It’s All About Activity
Relying on motivation to come from production goals alone is unrealistic. Especially in a tough market that saw record-setting numbers from most loan officers in recent years turn into barren years of minimal commission. Instead of motivating yourself through lofty production numbers based on years past, motivate yourself through daily activity. This will avoid setting yourself up for failure and ensure you’re still keeping up with the systems that made you successful before the pandemic.
“When you focus on the activity, it’s a lot easier to be motivated because you’re not attaching your worth to whether you succeeded or failed,” said Curran. “If you do enough of that activity, you’re going to get results. You just have to figure out what that activity level is specifically for you to get there.”
How do you know what your money-making activities are, though? Meeting with Realtors is one everyday activity most loan officers associate with production. But how do you know whether or not a particular activity is directly making you money? Those are the ones Curran says you should be replicating, after all.
“What is your closing percentage? How many calls do you need to make? How many names do you need?” Curran asks. “These are things that people don’t track on their own. Then, they wonder why they had a good month, and they don’t know how to duplicate it because they weren’t tracking what they did to get them there.”
The only way to properly identify your most valuable activities is to track what they are and what they provide. Once you know what these are, it’s important to replicate and repeat them.
Incentivizing Activity
For managers, tracking activity can be a great way to incentivize staff. When sales teams don’t meet their production goals, it can be challenging to keep them interested and engaged. Rewarding activity is important because, as Curran says, you can’t control results.
“The incentive needs to be based on activity, not results,” Curran said. “You can’t control the results, but you can control the activity.”
Ok, we get it. This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard that you need to meet with real estate agents to get more deals. But that’s not exactly Curran’s point, and it’s the reason her role is vital for so many sales professionals, not just loan officers.
“If you reverse engineer properly and make sure that the activity you’re doing is going to yield results and consistently do your activity without fail, then you should get the proper results,” continues Curran. “If not, you have to rework your activity.”
Once you know which activities are generating the most business, it’s time to practice what Curran preaches and incentivize those activities. See who can make the most calls or meet with the most people. Most good managers know that one incentive doesn’t always generate the same excitement across an entire office or team. Well, Curran knows the importance of understanding your staff to engage them. She believes there are certain actions that need to happen to understand what best incentivizes your team members.
“I think two things have to happen,” Curran adds. “I think that the leader has to meet individually with each person on the team so they know what specifically motivates each loan officer and where they might be personally struggling.”
When you’re more familiar with your team, you’re not only more aware of their weaknesses. You can also rely on their strengths.
“Have people on the team teach what they’re good at so that everyone is engaged and you’re not always hearing from the same person all the time,” said Curran.
The other common motivator Curran advises is simply a scoreboard.
“I think having a scoreboard helps. How many dials did you make? How many meetings did you run? How many drop-ins did you do at different Realtor offices?” Curran said, explaining the results that should be scored. “When you praise people for the work, everyone typically wants to participate because you can control the work you do.”
