Five hot tips on recruitingBrian L. Pearthigh payouts, low support, competition, strategy
This article is more for the owner/manager in a mortgage office
or any loan officer (LO) that one day aspires to own his own
company. Many people set a goal each year to recruit a certain
number of people, but they never take the time to think about how
to really do it. To follow are some tips I have found to be
helpful.
It is easier to take someone from 10 closings a month to 15 than
it is to get five new loans from recruiting. Most people think in a
very linear fashion. They see a dwindling office and say, "Man, I
need to recruit." They think that numbers equal success. But I
disagree. The concept of having 20 loan officers and needing to
administrate those 20 in order to produce 20 closings a month is a
nightmare to me. I would rather (and it is far easier to) take my
guy who is doing eight to 10 closings a month and get him up to 20
a month. He is already doing a lot of things right and only needs
some tweaking in some key area to go to the next level. Maybe it is
help with time management or marketing past clients. Whatever it
is, a little effort with your top producers will bring radical
results. I would rather have two guys closing 20 loans a month than
10 LOs closing 20 loans a month, and so would you, I'm sure.
You must know and be clear on your recruiting strategy. Do you
go with high payouts and low support, low payouts with provided
leads or somewhere in between? Look at what you are offering, think
about who that would be attractive to and market that way. For
example, if you were offering high payout and low support, what
type of person would that be attractive to? Contrary to what you
think, top producers would not be attracted to that. By top
producer, I mean someone closing 20 loans a month. The top 200 LOs
in the country either work for banks and large lenders with
basis-point payouts and tons of support, or they own their own
companies. Neither of those two will fit your bill if you offer
high payout and low support. The most likely person to be attracted
to you is the person who has been in the business for some time and
closes two to five loans a month. That is your target, unless you
change your strategy. There's nothing wrong with that target, but
know who you are attracting and see if that meshes with your
mission.
Now, look at your competition and see what they are offering.
How can you package your deal to seem more attractive? Can you
offer some training or mentoring while keeping the pay high? Or can
you offer leads and still pay a decent percentage? Personally, I
think one of the hottest recruiting tips right now is to push that
you offer training on how to bring in purchase business. Many
people are floundering in this business right now. If you offer
training to potential employees, you can attract a lot more people.
There are plenty of good training programs out there. There is a
hunger for training right now. This is an area you can capitalize
on.
Now, get busy. You have your "offer" and you know how you
compare to others, so get recruiting. Again, a little initial
planning can speed up your process dramatically. Who are the best
recruits for your style? If you go high payout, you want people
with experience. If you go low payout with provided leads or, like
me, medium payout with training, you can hire people with some or
no experience. Then, think about where to find these people and how
you recruit the best. Where have your recruits come from in the
past? Who has had the most success? For us, it is family members
and people who have been successful in sales in other industries
but want to get into the mortgage business. All of my top producers
have come from one of those two groups, so that is whom I market
to.
Create a strategy that consistently markets for new recruits. In
college football, recruiting never ends, and if you want to be
successful in todays environment, you must constantly recruit, as
well. For example, for me, recruiting is focused on salespeople and
referred people. So each month, I place one ad in the classifieds
under the sales section to target salespeople, and each month I
block off two hours to call friends/family and referral sources
(like appraisers, etc.) to get referrals and then call on them. It
is not a lot of time, but it is consistent every month. As simple
as that is, it is a recruiting strategy.
So there you have it. Build into your top producers, think about
your strategy, think about how to make it more attractive, think
about whom your optimum target is and then target them every month.
Do that consistently, and over the course of a year, you will build
a full and dynamic office!
Brian L. Peart is president of Nexus Financial Group Inc.
and publisher of the Top Producer training course. He may be
reached at
[email protected].
