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Climbing the Ladder of Success
by Douglas Smith
130 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-2645; ISBN 1-4120-2066-2; US$20.00, C$25.00, EUR16.25, £11.26
19 valuable lessons in success for mortgage loan originators.
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About the Book About the Author Excerpts Catalogue Information
About the Book
There are thousands of mortgage loan originators in business today. Have you ever wondered why some are so much more successful than others? Why do some loan officers consistently produce high results, while others struggle just to get by?
Climbing the Ladder of Success shares 19 valuable lessons that top performers have learned about achieving great results in mortgage loan originations. You'll discover new approaches for managing your time, controlling your operations, building stronger referral sources and making more money than ever before.
Written by a 20-year industry professional, Climbing the Ladder of Success is straightforward and real world, providing tangible ideas to make your job easier and your results even more successful.
About the Author
Doug Smith is the founder of Douglas Smith & Associates, a training, coaching and performance consulting firm specializing in the mortgage and financial services industry. As a 20-year mortgage and banking professional, Doug has worked successfully in retail loan origination, sales management, sales training, leadership development, marketing and corporate sales with four major banks and mortgage companies and has consulted with dozens more.
As a nationally recognized speaker, Doug delivers more than 100 presentations and training workshops each year on a local, state and national level for mortgage associations and financial institutions of all sizes. As a frequent writer for industry publications, Doug's articles have been published in Mortgage Originator, The Mortgage Record, Broker and Mortgage Banking magazines.
Doug Smith has personally trained and coached thousands of mortgage and financial services sales professionals. His approach to sales is genuine, straightforward and real world. He is recognized as one of the leading experts in the business today.
Excerpts
Lesson 3: Create more opportunities to sell
No matter how much you dress it up, the business of loan origination is a business of selling. You compete with other lenders for a consumer's choice in which mortgage company they will ultimately decide to borrow money from. You make your best presentation and utilize your personal sales skills to convince the prospect you have the best solution. If you win, you are rewarded with a loan and a commission. If you lose, you get nothing. That's selling. That's our business. Selling has always been a bit of a numbers game. Suppose you average ten customer encounters a week (rate shoppers, Realtors with buyers looking for financing, phone calls from ads, etc.) Of those ten encounters, let's say you can turn two into loan applications, or a 20% conversion rate. (Others either don't qualify, aren't ready to commit or go somewhere else.) You decide that two loans a week is not enough production to reach your personal goals. You must net at least twice as many loans to get where you want to be. How are you going to make that happen? There are a couple of ways to look at this situation. First, ask yourself if you are losing deals because of how you handle the opportunities you have. For example:
Am I saying the right things to prospects? Do I take time to build a comfortable rapport with people? Can I sell my company's capabilities strong enough? Do I ask the right questions? Am I really listening to what they need? Can I explain my products clearly? Am I asking for the business?
If these answers to these questions trouble you, maybe you are converting only two out of ten opportunities because of your personal selling skills, or lack of. Some loan originators believe they can't do the volume they want because they don't have the right products or their rates are too high. Sometimes that's true. But most of the time we lose business because our competitor uses better selling skills to present a superior client solution. To illustrate this, look at your own company. How many originators do they employ? Although everyone on your team has the same products, pricing and delivery system, others in your company will originate more loans than you this week. Why? It might be because they can sell better than you can. Think about that. The second way to get to the number of applications you want each week is to increase the number of opportunities you have to compete for the business. Even if your conversion rate is only 20%, increasing the number of opportunities from ten customer encounters to twenty a week would yield the goal of four loan applications you want. Remember that sales is a numbers game. You can quickly increase your sales by increasing the number of opportunities you have to sell. It's a fact that many loan originators write a minimal amount of business every week because they initiate a minimal number of contacts every week. They don't advertise, they make few sales calls, they have a confined number of referral clients and they don't leverage their existing customer base for referrals. By contrast, high performers secure more business more often by simply creating more opportunities to sell. They:
ß Make frequent sales visits to their key referral clients ß Maintain ongoing marketing and advertising activities ß Hand out their business card to everyone they meet ß Stay involved in community activities ß Attend real estate and builder events ß Take advantage of rate shopping calls-ins
ß Mine their database with frequent mailers ß Follow up on leads and prospects diligently ß Are always thinking about finding new business
All of these activities create multiple opportunities day in and day out. Like you, top producers don't convert every prospect. Some will tell you they'll lose out on as much as 80% of the leads they receive for whatever reason. The point is that their personal marketing and outreach efforts work to create dozens of opportunities every week. Even if these top producers convert just 20% of those opportunities, they still write five to ten loans a week, and that's some pretty good production! Want to try a great experiment? Next week, keep a record of the number of actual sales opportunities you create. Note the specific activity and what you did to create that opportunity. What may surprise you is that the reason your loan production is off your goal is directly related to having a limited number of sales opportunities to begin with. If you only create four or five encounters a week, how can you expect to write ten loan applications? It won't happen. Set a goal during the next few weeks to create more opportunities. This may involve client sales visits, making presentations, hosting events, mailing letters, running ads, telemarketing and anything else that will put you face-to-face with potential business prospects and new loans. Momentum creates energy. Activity breeds more activity. Before long you'll notice your phone ringing more because of all the new things you are doing to make it ring.
Catalogue Information
