With AI we now have the tools to find your next best customers, but if you don’t bring wisdom to the tools, you have more junk.   

There’s a world of difference between information and communication.   

There’s a world of difference of being able to use AI to find customers and being able to use AI to find customers with the right parameters in the right way.   

There’s an old saying garbage in garbage out. That’s not true, it’s garbage in garbage stays. If we choose the wrong people to go after, and your people are working on them and it’s not working, you can be masters at your process of bringing them in. But if we choose incorrectly and we don’t have the right people, that can be a problem.

In the future, we’re going to have AI as it’s going nowhere. It will be one of the tools that we’ll be able to use in marketing (and by the way, everybody in banking is a marketer, when they really understand what marketing is).  When we use the tools correctly, and then we find the processes to get in front of them, that’s when the magic happens.   

Now more than ever critical thinking skills, expertise, and mastery need to drive AI because, again, garbage in garbage stays.

Can we afford, when we’re on our path to being a Top Five Percenter, to not have properly identified our next best customers and the best tools to communicate with them to break the relationship with their current financial institution so they can come to you with the entire relationship and make a quick decision? And make sure that you’re giving premium pricing on top of all that? That is what mastery looks like.

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

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

The post How Technology Can Help Scale Personal Relationships with Customers [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

But the real question is how do we find another 100 just like these?

Well, they have the same psychographics, and firmographics, and so we must study very carefully the psychographics and demographics of our current customers, and then find people who have things in common with them and know how to quickly disqualify.

By putting them in the right top 100 list and creating a warming situation so we build reputational equity with them, they start to fall in love with us and it’s then and only then that they’ll be open to taking the call from you to set up an appointment, once reputational equity has been created.

But you better know what you’re doing because you’ve got one chance when you’re working with the affluent. If you don’t add massive value, they will kick you to the curb and they’re not letting anybody from your organization back in again, for another 10 or 15 years. Why? Because they just saw somebody waste their time. And yet, we have organizations who have officer call programs, and they have people who don’t know how to add value, who have briefcases, who go up and down the street calling on businesses, kind of like they are out of control. Every time they walk in, you may as well put a sign across their forehead that says “vendor”, because they haven’t selected the right person. And they don’t know how to embark on that conversation. And here’s the thing, it’s not their fault.    

When I first started as a lender, I was an agricultural lender and then a commercial one. That’s what I did. Why? Because that’s what all the guys did before me. I was the first female to do what I was doing, so I did what the guys did.  They had a briefcase, I got a briefcase. They got in the car and drove out to the businesses, I got in the car and drove out to the businesses.  I had the same conversations that always brought it back to rate. Having those conversations that bring it back to rate is kind of like putting your face in front of their foot and saying don’t kick me. Of course, they’re going to bring up rate, why because I’m a vendor, and I came in here in a position of weakness.   

So we have to identify the right people, but then we have to position ourselves as bringing so much value that they’re pushing the button to their assistant saying, “Cancel my afternoon, I need to have this conversation because it’s time to switch our banking relationship.”

Do your people know how to have them at hello? That’s the game. And so first of all, we need to identify them. And then we need to build a process that has them at hello. That’s the game of those who perform in the top 5%. And those who are committed to getting there need to get in the right game, because it’s hard to be a top 5% performer when you’re not playing by the right playbook.

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

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

The post Finding Top 100 Customers [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

He told me that they had hired a firm, spent several hundred thousand dollars, and been in meetings for five months to figure out how to find their next most profitable customers. I was thinking, “are you kidding me”? I said, “Well, how’s it working?” He said, “Well, we’re not done yet. We haven’t identified them.” So, what they should have done is identify them in a couple of hours by following a clean process of psychographics and demographics, and then got busy bringing them in. That is the point, isn’t it?   

He came up to me, and he was just distraught. And yet, I get it. I’ve been a part of those organizations where you get it and you see what needs to be done, but nobody else does. But what do you do when you know everybody around you is going the wrong direction?   

