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Stop the To-Do List Madness: Use Behavioral Economics to Drive Bank Profitability

by | Creating an Accountability Culture, Culture, Effective Leadership, Employee Engagement, High Performance, Managing Employees, Profitability and Growth, Sales & Marketing

Most community banks are busy.

But busy is not the same as profitable.

If your lenders are running up and down Main Street chasing low-close-rate deals and matching rates just to “win” business, you don’t have a hustle problem—you have a behavioral economics problem.

In this video, the sacred cow of your endless to-do list will be challenged and replaced with a sharper question: What is the highest and best use of your time right now?

You’ll discover:

  • Why activity without profit focus quietly destroys margin

  • How to identify and target your next 100 most profitable relationships

  • A two-meeting close strategy that eliminates price objections

High-performing banks do not reward motion. They reward profitable motion.

If your team says they’re “too busy” to think strategically, that’s not resistance—it’s a systems failure. Behavioral economics drives buy-in, execution, and margin expansion.

The future belongs to banks that understand what truly makes money—and eliminate what doesn’t.

Watch the full episode and decide: Are you running faster… or running smarter?

Watch now. 

Are you still operating off of a to-do list? Well, might I suggest that you throw that thing out—and do it immediately?

Because not every to-do is as important as the other pieces. And it’s one of the main reasons that most organizations just never get to that state of thriving: they do not create a clear understanding of behavioral economics.

What is the highest and best use of my time at this moment?

Let me ask you this. For a loan officer, should they be going and calling on all kinds of people up and down Main Street with maybe a ten percent close rate—where they’re having to match rates and thereby losing money for your organization?

You can’t make that one up in volume.

Or would it be better to identify your next top one hundred most profitable customers, know how to call on them in such a way that they actually get the appointment, and know how to, with a two-meeting close, close the entire relationship—with pricing not being a thing—and have all of their business and all of their friends as a result?

You tell me.

If somebody’s telling you, “I’m too busy running up and down Main Street doing deals that lose money for you,” versus, “I’m going to take the time to figure out how to do this instead,” which one makes more sense?

And yet—God bless you—I’ve been around bank executives for decades now, and I know as you introduce this thought what you’re going to run into. I know it.

You’re going to have some folks who are basically going to tell you, “Don’t you get it? I am so busy running up and down Main Street. I don’t have time for this. I’m exhausted. How dare you ask me to be more?”

Here’s what we’ve got to understand.

The future is here for those who understand.

We’ve got to bring brilliance to our work. We have to bring good strategic thinking to our work. We have to execute with behavioral economics and understand what makes our organization money—and what actually loses money for the organization—and get about the right things.

All right. Next time we talk, we’re going to have some fun. It’s going to be a surprise. Stick tight, because I’m going to show you something that nobody knows how to do, and I think it’s going to be very important for the future of your organization.

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