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As a loan officer, once you realize the power of leverage, you ‘get’ why it’s so important to have a team. But should you build a team or plug into an existing team? There are pros and cons to each approach – one has greater initial expense while the other is turn-key. I actually don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer to this question because I’ve experienced both and been very successful with each method. That said, it’s important to explore this topic for your business so here goes.

Here’s the first reality of being a loan officer – you have to be a good salesperson to succeed. As a general rule, you are great at what you do because you’re keeping food on the table. (If that’s not the case, we need to talk – please DM me immediately!). 

However, just because you’re good at sales doesn’t mean you make a successful human resources (HR) officer — that’s an entirely different skill set. Just because I think I’m a darn good salesperson doesn’t mean I’d be good at knowing how to hire and fire people. Granted, some people have both skill sets, but that’s not typical. 

One of the most common scenarios I find in this business is that people are hesitant about adding someone to their team. I’ve been asked, “Carl, what if they’re not the right person and I have to fire them?” People procrastinate on starting or expanding their team because they’re worried the new hire won’t be a good fit. So let’s just take care of this little myth right now – when you hire enough people, you will eventually hire someone who is going to be a wrong fit. It is statistically rare that every hire you make will turn out perfectly. You have to learn how to hire and do it fire fast, because delay can cost you a fortune.

The good news is we find every time someone is added to a team, as long as that team member pulls their weight, it frees up the loan officer or branch manager’s time to get more business. We’ve found the average person who adds someone to their team does an additional 5–7 loans monthly. For the example I’m about to share, we’ll use six loans as an approximate number (but that may vary in your real-world situation). 

Let’s say every employee hired means an additional six loans to you and your business per month. Let’s go a little further with another general assumption and say you make $2,000 per loan. Ultimately, each time you hire a new employee, you’re adding an extra $12,000 of revenue per month, using these hypothetical numbers. 

Of course, you need to pay your employee. To make it easy for our example, let’s say they get $5,000 a month. That’s $7,000 of net profit per month going into your business. Keep in mind that, while you’re bringing in this $7,000, you’re actually doing less of the work because the person you hired is helping you take applications, chase leads and put out fires. All you’re doing is making the phone ring, selling deals, and turning them over to your team to handle the rest.

Now, it might take someone six months before they hire their first team member. Of course, it’s not your fault if you’re not the best HR person. In my organization, someone else does the hiring and firing because that’s not my gift. However, if you force yourself into the HR position and there’s a six-month delay, you miss out on $7,000 of net profit revenue per month. That’s a total potential profit loss of $42,000 from not hiring that new person right off the bat.

You might think getting help is expensive, but not getting help costs you a lot more in money, time and potential opportunities. It’s okay to recognize that building a team isn’t one of your skill sets and that you need to find someone who has that talent for your business. Building a team is a major undertaking and I highly recommend it. Here’s the downside: every minute you spend building your team, you’re not out selling.

This leads into another viable alternative — plugging into a team that’s already in place. You don’t have to leave your company to take advantage of this method. Just find a group already in your company and join their team. I did this early in my loan officer career, and it helped me immensely.

You need to know when you plug into an existing team, they’re going to charge you some basis points. Let’s say that ‘cost’ runs about 25 basis points. If you’re used to making 100 basis points and you plug into that team, you’ll get 75 basis points, and the team will receive 25 points from you. The benefit is that, instead of worrying about the headache of hiring and firing people, you’ll be able to focus on closing more loans and getting revenue for you and the team.

The math will prove the point. Let’s say you’re doing $200,000 loans, closing five loans a month with 100 BPS, and you are earning $2,000 per loan. That’d be $10,000 of revenue as a one-(wo)man band. Now, when you plug into that established team, you’ll drop down to 75 basis points, but you’ll still be doing $200,000 loans — that doesn’t change. What does change is the number of loans you’re doing, which obviously affects your earnings. If you were doing five loans a month by yourself and adding six loans from being plugged into a team, you’d be doing 11 loans a month. So instead of making $10,000 a month, you’d be making $16,500 every month. Even though your basis points are lower, you’ll be closing more loans by having a team.

