In my January blog “5 Reasons Every Business Banker Should Have Industry Niches,” I noted that successful bankers should study up and figure out the industries on which to focus. One factor you should consider is industry profitability. Generally speaking, profitable companies accumulate lots of assets and can therefore afford to pay...

When I was a banker calling on businesses, company owners frequently would ask me, "What's going on with the economy? Is it growing? Should I be worried? What are you hearing out there?" It struck me that they were looking to me, their banker, to be a “mini-economist” of sorts.

Driving home from work recently, I saw a new “For Sale” sign in the yard of a house in our neighborhood. The home is tidy and well-maintained, but it isn’t necessarily someplace that would grab your attention while driving down the road. Then I noticed a smaller placard affixed to the “For Sale” sign, which read, “I’m Gorgeous Inside!”...

In our last blog post, 8 Reasons Why Bankers Should Call on More Growth Companies, I made the case for why bankers should be calling on more startups. While banks have traditionally been somewhat wary of these fast-growth, new idea-type companies, believing that they were too risky, I contend that there are numerous advantages to calling...

Startups. They’re all the rage lately, aren’t they? Incubators and accelerators are springing up all over the country, and the startups and growth companies they foster make up an exploding part of our economy. In fact, according to research by the Kauffman Foundation, startups account for up to 50 percent of the new jobs being created...

Dental practices and other privately-owned medical practices have long been attractive to banks for both financing and deposit products. Big picture, while dental practices need financing for initial capital expenditures and ongoing updates, and have operating costs that can reach 75 percent, they also have extremely low failure rates,...

The Wells Fargo fiasco has put the words “sales” and “banking” together like oil and water– bankers now are scared to even imply that they are salespeople or selling something. After all, when one of the largest banking institutions in the world opens millions of bogus accounts unbeknownst to their customers so that people could make...

During my 13 years in the business banking world, I came to realize that almost all bankers want to think they know their customers. Several years ago, my manager shared a story about a time he “knew” his business banking customer…or so he thought.

I’m sure you recall the famous line from the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire, “You had me at ‘hello,’’’ muttered by Jerry’s wife, Dorothy, during a passionate discussion. I must admit that, as a business owner, I felt a lot like that when my banker asked me about corrugated box prices during a meeting. He wasn’t an “industry expert,” but he hit...

The bank's vaults are open for any and everyone. Money is there for the taking; all you have to do is ask!!!

Sounds a bit on the crazy side that banks will loan money to anybody, doesn't it? But how could the educated economist or banker, for that matter, say anything different when many banks are reporting double-digit loan growth in...