Think about the last time you went to dine at a fine restaurant. The owner of the restaurant didn't seat you, serve you water, take your drink order, mix your drinks, take your food order, cook the food, bring you the food and clean up after you. Five-star restaurants have five-star teams that create five-star experiences.
Why should your loan process be any different? Here's how top producers create a five-star experience for the borrower:
1. Write down your process
Top producers continuously ask themselves: "What does it look like for a borrower to have a relationship with me?"
►Lead generation process: How does a lead come in? What happens when a lead comes in? How does the lead become a borrower?
►Loan process: What specific steps take place in order to take a transaction from application to funding? Who performs these steps? When are they performed? How are they performed?
►After-closing process: What happens after a borrower's transaction is funded to maintain and advance the relationship?
The answers to these questions will tell you what your process with borrowers looks like right now. Once you discover that, you'll be able to identify ways of taking that experience to five-star levels.
2. Build a five-star team
Most top producers have at least one assistant, and many top producers have an entire team of people to help them create five-star experiences. Let's go back to the restaurant example. If the restaurant is only serving dinner for one person a day, the owner may be able to get away with doing everything. No need to delegate. No need to build a team. But even then, who's taking care of the customer when the owner is in the kitchen cooking the food?
In the loan business, if you're only closing two to three loans per month, you can probably get away without an assistant and without building a team. But I'm still not sure your client experience would be at five-star levels. Let's assume I'm wrong. Let's assume you can create a five-star experience for someone by doing it all yourself. At what point do you lose your five-star touch?
I've found that once you reach five to seven loans per month, loan originators start losing it … when they work on their own. Things slip through the cracks, clients are under-served, quality of life goes down and stress levels go up. At that point, a decision needs to be made: Keep doing what I'm doing or get serious about creating a five-star experience.
Top producers get it. Being a loan originator is not just about closing loans. It's about impacting lives … and the mortgage transaction is the single most important financial transaction of someone's life. Top producers see themselves differently than the other loan originators who try to compete with them. Top producers do whatever it takes to create a five-star experience for their clients.
Gibran Nicholas is the founder, chairman and CEO of CMPS Institute and Top Producer Round Table Series. Since 2005, he's helped more than 7,000 of America's top loan originators to grow sales and improve their relationships. He may be reached by phone at (888) 608-9800, e-mail [email protected] or visit CMPSInstitute.org.
This article originally appeared in the March 2015 print edition of National Mortgage Professional Magazine.