Here’s what happens when that person works for a bank that’s destined to become a top 5% performing bank, they become a puppy dog with a sock in their mouth, they don’t let go. They just keep asking questions like “Shouldn’t we have figured this out already”? “Shouldn’t we be calling them”? “What is our process for calling on them”? “Do we know we have the right thing”? “What’s our process for organizing this”?   

Those who are Top Five Percenters™ don’t watch the crazy going on around them except it and say “that’s just how things are around here. It’s just me, how will I ever move this mountain?” Every great organization that’s become a Top Five Percenter has had somebody who grew a backbone and decided to be a stand for “if somebody can do it, we can do it, and we’re going to do it, so get the heck out of my way. I will just annoyingly keep asking questions until we get this right, because I will not accept working for a mediocre organization. “ 

When was the last time you ever called home and you said to your significant other “Honey, today, I performed average.” That doesn’t happen. We called home and we kick some back end and took some names and we made something happen. And that’s how our Top Five Percenter thinks. They are unstoppable in getting what they want when they know that there’s a better way of getting things done. And they are never going to sleep until they find the best way because success leaves clues. And as my mentor taught me years ago, only study with those who have their information in order and have done it repeatedly. 

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

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

The post What is the Most Effective Way to Choose the Right Next Best Customer [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Yeah, I know you think you’re doing team selling because you put Josie and Molly together and you put Tom and Joe together- that’s not team selling. An optimized team selling experience requires an incredible amount of skill sets, and different team members going out the first time than the second time, along with being customized to who’s in front of them; in other words, who is the audience for that particular piece.  Team selling done correctly should, on the loan side, generate at least 150 to 200 basis points more than what your competitors are willing to accept the deal in it. And it should get the entire relationship because the process is worked.   

Here’s why team selling is really important.  

Harvard Business Review had an article years ago and talked about how team selling was rocking it compared to individual sales. But it’s not just that they’re going out in teams, it’s that they know how to pass the baton. Because if you’re like me, whenever I’m in front of the biggest deal I’ve ever worked on before, my tongue just starts getting tied up in a knot and you’d think I was a complete and total idiot. So things that came easily to me before suddenly they’re lost.

So, does the team know how to pass the baton? Do they know exactly what steps, stages, questions, how they’re listening, and how to move that through? And do they hold each other accountable to exactness of the process?  

Whenever my dear colleague of many years, Terry Slattery, the legend of IBM, would go into our banks, people would say, “Oh, he’s the legend of IBM,” well, of course he is. He’s a master and what he talked about is that so many bankers have imperfect practice. Imperfect practice basically means they’re doing stuff, but they’re not doing it with precision. Going out and getting a deal that’s going to bring in extra 6,7,8 thousand to $12,000 to the bottom line on a monthly basis, is going to take some precision, especially to get it in a two-meeting close.

We have some Top 5 Percent performers right now, and one of the things they have in common is a 90 to 100% close-rate. We have one bank that’s gone 18 months not having lost a deal where they went after somebody’s best customer who wasn’t looking for a different bank, they totally loved their current bank, and yet, within two steps and two weeks, they closed at 100% close rate at premium pricing with the entire relationship.

Don’t tell me it can’t be done, because I can point you to people who are doing it. And they are the ones where their numbers are taking off; their net interest margin, well of over five, their ROA well over two. These are the banks that will be able to keep their names on the doors because they have de-commoditized. They have got their team members proficient, and they know how to get big deals at premium pricing through a team selling process. They hold their team to the expectation of mastery. 

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

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

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

And what they’re really saying is 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 of the person who 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, let me assure you it is not their fault. They don’t know what a Top 5 Percenter™ does.

They don’t know that instead of going out and calling on a whole bunch of potential accounts, that if they knew how to identify a Top 100 most profitable next account, that could bring in an extra six, or seven, or 12, or $13,000, 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 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 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.  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 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 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 selling of products and understand that now, we have to bring true trusted advisor skill sets, are the ones who will make it.

If you want to be a Top 5 Percenter, you have to figure out how to take your people and elevate them to the skill set of two trusted advisors.   

