The meeting had about 30 loan officers. It was about 1992 give or take. The boss also had invited the processing staff and the Underwriters. Notice I capitalized underwriters. It was a natural reflex. More on that some other time.
So the boss tells everyone assembled how great everything was, how much business was growing exponentially, how they could be looking for more and bigger checks as the real state market was growing. More and more buyers were looking. More and more buyers needed financing. Things were great.
But these guys and girls knew that something was up. They had heard a rumor. Do you know what’s going on Ralph? What changes are going to affect us? Are we going to be forced out of the business? The boss knew and had procrastinated for over a month. He knew there would be a bunch of crap thrown at him. He knew some of the LO’s would accuse him of selling out. What was going on?
The boss left it up to me, little me, the consultant, the coach. He didn't have the testicular fortitude to handle bad news. So I stood up, grabbed my baseball bat and said pretty much these words. "What I'm going to say is not going to make you happy. It will probably actually make you mad. But FannieMae is starting to underwrite loans based on the FICO score. We can't submit loans anymore unless the FICO score is a certain number. No exceptions!"
"Holy shit!" They screamed, the nicer comments were like this: "What did you say? What are you saying? What purpose are underwriters anymore. How will we survive?"
They didn't give me a minute to explain. Not a minute, hell, they didn't give me 5 seconds. "You mean some machine is going to decide who gets approved and who gets rejected?"
Meanwhile the world was making another revolution.
People hate change. Just hate it! I tried to explain that this would be just a small bump. A mere pimple. Nothing to worry about. They would adapt. Everything would be ok.
TRUST ME!
So I hear that the compensation plan is not the same as it was. Jeez, wow, hokey smokes! Well here's what those who know how to survive are doing. They are meeting with clients, potential clients, referral sources and potential referral sources. They avoid the talk about how Washington is going to kill their business. They move forward and take the punch and keep doing what makes and has made them successful and avoid all the bullshit talk about Representative Barney Frank and how he wants to destroy the mortgage industry.
Which type of Sales Rep are you? What is your daily take on life? Will you survive because you love what you do, or will you let this be the nail that closes the cover on the casket and kills your business?
Get over it! The Law is the Law. Move on. Live with it. Two years from now you'll have another battle to fight. Go out and produce business. There are so many other things to occupy your time. Go produce some business. Share something positive going on in your world on Twitter. Send a text to a real estate agent telling them how to do more business. TRUST ME! Everything will be OK!
