Build a Bank Performance Culture That Drives Profit [VIDEO]

Most bank CEOs tell me, “We have great people,” and yet sometimes they suffer not-such-great efficiency ratios, return on assets, return on equity. And what they’re really saying: “We have good people, but they’re not great because they don’t know how they tie to profitability.” Well, I get it. When I first started in banking, people showed me what to do.

I moved things from the left side of my desk to the right side of my desk, and I thought that was the job, and I just did the job with a person who had had the job before me because that was the training that I got. I didn’t know there was another way. It wasn’t my fault, and let me assure you, it is not their fault. They don’t know what a top five percenter does.

They don’t know that instead of going out and calling on a whole bunch of potential accounts, if they know how to identify a top one hundred most profitable next account, that could bring in next year’s six or seven or twelve or thirteen thousand dollars of bottom-line impact every single month after you bring it in. If they don’t know how to do that, that’s a problem. If they don’t know how to pull that customer away from your competitor and get premium pricing and the entire relationship, that’s a problem. So instead, what are they doing?

They’re walking up the street, up and down the street, calling on people or seeing what walks in the door, and as a result of it, they’re not bringing in the quality credits, they’re not bringing the entire relationship, and, God forbid, if we ever have to match a rate again, that becomes a problem.

It’s not just in sales within banks. Every person must understand how they tie to profit on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. But here’s the warning. And do I have little red flags? Are there fireworks going on here? Because there should be. Because when you hold people accountable for outcomes before they are ready, before they are winning, before they have the education, before they have the confidence, you’re going to have a mass exodus.

I probably have followed hundreds of sales training companies who totally mucked up cultures within banking organizations because they brought in the sales training and they said, “And these are the goals, and people should be hitting them, and if they don’t hit them, out you go.” Well, here’s the reality. No one thinks they can hit those goals, and the sales training is all done incorrectly because it feels like sales. When you’re a community bank, it should never feel like sales.

It should feel like helping someone along to make a better financial decision for them and to bring great value that far exceeds anything within your product line. It’s a whole new world of banking, and those who get out of commodity banking, those who get out of the same old, same old slugging of products and understand that now we have to bring true trusted advisor skill sets, those are the ones who will make it. If you want to be a top five percent, you have to figure out how to take your people and elevate them to the skill set of true trusted advisers. I had a CEO of a bank recently who was going through my trusted adviser certification, and he said these words. He said, “I thought I was a hotshot.”

“I’ve been helping bank customers for thirty years, and now that I’m taking this trusted advisor certification, and I’m realizing that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I really wasn’t very valuable at all.” And I’m thinking, if a bank CEO says that, just imagine what’s going on with your team members as they’re going out there slugging product lines as opposed to truly becoming the only banker they’ll ever need. If you want to be a top five percent performer, you’ve got to teach your team members to be the only bank that customer will ever need.