I had a CEO of a bank recently who was going through my Trusted Advisor Certification and he said these words, “I thought I was a hotshot. I’ve been helping bank customers for 30 years. And now 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.”

I’m thinking if a bank CEO says that, just imagine what’s going on with your team members as they’re going out their shluggin’ 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 customers will ever need. 

To your continued success, 

Roxanne Emmerich 

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

The post How Can a Bank Best Align Personnel to Profitability [VIDEO] appeared first on The Emmerich Group.

Are you as good as you think you are? Whether the economy gets better or not is out of your control. But YOU getting better—that’s entirely in your control, and it’s non-negotiable.

As a leader, YOU set the standards. And this year, those standards had better be high and focused on the right things.

Organizations thrive because the leaders within those organizations thrive. After 25 years of working with many of the top-performing financial institutions in the country to take them to a higher level, it is clear that the quality of leadership is the key performance indicator—regardless of what the economy dishes up.

Here’s an action plan to put on the desk of every one of your leadership team to raise the bar next year.

• Seize the opportunity. With great challenges come great opportunities. Never before have the opportunities been greater. This will be the year of the great “pull ahead.” The financial institutions that will thrive in the future will make astronomical headway this year while their competitors remain stuck implementing yesterday’s agenda and focusing on “cost control.” What’s left to cut?
• Leader, compare thyself! How do you do compared to competitors at hiring, attracting high-profit customers, owning the full relationship of each profitable client, getting massive core deposits? What are the retail principles of Amazon that should be used in your business? How can you apply the principles of the new “Google Economy” in which FREE is a way of attracting business? It’s time to get wise!
• Set high standards in the key result areas that matter most and are rigorous to stamp out incompetence and poor performance. Make your standards of performance clear and hold people accountable.
• Commit to being the best in EVERY way—the best service, the best sales approach, the best educator on financial information, and the best at getting massive results without a Mongolian goat rodeo of chaotic activity. Focus. Focus. Focus. There are thousands of ways to do every task—but one best way that gets massive results with low inputs. Do you know what it is?
• Be the example. The commitment to personal excellence must show in everything you do.
• Have more fun. Make winning at business a game. Imagine going to a football game with no scoreboard and bleachers full of confused fans not knowing when to celebrate—or why. That’s exactly the culture of most banks, and that’s why so many of them are struggling. Sorry to deliver the hard news, but a professional takes hard news without hard feelings, sucks it up and gets busy making changes. How you compare to the financial industry is feedback. Take it and get busy making corrective action.
• Stay informed, but only from people who KNOW what works. Study with people who have their business principles in order and have a history of success and of leading others to success. This is not the time for theory, MBA mumbo jumbo, or the Fad of the Month.
• Leaders are learners. They attend seminars, read outside industry journals, and study everything. Most important, they study with those who have their information in order—those who have been there and done it.
• Leaders are also unlearners. Even as you keep learning new ideas, this year will also be the year of unlearning the old. Those banks that are marketing, selling, hiring, or doing practically anything the way they did three years ago will get a sucker punch to the bottom line this year.
• Create clarity. What are the 5 key initiatives and 5 key results in your organization? Do they sound like they could be the same as any other bank? If so, they won’t work. Does everyone in your organization know them by heart and have a personal work plan that ties straight into them? If not, you can count on exhaustion this year—but you can’t count on getting the results you want.
• Stay above it all. Two key emotions guide every decision you make: fear and love. The first will cause a bad decision every time—the second, a much better one. You must be a realist and deal with the bad blows of the economy. To stay mired in it, to not get above it, will cause your inevitable demise. Focus on decisions made out of love—love for being the best financial institution in your market, love for having a team of professionals who care passionately about the success of your customers, love for being at the top of your game. Love for your customers and concern for their future. Focus there instead of on the messes, and you’ll keep future messes at bay.

This is your year. But, it’s going to take a whole new level of sophistication and understandings. Most important of all…enjoy the journey!

Roxanne Emmerich

The post The Art of Superb Execution appeared first on The Emmerich Group.