Again, both methods can bring success. Since they’re both effective, I don’t know which is right for you and your business – only you can make that decision. However, I’m happy for me and my team to be a sounding board for you to work out what’s best for your business. If you want a personal 1:1 strategy session, we’re standing by. 

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor #TeamBuilding

There are two ways that loan officers are failing their business regularly… 1) they’re being intimidated by technology, so they don’t use it, and/or, 2) they’re using it like everybody else out there to attract new clients. The reality in business today is that we are operating in a digital environment. While loan officers need to build relationships belly-to-belly, they also need to work smarter vs. harder by using online marketing. 

If you’ve spent any time at all with me, you know I’m a big fan of picking up the phone and beating the street for leads and cultivating prospects. And you also know that, over time, I learned that internet marketing is an entire industry – one that we loan officers can use to our competitive advantage. So I’m here to tell you that you don’t have the luxury of letting your tech fears rule your business results. Instead, it’s time to leverage technology to generate new leads. 

Now I’m not talking about doing what everybody else does – slap together a visual that works like a digital brochure. A lot of people are making that mistake. If you’re doing that, you’re competing with every other Average Joe out there for the same low-quality leads. And you’re just not going to win that game. In fact, it will cost you a lot of ad money while you lose that game. 

6 to 8 Touches on Both the Front-End and the Back-End

Customer experience is a term being used to describe what your customer, well, experiences you’re your brand throughout their transaction with you. When you want to upgrade your customer’s experience, there are two stages you need to pay attention to – the front-end (when you’re cultivating the business) and the back-end (when you’re celebrating the business). 

You need six to eight marketing touches to bring people in as a customer on the front-end, and then you need six to eight different marketing touches on the backend to convert them into being a long-term advocate and brand ambassador for your business. It is a lot harder to handle all these communications one by one; this is one way you can see that technology can help you with your customer relationships. 

Each of those marketing touches needs to have a strategy behind it to be effective. Why? Because if they don’t all work together, you’d be directing a band of cats all playing their own tune instead of a harmonious song. 

And when it comes to online marketing, especially through online ads on Facebook, Google, Youtube and Instagram, you need to know how to ‘slice and dice’ the market so you get top-level leads for your business. There is a way to do this fairly easily – even for us non-techies! 

There are four types of online ads. There are three campaigns you want to be running at all times. And there are three advanced strategies you can use with your online target audience once you’ve identified them. The key is to find YOUR target audience! You don’t want the same audience everyone else is talking to for ‘mortgages’; you want the first-time home buyers or reverse mortgage seekers or lifestyle upgrade buyers who are actively looking. And you want to work all the leads your referral agent partners are buying (and aren’t working!). 

Is all this too good to be true? No. Can you learn what all this means in this one blog post? Nope. And, of course, it is not my intention to be coy or hold out on you here. So is there a way to get your hands on this insider info so you can understand and use it to predictably build your business over the next six months? Absolutely. 

Your Key to this New Reality Is Right Here

My buddy and business partner, Chris Johnstone, and I got together and wrote a book to share exactly this information. Chris started helping his dad, a real estate agent, figure out how to use online advertising to generate leads. And he found out he was really, really good at it. In fact, he’s been building his business for the last fifteen years or so and he’s now running a pretty good team helping loan officers get more leads with digital ads than they ever imagined possible in a matter of months. 

Because neither he nor I can possibly teach you everything you need to know in a post like this, we wrote a book together, The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ad Campaigns for Loan Officers 

How to Use Social Media and Google to Generate More Leads, Build Your Network and Close More Deals. It’s a hot new release that has the latest and greatest inside info we know to share with you so you can get on this technology train too. 

If all this isn’t enough to light a fire under you-know-where, know this… if you don’t take advantage of online marketing, your competitors are doing it. Do not let your business get left in the dust! Do not let someone else help your clients! Get over it and get on it by getting your copy of our book today. Seriously. When you do, you’ll see a valuable bonus in there that you are going to want to take advantage of… sooner than later. You’ll see why when you get the book. 

