Helping Your Lenders Succeed with Jack Hubbard

Caleb Stevens:
one final sound check.

Jack Hubbard:
Testing one, two, three. Here we are in Elgin, Illinois.

Caleb Stevens:
Great. All right, here we go. Well, Jack Hubbard, it is great to have you back on the Community Bank podcast. I think this is your third time on the show. I think we had you in 2020 during the height of COVID. We had you in 2021 as we were sort of recovering from the pandemic. And here we are, I would say, thoroughly on the other side of COVID, although there’s still some, you know, lasting changes from the pandemic. But to catch us up, what have you been working on? What’s new in your world?

Jack Hubbard:
Well, thank you for having me, Caleb. I just, I think so much of you and your dad, I listened to your podcast with him last couple of weeks ago, and that’s a great honor to be on with your father, and I know he felt the same way. You know, a lot has changed, an awful lot has changed. I was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer in March, right around March of 2020. to the official diagnosis came on June 23rd, but I pretty well knew after doing a biopsy and all the rest of it. And I was given about a 30% chance to live. And I’m very fortunate, I’ve got a great family and a 50-year partner who said to me, you know what, I’ve been married to you for 50 years, I’m not gonna let you die now, it’s too soon. And so we worked with hormone therapy and proton radiation. And so here I am. And what’s really interesting about that is I retired from St. Meier and Hubbard. I said to my good friend, Bob St. Meier, I don’t know if I can continue to do this. It’s not fair to you. So he’s got the company rolling. When I knew that I was going to be fine, I partnered with a woman named Bryn Tillman, who is just a phenomenal LinkedIn guru and we have a company called the Modern Banker. So it’s been quite interesting. I’ve had a chance to get out and do some traveling and do some speaking and some in-bank stuff and but it’s good to be back with you. It’s good to see you again.

Caleb Stevens:
Well, I know I can speak on behalf of thousands of bankers and the community that we are so glad that you are here and doing well and hope to hear from you and, you know, look forward to seeing more value that you add to the banking community for years to come. I know you’ve been doing this for a long, long time. It’s interesting, you’ve probably seen tons of changes over your sales training career, but if you wanna just kinda talk about what are… two or three big changes that you’ve seen since the pandemic coming out. You talk about LinkedIn, that’s obviously a huge one in today’s world. We had Brent Tillman on the show not too long ago. But what are the big things that bankers need to be paying attention to?

Jack Hubbard:
Well, I think if you look at statistics and, you know, liars do statistics and statistics can lie, but I think there’s some things that you really need to be prepared for and think about. First of all, you know, I do a lot of work with a great company called Barlow Research, and they have talked about for years the fact that, customers view commercial bankers about fifth in terms of when a customer wants to get more information or get some advice. Commercial bankers are just below Google. And that’s pretty sad. And I think we’ve done that to ourselves because we focus so much on products and not people. If you look at what’s going on now, everybody’s scrambling for deposits. I get calls every year, should we go after loans or deposits? And the answer is you go after great operating companies that you can build trust with and have a fit with you. So that’s really important. Certainly technology is a huge game changer. You know, chat GPT and now the new one, Claude, is coming on scene. AI like Tate that is going to help you internally. So certainly all the technology that’s available Is is important. I would say the biggest challenge we have interestingly enough in our industry I mean, there’s certainly plenty is coaching We continue to fail to coach Young bankers are hanging out there all by themselves. We don’t have the kinds of credit colleges that we used to. And so now they’re trying to figure out life by themselves in many cases. Now, that’s not to say that we don’t do deal coaching. We do a lot of deal coaching, but we don’t do much behavioral coaching. And I’ve heard a lot of your guests, whether it’s from… Chick-fil-a or your dad or others that talk about the importance of coaching and That’s part of the problem. We talk about it a lot. We got to start doing it

Caleb Stevens:
Mm-hmm.

