Why Do Loan Officers Need A Therapy Session After Every Call?

A New Post By Chris Johnson
Business Development Consultant
Read other posts by Chris Johnson

(For the Observation, HT, Jeremiah Arn)

So I'm in the office yesterday (rare apperance) an I notice an utterly shocking phenomenon.  

After every single phone call that was made, all of the loan officers seemed to need therapy. 

They would get off a 3-4 minute phone call, which we could hear through the paper thin walls in our office (at least with cubicles, you have the constraint of not wanting to overwhelm others).   You'd hear EVERY WORD of the call they were on...then they'd rehash the call with at least one or two other LOs...absolutely KILLING their momentum, and disrupting the other LOs momentum as well.

Good call, bad call, indifferent, each call had a debrief afterwards.  The debrief had no value to add.  Some sort of herd mentality...that makes you feel like you're working.

"Hey Steve, I Just got off the phone with Joe Bob the Realtor, and he hasn't had a closing so far this year,"

"Really?  Joe Bob? Man, that stinks," 

"Yeah, I know it stinks, but that's how it goes."

"Yeah, he didn't have a closing.  It's what, the middle of march?"

"Yeah march madness..."

"Well, steve, Back to work."

"Alright Dave."

or..

"I Just got off the phone with the underwriter..."

or

"Man, I can't get my title back..."

Over and over.  These are good loan officers that are having these insane and value free conversations.   Over and over again debriefing one another on the call (not CALLS) they just made.   And it's not enough that THEY stop at one call, they stop someone else's progress, too.  It's an office tribal thing.  When there was a lot of business around, I'm 100% sure that this didn't happen this way, and now that there's not, our minds invent problems on the deals or calls we have...to distract us from the fact that we simply aren't working enough deals! 

We tolerate this kind of incessant updates because it's less challenging than it is to sit and focus on one thing.  It's easy to twitter, to dash off emails.  It might be a basic human need to tell stories, and it also might be a basic human need to seek sympathy.  But it doesn't mean it's productive.  We humans are also wired to seek out sugar and fat, but that doesn't serve us today.

It's hard to focus on building a business.

I'll betcha in every single case, the elimination of just a third of the unnecessary conversations in your office would earn the loan officers an extra $25,000 per year. Each.

So, let's do some thinking.

1. What are the sources of YOUR unnecessary conversations.
2. How much are they costing you?
3. What are you going to commit to in order to stop?

.....

 Also:  A Transparent (or gratuitous) Use of Tony's Blog to promote my own Agenda:

I am starting a new site, called New Market Survival Guide.Com.  I intend for it to be a MULTI AUTHOR blog, with no more than 2 realtors, 2 originators, 2 financial planners, 2 insurance agents, 1 title agent.   I'm looking for new voices to have a space to write for 6-8 months.  If you've got something to give, PLEASE send an email to chris@chrisdoesloans.com.    You must be a PRACTICTIONER in your business that is looking to learn and teach.   If you KNOW anyone that you're recruiting to be part of this, please send 'em my way and we can put this together.  I want strong flavors and original voices.

Comments

[Jeremiah Arn]

Well put, Chris.
A related question that I like posing to loan officers in one-on-one planning is, What will be your 3 favorite time-wasters this quarter?
I am not an enforcer or a nag, but I think just having to answer the question once in a while keeps everyone more honest. About time-wasting.
Since this is not conscious/intentional behavior, perhaps one solution would be accountability partners.

[Colorado Mortgage]

The argument could be made that a lot of Web 2.0 conversations are wasted time. Having a Web 2.0 strategy is important to avoid wasting time, such as picking conversations that are important, reading blogs that make you better at your profession, wading through the junk blogs and forums, and filtering out those of value. Perhaps the most important is to avoid Web 2.0 because it's "fun" or "interesting" and focusing instead on the parts of Web 2.0 that are truly beneficial.