Patricia Sherlock

As the market changes, the ability of the originator to deliver trust to the customer is more critical than ever. Without instilling trust, originators cannot develop relationships needed to facilitate future business. In Sally Hogshead’s excellent book, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, she describes trust as the most nuanced, fragile and hardest […]

One hot topic in my recent training classes is how difficult it is to manage remotely. As we all know, the days of managers sharing the same office with their employees have faded away largely due to expense reasons. The problem is that remote managers no longer have the spontaneous daily interactions with employees that

While most sales managers in mortgage origination value producers who can multi-task, the emphasis placed on multi-tasking in our industry is out of proportion to the potential benefits received. It seems reasonable to believe that producers working on several things simultaneously will be more effective but recent research does not support this idea. The truth

Many previously successful sports teams are currently failing due to an unwillingness to consider a longer view or embrace an innovation before it\’s already become old hat. Does this sound like the mortgage industry? Many mortgage managers are stuck in a similar rut when it comes to training employees on improving sales techniques, recruiting younger

In my consulting practice, one of the most common mistakes I see is when mortgage firms fail to address having salespeople who lack prospecting skills. Many current originators have not had to prospect for new accounts or new business in a very long time. Why has this happened? For most salespeople, their careers have coincided

This week the baseball play-offs got underway and unfortunately, my home team — the Philadelphia Phillies — is not included this year. The Phillies have had their worst season in 14 years causing the owners and management to focus on how to turn the team around. On the other end of the spectrum, the St.

In recent conversations with managers, one of the questions I hear most frequently is what to do about salespeople who won’t prospect for new business. For many managers, this issue is especially perplexing because the majority of originators who fail to prospect have years of experience in the industry and may have been successful in

In my recent discussions with managers, it seems nearly every sales organization is grappling with the issue that future success in mortgage origination requires taking market share from your competitors. To accomplish this, I find that managers are either trying to hire like crazy (typically at the branch level) or trying to train their salespeople

Last week, I discussed common mistakes that managers make when coaching originators. This week I would like to cover what I believe are the two biggest errors originators make that prevent sales success. They are: 1. Not creating a personal sales system — Originators who “wing it” have a haphazard sales approach. These individuals never

As we move toward 2014, many companies are deciding how to compete in a non-refinance marketplace. I’ve noticed several common refrains managers use to improve employee performance, that in my view, simply don’t work. Dan Kennedy’s book, “No B.S. Sales Success in the New Economy,” discusses these issues in greater detail. According to Kennedy, three