With the compression of originations and closing in the mortgage industry as demonstrated by February 2014 being the slowest month of closing in the industry in 14 years, it begs the questions how are all the privately held independent mortgage companies prepared to survive the upcoming 6-9 months of brutal business conditions? According to the MBA, the average cost to manufacture a loan for this group in the 4th quarter of 2013 was over $5100.00 not including employee expense, the average profit was $150.00 per loan and those numbers are due to significantly change in the 1rst quarter of 2014 and not to the positive side. With that being said, can companies continue to lead their recruiting efforts by paying 80 to 125 basis points to their loan officers? CFPB has just start the in-depth regulating these non-depositories and small community depositories and their business practices. And if the last year has proven anything, is that these companies could be looking at an additional 30 to 40 basis points cost per loan in compliance expense on top of their present cost to produce. So let us look at what could be a very realistic scenario in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of this year, if company spends say over $5600.00 or higher to produce a loan and you lose money on a per loan basis, how do you continue to pay 80 to 125 basis points in commission? I do hear a lot of companies have been to market and have started selling off their loan portfolios to generate revenue to offset these expenses, but how long can that last? Makes no sense, to sale off your portfolio assets to run your sales business and operate at a loss. This 1.1 billion dollar market is not going to grow by any sizable amount according to every report that I have seen over the last 45 to 60 days. What about those organizations that are owned by a hedge fund or REIT, I wonder how secure they really feel? Hedge Funds and REITs are not keen on not making a return. The business is due some major disruption and as LOs how do you feel about that? What are your risks? As recruiters and Managers recruiting LOs how do you feel about that? Can you really tell a candidate that there is a long term future with the company you represent? All I know, after 30 years of recruiting in this business the numbers that I see and hear just will not work moving forward and something will change in these business models. I am trying to create an argument for one player verse another, as I do not know who will and who will not be the fittest and strongest to survive, but I am more interested in future thought moving forward.
Research has shown that most Branch Managers and Sales Managers in the Mortgage Lending Industry do not have a formally structured Recruiting Pipeline that they use daily, week in and week out. It is where you would keep score and you can track your progress and ultimately your team’s growth. To be successful as a Sales Leader you are always growing your team or as the saying goes “Either you are growing or you are going”. And by going, that does not mean you are going anywhere positive. Loan Officer Recruiting is a 24/7 aspect of any Branch Manager’s duties and the managers that are successful at recruiting understand that. Having a Recruiting Pipeline is as vital to the manager as a Loan Pipeline is to the Loan Officer. To have a snap shot of your recruiting activities in one centralized place that you can check the needed recruiting actions on a daily basis, is the cornerstone of successful recruiting. It is where you record and track all relevant recruiting information, such as how many suspects have you sourced, how many of the suspects do you convert to prospects and in turn how many of those prospects become qualified candidates? What should a pipeline consist of? To understanding that, realize that there are six basic phases in recruiting process and those distinct phases with abbreviated explanations are:
Phase One Suspects (Sourcing)
Phase Two Prospects (“Getting to know one another” and establishing mutual interest)
Phase Three-Candidates (Interviewing, Underwriting, Qualifying, Referencing and Business Plan Development)
Phase Four – Hot Candidates (Soft Commitment to Pro-Forma, Compensation, Spousal Buy-In and Pre-Close)
Phase Five- Offer and Close (Formal Offer and Acceptance with Start Date Confirmation)
Phase Six- Counter-Offer and On-Boarding (Walk the new hire through resignation to starting date and mentoring over the first 90 days or so).
Recruiters and Mortgage Companies all use different terminology for all these phases but the key is to have a central place to list of all Suspects that you have ever sourced and how did you source them. Then listing those that you converted to Prospects and the time that it took and then the percentage that then become a Candidate, not only can you see what areas in the recruiting cycle that you excel at but also the areas that you can still grow and develop. It will also give you the elapsed time from first contact to this point in the recruiting process; additionally it will offer you insight to how much recruiting activity that you require to meet your hiring goals, it also should give you a baseline of recruiting activities and conversation ratios that are needed to get Candidates to the interviewing process. This is a lot of data and insight to what you need to accomplish to reach this crucial point in the recruiting cycle. But now, this is the half way point, it is when theInterviewing Processreally starts, but not the Recruiting Process. That started back at Suspects and this is the forgotten first half of the Recruiting Pipeline. What we see as a major stumbling block to Loan Officer Recruiting, is how the Branch Managers get evaluated on, as to their recruiting activities. That usually starts at the “Candidates Phase” and how many Loan Officers are they in the process of Interviewing and how many Hires have they made year to date. That is not “putting the cart before the horse”, that is not having a horse and only having a cart with one wheel. These first sections are where most of the real recruiting activities happen but this is not where the glory of recognition is. Unless companies start recognizing the most labor intensive part of the Recruiting Pipeline it will continue as the most neglected part of the recruiting activities that their Sales Leaders do.
