Industry Trends – Page 3

Has One-Stop Shopping Arrived in Mortgage Banking?

In a recent investor presentation by Better.com, the digital-first homeownership company deemed the mortgage industry “broken” as “consumers deal with repetitive data requests, high fees and lack of certainty.” If customer satisfaction surveys regarding the home loan process are any indication, Better.com’s assessment is accurate. Better.com’s technology-driven platform offers a glimpse of mortgage lending’s future. […]

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Are You Hiring Radical Change Agents?

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank and respected banking industry guru recently said in an interview that bankers lack imagination when it comes to envisioning what their customers need. He noted that Fintech companies in particular, “are making great strides in building both digital and physical banking products and services. From loans

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Culling the Herd: A Smarter Way to Reduce Your Sales Staff

In my recent conversations with mortgage executives, many are considering reducing their sales staff now that volume has slowed. The consensus is that now is a good time to cull bottom-tier producers who are only generating 20% of the total volume. However, because mortgage lending is characterized by perpetual “boom or bust” cycles, I believe

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It is Time to Get Serious About Prospecting

In 2020, many originators pushed prospecting to the backburner. Thanks to the record-breaking refinance boom, originators were able to hit volume and income goals without much effort in the prospecting department. This year, a very different story is playing out. While interest rates are still low, marketplace volatility has complicated the financial outlook. A recent

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It’s Time to Stop Selling and Become a Trusted Advisor

Every salesperson knows that transactional selling is no longer relevant in today’s marketplace. With unlimited access to information online, prospects and customers conduct research on their own and don’t need someone to explain product features and benefits. However, this creates another issue for consumers that originators are uniquely positioned to solve. With so much

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Are Your Sales Leaders Unable to Envision Change?

During a recent industry webinar, a discussion about reducing time to close a loan boiled down to a single question: What would it take to have a 3-day close? One attendee asked, “Can mortgage bankers even conceptualize a 3-day close?” The event speaker weighed in, adding, “some practices are so ingrained in mortgage banking that

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Five Strategies for Mastering Virtual Sales Presentations

Last year was especially challenging for sales professionals after in-person sales calls ground to a halt due to the pandemic. Many originators were forced to adapt to the new world of virtual selling — and fast! For producers used to doing business face to face, lack of virtual selling skills didn’t matter as much

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Facing a New Reality: Five Ways to Win in a Purchase Money Market

During my recent conversations with sales leaders, managers across the board expressed concern about their originators adapting to the new environment of rising interest rates and the shift to purchase money. The decline in refinance business is a reality with mortgage applications dropping 43% in the last week, according to the MBA. This raises

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Lenders’ Biggest Dilemma: Invest in Training or Be Replaced

In the last few weeks, nearly every conversation I’ve had with senior mortgage executives has centered on one of two issues: finding sales and processor talent; and delivering an excellent customer experience throughout the loan process. To be sure, getting the human capital side of the mortgage business right when volume is through the

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What an “Attention Economy” Means for Originators

Today, consumers have easy access to an unfathomable amount of information on every imaginable topic under the sun. Moreover, that information is being published at an astonishing rate. Consider that in 2020, YouTube users uploaded 500 hours of video every minute! Who would have thought 40 years ago that 2021 would be characterized by

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