Mortgage sales strategies: Seven tips for creating a winning mortgage sales organization

In Q4 of 2022, the mortgage market shifted significantly, and many lenders are now playing catch-up — are you one of them? If your team is struggling to adjust to this high-rate, low-inventory market, the strategies you’ve been leaning on to attract and win business need to evolve.

In order for sales teams to succeed, their approach has to meet the market as it is now, not as it once was. As lenders try to make the most of the last quarter of 2023 (and prepare for 2024), I’d like to share some of the proven sales strategies that are helping my clients succeed—regardless of rates. If you act on them, these strategies will inspire confidence across your organization, encouraging your team members to operate with the right mindset.

There’s ample opportunity in this market, but capitalizing on that opportunity starts with reprioritizing what always matters most in any business: sales.

Evolve your culture to become sales-centric

Establishing a sales-centric culture company-wide requires that each person on your team understands the significance of their role in the sales process. Every team member, regardless of their role, should be expected to be relational and communicative, committed to creating solutions for your customers, and willing to do what it takes to drive deals across the finish line.

Seven strategies for managing behaviors, not just results

Good leaders drive sales success by focusing not only on results, but also on the activities that drive those results. Effective sales oversight isn’t just about concentrating on the month-end numbers, it’s about focusing on the activities that drive not just better production, but better conversion, and holding your team accountable to those right activities. With that in mind, here are seven strategies you can implement to help your team be successful, along with actionable takeaways.

1. Have a daily selling mindset

The number one goal for your LOs has to be selling every day. Why? Because by making just one sale a day, an LO can put 21 deals in their pipeline every month. At a 70% closing rate, that’s 15 funded loans a month. But those kind of results are only possibly if your LOs are always focusing their time where it counts most. Which is why it’s so incredibly important to have a CRM that maintains a prioritized queue of your LOs best sales opportunities at every moment, like Velocify.

Establish a daily sales mindset ­– Create power hours throughout the day where you (or your sales team) are only focused on selling. In fact, focusing on sales in the morning can help your team build momentum and close more deals. Create incentives, not just for results, but for productive activities (dials made, connections made, apps taken, etc.), and then parse out rewards at the end of the hour to create healthy competition.

2. Set requirements for daily activities

Push your originators to hit a set number of business-producing activities every day (customer follow-up calls, realtor prospecting calls, social posts, etc.). Check in with them throughout the day to ensure they are on track to hit their goals. By applying a uniform strategy across your team, you can ensure that everyone is focusing on activities that drive business, rather than wasting time.

Set specific metrics to track progress ­– Identify the leading success indicators for your business (outbound sales contacts, database contacts, referral partner prospecting contacts, social posts, etc.), and set a bar that you and/or your team members need to reach every day.

3. Have a prospecting emphasis

LOs who work with referral partners need to spend time prospecting for new partners every day. Why? Because in order to maintain peak production, LOs have to offset the decrease in nominal transactions represented by their existing partners’ reduced business as result of today’s high rates and anemic inventory. In 2023, LOs need 3-4 times more referral sources than they did in 2022 to make up for that loss in volume.

Focus on maintaining referrals – Offset the lower number of referrals you or your team members are receiving from partners who have less business this year by adding however many new referral partners are needed to get back to the number of referrals you’re accustomed to working with.

4. Surprise and delight customers

The average time an LO spends with a borrower to take an application over the phone is just 7-9 minutes. That simply is nowhere near enough time to build a relationship, let alone develop trust or create a memorable experience for the borrower. Ensure your team is focused on creating personal connections and taking the time that’s needed to truly understand their borrowers’ goals.

Give potential customers a “why” – Determine the 5 most compelling reasons why someone should trust and select you as a lender, and write those points into a value proposition that can be delivered at the beginning of every call to help borrowers understand why it’s in their best interest to spend more time, not less, with your LOs.

Go the extra mile: Write personal thank you notes — and not just to borrowers who close a loan with you, but to borrowers who start or complete an app, who refer a friend, or who get turned down for credit but could be a qualified customer someday. Find ways to stand out and be memorable.

5. Create unique experiences

To deliver a high-tech and high-touch experience, your employees need to embrace technology. Simply put, you’re out of touch if you’re not using technology. While the heart of sales is still relationships, best-in-class lenders augment their relational sales approach with tools including a CRM, Velocify®, SureFire, Encompass® and online apps — all the things that will deliver a better sales process.

Learn from customer feedback – If you’re collecting surveys, identify gaps in your process, tech stack or product suite by reviewing the last 6 months of submissions to learn what your customers liked least about their experience. Then, brainstorm solutions with your entire team to develop truly unique solutions. For a little inspiration, listen to my podcast to learn how a hotel made something memorable out of a potentially bad customer experience.

6. Create sales specialization

It’s also important to identify the strengths of your individual team members, and put those strengths to best use. Are they exceptional at going out and generating leads? Is their specialty getting consumers on the phone to help them through the process? Build a system so they can focus on their specialties, and put the right people around them for support. If needed, assign certain products to certain teams. Don’t make the mistake of overburdening your sales teams with too many products.

Maximize your teams’ unique skills – Segment your products (or audiences — e.g., purchase vs refinance customers, Baby Boomers vs Millennials, etc.), and assign team members to them based on their skills and affinities.

7. Always stay in touch

On average, borrowers make nine mortgage transactions over their lifetime, and have influence over 10 other people. This means that if, on average, your LOs are working with borrowers on only their third or fourth mortgage transaction, there are six to seven more transactions they could earn by becoming that customer’s Loan-Officer-for-life. Similarly, if you can get them to refer you to 10 other people, and two of those 10 people submit an application, you’re likely to make one additional loan by earning the initial customer’s trust.

Provide your borrowers with continued education – Stay in touch with your clients after the loan closes. Find opportunities to reach out to them, like when rates drop or their circumstances change, to share that it could be a good time for them to refinance. Becoming a trusted advisor to your borrowers will ensure you are top of mind when they are asked for a referral or when they are ready to take the next step in their homeownership journey.

Next steps

Beyond these tips, having the right tools in place can go a long way toward helping you meet your goals for the last quarter of 2023 and to being prepared for whatever comes in 2024. ICE Mortgage Technology® is a great partner that can help your foster a better, relationship-driven approach by managing repetitive tasks so your team can devote more time to sales opportunities and personal interactions with borrowers. To learn more, tune into my recent conversation with Tom Radle, VP of Solutions Sales at ICE Mortgage Technology, where we discuss how to earn borrowers’ trust with modern technology.

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