The mortgage business is a rather detailed one. A lot of paperwork, numbers, steps, and activities go into your job. But it is a fine line to walk. Spend too little time on the details and your transactions begin to fall apart. Spend too much time on the details, and you rob yourself of valuable sales, marketing, and prospecting time to earn more money. How do you make it work?

2 Extra Loans in the Next 30 Days
Low Cost and No Cost Marketing Techniques.
Some can be applied in minutes!
www.mortgage-marketing-secrets.com

The most effective way to balance your time, talent, and attention is to “budget” it. Budgeting time is like budgeting money, if you spend too much on some things, you’ll not have enough for others. The same holds true for your time.

But how much is enough? As a general rule (and a proven idea) you should budget 25% of your time for managing the details of your loan transactions. That means if you work an 8 hour day and a 40 hour week, you should budget about 2 hours a day and 10 hours a week for managing the details. The rest of the time is reserved and budgeted for sales, marketing, client contacts, networking, prospecting, reading emails, going to meetings, and everything else you need to do.

This all makes sense in theory, but how is it practiced? Discipline, discipline, discipline! Most mortgage salespeople are reactive, fire-fighting, “get-er-done” types of people. They thrive on details and little tasks because they are trying to push loans to closing so that they can get paid. The inherent problem with that mindset is that you soon morph yourself into a loan processor or administrative assistant, jobs you were not hired to do. If you spend 80% or 90% of your time in the office dealing with the details, that leaves little or no time for bringing new business in the door. This is the “devil” of the detail work.

Top producing mortgage sales professionals take care of the details too…they just know when to stop. They have developed the ability (and the trust and confidence) to “let go” of many of the details of their loan transactions and stay focused on creating the next client or mortgage opportunity.

If too many details have been constricting you in your business routine lately, maybe this year will provide a great excuse to try something new. Budget time for the details, and then stick to your budget. Allow no more than two hours a day for loan file details, and the rest to do everything else. It could be the change you need to make to take your results to the next level. Think about it.

©Copyright Doug Smith. All rights reserved. Doug Smith is the founder of Douglas Smith & Associates, a training and performance consulting firm specializing in the mortgage and financial services industry and a nationally known speaker and author. A 23-year industry veteran, he has built a successful career in loan origination, sales training, management development, marketing, personal coaching and corporate sales. Learn more at DougSmithOnline.com.

Back to top