Branding is a hot trend…but almost everyone has it wrong. A truckload of dough is wasted every year by missing out on what brand really means.
Let’s make it simple.
Holiday gifts are filled with one of my favorite things: CHOCOLATE. It’s right up there with the meaning of life.
But here’s an observation I’ve made over the last few holiday seasons:
If someone delivers a box of cheap chocolates to our office, they last for weeks. If, on the other hand, the chocolates are exquisite melt-in-your-mouth types, they’re gone in a few blinks. Everyone knows who sent them, and everybody loooooves the person who sent them.
So if you were a chocolate, would your clients call you a Hershey or a Godiva? The answer has a greater influence on your future profitability than almost anything else.
Why?
A Hershey will match prices. A Godiva never goes on sale and never demeans its brand by having coupons or sales.
A Hershey is perceived as a commodity. If something better comes along, people will drop their Hersheys in a New York minute. A Godiva merits a special trip, because the best is worth the effort.
A Hershey is undifferentiated, it’s okay…it’s nothing to write home about. A Godiva is a talkable experience. People will rave.
Positioning yourself as a Godiva brand, and living like it, is one of the best things you can do to prepare to kick off the New Year–it assures more profitable relationships, higher-quality relationships, and a brand that is insisted upon.
But that brand has little to do with traditional “branding” offered by marketing firms. It has everything to do with the client experience–the feel and culture of an organization.
So this year, instead of thinking like a two-pound box of cheap chocolates, savor the taste of greatness. Let that feeling stimulate your thinking every day as you live out being a Godiva.
Most banks try to fix productivity issues by hiring more staff—but that only inflates expenses. This eye-opening video reveals why your culture may be quietly draining millions from your bottom line and how one Top Gun CEO doubled his bank’s size with fewer employees by engineering a culture of clarity, accountability, and high performance.
Most banks don’t have a performance problem—they have a pretending problem. When people pretend not to see standards or hear deadlines, accountability culture in banks...
Most banks never see it coming—the hidden sales leak that quietly kills momentum and stalls growth. Discover how top-performing banks fix it fast, triple cross-sales, and build teams that drive results without pushing harder.
Most banks never see it coming—the hidden sales leak that quietly kills momentum and stalls growth. Discover how top-performing banks fix it fast, triple cross-sales, and build teams that drive results without pushing harder.
In this video, I discuss how the top 1% of community banks are not working harder than their competitors—they’re working smarter. By leveraging a high-performance...
Net interest margin is under pressure—and if your bank is still waiting on rate changes to save your profitability, you’re already behind. In this sharp, no-fluff...
Bankers, let me ask you a brutal but necessary question:Why are you still playing checkers while the top-performing banks are playing 4D chess with deposit growth? If...
Do you agree that high quality customers love high quality attention? Let's explore how you can transform your safety and profitability by creating the kind of...
What if you can 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...
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...
