Building a Performance Culture that Lasts with Jack Hubbard

Caleb Stevens (00:28.172)
Well, Jack, it is great to have you back on the show. This is, I think, your probably your fourth time joining us. So welcome back. You are a popular guest back by popular demand. So how are you?

Jack Hubbard (00:43.062)
Well, thank you, Caleb. It’s great to see you guys. And you know, I always tell people, of course, Chris Nichols is a good friend and and I always tell people you gotta follow Chris because whatever he does is just golden. And your your podcast is the best of the best. So it’s it’s it’s a real privilege to be back on with you.

Caleb Stevens (01:02.174)
How many years now have you been training banks and bankers?

Jack Hubbard (01:06.466)
Fifty three, Caleb. Eighty one thousand bankers have gone through the process with me and and they’re and a many of them are still in banking, which I always appreciate. They didn’t drop out.

Caleb Stevens (01:16.85)
That’s fantastic. Well, I feel like just about every bank that I talk to, if they haven’t worked with you before, they know who you are and know your reputation and and you’ve you’ve impacted a lot of people over the years. For the, you know, two bankers out there who are living under a rock and don’t know about yourself and what you do. Give us just a quick elevator pitch for what you do for banks.

Jack Hubbard (01:37.4)
Sure. Well, I was a community banker for thirteen years after leaving broadcasting play by play, and that was always my passion. So I got into banking a little bit by accident. I’m an accidental banker, a lot of them are. spent thirteen years in in the branches, in repossessions, in lending, and in marketing. And then after my fourth bank was sold out from under me and I was fired and by all four of those because marketing was expensive.

I decided I’m not going back into banking again, but I love the industry. So I I got into consulting and and started traveling about 40 weeks a year. and this is my nearly 40th year of of being in consulting, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve I’ve I’ve had a chance to meet a lot of amazing bankers and and certainly seen a lot of changes in banking. I I remember

You know, when they talk about green eye shades, I our auditor had a green eye shade. And when I started in banking, it was all about ledgers and pencil and paper. And we’ve we’ve certainly made a lot of changes to the industry. And most of them are pretty good. Some of them are probably is not. And I I I guess the last thing I’ll say, and and this is this is a real amplification of the changes. When I started in banking, there were fourteen thousand four hundred bankers.

And we controlled 74% of the financial services marketplace. You had to be a complete idiot or a complete criminal not to make money and do well in banking. And now there’s about 4,000 banks. And it’s unfortunate in a lot of ways. Some of them had to go. But community banking, as we’re going to talk about today, is still the lifeblood of this country. without community banking, we’d be in big, big trouble.

Caleb Stevens (03:25.62)
We just made a video recently that talks about what we do at the correspondent division. And the first line in that video is community banks are the lifeblood of our country. And so I’m glad you I’m glad you see it the same way. And we appreciate what you do to serve the community banks out there. I think one of the things you’re known for, you’re known for a lot of things, but one of the things you’re often known for is helping banks create a performance culture.

versus merely just a sales culture. In fact, I was scrolling on LinkedIn a few months ago and I saw a post by a banker and the banker was talking all about the importance of a sales culture. Like everybody’s in sales. And on one level, I totally agree with him. The teller is in sales, the deposit operation person is in sales. When you’re out in the community, you want to be representing your brand everywhere you go and looking for opportunity, irrespective of your specific role.

But you kind of flip the script on that a little bit and really emphasize the idea of a performance culture. So just to start us off, what do you mean by that?

Jack Hubbard (04:29.749)
Yeah. Wha when when we started our business with St. Myron Hubbard started twenty-six years ago, one of the things my wife did, she bought me a great gift, and it was the book The Trusted Advisor by Charles Green. And Charlie and I have become a really good, really good friends. And and so this whole idea of trust-based selling kind of got me down this path of performance cultures because

You know, a lot of times people say, well, bankers weren’t hired to sell, or they were hired to sell. What’s really important is that the customer wasn’t hired to be sold to. their whole mindset isn’t, gosh, I hope on on Tuesday at nine o’clock, somebody, some banker that I don’t know from a bag of donuts comes in here and tries to push a loan down my throat. that’s not the whole goal here. So when we started to talk about performance cultures, it was

Look, this sales culture is is really not working. What can we do to kind of modify this approach a little bit? So that’s how the per and it happened over a period of time, of course, but that’s how performance culture kind of got started. And I always tell bankers, so bank presidents, I do a lot of work with boards. They’ll call and they’ll say, Hey, come in and talk to us about what’s going on in sales. And I’ll say, Look, there’s five things.

