicks. Just results. A true bank deposit growth hack.

This is about building your unique selling proposition for banks—so you’re not just another option in a sea of sameness.

It’s how you attract high-value bank customers who stick around, deepen relationships, and refer others.

Want the exact script?

Click here to register for the Top Gun Series, where I interview the top 5% of banking CEOs—the ones who are pulling ahead while everyone else is playing catch-up. This month, I’m sitting down with Charlie Holland, who’s going to share how his team consistently brings in $2–3 million checking accounts every single week. Like clockwork.

Now’s the time to get the secrets—so while your competitors are busy rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, you’ll be building a yacht.

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board. 

The post Deposit Growth Without Begging or Discounting—Here’s How the Top 1% of Banks Do It [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Let’s explore how you can transform your safety and profitability by creating the kind of differentiation that attracts the highest quality credits and makes price irrelevant.

If you think that the best customers get the best pricing because everyone wants them, then you have to watch this episode because it can and is being done. 

Pay close attention if you feel overwhelmed because your team is stuck. Because they do the same thing year after year with the same results, but don’t know how or what to change even though you know deep down there’s a way to get those best customers in your market and get them to pay more.

Or maybe you’re the kind of leader who rallies the troops to focus on the best quality loans, but still have several who believe they need to lower them with rate, and when they do, they squeeze all the profit on the deal.

Or you’re worried about how to get your entire team to buy into the idea that they can get the best quality credits, and at the same time get substantial premium pricing.

I’m going to show you how to overcome the mountain of evidence that your team leans on to hold up their old beliefs. I know you’re thinking who wouldn’t want top shelf pricing on top shelf customers, but if it’s that easy, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

First you have team members who have been doing their job as well for decades, creating an okay result, but not tapping into the real goldmine opportunity. It’s not their fault. They’re doing everything they learned at conferences and lending school. It’s just that it’s outdated and inefficient. They don’t feel that what they offer is different or worth more than the bank down the street, so they typically ask for 20 or 25 basis points more tops. And they’re probably right. They don’t have a game-changing unique selling proposition that shows the extremely unique value that you offer.

Let’s cover how to create USPS that are permanent game changers:

Step one – forget the powder puff attempts at USPs and get your people to stop saying them. “We have good people”, “We have great service”, “We’ve been around 89 years.” Really, who cares? They expect you to have great service and great people and experience. That’s just the ticket to the dance. Never in the history of time has a person said “Oh, great, you have good people. I’m switching everything. Oh don’t worry about price, charge what you want right?”

Step two – build USPs that matter to the customer. By definition, a unique selling proposition, or USP, has three elements: 1) it must matter to the customer 2) it must be dramatically different, and 3), it must be stated as an explicit benefit to the customer. Tons of top banks dump a few $100,000 on branding every year. Sadly, after all of that, they get one really weak level one USP, such as how fast they close loans, when what they’re really needing is at least 40 USPs, all of which can be used in their sales process. And, those A+ quality credits that we want flocking in are not going to flock in until you give them a level three or level four USP, the kind where they tell you that’s worth $100,000 or more, or maybe even a million yearly, I can’t live without you. Let’s get everything switched over right away. Oh, did I mention they don’t even ask your pricing? If you have three or four USPs that total up to be worth over 10 to 20 to 50 times more than the amount of additional fees or interest that you charge, pricing doesn’t matter anymore. I’m guessing they’re pretty good at math. That is how they got to be an A+ quality credit. And you need to get your head wrapped around that you deserve extreme premium pricing. When you deliver that kind of value. It’s not too good to be true, it’s just too good to be free.

Step three – start developing level one USPs for each of your top three target markets. I believe the best way to get something accomplished is to achieve some small wins fast. So start with level one USPs and get about 20 to 30 of those in place. Level one USPs are the ones that prove that you have differences that matter to the customer. At our events for elite banks and their ambitious executive teams, we go through exercises together to do this right there at the event. Each executive carries home over 20 to 30 USPs that are just right for their bank, and we make sure that they state them as an explicit benefit. In less than an hour, we make more progress than they made after six months and $200,000 or more of branding. Don’t blame your marketing department, it’s not their fault. They just haven’t been exposed to a better way.

Step four – optimize how you use your USPs. That’s right, USPs do no good whatsoever in a binder. Although they can be transformative to marketing results, when used correctly in your marketing, the real magic is in the sales process. The magic happens when your team uses them in the right type of question format that allows for the prospect to tell you how much it is costing them not to have your USPs. Oh, that’s so fun. It’s like printing money legally.