So go get the book, then let me know what you think… if you have questions or want to share your review on the book in a comment below, great! I want to know what’s in your way of using technology, how you’re using online ads, what your online marketing looks like – the good, the bad and the ugly. Bring it below… let’s talk it out… and if you prefer a 1:1 chat about it, we’ll make that happen too. 

Get the book… then tell me how it’s helped you position your business more competitively (even if only in your mind for now). I really want to know – thanks in advance.

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor

Because You Don’t More Leads Until You Fix It. Business runs by the numbers. There are different kinds of numbers in that, of course, like the numbers found in the loan documents, interest rates, closing costs, etc. And there are numbers that help loan officers run their business better, like how much money is in their business bank account, how many happy customers they have and their return on investment for advertising. You might not think about it but there is a difference between monitoring a metric, which is just a number, and a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), which is a number that reflects business results. We are going to talk about KPIs because those are the ones that help create results. 

In our business, loan officers need to track five KPIs with great accuracy – leads, conversations, credit pulls, preapprovals, and locks. Meaning, we need to measure how many leads we get in, how many of those leads turn to conversations, how many of those conversations turn into credit pulls, how many of those credit pulls were pre-approvable, and how many of the people we pre-approve end up with a locking or contract with us. 

Within each of those five KPIs exists the possibility for doing better. When I ask loan officers where the bottleneck is in their business, and what’s preventing them from reaching the production numbers they’re looking for, most will say it’s about getting more leads. The primary business growth strategy most loan officers focus on is trying to get more leads. However, when you have five KPIs, chances are that each has about a 20% stake in creating results. That means that the number of leads accounts only for about 20% of your business results. 

The most comprehensive way to build your loan business is to measure where you are with each of these five KPIs so you know where you’re doing well and where you might need to put some time and attention. (And if you need help in any of this, you know that me and my team have your back, right?)

Conversations

Let’s assume you have the leads taken care of… you are maxing out your 20% efficiency and effectiveness there. So what’s the next step? Having a conversation with that lead. Now, I’m talking about having a true conversation, where you exchange words – not an email, text or chatbot. This is about getting someone on the phone and speaking out loud — that’s a conversation. 

Now, if you’re getting leads but aren’t having conversations, what’s going on? I would guess that there is an issue with follow-up. It’s probably one of the top three issues I see when I analyze loan officers’ businesses and their behaviors because LOs make the mistake of calling once or sending a message and that’s it. It is definitely not enough. You might be asking how many times you should be following up, and I would say constantly. Following-up with your leads is never a done-deal until you have a done-deal. Even then, you follow up every few months to make sure your client remembers you for referrals and for their next purchase.

But there could be another issue here because you might not be getting the right leads to have conversations. What is the source of your leads? We know online leads have a lower conversion rate into conversations, especially if the leads were tricked into giving their information or opting into a list. That happens when there is an ad that has false facts or uses hype to get attention but can’t live up to the promise. In either case, it’s not good business. Run your ads past a few friends to see if they pass the real-world test before you put them out online. 

And, of course, you need the right bait as well as the right fishing hole to get the right leads. If you are looking for reverse mortgage leads in a new parenting community, as one example, you’re not going to get the right leads (or maybe ANY leads!). 

So once you have made the connection with a lead, talk to them. Find out what’s important to them, answer their questions and set the stage for a great working relationship (even if that means in the future because they’re not quite ready yet). 

Credit Pulls

Once leads come in, and you have real conversations with them, the next step is to verify credit. What could go wrong here? Low credit pulls. 

When you are getting low credit pulls, there is probably a problem with your scripting. If you have leads engaged in a conversation with you or your team members but they aren’t generating credit pulls, something is going sideways with your scripts. There isn’t a sense of urgency, the leads aren’t comfortable with sharing their information or don’t understand why it’s needed at this point. There are many potential objections. However, the good news is this can be one of the easiest problems to identify and handle because you just need a little tweaking and training with scripting.