That you really need to think about if your bank wants to build a performance culture, and they all begin with the letter C. It’s kind of like the five C’s of lending. The first one is congruence. This whole idea of alignment. I I look at a lot of websites, Caleb, so so do you. And and a bank will say, Well, we’re all about relationships and boy, we’re our customers are our partners. And then I’ll attend their sales meetings and all the managers do is beat the crap out of people for numbers.

And so there’s this whole misalignment of go what’s going on. so congruence is number one. Number two is commitment. we this is a long haul kind of a thing. This isn’t a a a friends episode that has 23 minutes of content and seven minutes of commercials. This is this is all about making a commitment for for the long haul. The third C is is a really important one too, and that’s connectivity. This whole idea, and we’re gonna talk about

Jack Hubbard (06:51.873)
Teens and sales leadership, this whole idea of connecting what sales leaders do between and among the routines. I see a lot of team meetings out there, and then everybody walks away and there’s no commitment to do anything for the next meeting. That that level of connectivity. The next one is coaching, and we’ll talk about that. And the last one is courage. You know great performers, top performers that are superstars don’t want to participate. They don’t want to

Put stuff in the CRM and they don’t want to go to sales training and and they’re lone wolves and that’s all fine. I don’t want a superstar. I want an MVP. I want Peyton Manning. I want somebody who’s going to bring the team together and show leadership and say, look, I’m a great performer, but I’m part of this culture. And so a a man, what I always say to a bank president is the most important organ in your body as it relates to a performance culture, Caleb, is your stomach.

Because people are gonna come to you and they’re gonna say, I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna put the put CRM stuff in the system. but i if you let them off the hook, everybody’s off the hook. Because if they’re a superstar or an MVP and they don’t do what you want the culture to do, people are gonna start seeing that and they say, Well, if Jim can’t do it, why why why should I do it? so the other thing around performance cultures, Caleb, is

Sales cultures have to do with a number of different things. numbers. We talked about that that a little bit. How many calls did you make? I’ve never seen a statistic that would say the number of calls that you make is directly proportional to your success. Cross-selling and training events. What performance cultures look at are things like cross-solving. and when it’s not it

It it’s not one of these things where you just it’s words. It’s a mindset so that if a banker goes out to cross-sell, their questions are gonna focus on the product. When they cross-solve, their questions are gonna focus on the buyer. And this whole idea of training events, it’s not a training event. You know, I’ve done a lot of work over the years with South State Bank. And one of things I love about the bank and and a lot of banks is they’re learning organizations.

Jack Hubbard (09:14.945)
They don’t bring people in to do motivational speeches. They don’t do training events because it’s a tick mark. They do it because it’s the right thing. So performance cultures have a variety of different aspects to it. And we can certainly explore that further if you want to.

Caleb Stevens (09:30.428)
Yeah, that’s great. Have you, I don’t know how much you follow college football, have you watched any of the new Nick Saban documentary that just came out?

Jack Hubbard (09:38.261)
I have not, but I wanna see it. H what w what what are your thoughts on it?

Caleb Stevens (09:42.065)
It’s worth a watch, and what you’re describing actually reminds me of it a little bit. One of the key themes he talks about in the documentary is how we live in such an outcome-oriented society. What were my numbers this quarter? How how many sales calls did I go on? And it can be easy to get so fixated on the outcome that you actually ignore the process and all the things you need to do to achieve the outcome. and that’s really where

the magic happens and it takes discipline to be dedicated to a process of knowing what do you have to do each and every day to achieve the outcome that you want. And it requires a change in perspective. And he always would say, I don’t I I I I of course we we care we care about the scoreboard at the end of the day ’cause we want to win the game. But when you’re playing the game, don’t focus on the scoreboard. Focus on playing every play and doing exactly what you need to do. And then the scoreboard will take care of itself.

