Part 3 - The Six Things Highly Efficient Originators Do!
I want to start out this week’s post by thanking all of you for the kind words and comments about the last couple of posts. It has been real fun for me to have the interaction with you and get to share some time with a few of you who are not clients, but followers of the posts. It’s always good to connect and share thoughts and ideas. This week we are going to talk about items four through six of the six efficiencies.
Item number four is your plan execution and service delivery. This is likely the place where it all comes down to really specific personalities, markets, and business make-up. This is where you have to drill down and understand your value to the client. What do you do? How do you do it? Do you connect through paper or in person? Is it email or text? Do you just pick up the phone and call? Will there be a face to face encounter? Having a great plan won’t yield the desired results if you can’t effectively communicate with your people!
Each step in your process has to incorporate the bigger picture of your overall connection plan. Database systems are nice, but a series of “canned” emails will not keep you connected to your client or referral partner as well as using all forms of communication will. In fact, email is the WORST way to stay connected. People are programmed to ignore email. People dump and block dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of emails a day, why run the risk that your ability to connect and communicate with your client and referral partners gets lost in that mix? What if you got into the habit of only using email to confirm or document some other form of communication? Use email as a support tool and not an engagement tool.
Item number five is so simple and effective it’s hard to believe I have to bring it up, but most originators don’t ever track results other than to see how many units they closed or their past dollar volume. This is the type of “rear view mirror” habit that helps support the “roller coaster” production that most originators fall victim to! Tracking your business by closed units and dollar volume after the fact only tells you where you have been and nothing to help you plan and project the future!
When you did your business plan, you set projections for referrals from all the potential sources of business. You list people and areas you were focusing your efforts on to attract the opportunities you needed to reach the performance targets you set for yourself and your referral partners. To not set aside time every month in the middle of the month to not only look at the prior months closings, but to look at new credit pulls, new referrals, size of your pre-approval pipeline, gestation period of those pre-approvals into closed loans, and the tracking of inbound referrals from all sources to be sure you are tracking the course you set is like leaving your map on the kitchen table when you head out on a trip! You need to schedule the time to track your results.
Number six follows all the others because you can’t make adjustments if you don’t do the first five things, and doing the first five things without making adjustments is a huge potential loss of time and money! Let’s be honest, sometimes we get things wrong! Sometimes things we thought would work don’t go as planned. Sometimes referral partners don’t refer as we thought. The other side to that coin is that sometimes things work BETTER than we thought, or that we find more opportunities and referrals than we ever thought possible!
The key is to look at the results and see what adjustments may need to take place. Sometimes the plan you have is fine and its outside forces like weather that get in the way. Sometimes things happen slower or faster than anticipated. And sometimes it all comes together! Being prepared to review the information and to make, or not to make, adjustments can really impact your bottom line. And remember, it isn’t always about the number of referrals, closings, or dollars closed that matters, it is also the balance of investments in time and money to be sure it is all worth the effort!
I hope you found this mini-series helpful. I look forward to your questions and comments: [email protected]
