We all fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy from time to time, "This movie is terrible, but I've already spent an hour watching so I might as well watch the next hour." Actually, you should just stop the movie and spend the next hour on something you really want to do!

Dallas and Jess talk about how the same concept can apply for bankers around pricing decisions. 

We're going to be discussing the book that Dallas and Jim have spent a great deal of time on these past few months.

The book we've been co-writing, along with PrecisionLender CEO Carl Ryden is called Earn It: Building Your Bank's Brand One Relationship at a Time.

If you're just now hearing about the book, we're releasing it sections, a month at a time. After starting with the intro and Chapter 1 in March, we released Chapters 2 and 3 just last week.

It's all available at theearnitbook.com. 

Dallas and Jess explain the concept of customer success, how it works for PrecisionLender, and why it is so important in the Saas business. But, the economics (low margin but high volume, high cost of customer acquisition, losses in year 1, importance of lifetime value and need to minimize churn) also apply to banking, so bankers should take some of those same concepts and apply them to their business.

Dallas Wells is joined by Matt Davis, COO of Paragon Bank, to discuss Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). 

In Matt's article for banking.com, he laid out 8 big types of risk that an effective ERM platform should cover. Its one thing to talk about ERM, but is quite another to actually bring all of those very different risks under one umbrella. Matt and Dallas go over what some of the struggles Paragon Bank has either found directly or heard from other banks in managing risks that are often in a silo with their own department?

Employees are the lifeblood of any company. They embody your company to your customers and the public, and they turn the ideas and strategies into real results.

Hiring employees can be tough. But hiring the BEST employees is even harder. In this episode, Dallas and Jess talk about how to find and keep superstar employees. 

Lenders typically have two sets of negotiations for every deal. First they have to successfully negotiate and win a deal with their borrower, and then they have to negotiate internally to get the deal booked. This means navigating the often difficult waters of credit and loan ops, including pricing approval, credit approval, document prep, and closing.

Negotiating with borrowers is where the rubber meets the road in pricing. It is also something that very few lenders are trained to do - instead they have to learn by trial and error.

The first year at any new job can be tough, and lending is no different. Jess chat with Dallas about the top 5 things he wishes he knew his first year of commercial banking.

How do you differentiate between what your customer wants and needs?

What do you do when a person says they want something, but their actions prove otherwise?

Dallas and Jess talk about our own approach to handling client feedback and how your bank can use the same approach to look at the services you receive and offer.

How can banks better incorporate the loan portfolio into ALCO discussions? How has regulators' focus on interest rate risk impacted bankers? What are some resources for bankers that want to learn more about ALCO and interest rate risk? Dallas and Jess speak with Darnell Canada, Managing Director at Darling Consulting Group, to answer those questions and more.

Earl Worley has been with KS bank for over 20 years and is ow the COO. Join Phil Buckley and Rollie Tillman as they find out from Earl how he views commercial lending, it's impact on the bank's health and what keeps the COO happy.

Banks struggle with lending when they try to be "all things to all people" and go about selling without a clear focus and strategy. They need to know which products and customers are profitable for them, and where they can provide real value outside of just the lowest rate. Then, spend their sales time and resources working those deals instead of spinning their wheels on low margin "commoditized" loans just for the sake of volume.

Today we're talking about a blog post written by our CEO, Carl Ryden, a couple weeks back: Putting First things First. Carl talked about the struggle to keep the urgent from crowding out the important. 

According to the research of Stephan Liozu, author of "The Pricing Journey," there are two dimensions of pricing capability, Price Setting and Price Getting, and in order to excel at pricing, companies must master both dimensions.

What makes lenders happy at work? According to CoBiz Financial, named one of American Bankers' top 50 Best Banks for Work for in 2015, the key is providing lenders opportunities to deepen client relationships through exciting community initiatives. Jess Stone speaks with Scott Page, CEO of Colorado Business Bank and Arizona Business Bank, which are part of parent company CoBiz Financial, about the programs they offer to keep their employees happy and connected to the community, as well as advice for banks that may want to launch similar initiatives. 

What's one of the scariest things that keeps a bank CEO up at night? Two words: data breach. PrecisionLender's Vice President of Information Security, Chris Nelms, talks with Dallas and Jess about how to ensure your company's security while working with vendors.

Jessica Stone speaks with PrecisionLender's VP of Information Security, Chris Nelms, about what you can do ensure the safety of your technology and data. Although every bank is different, your IT person will surely love you if you heed this advice.

In normal business, if you're right 95% of the time, you're a huge success. In banking, if you're only right 95% of the time, you're probably out of business.

That risk means that banks and bankers are cautious when making decisions, and for almost every bank that means decisions are ponderously slow. To the general public, that's how businesses worked last century. Banks are starting to be seen as laggards compared to some of their FinTech competitors.

Dallas talks though how your bank can start using the time tested "Scientific Method" to start picking up speed and also start making better (data driven) decisions.

Joel Rosenberg talks with Jessica Stone about the fundamental shift that is moving the world under the feet of the US banking industry.

Is the way your bank looking at Lending Club eerily reminiscent of the way GM and Ford looked at Honda in the early 1970's?

Carl Ryden, CEO at PrecisionLender, talks about their new banking conference, BankonPurpose. Why he felt there was a need for a new conference and what he hopes bankers will get from it.

Telling people that their data is "in the cloud" can seem like a weird movie scene, but it's usually the safest and easiest option. There's a reason most of the world's biggest companies are moving to the cloud.

A couple of weeks ago we released part one of our discussion with Charlie Johnson from Flagstar Bank in Michigan and and Andy Max from First National Bank of Omaha, and their efforts around integrating Salesforce.com within their banks. Because we just let them talk, we ended up with about 90 minutes of gold.

Part two is where the guys talk about social "listening". Flagstar Bank started with Radian6 - which was purchased by Salesforce a few years ago and now fully integrated within their Marketing Cloud.

Andy and Charlie both agree that your bank's brand is no longer wholly in your hands. The social side of brand strategy in the fast-moving, 21st century digital landscape is a place of enormous opportunity as well as fraught with peril.

Dallas Wells and Jess Stone speak with Bill Ragle, SVP at Comerica Bank, about his experiences managing a lending team, and his experience and advice for managers and lenders alike.

We all wish we had more time in the day. During this LenderPerformance podcast, Dallas and Jess will explore tips, review technology and share best practices on how lenders can aim to be more efficient at work. 

Jess Stone interviews Brandi Haymore to discuss conferences. Banks spend big money sending employees to conferences, and often feel like they get very little return on their investment. However, they can be a great resource for the bank, and attendees that leverage the connections and knowledge properly can see big impacts on their careers. Brandi will share thoughts on how to prepare, what to do while you're there, and how to share and implement the best ideas when you return.