Pre-Approvals

At this point, you’ve taken the time to collect the leads, have the conversations and get the credit pulls – that’s great! You’re at about 60% efficiency when you have all that working. But what happens when you find out your leads are not pre-approvable? This happens when the lead source is bad. I have two stories to share with you that describe this perfectly.

In the first, one, I was at a flea market, saw all the people there and got a brilliant idea – I should set up a booth to collect leads. With all those people, I should get a ton of great leads, right? So that’s what I did – I set up my booth, started talking to people and collecting leads. I got a ton of them, as a matter of fact. But guess what? When I started working them, I learned the difference between quantity and quality. Even though I got lots of leads and had plenty of conversations that led into credit pulls, none of them were pre-approvable. That was a hard lesson to learn at the time. Flea markets are not a quality source of leads for qualified buyers. 

My second story is about the importance of tracking a KPI around credit pulls. A metric would be how many I got; a KPI is how many credit pulls are pre-approvable for each of my referral sources. 

So I had this agent who I thought was excellent. I was getting business from her constantly and spent a lot of time and resources following up on the leads she sent my way. One day, Diane pulled me to the side and said, “You know, we’re not closing any of the leads this realtor is sending over.” I was floored. I just couldn’t believe it. But the numbers don’t lie. When Diane and I sat with the agent and started going through lead by lead to track results, it confirmed what Diane had said. This agent was a great source of leads that turned into conversations and credit-pulls, but none of her clients were pre-approvable.

If you are having issues come up with your pre-approvals, check your lead source. Your time is your most precious asset – you cannot afford to waste it. This might sound harsh but when you build your business on broken people, you have a broken business. So look for red flags and patterns in your leads and how they’re progressing through your system. When pre-approvals are down compared to your incoming leads, you know it’s time to upgrade your lead source(s). 

Locks

Now, if you’ve gone through all these steps but still aren’t able to get these people into contracts, what’s left? Well, if you’re getting pre-approvals but no locks, it’s another symptom of not following up.  

Low conversion – as another point of conversion for your leads – means you have low follow-up. 

We need to talk about our PAALs, or those who are “Pre-Approved and Looking.” I’ll share more in my next post on that. 

For now, look at each of these five KPIs, or steps, in your business process to see where you have bottlenecks, leaks, gaps or inefficiencies. In fact, look at the four areas that are NOT more leads because that can have the biggest impact the fastest in your business. And when you are rockin’ and rollin’ in all five areas – conversations, credit pulls, preapprovals, locks AND leads – your business will grow. There’s just no other possible outcome. 

Let me know where you think you might have a bottleneck in your business below. This is not to call you out! (Well, maybe a little…) Instead, I want you to own what’s going on so you can address it. And maybe one of our community will have been through the same thing and can offer some insight or a way to get it handled faster and easier. So share below – you’re among friends here.

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor

I promised to talk about how to take care of our PAALs, or those who are “Pre-Approved and Looking.” Obviously, these are people you’ve already pre-approved who are on the hunt for the right property. Once you pre-approve someone, they typically go out looking for houses because they know what they can afford. 

Why do we need to talk about them in a serious and focused way? Because this is where we drop the ball as loan officers – sometimes we get so busy going after the next lead we ignore the leads we already have working. Ignoring the people we’ve pre-approved to go get more people to pre-approve can cause all kinds of unintended issues. 

First, we spend so much time, money and effort getting that lead and building trust that dropping the ball once they are a PAAL shows we are inconsistent. But it’s even more than that because to get the lead in the first place, we invested time in build the relationship with our referral partner. So what really happens is, once they’ve sent a lead, and we’ve done our due diligence and built trust with that lead and pre-approved them, ignoring them to look for more leads is a huge waste of time and money.

PAALs can also “ghost” us. When that happens, it’s an indicator they’ve found another lender, or worse, another lender and another realtor. If a realtor keeps sending you leads only to have those leads buy from someone else after you pre-approve them, then they’re probably to think twice next time about sending a lead your way. It’s a real loss when a referral partner starts referring their leads to someone else.

