Be BOLD, state your goals...

A little sales motivation for you this morning ??

Some of the examples below are from my career in wholesale. Loan Officers should be thinking about Real Estate Agents, CPAs, Builders, Contractors, Financial planners, etc. Start building more referral sources.

One of the most powerful tools you can ever use in your career is to boldly state a career goal to colleagues, spouse, on social media, friends, or really anyone that is a regular part of your world. Say it out loud and/or in writing. Say it a bunch of times. Burn the ships, there’s no going back. Why? Because once you put it out there, you can't get away from it. Puts a little more pressure on yourself to perform. Gulp…whelp…. But we all know darn well that's exactly what everyone needs. The most productive moments in our careers will typically happen in some of the most uncomfortable situations. Knocking on doors, cold calling, prospecting, onboarding, and sometimes just simply showing up. But isn't that where real expansion happens? Real growth? And then comes the real $.

I'll give you an example from my own career. As many of you know I'm a very seasoned Account Executive and in this environment we are all sitting on obnoxiously large pipelines. But I know there is significant opportunity for growth with other lenders under-performing. Around February of this year the opportunity to add accounts was growing fast and I wanted to get after it. But I also knew that my daily habits had been built around my huge pipeline and really just making sure my current clients were happy. Sound familiar? But that's just part of my job, my real job as a salesperson is to grow and expand because we all know the roller coaster will head down in the future. I will need every client I can get when this all turns around on the other side.

So how do you break your habits, how do you start something new and get out of your comfort zone? First thing I did was set a lofty goal, and then I told my boss and a handful of other top AEs that I work with what I wanted to do: In a typical year I will add between 5 and 10 new accounts. In late February of this year, I told my boss I wanted to add 30 new accounts in 60 days, and that I was no longer concerned with pipeline numbers, solely focused on account growth. He was blown away by the target. After 30 days I already had 25 new clients, and I then re-set my goal to 50 new clients in 90 days. To let you know the power of how this all works, we are at about 50 now and just yesterday we had a conversation and the new number is 80 for this year.

Here is what is also cool, because my boss was in the loop the whole way we worked on building out my operations behind me to support it. As soon as he saw the momentum we got in front of it and added another production team. When we get to our 80 number we will likely have to build out another production team. Stating my goal boldly put everyone on notice.

For loan officers, you may want to try to enlist someone to hold you accountable. Someone you can talk with on a weekly basis about what's working and not working. A good idea for loan officers is to use other top producing LOs as your sounding board. Motivate each other.

How on earth can you get that kind of growth while still maintaining a huge pipeline? I had to break habits and get uncomfortable. I completely changed my daily schedule. Prioritizing sales through time blocks and calendar alerts. 15-30 minute tasks structured throughout my day to always get me back to prospecting. Lots of them. 5 days a week with a variety of tasks designed to prospect and on-board new clients. I have created a system, new habits.

Here's a one day snapshot of what I did to my outlook calendar, all morning long I get calendar alerts getting me back on track:

If you would like to talk about a plan for yourself I will be happy to put it together with you. I will certainly hold you accountable if you would like ??

Be bold, stay positive. Thanks Everyone.

If you are not a Home Point Partner let’s get it going! https://tpo.homepointfinancial.com/partner

 Kind regards,

Rich Phillips

Almost at $3 billion in career funded volume! Named one of America’s top 100 Wholesale AEs by the Scotsman Guide.

Senior Account Executive. Wholesale/Correspondent Lending. Southern California.