In Tough Markets, Success Requires a Compelling Message & Consistency

The housing market is impacting all loan originators, and credit unions are certainly no exception. Even the obvious advantages credit unions offer – such as highly competitive rates and the ability to serve many facets of a member’s financial needs – aren’t enough to overcome a tough market alone. When interest rates spike and home inventories are already low to begin with, there’s only so much an originator can do to grow sales.

But that doesn’t mean they should stop trying. The reality is there is always a path to success that works in every type of market. And the strategies credit unions implement today to generate business will not only pay back ten-fold when market conditions improve, they will help sustain volumes during future downturns.

Relationships Are Everything

Over the years, I’ve trained thousands of loan officers from every type of mortgage lender, and realize compensation works differently at different credit unions. I understand many credit unions still keep their loan officers on salary and offer little to no commission. And because these loan officers receive most of their leads through the credit unions, they spend little time sourcing relationships.

However, a growing number of credit unions understand that to grow, they need to change this approach by creating or recruiting sales teams that do self-source business and get compensated as a result. While recognizing the need to maintain a feeling of member service –something every credit union prides itself on – these organizations are becoming more sales focused in their approach to the mortgage consumer.

Unsurprisingly, many of these forward-thinking credit unions are experiencing significantly better results than others – that is, the ones that make the proper investments in their origination team. Usually, this means implementing training programs to teach their salespeople how to go out and develop relationships with real estate professionals, who are the ones on the front lines working directly with today’s buyers.

But a tougher housing market is impacting all sales professionals, and loan officers at credit unions have had additional hurdles to surmount – which can make building those relationships more challenging.

Know Your Audience

To develop real estate partnerships and win more sales opportunities, credit unions and their loan officers must first realize that real estate agents are constantly bombarded by other loan originators. The key to being effective at building relationships lies in mastering the processes of setting appointments, conveying the uniqueness of one’s offerings, and showing how they can help real estate agents get deals closed better than their competition.

If you’re a loan originator at a credit union looking to launch or expand your referral partnerships, you must first be ready for their objections and challenges. Perhaps the biggest of these objections is the fact that most agents either already work with an in-house lender or have existing relationships with loan officers they trust. Not knowing how to respond effectively to these two hurdles alone lock out more than 80% of credit union loan officers from getting a relationship.

Once you’ve secured a meeting, you must also understand that the goal isn’t simply to talk about your credit union’s products. You need to understand and say how these products solve the problems the agent faces and how they will help them do more business. It’s also important to find out if the agent has any preconceived notions about how credit unions operate.

For example, many agents believe credit unions only operate during regular business hours. If this is a challenge for them, they’ll want you to explain how you’ll overcome it. On the other hand, many credit unions have added specialty products to their portfolios that the typical bank or mortgage lender doesn’t offer. The better you’re able to position these products in a way that solves the agent’s challenges, the more effective your meeting will be.

Before you leave the meeting, you’ll need two things – a compelling reason for the agents to want to continue engaging with you, and a strong, deliberate follow up plan to stay top of mind for that agent.

Consistent Learning Is Crucial

Of course, knowing how to build relationships effectively isn’t the same thing as actually doing it. Fortunately, mastering this process is not as hard as some sales experts would have you believe. It can be made very simple to learn and implement – as long as your credit union is willing to support the process and understands that changing an originator’s ability to market and sell their products doesn’t happen in five minutes.

In my experience training mortgage professionals, this is clearly the number one reason why companies fail at transforming their salespeople. Everyone is looking for overnight success, but the reality is that success takes sustained training and effort. A series of training sessions is often recommended to obtain the best and fastest results by providing loan officers the time, opportunity and support to build momentum and master their relationship-building skills.

Loan officers that try to apply what they learn from a single training session almost always find that it doesn’t work. They’ll make mistakes – which is only natural – but won’t find out what those mistakes were or how to correct them. Without proper follow up and reinforcement, they won’t truly learn.

All professional football teams do this, by the way. They play on Sunday, then on Monday, they watch game film and find out what they did and didn’t do right. The problem in the mortgage industry is that very few organizations or originators look at game film—although those that do eventually find the answers they seek.

Surely, today’s market is more challenging for originators. But the market is not the problem, because a problem is something you can fix. Plus, people are still buying and selling homes, even in the current high-rate environment.

The salesperson who does not focus on market conditions and instead focuses on developing relationships is the one who will be standing at the head of the pack when the market turns. They will get more business today, and as soon as the market pivots, their business will explode because they will have planted all the necessary seeds. And there’s never a better time to start planting than right now.

Ron Vaimberg is President of the Jefferson Valley, N.Y.-based Ron Vaimberg International, a mortgage and real estate success training and coaching business.