The bottom line is that, as responsible loan officers, we MUST follow up. Realtors have to be able to trust they won’t be losing sales by sending their leads to us. They’re relying on us to be attentive with their clients, which builds a beneficial relationship for everyone.

In our office, we like to call our PAALs every Thursday. Thursday works well because it gives us an extra day before the weekend to tweak things if we learn anything during our calls. We take it one step further because, once we call our PAALs, we also call the real estate agent to let them know we followed up with that person. We’ve found this to be a good way to build trust and demonstrate our commitment to our collaboration. 

Future Casting

Now, sometimes PAALs can drag out their homebuying process to the point it starts to hurt you and your realtor. For example, a PAAL might look at a property, then another, then another without ever deciding on one. When a PAAL sits on the fence like that, you can help them commit by future casting their dreams. 

Future casting is where you get your pre-approved potential client to envision themselves with their desired result. In this case, it’s about getting that PAAL to imagine themselves in their new home. You can work this into your Thursday touch base calls with something like, “Refresh me – what’s the purpose of the move?” When they share their dream goal, like maybe owning a pool home or living in a particular area to pursue hobbies or be closer to family, then you can help accelerate their decision by reminding them why they are moving by envisioning that pool, having fun with those hobbies or hanging with their family. 

Essentially, your goal is to get them to visualize what they’ll be doing when they’re in that new home, whether it’s swimming, having barbecues, saving money, or downsizing. There’s an old saying that demonstrates this idea well: 

Wherever your head is, your butt will soon follow. 

When you can get their heads into that house, it’s in their best interest. They’re not going to bite off something they can’t chew; instead, they’ll get off the fence faster because they know you have their back and they’re connected to their dream again.

Treat Your PAALs Like Pals

It might sound a little bit crazy but treat your PAALs like you would treat your pals – with respect, follow through and care about what they want in life. Would you let a friend go for a month without talking to them when you know they’re up to going after a big life dream? No. You would want to support them and find out how it’s going and see what’s up in case you can help. And that’s what you need to do with your PAALs too.

You’ve come a long way for them to become your PAAL – they came to you as a lead, you had one or more conversations where you built trust and shared information, you pulled their credit to see their financial life in detail, and you pre-approved them for one of the largest loans most people take in a lifetime. All that’s left is to lock in their deal… but if you don’t know how they’re doing, you can’t help them. 

To have a PAAL you need to be a pal. It’s just that simple. Follow through, keep the communication going, support them in seeing their vision, keep the dream alive and make sure they know you have their back when they find their ideal new property. That’s how you keep PAALs, and deals, in your business.

You’re Still Pals After the Deal is Done

Of course, once the deal is done, you are still pals because you will stay in touch with them. I’ve shared how to do that before but, in case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s how to use technology to help you stay in touch in a time-effective way – my newest book that I wrote with my buddy, Chris Johnstone. It’s called The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ad Campaigns for Loan Officers: How to Use Social Media and Google to Generate More Leads, Build Your Network and Close More Deals. To get your copy, just click here now – you’ll be glad you did (IMHO). 

Do you have a strategy you use to stay in touch with your PAALs?

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor

I don’t know if you know this, but I used to be a Boy Scout back in the day. I wasn’t too good at a lot of the things we did in survival training, but I liked learning about everything. One of the skills we had to learn was how to make a fire. To get a spark to start the fire, we learned how to create friction with a drill bow – basically, a round wooden stick that was in a vertical position, placed on a second flat, horizontal piece of wood. (Think of an upside-down T.) Then we would wind a string around the vertical stick to spin it back and forth quickly; the friction caused at the contact point between these two pieces of wood created a spark. Once we had a spark, we could start our fire. So, friction caused us to create fire.

Now, is creating a fire in business a good thing? Maybe… but you want the fire to be about visibility in your market, generating leads, and getting and closing lots of deals instead of having a raging fire in your infrastructure, your team, or your in-house systems. The way to make sure you have fire in the right places in your business is to create a frictionless business.

