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A Great Recruiting Plan is Not Rocket Science

Sales management is one of the most difficult jobs within the mortgage industry. Most sales managers are personal producers and produce at a level which constituted a full time job before they became managers. After 50% of their time or more is taken by their personal caseload, how much time is left to dedicate to great management skills?

Unfortunately, the majority of the rest of a sales manager’s time is quickly absorbed by fighting fires. It is said that 80% of a manager’s supervisory time utilized by 20% of the poorest performers. This leaves precious time for a manager’s most important task—recruitment.

Why is recruitment a manager’s most important task? A manager can possess the best management skills in the world, but if that manager hires the wrong people their life is going to be a supervisory nightmare. Rule #1 of great leadership is to hire the right people. Most managers cannot hire the right people because they do not have the time to dedicate to a great recruitment plan. This is because they are spending their time trying to fix the wrong people. Sounds like a vicious cycle? You bet it is!

The question remains: how do we break out of this vicious cycle? We could try to outline a recruitment plan that would absorb ten hours of a manager’s time each week. The actions would look great on paper. In reality, there would be no implementation of such a plan. Our sales managers do not have an extra ten hours each week to expend, no matter how much time and stress it will save them in the long run. The only solution is to find synergies between the manager’s present activities and the recruitment objectives.

We have already identified what activities occupy the greatest portion of a manager’s working day; personal production and supervision of present employees. We must identify actions which will help us meet recruitment objectives and increase personal production. We must also identify actions which will help us increase our supervisory capacity and help us meet recruitment objectives.

To illustrate this point, let us take a few examples:

· Most sales managers hold periodic sales meetings. Far too many managers complain that these meetings degenerate into complaint sessions (why are our rates too high?) and far too many originators complain that these meetings do not help further their sales objectives. Perhaps we are spending too much time focusing on problems and products. How much time does the manager spend focusing on the company’s number one objective—attracting top notch sales and operations personnel? Do you ask each originator to help you recruit every week and entice them with incentives? When your sales force becomes part of your recruitment plan, they are forced to start focusing on the positives within their environment. It also helps solidify their own loyalty. Why recruit alone when you could have a recruitment team of several members working in concert to meet your objectives?

· One of the major goals of producers is to learn about their competition. Your objectives for interviewing targets should always include several questions regarding whom they are presently using, whom their peers use, what level of service they receive and more. What better way to benchmark potential recruits than by in-depth interviews with your targets. If their report is glowing: you have a recruitment target. If their report is not so glowing, you have a great opportunity to obtain more business. Ask the target to set up a meeting with you and their favorite originator, just to network. You will be surprised at how you might benefit. Many producers report that the majority of their production comes from loan officer sources, rather than Realtors^Ò or builders. Of course, not everyone can handle every deal. Talk about real synergy!

These examples sufficiently illustrate how we can link the two most time consuming elements of a manager’s day with the number one objective—recruitment. Of course, before we go about implementing these solutions, we must have a clear idea of our recruitment objectives. All too often we recruit anyone who is available—blindly—and wind up adding bodies instead of upgrading our staff.

When we open our eyes to take full advantage of the concept of synergy, there will be no end to the possibilities. Any action which helps us meet more than one objective will decrease our stress levels because they help us conserve our most precious resource—which is time. Any upgrading of our staff will also help decrease our stress levels. More productivity and less stress? You bet!

Dave Hershman
dave@hershmangroup.com
Click here to read Dave's bio

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August 30, 2006 in Recruiting | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hold A Contest

Did you ever notice that a lot of managers hold sales meetings and they turn out to be complaint sessions either by the manager or the loan officers? Before too long, loan officers stop attending them and/or the manager stops giving them. Put an end to that situation!

First, declare the meeting to be one that will held them sell more.
Second, declare that they will be fun!

Then, follow up by making it so. For example, hold a weekly sales contest. And not always for the most loans which means that the top people will always win. How about for certain activities? How about selecting teams? How about for improvement (number of additional loans)?

Make them participatory--have them select the contest.

Try it--it will work!

Dave Hershman
dave@hershmangroup.com
Click here to read Dave's bio

MortgageManagerCommunity.com Member's Only Resource:

Manager Download
Time Management Exercise by Dave Hershman

August 21, 2006 in Sales Meetings | Permalink | Comments (0)

Setting Branch Standards

The most significant standard?

It is more likely that the branch or company will have a productivity standard than any other standard. For loan officers this may include volume, number of loans or gross revenue produced per month, quarter and/or on a yearly basis. For a processor or closer, it may be the number of files that go to closing each month. We will address the question mark after the above caption in a few moments. First let’s address a very central question—

For commissioned loan officers, should there be a production standard?

Some would argue that a loan officer on 100% commission that is not using a desk and is not being provided with benefits, costs the branch nothing. Therefore, any loan brought in is an additional revenue source without adding to the expenses significantly. In reality, you cannot take a look at the costs in monetary terms. The loan officer, especially if they are less productive, will use resources of the branch—from processing to the manager’s time.

There are a limited number of resources and the use of these by a low-level producer may preclude the use of resources for other important tasks such as recruiting.

Another issue is the development of a company culture or atmosphere. Top producers tend to want to participate in an environment in which they are challenged. It is hard to be challenged by those producing one loan each quarter. That is why very productive branches tend to get stronger. And these branches are likely to have significant production standards.

What could be more significant?

What could be more significant than production standards? Believe it or not, there are many standards that are just as important, if not more important. For example—

• Standards for quality. Loan officers that hand in files that are incomplete use up a greater amount of company resources per loans closed. This is especially true if the fallout ratio is high. If the company is constantly processing “air”—then it will be hard to be profitable.

• Standards for ethics. It does not do good to produce many loans and then lose your license or perhaps be suspended by a lender.

Standards of behavior

A good example of a behavior standard would be attendance at sales meetings (see the next Chapter). Are they to be mandatory? You might point out that 1099 originators can’t be required to attend meetings because they are independent contractors. You will note that the vast majority of Realtors are also a 1099 status. Yet, you will see that in some offices the vast majority don’t attend the meetings and in other offices, the vast majority do attend the meetings. Making the meeting mandatory is not the issue. The issues are—

• Did you set the expectations at the time of hiring?

• Did you hire the right people? Successful people do the right things and that includes attending meetings that will help in their success.

• Are the meetings helping them and are they interesting? The best people will quickly recognize that poor meetings are a waste of their time.

• Are these meetings imbedded in the culture? Are they held regularly? Are there rewards given out for those who participate in the meetings?

Of course, meetings do not comprise the only standards of behavior. How are the employees to dress? Is the office business casual or suits? Can they come in any way they please, even if there are clients being serviced in the office? It may be disconcerting for a loan officer to meet with a top client and other originators are walking around in cut-off shorts.

The key is communication

It does not help to set standards if they are not communicated, especially up-front. You do not want a loan officer informed of a behavioral standard only after they violate that standard. This issue should be covered as part of the hiring and orientation process. And communication “up-front” is not the only issue. Communication of these standards must be continuous. These standards will only be ingrained into the culture if they are reinforced on a regular basis.

Dave Hershman
dave@hershmangroup.com
Click here to read Dave's bio