Get Fit!

There is a lot of talk about what mortgage bankers need to do in their operations for compliance, profitability and workflow, which leads me to wonder what is being done on the front-end to prevent any issues in the first place. Your entire company is a team and each player needs to be coached by the team managers for their specific function. This means drills, practice, education and a coordinated approach. If you don’t want to play on the team then you get cut and someone else takes your place. No harm and no foul!

A strong core is essential to a fit body or organization. Your company’s core, are the consumers who choose to do business with your front line and subsequently your company.

Your company “face” is your front line team. It starts with their physical presence, social media presence and phone/email presence. It continues with their ability to answer questions effectively, structure loans properly and presents the intelligence of your company. All professional sports players are coached on how to address outsiders to keep the team integrity in tack. When this doesn’t happen the whole team takes a hit. Your company reputation is propagated by the opinions of those you serve, from the referral source to the consumers you are serving.

If you are seeking better workflow, excellent exam results and a reduction in Gray Hair, the same educational efforts that go into training your ops staff needs to be pushed down to your front line staff. I’m not talking about the yearly “rah rah” trip you send them on for motivation; I’m talking about consistent training done by people who have been there and done that!

Let’s take a look at some front line skills that will have a positive impact to the front line, exam oversight and your bottom line.

1. Sales Coach: Sales meetings should be sales training sessions and they should happen every week or the sales staff will get flabby. Each aspect of how to bring in a loan and satisfy the customer trumps meetings about production and numbers. Production and numbers will cure itself if you follow that methodology. Sales training is the methodology of the sale, the exact “do this and then do that” recipe for bringing in a loan, as well as personality selling, body language, what to say and what not to say. Managers need to role play and mystery shop their LO’s for constructive feedback. They also need to go out on calls. All of this used to be done but somehow got lost. Manager’s you are the coach to getting your team fit.
2. Marketing Coach: Just because someone is great at the sales function does not mean they are a marketing person. Marketing is a separate job and strong technology should be used to run it. This is especially important in today’s regulatory world. Gone are the days when the LO can just buy into any marketing product they want to. Now that decision has a more global effect on the company. Strong marketing back up also helps keep your people. When they see the value in that investment they will think twice before moving to another company.
3. Product Coach: Being a great originator means knowing your stuff when it comes to products. What are certain programs used for? How do they work? Basic loan structuring for customer retention. All of these are key and will keep business coming in your door, increase referrals and keep the regulators off your back.
4. Compliance Coach: What is happening? How does it affect their position? How can the employee apply it to their position on the team? When a sports player breaks the compliance rule there is a foul. Based on the severity of the foul there is a consequence to the company or the person.

So let me ask you this. Are you a manager or a coach? Strong managers coach to keep their staff from getting flabby. Weak managers hide behind the playbook and hope that the excel spreadsheets provide them with a win. Which one are you?