Over the past 25 years, CCowan & Associates has established itself as the “go-to” team for mortgage banking recruitment and retention training. Using the innovative, customizable, and dynamic training process our talented coaches have perfected in those twenty-five years, we deliver successful retail mortgage sales recruitment and retention training that encompasses multiple levels of mortgage sales—from originators and sales managers to branch, area, regional, divisional, and C-level leadership in the retail and wholesale mortgage industry. Our satisfied customers will tell you that no other consulting firm in the mortgage sales arena can deliver the return on investment that CCowan can and does.
The CCowan Process
Our remarkably successful training model is so effective because it focuses on one goal: delivering measurable results through process tracking and accountability. Here’s how it works: the initial, introductory call between a CCowan coach and one of your mortgage sales professionals will be followed by weekly sessions during which our coach will use accountability-based metrics to review the previous week’s activities, progress, and results of your manager to ensure that she or he fully engages in the training process, consistently applies and learns to adapt its methods, and reliably follows through to achieve your recruitment goals.
What Makes CCowan Right for You
CCowan doesn’t offer outmoded, vanilla, “one-size-fits-all” training. Instead, we custom-tailor a unique training program for each of our clients and each of our participants so that our individualized, one-on-one coaching system produces measurable results, whether your recruiting manager is a rookie recruiter or has years of proven, successful hiring experience. In addition, our coaching process is scalable company-wide, and can be systematically and strategically delivered to an entire retail sales management team. Because we build this flexibility into our training process and because our coaches are experts in the field, we can guarantee that our training is not only the best mortgage-banking recruiting training available at any price, but also the best investment you can make in your employees’ and your company’s success.
How to Get Started
Call me today at 321-363-4384, and let me show you the better, more profitable recruiting results your team can achieve through one of the cost-effective recruitment-coaching solutions available through CCowan & Associates! If your recruiting managers are doing well, we can take them from good to great. If your company is experiencing high sales-team attrition, or your managers are not delivering the results you need for growth at this critical time in the mortgage business, we will show them the path to recruitment and retention success. When I share with you the details of our process, our record of success, and what we can achieve for your company, I know you’ll want to take the next step: an in-depth Recruiting Core Competency Evaluation to determine how much your managers can benefit from the game-changing CCowan & Associates’ recruitment training program.
CCowan & Associates is a relationship based recruiting firm specializing in the Mortgage, Banking, and Financial Services industries. We bring over 100 years of combined consulting experience to a broad spectrum of clients, ranging from medium and regional-sized companies to the largest, best, and brightest of the Fortune 100. CCowan & Associates owns a reputation for bringing “High Impact Players” to our clients. Our placements have driven billions in funded production volume and millions in profit to bottom lines. Additionaly, partnering with best-in-class organizations has provided a preferred first choice destination for top performers. This has resulted in a tremendous increase to the Value Proposition our partners have taken to the market. Our firm offers a full suite of customized, fee-based recruitment services. If your company mission is to achieve sustainable, profitable results then CCowan & Associates wants to be your results-driven recruiting partner.
For organizations wishing to adopt a more self-sufficient recruitment strategy, CCowan also delivers the expertise, experience, and curriculum to individually train recruiting managers to build their own teams successfully and autonomously. CCowan & Associates has expanded our menu of services to include individualized coaching and training for Branch, Area, and Regional Managers. This cost-effective, high value strategic partnership achieves an exceptionally better quality of hire, resulting in increased production. It has also enhanced both management and subordinate retention rates. The “Identify, Underwrite, Recruit, Hire and Retain” CCowan behavioral model becomes a part of our clients’ cultural fabric.
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The federal government has negotiated a settlement with a man who is accused of abusing the federally insured reverse mortgage program.Alexander Olympus Zarris was marketing condominium units at a development that is located in Tarpon, Springs, Florida.Zarris targeted elderly buyers and utilized the Federal Housing Administration's home-equity conversio […]
Mortgage banking economists have improved their outlook for loan originations during the current quarter. Full-year expectations have risen for three months in a row.From July 1, 2017, through Oct. 31, home-lending volume is expected to reach $455 billion. In the final quarter of this year, production is projected at just $348 billion.The trough will occur i […]
In addition to lifting its quarterly home lending, SunTrust Banks Inc. grew its residential loan servicing portfolio. But mortgage earnings deteriorated.Income before the provision for income taxes at the bank-holding company amounted to $752 million during the three months that concluded on June 30.Atlanta-based SunTrust provided the details, along with add […]
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