Talk about that. You know, I I could see many lenders sort of th thinking through. Well, I I want to I want to produce 15 million in loans this year. and you can get so fixated on the outcome and the numbers that you ignore all these things you can improve about how you’re doing your job, how you’re solving customers’ problems, how you’re asking the right questions, how you’re how you’re not making it an adversarial relationship where it’s you versus the client, but it’s you helping solve a client’s problem. Talk about the process.

versus just being totally outcome oriented.

Jack Hubbard (11:10.849)
Well, you you talk about the score scoreboard and that that kind of leads us into this discussion. one one of the things that my good friend Bob St. Meyer talks about is you w if you want to win, you don’t win by staring at the scoreboard, you win by glancing at it. And so the the way I like to look at this whole thing from a goal perspective is is a pyramid. If you think about outcomes at the top of the pyramid.

that that is that is directly re happens as a result of behaviors and activities. I I remember one of my friends in in in life and and in banking, and he was a great friend of banking as Kelly King. And Kelly and I fr Kelly used to be the chairperson of of of BB and T and then left and just a great man.

And he and I used to talk about this pyramid a lot. And and the bottom of the pyramid is is the behaviors. What are the behaviors that I need to do every day as a banker to help my customers and help myself and help the bank? The next one at the at the top, the next level is the activities. What are the activities that I need to do when the bank rents my time? Because that’s what they’re doing.

and when I leave my my house in the morning, what what are the activities I need to be thinking about? And if it’s selling loans to the to the next person who is breathing, it’s a it’s a bad idea. But the top of that pyramid is really critical. And what what makes it more of a challenge than ever is we set the goals and hopefully the banker has some input into that, but the customer decides if the goals are going to be achieved or not, because it’s their behavior.

That determines whether they will buy from you or not, or buy from somebody else or not. This year, fifty-two percent of deals go un closed because the customer couldn’t make a decision. So as a banker, we need to we we need to do this a little bit differently. So that outcome is is really important. But if we keep staring at that outcome, it’s never going to change. A couple of weeks ago, and you talk about process, the bears

Jack Hubbard (13:30.776)
Played a terrible game against the Green Bay Packers. And one of the things that the coach said is, look, we we focus too much on the outcome of the game and not enough about the process. And I’ll put that on me. So the leadership has this pyramid too. Banker has a pyramid that says, I got to do the right behaviors, I got to do the right activities, and hopefully that’ll lead to good outcomes. What the sales leader has to do is to say, okay, what are my behaviors?

And what are my activities that I need to do? Because the outcomes that I’m looking for are the team based outcomes. Cause if everybody succeeds, the team succeeds too.

Caleb Stevens (14:10.246)
Yeah, that’s great. I I got lunch with a a guy who is an analyst and covers covers banks and works for an investment bank and he’s he’s like an equity research analyst and I told him, I said, It’s interesting how oftentimes on these earnings calls you guys will tell the executive team, Congrats on a great quarter. And it always kind of makes me chuckle because whatever we did to have a good quarter this past quarter was probably things we were focused on two or three years ago.

that set us up to have success in the future because if you’re process oriented, you’re you’re you’re not gonna be myopically focused on what’s the outcome this quarter. You’re thinking about building long-term value for your shareholders, for your employees, for your customers, and and that takes a process. So that’s that’s really good.

Jack Hubbard (14:57.919)
It does need Caleb. And one of the things that your dad did when he wrote his great book, Leading Life on Life, was was to talk about this whole idea of of behaviors and focus. and and I always tell the story about how when when our kids went through grade school and high school and college, I never looked at a report card. I didn’t care. sure, I wanted them to do well. My wife looked at the grades.

What I asked the kids when they got their report card, I said, I want to see it. I said, How do you feel about how the report card looks? And if you’re not, what what are you happy most happy about? What are you least happy about? What do you plan to continue to do to make be happy with whatever that is? And what do you plan to do to change what you’re unhappy with? I think if you look at performance cultures, and that’s one thing I really liked about your dad’s book.

