When volume slows, you'll need an effective sales and marketing strategy to grow your business. John Donnelly of Service First Mortgage talks about learning to market yourself again, the challenges of recruiting new loan officers, and ways to create a thriving remote work environment.
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When volume slows, you'll need an effective sales and marketing strategy to grow your business. John Donnelly of Service First Mortgage talks about learning to market yourself again, the challenges of recruiting new loan officers, and ways to create a thriving remote work environment.
Thanks for listening to Mortgage Connects, an MGIC podcast. If you have questions, comments, or want to get involved, send an email to mortgageconnects@mgic.com.
Looking for even more expert insights? Check out our mortgage industry content portal, Mortgage Connects knowledge hub. Subscribe today so you don't miss out on the latest! Subscribe
Stephanie Budnik:
Welcome to mortgage connects by MGIC bringing you the latest insights from top mortgage professionals from the industry. I'm your host, Stephanie Budnik. And today I'll be talking to John Donnelly. He works for service first mortgage as the executive director of sales, he holds over 20 years of experience in the mortgage industry in a variety of roles, including loan officer branch manager, and a regional manager. He joined service first mortgage in 2009. And as a director of sales in any given day, you'll find him coaching, mentoring, recruiting, developing new business and training. He believes that we must set big goals and push ourselves to grow and become the best version of ourselves. He also believes that success is possible when we surround ourselves with the right leadership, when we have a growth mindset, and when the company that we work for can deliver like no other. The way that they do this at service first mortgages by playing big. Because when we play big, we serve the world. That's really exciting. And I'm really excited to be here. Speaking to John today. Welcome John. I would love for you to tell me just a little bit from the executive director sales point of view and talk today a little bit about some of the changes that you've witnessed over the last couple of years, just with the pandemic amongst other things and how running an organization is bad, and to that point, the first thing that I really want to talk about is what are some of the challenges that you have to face during the pandemic, since it is kind of still going on and it's something we're living on a regular basis.
John Donnelly:
Yeah, it's something that is really changed our company. Some of it's been for the better, but the first thing I think about is our culture and how important that culture is to our employees. It's hard to portray a company's culture until you actually work and you feel what it's like to be somewhere. We say that we're one team, one mission, and we're better together. And we're very involved in connected. And so when we were forced to all start working at home it really kind of changed the field and the dynamic of our company a little bit, as we really realized that we were up against something big. We felt that as a leadership team, it was important to be transparent to all the challenges we were facing. And so what we did is we had a weekly open mic call on zoom. We have about 300 employees and we opened that up to the entire company and it was just an open call. We had a couple items generally that were part of an agenda just to make sure we covered some topics, but we answered questions that were personal inside the company. How are we dealing things to externally? How are we dealing with a lot of the changes that were coming at us and from the market? There was a lot to navigate. We were having a hard time selling loans to investors. It made pricing crazy. And so we really told the whole company we would say, here's the challenges we have. Here's how we're dealing with it. It gave them a lot of confidence in our leadership team and help them know that we are going to make it through this. And they could see the challenges that we're facing weren't just inside of our company. They were in there in our entire industry. And so I think that was really important for us to keep the communication very transparent. Everybody could participate. And then as leadership, we even jumped on to a lot of our individual departments or branch calls, very strategically as much as we could to just engage with our team. And so we had a pulse on exactly the kind of challenges they were facing. So one thing we did just kind of interesting was we realized quickly that kids who were going to have to be at home with our with our employees. And that was a challenge, especially doing homework. And so what we did is we organized some tutors and we as a company paid for all the employees to have tutors for their children. It would help take a little bit of the pressure off at home and it would give them a nice benefit to help bridge that gap between working at home kids, being at home and then having to help with homework. That was one of the things that came out of doing these calls is just hearing people say how challenging it was to work at home and have to do homework all the time. So that was pretty neat the way we...
Stephanie Budnik:
That is really cool. I hadn't heard that. That's cool.
John Donnelly:
Yea I don't know that a lot of people did that. We also set up an enterprise door dash account and that was pretty neat. So everybody, all employees got a door dash accountand the enterprise one as a company, we paid for part of the fee. So when you ordered, you really only paid for the food and if you wanted a tip them or something, and that was a huge hit, like it's still going on. I think we can never get rid of that going forward because every employee door dash, I think I've used it more than I should you know.
Stephanie Budnik:
I just didn't use it for that reason for like all the fees. I was like, God, I'll just make something at my house.
John Donnelly:
It's nice when the company's paying those fees, it's like, ah, we'll just go ahead and order again, you know? Yeah. All the time.
Stephanie Budnik:
It sounds like you had a really good way of staying connected with your team and your organization as a new challenges were being faced and it just became more normal. Did you find that you had a lot of involvement or people were willingly active within the zoom calls? I know that sometimes I was reading an article recently about introverts versus extroverts and how they're able to communicate or participate. Have you found that people are more willing to participate or if you're doing different types of events that you're seeing that type of engagement or participation increase?
John Donnelly:
You know, it's interesting. I'm thinking back in the beginning and when we first started doing zoom, not everybody would turn the cameras on. And so that was some of those introverts hiding, or maybe they didn't want to sit their house or whatever people learn how to do their backgrounds. But as a company, it was like mandatory because we did so many open calls every week. We thought you got to turn your cameras on. And so our culture is turn your cameras on. And I think that matters a lot so we can see each other and connect. So there's not very many calls we have now that your camera's not on. So it's hard to hide. You know, another thing I found as a leader is it's really important to call as many people out as you can, to give them an opportunity to engage. Maybe not put them on the spot and make them nervous, but I call it bringing them to existence. And so the more you can make them feel like that, you know about them, you care about them and that they're part of the team. I just think it matters so much so strategically. I know I do it. I look through zoom and I try to find a way to get as many people involved. And honestly, I think for the most part, they appreciate it and they don't just feel like they're sitting there stuck on a zoom. And they don't know if they'll even be called on or maybe it's not always relevant. And it makes them pay attention to which is always good. You know, they never know hold on.