Jack Hubbard:
So those are a few things that I’m certainly seeing in the industry and there’s probably many more but those are those are a few

Caleb Stevens:
And you talk about coaching. Are you referring to internal coaching as far as leadership development? Are you thinking more coaching to our clients, helping them make decisions? Are you talking about both? What do you mean when you say coaching?

Jack Hubbard:
Well, that’s a great question and it is indeed both. One of the things that we need to think about as bank coaches is to think about behaviors. What behaviors do we want our bankers to do when they’re out in the field? I teach at a lot of banking schools and last year up in Madison at Graduate School of Banking I asked the freshman, I said, how often do your managers make joint calls with you? And of the 200 bankers, 200 hands went up. It’s a pretty simple thing. But then I said, when was the last time your manager observed you when you were trying to get an appointment with a prospect? And no hands went up. And so… We need to think more about how do we coach certain kinds of things, and part of it goes to tracking and measurement. We continue to track things like how many calls did we make, how many sales did we make, and that’s all fine. But neither of those create coaching moments. They’re lagging indicators. The leading indicators are how many prospects do I have, how many telephone appointments did I did, how many people took my telephone call. Of those, how many gave me an appointment? of those how many kept my first appointment, of those how many kept my second appointment, et cetera, et cetera. And most banks have the capability to track that way, but most banks don’t track that way. So that’s the internal side. On the external side, you make a very, very good point. During the PPP process, our customers were floundering and all of a sudden, their relationship with their banker was really, really important. We need to do a better job of providing that resource to the customers so that when there is a need, they’ll come to us. The other thing I’m seeing from a coaching perspective outside is a lot more banks are doing better at doing… Big events for prospects, economic updates, authors. I know a bank that does something called the best seller series, where three times a year they bring in a best selling author. Author brings a few books, prospects and clients are together with COIs, and it’s a great event. Those are the kind of things we need to do to coach our clients on how to do a better job in a relationship with their banker.

Caleb Stevens:
Yeah, it seems like mastermind groups and business coaching has been a pretty popular trend for quite a while now. And I’ve often thought, you know, there’s so much financial advice out there and so many financial gurus for your business and so many masterminds. And I’ve always wondered, why aren’t more banks taking the lead on these areas? I mean, you talk about somebody or an entity that’s close to the action for small business. The local banks got to be up there as far as interactions that they have with that business owner. Why aren’t they adding more value beyond just basic products and loans and rates and things like that?

Jack Hubbard:
Yeah, and part of that is cultural. Because if a bank has always been driven by the retail side of the bank in terms of the number of branches they have and et cetera, they’ll hire people that have that kind of expertise. One of the schools I teach at is the sales and marketing school up in Madison. And when we talk to marketing professionals there every year, there’s very few of them that interact on a regular basis with their commercial or business bankers. And part of it is they don’t understand the process. They don’t understand the buying cycle. They’ve never been to a sales training class. They’ve never made a joint call. So it’s real hard to communicate with the buyer, the commercial buyer, when a bank marketing professional doesn’t have that level of expertise or confidence.

Caleb Stevens:
Yeah, I actually did a breakout talk for our South State Conference a few weeks ago. And one of my key points I drove home was if your marketing team and your lending team are not having a standing meeting at least once a month, you’re wasting money on marketing. If your marketing team doesn’t understand the basics of commercial banking and how banks make money, you’re probably wasting marketing dollars. And if you’re not allocating some of your marketing budget to helping your lenders call on specific accounts, doing account-based marketing, instead of just broad brand marketing, you’re wasting money. And so not saying don’t have billboards and do sponsorships and do ads and that kind of thing. I think that’s all great. You should have a great brand, but do your marketing team and your lending teams interact at all? Because if the main drivers of profitability are deposits and loans, commercial deposits and loans, I would add, then why aren’t we allocating our dollars there? So anyways, I’ll stop

Jack Hubbard:
Really

Caleb Stevens:
ranting.

