Fewer Sales People Making More Money is the Way to Go

One thing I’ve observed after decades in business is everyone wants to make millions, but very few people are willing to do the work it takes to get there.

Eastern Union was expanding rapidly using our new farm system and adding junior mortgage brokers to our team to make cold calls.?

Our new hires would only focus on initiating deals, thereby only needing a fraction of the training as our more senior positions. Then, they would pass it off to our senior mortgage brokers to execute the underwriting from application to close.?

I had a new understanding of the concept of partnering strengths and weaknesses on a team, but I noticed one problem...?

I realized that although this process was working and our revenue was growing, these new hires were doing telemarketing-style calls, but they weren’t telemarketers. Their ambition wasn’t to make calls all day; they joined to become a mortgage broker.?

For the first six months, it was great—their deal volume continued to increase as their confidence grew. At six months, they started becoming more focused on learning the ins and out’s of being a mortgage broker so they could advance to one of our senior positions. As such, they started making less calls, each one hitting a wall in performance. I knew they should be able to do more, but that’s when it clicked…?

I didn’t want to only keep hiring new mortgage brokers, I wanted to develop ways to get more out of the mortgage brokers we had and allow them to continue to grow in their careers.

Our capacity still felt too limited.?

That’s when we made a critical hiring shift—we started bringing on salespeople that wanted to be salespeople—make their calls, bring in leads, make a nice salary and bonus stucture, then go home. Our new sales hires were true telemarketers at heart. They were thrilled to make calls all day in contrast to our mortgage brokers who felt it was a mundane task.?

It was a game-changer. They were able to make more calls every day and expand on their pitch until it was a masterpiece.?

As an added bonus, before we made the switch, our best junior mortgage brokers were spending so much of their time talking to unqualified leads. This new step in the process created a filter of sorts on our lead quality and deal flow, helping us get the most out of every lead and avoiding wasted time.

With our new telemarketers, they would call leads to rate how good they were. If it was a very hot lead, it would go directly to our senior mortgage brokers. If it wasn’t as hot of a lead, it would go to our junior mortgage brokers to finish the initiation process and they were thrilled. If it was junk, our telemarketers caught it and none of our mortgage brokers had to waste any time on it.

This filtering system empowered us to maximize each employee in their role and convert more of our leads faster.?

Over time, we got the process down to a science. For every number we dialed, we would need:

1. Telemarketers to make the initial call and rate the lead
2. Junior mortgage brokers to take warm leads and finish the initiation process
3. A successful, senior underwriter to take hot leads and close deals

Later, we even took it one step further and hired an overseas company to filter our leads before passing them to our new sales team. They would Google each lead to confirm they were in real estate so our salespeople could focus on the best quality leads possible.?

Most people think their whole sales staff should look the same and have the same career goals. I discovered that there are salespeople who want to make millions of dollars and put in the work it takes to get there, and there are also those who don’t. There are salespeople who want to work fewer hours, love making calls all day, and don’t want to progress to anything else.?

Instead of building out a flat sales department on your org chart, it’s better to create a system that fits these different levels of ambition. Not only do you get happier employees, but the benefits of each group pass up so the more ambitious can bring in even more deal volume.??

I still use this model today. Since GPARENCY is a membership, we have a great customer service rep to work with our clients, and then on the back end, we have senior mortgage brokers and brokers who focus purely on building relationships with lenders. We have also been able to expand with inbound leads from our website—a game-changer and uncommon approach in the mortgage industry. There are multiple layers to our deal process so we can ensure each person is a ten at their piece of the puzzle.?

As our deal flow at Eastern grew, this required an amazing CRM—a system that could revolve around the person, property, loan amount, and when the mortgage came due. Next week, I’ll share how we transitioned our sales flow to a new customer management system, and how one of my biggest failures turned into a life-changing learning experience that still plays a huge role in my career today.