This this translates right into the family. We took a lot of what I taught and we took it right into the family family mission statement and one-on-one check-ins every week. And and we had what’s called Goals Sunday. And our kids hated it. But but they had action plans for their life. And I think too often what happens is we allow the the schools and they do a great job to take over and our

We we as parents need to be more involved in this whole idea of performance as a as for your kids as well as your kids at work.

Caleb Stevens (16:32.008)
Good. So you talk a lot about the importance of being a resource manager. Too many banks, when you look at their titles, it just says commercial lender. maybe it’ll say commercial relationship manager, but you’ve talked for decades about the importance of changing that mindset to being a resource manager. give us a refresher on what that means and what does that look like in in, you know, as we go here into 2027, not too long from now.

Jack Hubbard (17:01.674)
Yeah, we I have two banks that have actually adopted this whole resource manager mindset. And I even have the CEO who has the a card that says CEO slash resource manager. And it it’s not just on the card, Caleb. Too often what happens is we we look at slogans or you know, those those kinds of things and and and it you gotta change your heart. You gotta change the mindset, you gotta change the culture.

So, this whole idea of resource manager is it goes far deeper than a relationship manager. And look, I’m I’m not beating up people who are relationship managers. That’s fine. But a resource manager is something that a customer wants. I’ll give you a quick scenario on that. So recently we we just did a study: 192 CFOs, 14 markets, $5 to $50 million in sales. And

They didn’t say the word resource manager, but here’s some things they said they wanted. When you come out on a call with me, banker, share insights that give me new perspectives. Don’t give me brochures, annual reports, or any of that stuff with a bank logo on it. Help me understand how to make sense of what’s going on in my business. I’ve got plenty of information. Help me make sense of what I have.

Another one is, and this is a key to a resource manager, and that’s be proactive. They they’ll say things like, banker, you have you deal with a lot of customers like me. Help me understand what’s going on with some of these customers. You don’t have to tell me their names if you don’t have to, but but if you can’t, but but tell me what’s going on from a best practice perspective and and introduce me to other resources.

We we there used to be a great bank here in Chicago, LaSalle Bank. And their whole mindset, their whole marketing was putting buyers and sellers together, that the banker’s job was to put buyers and sellers together. And I think when you do that, regardless of whatever happens, if it ever goes on the balance sheet or not, if if you can do that, you are a resource manager to both of those people, to the buyer and the seller.

Jack Hubbard (19:19.276)
And the last thing they said was, and this is really critical, teach me something new and contribute to my critical thinking. Help me almost be inside my business. I know, banker, you can’t be inside my business all the time. But be thinking about me. Be a be be a resource and teach me something new. The Rain Group is a great training company, and they’ve written several books on this.

And and if you look at their data, they do a lot of surveys and survey after survey will tell you that the reason people win in sales was because on every call they added value, new perspectives, and they taught something new to the buyer. When you do when you do that, how can a buyer not come to to do business with you? That’s a resource manager.

Caleb Stevens (20:06.012)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. It’s funny. We we’ve talked before in our correspondent division about how it it it it’s I I can’t think we can’t think of a better compliment than when a bank will call us asking about something that we don’t even sell it, but they just want our opinion on it or want to know if we do it. Like for example, a while back a bank called us about something they were something that was going on with their ATMs.

and we don’t service ATMs, we don’t have any ATM line of business on our correspondent banking side of the bank. But the bank just trusted our opinion and wanted to know what we thought about this this ATM situation. And it’s flattering to us that they would think of us as a as a resource that could add value irrespective of if we sell it or not. You know, they just want our opinion and great, great, you know, aspiration for all the bankers out there is are you someone the client calls?

when they just need a loan or have a question about their account, or are you a resource that goes beyond just the bank products that you offer, but you really are a go to trusted advisor and it’s easier said than done.

Jack Hubbard (21:15.22)
And and you know, it is it is Caleb, but it is easier today than it was when I was growing up as a banker. Today you can prove that you’re a resource by going onto LinkedIn, by sharing content, by commenting, by connecting. And so LinkedIn helps you with that personal brand. And pe when people start to see, this is a banker that that has some perspective on things, you may get calls.