Jack Hubbard:
interesting. It’s really true. I was with a bank recently and they showed me about 25 different testimonial letters that clients had sent them. I said, what have we done to maximize this? We have permission from all these people to say nice things in the marketplace. Why don’t we go out and do a short interview with an iPad or an iPhone, put that on your computer, and when you’re on a call, say, let me show you what one client that we’ve done work with has accomplished. That’s that integration you’re talking about, Caleb, because a commercial banker isn’t going to do that. That’s where they need the help from marketing.

Caleb Stevens:
Yeah. Okay. So let’s go back to the internal coaching piece that you just mentioned a second ago, talking all about process. You know, I live in the South. I’m a big college football fan. And so I hear Nick Saban and Kirby Smart talk all the time about, don’t just look at the scoreboard, look at the process that you went through to get the result that’s on the scoreboard. But if you’re just focused on the scoreboard and not the process, you’re not going to be reaching your potential. A common pushback though, I hear from bank executives when they try to implement a quote unquote process on their lenders. Let’s say, hey guys, here’s your expectation as far as calls per week or how we want you to track this in your CRM. The top producers will often say, well, I’m hitting the numbers. I’m hitting my loan goal every year. I’m the top producer in the company. Why are you going to stifle me now with all this busy work to quote unquote track stuff? in a CRM and keep me accountable to the process. Look at the scoreboards. Scoreboards. Great, Jack. So why do I need to focus on process? How does an executive think through maintaining a process without micromanaging their top people or stifling their top people?

Jack Hubbard:
This is a tougher one now than it was before because of the mass exodus of bankers to other banks or maybe other industries. Then if you look at, depending on where this bank is, if it’s in a rural, more rural community or a smaller town, you don’t have a whole lot to choose from. So you have to be a little bit more careful. And part of it is, do I use a carrot or a stick? I’ve seen a lot of banks actually say top producer. The reason you are a top producer is because you have this process that you go through. All I want you to do is to help our people by you replicating that process. Show your leadership and help the younger folks to be able to do that. Mike Ditka used to say when he coached the Chicago Bears, every year he said you’re either going to be fired with enthusiasm or you’re going to be fired with enthusiasm. So that’s the other side of the coin. Do you want to play by these rules in our culture or do you want to play by your own personal rules? And that’s a tough decision, especially for superstar people. I read a book a number of years ago that kind of compared the difference between an MVP and a superstar. And a superstar in their mind was really more about themselves. This is, you know, I’m going to carry this team on my back. I’m going to do this. This is all about me. But an MVP is one. that brings the team together and helps the team win. And one example that the book used was Greg Maddox, the great pitcher for the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs Hall of Famer. And he was able to show people by being an MVP that he made everybody around him a little bit better. That’s not an easy answer. And that’s not everybody’s answer. But if you as a leader, as an executive, don’t take the bull by the horns and at least talk to your superstar or talk to your top producer, say, look, people look to you. uh… as a as a shining light if you’re not going to lead by example we’re dead we’re dead in the water and we’re not going to be around very long and you’re not going to be getting that big paycheck you’ve got to individually know what drives your people dan pink wrote a great book called drive and it’s all about this intrinsic motivation it’s not just about the money certainly important but it’s about what drives you to come to the office every day And if I’m an executive and you’re my top producer, I need to understand what your motivation to come here is so that I can create an environment where you will thrive. But part of it has got to be, you’re also in the culture.

Caleb Stevens:
Yeah, great book by Dan Pink. He talks about, I think it’s Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose are his three intrinsic motivators. And my guess too would be your top producers, even if they don’t think they have a process, probably do. They just haven’t codified it or written it down or thought it through and put it on paper and then thought through, well, how does this translate to other sales folks, lenders in the company?