I had a bank that on their first deal after they learned us nailed a $5.4 million loan without the prospect ever asking how much. Their CEO said that they charge 150 basis points more than any of the 100 banks located between the prospect and that bank would have offered. Wouldn’t you like to do that all day every day? What’s it costing you this month with your current pipeline to know that you’re missing 100, 150 or 200 basis points on every deal?

Step five – do a backflip. Once you figure this out, and you get the system in place to do it over and over, you should do a happy dance because you just protected your bank from the ups and downs of the economy. Which means that while other banks will be crushed by their belief that NIM compression is a thing, you will be there to pick off their best customers. It’s supposed to be fun, isn’t it?

Stay tuned much more great content coming your way next week.  

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board. 

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Why Accountability Efforts Fail

First, one big mistake organizations make is bringing in brand-new training, then immediately holding everyone accountable—before they’ve had any time to develop mastery. The result? Good people start thinking, I’m never going to get this, and they run for the door. You lose your best talent before they even have a chance to grow.

But that’s not even the biggest issue. The real problem? This silent agreement: I won’t call you out if you don’t call me out.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Fail

We all know the saying: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Well, here’s another truth—Friends don’t let friends underperform at work.

Why? Because when deadlines are missed or results don’t happen, there are consequences. Someone doesn’t get a raise. Someone gets fired. And when we stay silent, we’re actually hurting the very people we care about.

And yet, in so many organizations, there’s this lingering ghost—the unspoken rule of This is just how we do things here. Being “nice” becomes an excuse for avoiding hard conversations. But real accountability doesn’t have to be harsh—it just has to be consistent.

Holding People Accountable—The Right Way

It can be as simple as this:

“Hey, Joe. This is the third week this has been on your list. I need this done by Wednesday at 11 AM. What do you need to make that happen? What roadblocks need to be moved?”

It’s a direct, no-nonsense way of saying, I care about you, and I’m not going to let you keep making empty promises without following through. Accountability isn’t about being mean—it’s about helping people show up as their best selves.

The Hidden Hiring Mistake That Kills Accountability

One of the biggest accountability killers? A deep need for approval.

If you’re hiring people who will do anything to avoid confrontation, you’re creating a culture where problems go unspoken—and that silence becomes the real issue.

For those of you using emotional intelligence assessments, watch for high intuition and empathy scores. If you’re building an executive team, aim for an average of six to seven on those traits. That’s the sweet spot—people who care about relationships but are still willing to have tough conversations.

Accountability with Kindness and Love

At the end of the day, accountability isn’t about being harsh—it’s about helping people succeed. And when it’s done with kindness and consistency, it changes everything.

Roxanne Emmerich 

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board. 

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On pages 58 and 59, the author introduces a powerful concept: first-order thinking versus second-order thinking. As an executive, understanding this distinction is critical—not just for yourself but for helping your team evolve their thinking as well.

Here’s how he defines it:

First-order thinkers look for simple, easy, and defendable solutions. But the reality is, the world we operate in isn’t simple. It’s a complex web of variables, interactions, and shifting factors happening all at once.

A classic example? We need sales. Let’s get sales training. Or We need to improve deposits. Let’s hire a new head of retail. That’s first-order thinking. Does that work? Maybe 1% of the time—if you’re lucky.

Second-order thinkers don’t stop at the obvious. They push beyond the surface and examine deeper layers, considering second, third, and even further levels of consequences. They ask questions like:

• What factors are truly at play in this problem?
• How do these factors interact?
• What are the different possible consequences of each action?
• How can we leverage these insights to accelerate solutions?

Charlie Munger sums it up best: Second-order thinking is not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid. Gotta love Charlie Munger, right? One of the sharpest business minds of our time.

So why does this matter so much for bank executives right now? Because in the world of AI, if second-order thinking isn’t guiding the strategy, you’ll end up with a lot of wasted activity moving in the wrong direction. First-order thinking might feel like progress, but when it backfires—and it will—you’ll be left scrambling.

The industry is at a crossroads, and time is running out to shift the level of thinking. This isn’t about rolling out another training program—because training just teaches people what to do. It’s like training monkeys to follow steps.

Education, on the other hand, teaches people how to think. How to dive deep, challenge assumptions, and move beyond pedestrian solutions to real, strategic problem-solving that doesn’t just fix issues—it unlocks opportunities.

So, stick with me as we dig into how to get your team ready for the new world of AI—especially when they’re resisting, pushing back, and clinging to the past. Because let’s be honest: their old jobs aren’t going to exist the way they used to. It’s time to move forward.

Welcome to the world of second-order thinking.

Roxanne Emmerich 

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board. 

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