Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses
It’s important to review what you do really well and what you need to improve on. This can change from year to year since the mortgage industry has a way of getting originators off track. Sometimes you’ll just need to get back to basics, other times this review will point out things you need to add to your current process. Below is how I review both strengths and weaknesses.
Leads, Partners, Marketing
Reviewing this category is the starting point. Do you have enough leads, do you have enough partners, is your marketing working and being effective? If the answer is Yes, then keep it up as that’s a strength, if the answer is no then the questions becomes are you not good at it or do you just not do enough of it. Do you have a high conversion rate on new partners or a low conversion rate? Sometimes you don’t need more you just need to put more energy into what you have. If you go through this exercise and realize this is just not something your good at you can always look to outsource or hire someone to do it. The best LO’s I know hire people that are good in areas they are weak.
Database and Follow-up
You need to go through and determine how good you are with your lead management. Too many times LO’s get leads in the door, forget about them since they’ve been told to get more leads. You need to establish if you’re good at managing your database. Do you have notes and a log for every file? Do you input and know every time you’ve talked to someone that could be a buyer? Do you follow up often enough and I don’t mean you put them on an email drip campaign?
If you’re really good at this aspect then you know you can focus on getting more leads. If you’re not good at this then you could see an immediate increase in your business by getting good at it and making it a strong suit. You don’t have to chase the next deal when you might have the next deal in your current leads.
Systems, Presentations, and Conversions (pre-contract)
One of the things that has become really clear to me in recent years is that most LO’s don’t have a system for their clients that aren’t in contract. In turn, when a client gets into contract the world stops and they have to spend most of their day trying to put the pieces together. You can do 80% of a loan without having a client in contract.
So do that when you’re not under the gun, put the plan in place so when you get the call that their offer was accepted it’s on auto pilot. You need to have a specific system from when the client first calls you’re going to do this next, after the next step you’re going to do this and so on. This needs to end with a strategy session or meeting in your office to go over specific programs.
This is where you need to have a presentation for every client. You need to be pitching and selling them when they don’t even have a house. You can use a software which there are a few good ones, you can use powerpoint but you need to have a presentation not just here is my rate and here is the payment. If that’s all you have then you’re providing a mediocre service. If you provide mediocrity then eventually technology and automation will be able to provide mediocrity for cheaper.
Determine what you’re good at in this sense and continue it, if you’re weak you need to build this out because I can guarantee anyone that is weak at this will have a much lower conversion rate than someone who is good at it. The projection are the overall business is going to go down a little and the best way to offset that is to increase your conversions.
Loans In Process
So we all know what this means, but I look at it from a different angle. It’s not a question of if you close on time or if you’re good and getting deals approved or closing. The question becomes once a client is in contract how much do you personally have to do in order to close it? The answer should be very little. If you have to be the only one driving the loans forward once they are in process even if you’re good at it you’ll never have the time you need to sell and grow your business.
You need to identify how many hours you spend on loans in process, what areas you can outsource to someone on your team or at your company. Doing a good job isn’t that the loan closes, doing a good job is have you put the pieces in place to close the loan with the smallest amount of your own time spent so you can originate more loans.