Jack Hubbard:
And I think that’s right. And you made the specific example about CRM. I find that about 80% of CRM initiatives fail. And there’s a couple reasons for it. One, you don’t get the superstar. When you’re developing a CRM system or you’re putting out RFPs for CRMs, you don’t include the superstar in the committee. In fact, a lot of banks don’t even include any salespeople on the committee. It’s risk, compliance, operations, systems, et cetera. The second thing is, if you want your top producer to know and use that CRM, first of all, tell him or her what you want in the CRM. It doesn’t have to be a book or a novel. It just has to be enough where you, the salesperson, know next steps and strategies for the benefit of the customer. But the second reason that CRM systems fail is that executive that you talked about, does not know the system. So the producer may know the system, but opts not to put anything in because the executive won’t use the system either. You get the executives to use the system, then everybody will tend to pony up and do it too.

Caleb Stevens:
I think you’ve put your finger on exactly the reasons why most CRMs fail, at least efforts fail with lots of companies, not just banks. I would echo the same things that I’ve seen. The sales folks weren’t involved in the process. Maybe the executives don’t even use it. They just assume this is for my salespeople. This isn’t for me. What does this have to do with me? I’m not carrying a list of contacts or accounts I’m calling on, so why do I need to even invest time into this? And then part of it is a mindset shift for sure.

Jack Hubbard:
Yeah, and I’ve seen most CRMs that I’ve seen do not have a sales leadership component. In other words, the salesperson is supposed to enter data about their calls, et cetera. Where is the component for the sales leaders to enter their team meeting topics and their templates and their coaching and their one-on-one results? If the CRM had that and the leader used it, the team would tend to use it.

Caleb Stevens:
Well, speaking of CRMs, we’ve got a lot of younger bankers that listen to this podcast. And I would assume many of them are very up to date with CRMs and love getting into LinkedIn and technology and those things. But maybe you’re lacking the confidence they need in their sales career and their lending career. Maybe they feel like they’ve got the tech side down, but the banking side, they’re still learning. Obviously, there’s a lot to learn when you get into any area of banking. There’s a learning curve and it takes time. What would you say to lenders who are just starting out in their careers today as they’re trying to build confidence?

Jack Hubbard:
Yeah, it’s all about practice, preparation, and experience. You have to practice your craft. If you think about a football team that wants to win the Super Bowl, it takes about 3,000 hours. You look at the greatest golfers. I’ve had a chance, and I’m sure you’ve done this multiple times, but I’ve had a chance once to go to the Masters. And I spent a lot of time on the practice tee. And I watched those golfers, Tiger and the best golfers in the world practice, and they all had a coach. And so despite the fact that they are earning millions of dollars and winning a lot of tournaments, they’ve always got somebody there to help you. So one of the things is practice. And part of that practice involves the training that the bank provides. Go to it and go through it. with your eyes wide open. I was with a bank recently, and about 50% of the bankers had never gone through sales training before, and they were in their late 30s. So we need to make sure that we practice, and that practice sometimes comes through training. Then the second thing is preparation. You look at great actors like Emeril Streep or Tom. Hanks or whoever it might be that have won multiple Academy Awards. They’re always preparing. They’re always rehearsing It’s fascinating to me how bankers will go out young bankers will go out on a call and The first get what they really want to take is a bank brochure Because that’s a level of confidence for them and they know their products. So that’s what they’re going to talk about Why don’t they take a big chief tablet or a notepad with some prepared? question ideas that they might want to think about. And I like to call it BNG, where have you been, where are you now, where are you going to make it kind of simple. And then the other thing is, you gotta go out and you gotta experience the training. Here’s what happens to a lot of young bankers. And this is credit analysts or portfolio managers or young BDOs. They’ll go through a training class, but then they won’t go out and make calls for weeks and weeks and weeks. They’ve lost everything. They’ve lost everything they’ve learned. What your training should be is do the training on Tuesday and use your client or prospect as a case study. You’ve got an appointment with that client or prospect. use them as a case study and the following day go out and make a call and be held accountable by a team leader who goes with you to do the same behaviors that you learned in the class. It’s amazing to me. I did this at a bank up in New Jersey and of course young bankers and they, you know, oh yeah, sure. What do you know? You’re an old guy and you’ve been, you know, who, what do you know? Well I’ll tell you what. They went out and they weren’t allowed to talk about a product. They had to focus on their questions and they had to do a leave behind that had nothing to do with the bank. When we debriefed, because they weren’t allowed to talk about a product, they talked about opportunities. One banker uncovered 29 opportunities. opportunities to help the client, opportunities for referrals, etc. So it’s all about getting out there, Caleb. It’s all about doing the training and then going out and doing it. But I’ll just say one other thing real fast, and we’ve talked about leaders enough. I would say the culture really helps make some decisions here. What kind of tools does the culture provide? Does the culture allow people to use LinkedIn at their desk? Does the culture provide tools like a vertical IQ or a relpro or other kind of tools like that and then do the leaders at their team meetings hold the bankers accountable to use the tools by practicing the tools in the team meeting. So confidence is important. I’ll just say one more thing. Too often people look yonder. When they’re not successful, they’re always willing to look yonder. They need to look in the mirror. And part of that looking in the mirror is, have I read any sales books recently? Have I listened to a sales podcast recently? Have I gone to LinkedIn and read an article about sales? Some of this, Caleb, in terms of confidence, is personal accountability. That has to happen as well.