Caleb Stevens (21:45.28)
So let’s talk about that. you know, one of the one of my favorite phrases is you can’t take advantage of an opportunity that you don’t know exists. And the same thing goes with a business. You you can’t you know, I I I often see some of the some of the lenders that that are doing well today are visible, more visible than their competitors. and LinkedIn is a big part of raising their profile and their visibility and their perception.

As a resource manager, and there’s probably a lot of other lenders that are just as capable and confident and can, you know, do all of the same things, but nobody knows they exist and they’re not as visible. And in such a digital online world today, if you aren’t, I think, have some kind of presence on LinkedIn, I would say you’re leaving a lot of opportunity on the table because buyers won’t know you’re out there. So talk about how banks should be using LinkedIn.

Jack Hubbard (22:40.074)
Yeah, and and it it goes beyond the basics. Clearly you need to have a profile with a good picture and all the rest of that. But I I I wanna talk about a couple of hidden things that that I teach bankers. one of the big hoop de does going on now on LinkedIn is the new algorithm.

LinkedIn has changed their algorithm and people that are that are well known and and do a lot of work internationally on LinkedIn are all in a tizzy about this. And AI certainly has a ki thing with that. But look but let’s take it down to the community bank level. You’re in a town of 50,000 people, five thousand people.

Should you be using, of course, because people in your community are doing it. You don’t need a hundred thousand followers and you don’t need 20,000 connections. But if you don’t have 500, if you don’t, if you aren’t out there, you got a problem. So I always tell bankers, here’s some hidden gems. Number one, connect, connect, connect. The connect, the first degree connection on LinkedIn is a real difference maker. And I’ll tell you how in a second. So do do a lot of connections every week.

Three, four, five connections every week without fail, maybe more. number two, comment. Go out and comment on people in your community that have shared content. And I and I don’t care, you don’t have time to share content, fine. You do have time to comment a little bit. More than 10 words, about 15 words, and leave it with a question. What would you do? What’s your best practices around this?

I I you know I post regularly on LinkedIn, but I’ve noticed lately that my comments have gotten as many eyeballs on as my as my posts. So that’s the th the second thing. The third thing is, and this is a real hidden gem, it’s called catch-up. If you go to my your My Network tab, this is for your first degree connections, there’s something called catch-up. If you click on catch up, what you’ll see is birthdays, anniversaries.

Jack Hubbard (24:42.464)
Job anniversaries and the key for me, job changes. It’s the very first thing that I do every single day. I go to catch up, who’s changed jobs, and then I message them. I s I don’t go through link, I go to their profile and I message them with something of value: an article, a white paper, congratulations, something like that. Real short and sweet. Not do you want to buy anything. So catch up is really, really critical. When you have a connection, you can send articles.

Caleb Stevens (24:45.653)
Mm.

Jack Hubbard (25:11.188)
either via messaging or through the send feature on LinkedIn. You can only do it if it’s your first degree connection. And the last thing I’ll suggest to you is use your cell phone. There is a there is a feature on LinkedIn on your mobile app that allows you to either send audio or video messages to your first degree connections. I do it all the time. When the bears are playing over Thanksgiving the

couple weekends before or weekend before, I’ll sit it there and I’ll just be sending Thanksgiving messages out to as many of my connections as I possibly can. Not do you want to buy anything, but just sending them. And I I said one last one. Here’s one more. Join groups. Join groups in your community, the Chamber of Commerce group, things like that. And then be active. Post and comment on those things. So those are little hidden gems that you can do on LinkedIn, Caleb. And I always say,

do do w what what I like to call three by five by fifteen. Three things a day, that that take fifteen minutes, five days a week. You do that, you’ll be LinkedIn licious for sure.

Caleb Stevens (26:22.485)
That’s great. And I would encourage our listeners, go to Jack’s profile on LinkedIn. It’s just type in Jack Hubbard. I’m sure he’ll come right up. He he’s a great model for how he structures his profile. I I like even your about section, Jack, where it’s really a resource. you know, you’re you’ve got testimonials, you’ve you’ve you’re clearly you’re clearly showing results you’ve achieved for clients. You’re talking about outcomes, your help you’re showing the problems you solve, you’ve got your easy to contact.