Look around your office right now. How far away is your computer? Your printer? Your stapler? Can you reach them without pulling a shoulder? Is your chair comfortable? Do you have pens and paper handy or do you have to get up and walk over to a file cabinet to get them? Can you get ahold of a team member easily or do you shout down the hall to get their attention? Where are the things that hold you up or take extra time because they’re not set up just right for you to be productive and at peak performance? Those are your friction points.

Here are other friction-makers in business… not having a complete file on your prospects, clients and/or agents and referral partners. Not being able to see exactly where each deal is and who is handling what part of the deal(s). Not having the right team members – trained – in place. Doing manual data entry on the same file in two or more places. Basically, anything that is redundant as a processor that gets in the way of or slows you in delivering a great result and experience to your potential and current clients is a friction point.

Or we can think about it in the opposite – what makes a frictionless business? I would suggest having the ability to call up and rely on accurate, relevant, complete information on each prospect, client, agent and referral partner on command. Having the ability to communicate to each of your prospects and clients quarterly is a big deal. Having the right technology to leverage your time and energy. Having the right team members who are trained and can handle processing the deals once you get them in the door. Having the right corporate culture that supports innovation, fast-thinking and serving your clients in a personal way is critical. Having the ability to attract new prospects and then convert them to work with you for their deals easily is a big key to success.

Basically, anything that allows you to attract, educate and nurture clients and close deals more efficiently, quickly and easily in a cost-effective, timely and streamlined way makes your business frictionless. (Try saying that three times fast!)

4 Keys to Frictionless Business

While you can see there are many things that add up to having a frictionless business, there are four keys that can help you leverage your time and energy in making your mortgage business frictionless and more successful with less effort.

1. A Motivated Culture

The culture of any business is, basically, the heartbeat of the business. It’s the unspoken ‘hum’ that you and your team members create through language, behaviors and attitudes. The unwritten culture guides team members in making decisions, collaborating effectively (or not), gives your team ‘the feels’, and creates safe space for trying new things to improve helping your clients. When I say ‘safe space’, that’s not about the office environment, although that’s important too. Instead, it’s a mindset that supports team members in finding new ways to support your clients and close deals more effectively. Growth needs motivated team members and wiggle room. So your culture needs to value continuous improvement, forgive mistakes and celebrate progress.

2. Client-Centric

Business exists to serve clients and get paid for doing so; if your business isn’t wrapping everything around your clients, you are overlooking opportunities for growth. Consider every aspect of your brand promise, your business processes, your operations, your skills and your ability to deliver a delightful experience to your clients. Where needed, upgrade (or establish) what’s needed to ensure your clients have an exceptional experience with you and your business. If you aren’t quite sure yet what that means, focus on delivering better value and a smoother, happier experience for your clients because that’s what will make sure your business grows over time.

3. Flexibility

As we’ve already established, business is about serving clients – clients who lead dynamic, busy lives and who might have short attention spans – using your resources and capabilities. Business is changing faster than ever before in history. Your clients are being bombarded with messages and are doing more self-service research and being more informed than ever before too. You need to be able to understand trends, problem-solve and make quick decisions in your business. Your team needs to be agile and able to adopt new processes that will help serve your clients better. Being able to flex with the changes that are inevitable – because people are always changing – is how your business stays fresh and viable for the long-term.

4. Invisible Intelligence

I think I just made up a new business concept – invisible intelligence. What I mean by it is that your clients should never see you sweat. Your processes should be automated. Your team members should be able to answer the phone and pull up that client record to continue a conversation like they know what’s going on with that file. Your marketing should be cohesive, with clear messaging that relates back to your brand promise. Your online advertising should be strategic and target prospects using real-time data. Basically, make the operations invisible to make your business frictionless and your results seem effortless.

Altogether, when you look at the friction points in your business so you can eliminate, or at least neutralize, them, you set yourself up for more efficient and effective operations. That means you and your team become more productive. And that means you can help more people get the homes they want, which makes your business more profitable.

Where can you see that you need to eliminate friction in your business?

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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