Caleb Stevens:
And one final kind of note there on the leadership side of things. I think it’s important too, that you just stressed the value of training because I think many executives may look at a younger banker and say, I just don’t know if they have it. They haven’t had many wins. You know, we’ve had them on for a year or two now, and they just haven’t really gotten the momentum we’d like them to. How do executives distinguish between, is this a problem with this person? They’re just not a good fit. for the role of a commercial banker? Or should they look in the mirror themselves and say, have we done what is necessary to help train and equip this person to be successful?

Jack Hubbard:
Well, that’s a great question. Let’s back up and say this, that only about 15% of bankers, by actual statistic, should be a sales manager. Most that are promoted from sales into sales leadership should not be promoted there. And we don’t know what to do with these people. They’re top producers. Why don’t we give them more money? Why don’t we give them an assistant? Why don’t we pile on some other perks instead of putting them in a position where they’re doomed to fail? So the first thing is get the right people on the right seats. That’s that’s a really important thing Then as a leader, I would say look at your team is your entire, how’s your entire team going? If you’ve got one person who’s a laggard, then maybe it’s not you, maybe it’s them. But if your entire team isn’t doing very well, then you need to look in the mirror and say, what’s going on with me? But there’s a cultural aspect to this too, Caleb. Too many banks have their sales manager also as a sales producer. And so because they were a very good producer, But now I’m a team leader and I’ve got a team of five or six people. Well, if I’m a good producer, the first thing I’m going to do for the year is I’m going to go make my numbers. Then I’m going to help my people. Well, it should be the opposite. I know if I’m a good salesperson, I can hit my numbers and exceed them. What I have to do is start coaching my people. And too often, they just don’t want to do that. They don’t either have the skills or the will to be able to do it. Think about Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. No one would want to be coached by Michael Jordan because his entire focus was winning. That’s not what a coach does. That’s why Phil Jackson was so successful because his focus was how do I get the team to win, not the individual.

Caleb Stevens:
Okay. So what do you say to a CEO who, let’s say their chief lending officer is retiring and they’ve got to replace that chief lending officer, and they immediately think of their top lending producer? That’s probably a common temptation for all of us that they’re the top producer. They’re the best. They’re bringing the most money. Make them the chief lending officer. What would you say to that CEO who’s tempted to just promote the top producer versus finding the person who has the leadership and the management? skills to actually lead a team versus just keep bringing in business.