I like how you have it structured and I hope folks will go and check it out and, you know, customize it and tailor it to your own style. But I think Jack does a great job of of modeling how to use it effectively. it goes beyond to your point, yeah, just a profile picture and your n your your title and all that stuff for sure.

So we can’t let you go, Jack, without talking about AI. we’ve mentioned that before, but I feel like every time we get back together to talk, there’s something new that’s coming out or there’s a change and it’s interesting to see how fast things have developed. But as it relates to banking and as it relates to the selling side of banking, where do you see the biggest opportunity out there? And talk about some of the initiatives that you’ve got cooking at St. Myre and Hubbard.

Jack Hubbard (27:39.263)
I I think if you look at twenty-seven, AI certainly is gonna be everywhere. But I think you’re gonna see more in-depth look at AI and sales. We have we’ve we’ve done the compliance and risk and all the things that we need to do in lending. We’ve become more efficient. Read Chris Nichols every week. He’s got all kinds of great ideas there. But I think in twenty seven we’re gonna do more in sales. We’ve spent two out two years.

putting together a a pretty amazing tool. Think about this. It takes about three hours for a middle market banker to prepare for an initial call. they go to about twenty websites and now they’re doing ten prompts on co-pilot. what we’ve tried to do is stop the swivel. In other words, stop the swivel from going to this website to this website. We put together what we call AI navigator. it it in three minutes, in less than three minutes, it does

Call planning, research, strategies, questions. it’s the most amazing tool that I’ve ever seen in banking, and I’m very proud to have been associated with it. it what Muhammad Ali said something interesting once. He said, I’ve never won a fight, fight in a ring. I always won in preparation. And too often what happens is bankers are not preparing well enough. They do the research.

But what AI Navigator does, and what we’re going to see more and more in AI, is taking that research and creating, connecting it to understanding, connecting it to call planning, to call execution. And if you go back to what you talked about around resource management, that’s the real key. The other thing is, I’ve got bankers that have two or three hundred clients. How do you keep track of that? Here’s and here’s the problem there’s risk in the portfolio.

When a new CFO comes into a business, you have 90 days to talk to them, get get to know them a little bit, get them to trust you. And if they don’t, if they don’t trust you, they’re gonna go out and find a new bank. And so what we see is a lot of portfolios diminishing because a banker didn’t know what was going on. One of the things I love about AI Navigator is there’s what we call signals, which is 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Jack Hubbard (29:58.882)
Helping the bankers, sending stuff to bankers about their portfolio and what’s going on, what’s changed, what’s new, what’s the opportunity, what’s the risk, et cetera. So this whole idea of going from hours to minutes, we’re saving bankers about 20 hours a week in call planning, Caleb. And the the the results are really are are really there. So I’m really excited about that. I think that’s gonna be a real key for 27.

Take this whole idea of AI into the into the sales role. and and I think that one other thing for 27 I’ll I’ll suggest is bankers are gonna need, because they’re so busy and we’re doing more with less, we’re gonna need to do a lot more targeting and focus and less worry back to the leadership, less worry about less we’re less worry about the numbers and more worry about the quality of the call. How did the call go?

And it leads right back into leadership. Leaders shouldn’t be saying how many calls did you make? They should be saying, like that report card story I told you, what was your best call for the week? What challenges do you have? What can I do to be of help?

Caleb Stevens (31:08.541)
Yeah, that’s outstanding. if folks want to learn more about AI Navigator and all the resources that you put out there for bankers, how can they find you?

Jack Hubbard (31:18.123)
Yeah, and I’m still training and I’m still doing a lot of stuff, public speaking and in-bank stuff and AI navigator, certainly. Jhubbard@smandh.com. And my cell phone is area code 847-903-4152. And as you mentioned, Caleb, they can find me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to talk to anybody in banking that wants to chat. I I love doing that. And thanks again for having me. I really appreciate it.

Caleb Stevens (31:46.439)
Our pleasure. Well, you’re the best out there and we appreciate you coming back on and keep doing what you’re doing. We’re big fans of of everything you do to help our industry and we hope folks will connect with you. So thanks again.