For ambitious loan officers, tuning in to the things that can help them find success is important. Equally important, tuning in to the things that are holding them back from that success can help them supercharge their progress. When you evaluate your current situation with the goal of pinpointing inefficient habits and limiting mindsets, you make it easier to move forward towards success. Here are some of the most common things that can hold loan officers back:
Only Investing in Marketing When Business is Slow
Is marketing a regular part of your work, or is it responsive? If your marketing efforts really only pick up when business slows, you’re limiting the growth of your business. Marketing should be consistent. It should be something that you invest time into regularly, whether business is at an all-time high, an all-time low, or anywhere in between. If you’re working in stops and starts, the work your putting in will be less effective. To fuel business growth, maintain steady marketing efforts from week to week.
Resisting Automation
Especially if you’ve been in the business for a while, it can be tough to change your way of doing things. Once you find a system that works for you, it can be tempting to resist change. As technology continues to evolve, though, there are more and more opportunities to make our work more efficient. You may have a regular task that takes you about 30 minutes 3 times a week. You feel you work efficiently and have found a way of doing it that works for you. But what if you could automate that task? Instead of spending an hour and a half every week, you could spend maybe 15 minutes a week getting it set up and checking in. Posting to social media is a great example of where automation can work like this. Though embracing automation may mean embracing some change, loan officers who resist it are significantly limiting their productivity.
Over-Automating
On that same topic of automation, it’s worth noting that over-automating can also be limiting. LOs need to find the balance. Using automation to schedule posts is seamless, and your followers won’t know the difference. Regularly using automated messages though, could come off as impersonal and cold. Automating parts of the loan process can be valuable, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of a personal connection with your clients.
Operating Without an Underlying Strategy
Whether you own your own business or work for a larger company, having a business plan for how you manage your work is important. You want to establish concrete strategies and standards that form a stable foundation for business growth. When professionals skip over this important planning, they often don’t have the capacity to support the growth they want to see. It’s also important to have a vision for your business. Why are you doing the work you do and what do you hope to achieve? That vision can guide your evolution and ensure that you stay motivated to continue striving.
When you identify the things that stand between you and success, you can start moving them out of your way. There are many common things that loan officers experience when it comes to limitations, and there are also more unique challenges. Take the time to investigate your own. Are there any other common tendencies that can keep loan officers from reaching their full potential?
Kirk Brewer
Branch Manager | Loan Geek | NMLS #150287