Jack Hubbard:
And this happens all the time and we have a lot of fire drills here. But what you said was interesting. The chief lending officer is retiring. We knew this was going to happen two years ago. Why didn’t we do something? Well, we want to ignore it because maybe it’ll go away. Maybe I can talk to the lady or gentleman into staying a little bit longer. And we have a lot of other fires to put out. So hey, it’s two years away. Suddenly, it’s six months away. And then it’s a month away. And what have we done? So we’ve come down to who’s the best option here on the road? OK, Fred or Frida are the best producers. Let’s put them into the situation. But wait a second, are they really a great chief lending officer or are they a great business development officer? So I think it has to go back to, you know, when I had my business, St. Meier and Hubbard, Bob St. Meier and I used to talk about planes landing at O’Hare, that there’s a lot of planes up in the sky. Those are the people. That banks need to be thinking about hiring We need to land one of those planes before somebody leaves or retires So I would say look at your look at your culture. Look at your goals and objectives Look at your people and here’s I think there’s the real key and this is where HR can be a real partner What are their objectives? What are their career goals? Where do they want to go? If you really said something to your top producer, okay, two years, Fred’s gonna retire, what are you thinking? Where would you like to be in two years? Those are the kind of things, I mean, we ask that when we go out on business development calls, we need to be asking it of ourselves.

Caleb Stevens:
And many top producers don’t want to lead people. Some do, but a lot don’t.

Jack Hubbard:
I don’t have any. I’m a lone wolf. I love people. I love working with people. But I don’t want to coach anybody. I don’t. I want to go sell.

Caleb Stevens:
Yeah. Well, I’d love to transition and get your thoughts on how do you see the best community banks today adding value beyond just rate? Obviously, rates have gone up extraordinarily fast over the past couple of years as the Fed fights inflation. You mentioned earlier, deposits are all the rage right now, liquidity is all the rage. I’ve heard of a lot of banks incentivizing their lenders, not on loans this year, but on gathering deposits. It’s that critical. But how do bankers add value beyond just, hey, we can pay you a higher rate on your business account, your deposits if you come over to us? What do you see the best lenders out there doing?

Jack Hubbard:
Yeah, well first lenders need to understand that there are two different kinds of buyers. There are technical buyers and relationship buyers and relationship buyers will stay with you through thick and thin. Technical buyers just want you to do it right. So I need to understand what kind of buyer I have. Then as a community banker what I might do is to consider pairing my technical buyers with my technical sellers because that would create a synergy there and a relationship that is beyond just building a relationship and having lunch or whatever because that’s not what they want to do. And the relationship bankers with the relationship buyers. But I would say this to you, Caleb. Excuse me. I learned from a banker when I was a banker many years ago. And I heard him speak and he said, the absence of value. Price is always the issue. Can we stop the recording a second?

Caleb Stevens:
Sure. Take your time. Yeah, take your time.

Jack Hubbard:
Don’t check me out when that happens. Sorry to do that to you.

Caleb Stevens:
No worries, take your time. We can always, it’s the beauty of podcasting. Everything can be edited.

Jack Hubbard:
You can edit that, right?

Caleb Stevens:
Oh yeah, we can edit all that out. It’ll, it’ll be like it never happened.

Jack Hubbard:
Okay, I think I’m good.

Caleb Stevens:
All right. You wanna just take, we can take the question.

