In the mortgage planning business, your attitude is critical to whether you achieve success or not. A bad attitude can ruin your entire business, particularly in a down market like we’re having now.
Every month, I speak to hundreds of originators, and at last week’s Mortgage Coach Power Users Summit, I confirmed an important pattern that I have been seeing a lot lately — the correlation between attitude and success. I know most of you already know this and I have learned this lesson many times over throughout the years. However, it still always amazes me.
For about 50% of the loan officers in the marketplace, to say they are struggling is an understatement. The stress behavior and the mindset they embody are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for these folks that they’re going to be out of business soon. The reason: They’re not focusing on the best strategies in the market. They’re all over the place. If they could just adjust their attitude and get a very clear game plan — that is, the right game plan — they could all be successful.
Another 45-47% or so of these loan officers are not having a good year, but they’re okay with it. They have a ‘cool’ attitude and talk about riding out the year and things will be better next year.
Then the last 3-5% I speak with are having a great year. They’re having the best year they’ve ever had…and a big part of that is attitude. But with that attitude, they’re also mastering the strategies necessary for being successful in this market. If you can master those strategies, you can absolutely kill it and become a multi-millionaire in a future market.
In order to be in the top 3-5% bracket, here’s a clear action plan for you to follow:
Read our Mortgage Planner’s Book of Best Practices. Everything you need to know to shift your business from a transactional loan officer to a proactive mortgage planner is in this book. It puts everything right at your fingertips. There’s no excuse for you to not know the industry’s core best practices when they’re all in this one handy place.
If you have Mortgage Coach, you already have the most powerful success tool at your disposal. If you watch the videos and execute the key mortgage planning strategies you learn, you can uncover hidden opportunities in today’s market and be on your way to closing new loans within 30 days.
You will find the opportunities I mention above among your past clients. There are still plenty of past clients who need to do transactions. You just have to find them. You can also get referrals from CPAs, financial planners and realtors if you teach them what to look for in today’s market. There are people who need to get out of Option ARMs and into different option ARMs. Do recast reviews and you will uncover them. There are others who need to consolidate their auto loans.
Homeowners are hurting right now. There’s a lot of pain out there, but there are a lot of solutions, too. Don’t let the bad attitudes of your peers get you down. Be the change agent.
Another thing I see causing bad attitudes is because guidelines have changed. There are a lot of people out there who could get a loan last year that can’t get a loan this year. You need to make sure you understand the underwriting guidelines in today’s marketplace and learn how to say “no” faster.
I see too many loan officers trying to do deals that they could have done last year but can’t this year, and they’re letting people suck the energy and passion out of them. The longer you take to say no to a homeowner the more upset they are going to be with you, and you will end up “overpromising” and “underdelivering”. Then you will lose that customer for life when you could have continued to cultivate the relationship until they were able to refinance or purchase by simply being honest with yourself and your client. A fast no is 10 times better than a no after two weeks of going back and forth.
Give your sales team some links to pump them up, some books to read, any words of wisdom you can think of to get them pumped up, improve their attitudes and give them a path to success. There are mortgage planners having success in this marketplace. If you believe that you can be one of them and you take the actions on a day-to-day basis to get there, you will be one them.
Download the 2007 Edition: The Mortgage Planner Book of Best Practices
To motivate your sales team and change their attitude, have them watch:
http://www.212movie.com/
Attitude defined:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-36,GGLJ:en&q=define%3a+attitude
Inspirational quotes:
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/
David,
I couldn't have said it better!
Posted by: David A. Porter | June 13, 2007 at 03:54 PM