Jack Hubbard:
I’ll say I saw a banker in a speech once. So I saw a banker in a speech once when I was a banker and he said something that really stuck with me forever. He said in the absence of value, price is always the issue. And then he said, now if you don’t believe that, when was the last time you went to a discount doctor? Because the two most important things in your life are your health and your wealth. So what we need to think about as bankers is how can I be a resource manager? And I’ve been talking about this for years, Caleb, being a resource. How do I become a resource to my prospects, my clients and my COIs? In fact, I know a couple of banks who actually took their assistant vice president title and vice president title off of their business cards and put resource manager on. But it’s beyond that. It’s not just on the card, it’s in your heart. What kind of value are you going to provide every single day? I’ve got a banker who does something that she calls three before eight. Every morning she sends three emails to either a prospect, a client or a COI combination of those to arrive before 8 a.m. in their email box. So they’re always at the top of the stack. And she uses things like vertical IQ and LinkedIn and other kinds of ways to find articles or podcasts. She even sends leads from time to time. Those are the kind of things that We’re the only trusted advisor, if you think about this, we’re the only trusted advisor that doesn’t charge for our services. In other words, when we go on a business development call, we don’t charge, our accountant and our attorney does. So it’s all about a mindset. Part of it is leadership, as we’ve talked about, part of it is cultural, and part of it is personal. But value just doesn’t, I’ll tell you a quick story. I was in Boston. and I’m going on a call with a banker, and he’s going on with a client. And we were walking and I said, hey, what kind of articles have you brought to the client so that you can leave him behind and show value? He said, oh, for God’s sake, I used to do that when he was a client, but I don’t do that anymore when he was a prospect. I don’t do it anymore when he was a client. And somehow between that prospect, let’s fall in love, let’s get married, We need to make sure that our clients are attended to as well. And this regular process of sending out value ads sometimes does help when it comes to… I’m renewing my loan and the rate’s gonna go up a little bit. Well yeah, but look at all the value I’ve provided previous. And part of the value could be golf, it could be lunches, it could be inviting them to a seminar, it could be giving them a referral. Everybody’s different, Caleb, but everybody in their own way does want the value. And that’s one thing banking needs to be doing better at.

Caleb Stevens:
I like how you distinguish between technical buyers and relationship buyers, because I think we’ve all, if you’ve been in sales for any amount of time, you’ve all experienced the reality that many prospects and customers love to be taken to golf. They’re offended if you don’t text them happy birthday. They want to see you for lunch. And some, I was hearing of a customer just recently and he said, I love my lender because he does not make small talk. He just cuts right to the chase. And he doesn’t ask you, you know, how’s your kids doing? We just get down to the problem that I have and we’re off and running and we’re good. Talk about just, you know, if you’re a brand new lender, how do you, I know it maybe it’s just some trial and error, but there seems like there’s a lot of value in uncovering what does creating a remarkable experience look like for this prospect?

Jack Hubbard:
Yes, and creating a remarkable experience is going to be different for everybody. Caleb, a lot of us go through trading and provide training in what some would call communication styles or social styles. Myers-Briggs, and we go through these training classes as bankers, and we view them as kind of off to the side. This is all integrated into the sales process. So first of all, I get a referral from you. And first of all, I appreciate it, and I thank you, et cetera. One of the questions I’m going to ask is, how does Fred give and receive information? And I’m just going to believe it open ended. You might say, well, Fred talks kind of fast. Oh, really? What are some of the words on Fred’s business card? Yeah, I got a business card right here. It says, Bubba. Okay, that tells me something kind of interesting. So he talks kind of fast and he uses Bubba. How fast does he, when you work with him, how fast does he make decisions? So I’m asking those kinds of questions because there are four different social styles. A promoter, it’s all about them. A facilitator, it’s all about the team. An analytical, it’s all about data. And controller, it’s all about now. So if I know that my buyer is a controller, I’m gonna ask the same kind of questions, but I’m asking in a short sentence versus a longer sentence The kind of leave behind I have is gonna be in bullet points I’m gonna show them bottom line results But too often what happens Caleb either we don’t know enough about the prospect or we don’t Tend to want to know enough about the prospect because you said it earlier. We got to make 20 calls a month Well, in 20 calls a month, I’m not going to do that much research. But if I want to sell and if I want to build partnerships, I can build partnerships with all four of those social styles. But the way I communicate with them is going to be very different.

Caleb Stevens:
I feel like we could keep going for another hour or so, but I’d love to end just getting your take on LinkedIn. We touched on that earlier. We talked about the work you’re doing now with Brent Tillman at The Modern Banker. LinkedIn, I mean, I see some bankers that are all over LinkedIn. I follow one guy who calls himself the LinkedIn economist, and he’s a commercial banker, and he puts out great content on the economy, even though he’s, I don’t know if he’s an economist, you know, I don’t know if he studied it or where his… credibility comes from, but he has good content, he’s a commercial lender with a bank. And then I see some bankers that say, that scares me, I don’t even wanna go there, I’ve been successful doing it the way I’ve always done it for years and years. What value does LinkedIn provide commercial bankers in today’s environment?

Jack Hubbard:
Yeah, and we could do a whole show on this. I would just tell you that LinkedIn is not going to close business for you. And that’s what frustrates a lot of bankers. They want something that’s a friends episode where everything is solved in 30 minutes with, you know, seven minutes of commercials. It just doesn’t happen that way. LinkedIn is part of the sales process. And for bankers to be involved in LinkedIn, they need to think about a few things. is a resume because when somebody at 317 in the morning sits up straight in bed and looks at their profile, somebody’s profile in banking because they’re upset with their banker, the banker wants them to stay on that profile. So is that profile a resource and not a resume? When I do connect with someone, do I automatically pitch? Connect and pitch is a bait and switch. So we need to think about all those kinds of things. Do I do I post content? I talked to bankers and they say is once a week too often I post seven days a week Now I don’t post my own stuff. I once a week I post stuff from Chris Nichols from your amazing bank And Chris is just wonderful. So I need first of all If I’m going to be successful at LinkedIn, Caleb, and we can go around and around about this, it’s all between your ears. It’s all about, this is a tool, it’s not going to close business for me. I’ve done a lot of things one way all my life, but you know what, Caleb, when I got into banking, we had ledgers and now we have computers. And so I’ve had to adapt and adopt things over the years. And if we don’t do it, we’re going to get passed by.

Caleb Stevens:
Yeah. Well, I think you’re dead on about the connect. What did you say? Connect and pitch.

Jack Hubbard:
is a bait switch.

Caleb Stevens:
My goodness, I think we’ve all had those, you know, experiences in the past. And I’d be shocked to hear anybody say, yep, as soon as you pitched it right after connecting, I was sold on your product and I knew I had to I had to buy something from you. I mean, in my opinion, the things that have gotten at least my attention in the past has been, hey, Caleb, I saw such and such and such about such and such and such that’s relevant to you. And it’s like, wow, they did their homework. They know what my interests are. They know that I’m making it. We have a podcast, whatever it is. But they’ve put some effort into actually making an intentional that they’ve put intentional effort into actually understanding me. And those are the ones that if I do respond, it’s those kinds of reach outs.

Jack Hubbard:
You bet. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, Caleb, and we have to do something right on behalf of the client every single day.

Caleb Stevens:
Yeah. Well, if folks want to check out the modern banker, if they’re, if they need help on LinkedIn or if they just need, you know, general sales coaching, if they’re implementing a CRM, any of the things that we talked about that may be facing bankers today is they’re trying to improve their, their sales and lending teams. How can they get in touch with you?

Jack Hubbard:
Thanks, Caleb. Yeah, jackatthemodernbanker.com is my email address. We do have a public library in the Modern Banker, the modernbanker.com slash public library where there’s all kinds of wonderful articles and podcasts and different things like that. And I’m not shy to give my phone number, 847-903-4152. Call me and I’m happy to have a conversation.

Caleb Stevens:
Fantastic. Well, Jack, always a pleasure. Great to see you. Glad you are doing well on the health front. And look forward to hearing more from you, especially on LinkedIn.

Jack Hubbard:
Thanks, Caleb. Great to be with you today.

Caleb Stevens:
All right, we’re clear.

Jack Hubbard:
Yeah, that was probably a little longer than you wanted, I’m sorry.

Caleb Stevens:
No.