Stephanie Budnik:
It allows you to, you know, feel like you matter or that your voice matters and that everybody is noticing. So I think that that's probably mostly appreciated more than anything.
John Donnelly:
Right. I agree with you. It is definitely mostly appreciated. We all want to make it feel like we make a difference.
Stephanie Budnik:
We talk about challenges about the pandemic, but what type of benefits, if any have really come out of this that maybe you'll take in moving forward?
John Donnelly:
Yeah, there's been a few. We were pushing for about about a year and a half. We were really pushing him to do a full IE close and we had an app that our customers engaged with. So they could do an application online and upload some documents, but we would do DocuSign and email documents in. The pandemic, fast-forwarded the whole experience, the customer experience to where we've recently launched with a partnership with east title, um, a full e-closing experience where you can apply for your mortgage, upload your documents get your disclosures and then close electronically. I believe that we wouldn't have fast-forwarded to get this done if we didn't face the challenges of the pandemic. So it really made that go quicker. And title companies and other mortgage companies and, technology companies, they're all, everybody's kind of jumped on board trying to fast forward this thing a lot quicker. So that's a benefit. We closed a couple of offices and we really looked at our real estate strategy to be more strategic. So we've saved a little bit of overhead by doing that. I think our employees are happy in the situation cause they can still, they still have places to go when they need to, but they also can work at home and they feel like they're effective. Save a little bit of cost is part of it and just really push that technology forward a lot quicker than we would have probably normally.
Stephanie Budnik:
Are there other operational changes that you see taking place as a result of the pandemic? You talked about the branches closing, but are there other operational changes overall throughout the organization that you see may be taking effect?
John Donnelly:
I would say yes, some of them are not all because of the pandemic, but a little bit. So when I think of the pandemic sales wise,, a lot of the salespeople want to get together, they want to do trainings. They want to bring their referral partners in and do classes. We've had to be strategic on how we connect sales wise. I think that's been challenging a little bit, to be honest, because not everyone is accessible to go meet with and they're not always available. And then people don't want to answer the phones as much anymore. So how do you get ahold of them? So that's been a challenge. I think that some benefits that have come or we've challenged our entire process. We start at first we say, we're nonlinear. So we can work on multiple pieces of the loan at once. So we could literally draw docs and cleared and review and appraisal, and in clear condition and underwriting at the same moment where we continue to challenge our system. And because of the inventory shortage, which is still kind of part of the pandemic caused all this, that inventory shortage caused us to re-look at our system. And then we moved underwriting up to before, before you even make an offer. So we're fully underwriting loans prior to making offers. And then we're calling these customers certified buyers. And so they can go to make an offer. And then we guarantee a close in 19 days. So they have a leg up on their competitors that they're already underwritten. The only condition is title and appraisal, and we closed the loan really quick. So maybe they can get their offer accepted over somebody else because we've done so much work upfront. And then our loan officers call email and text listing agent and try to explain to them how much work we've done. And it's not just, we didn't just run the loan through the U and get an automated approval. We literally went fully to our underwriter. We've cleared all the conditions and we're ready to go as fast as we can possibly go.
Stephanie Budnik:
That's really awesome.
John Donnelly:
So I think with the pandemic and the inventory shortage, that all created a change in the way we do business internally. So that's a positive, that's a really big positive. I know of personally, I know of some, a couple of veterans that were had VA loans that we did the underwriting upfront, and we helped them get their offer accepted by calling the listing agent explained to them how much work was done in the head can have confidence in a VA loan, even an FHA loan, which you would never have got those offers accepted a couple of months ago. Now we're starting to see there. Those offers are getting accepted to, so that's a really big positive for our buyers.
Stephanie Budnik:
That's a really unique way to think about it. And I mean, for myself, going through the home buying process and the refinancing process, both within the pandemic, both things changed drastically, but that would have been huge for my, like when I was looking at offers to know which ones that were really going to close. You didn't have to sit here and worry and sit and wonder because I understood what was going on and there's others that don't even have a clue how much those other parts can be so impactful. So that's a really interesting way to think about working in partnering with your agents and to provide that extra value and assurance.
John Donnelly:
It is, and I had a loan officer recently tell me, actually as a manager, Josh Smith, his name, and he said, he's been taught. As a buyer calls him. He's like, my job is to help you get your offer accepted. It's not to do your mortgage loan at this point. That's just part of the process. And so we're really taking an active approach to partner with our real estate agents, our builder partners, and work with them to get that offer accepted. When we call the listing agent, I mean, we're going to bat for everybody in that transaction trying to win it because there's so many offers by the pieces that we've put in place. It really makes us different.
John Donnelly:
I think that's a part that I worried about when you talked about everything, moving to e-close and all these things that you're able to do without that personal touch, you worry about losing that connection that you get from all of the things that we used to do in person, but you doing these steps feels like it gives you that opportunity to gain that trust in that relationship aspect.
John Donnelly:
I agree with you. And I think some real estate agents I've talked to are nervous about the e-close because they don't get the moment at closing. Right?
John Donnelly:
Sure.
John Donnelly:
So we've challenged us recently. We've talked to a couple of buyers that said, how long did it take you to drive the closing 30 minutes? How long were you there in an hour? You know, another 30 minutes, that's two hours time to just go close on your documents when we've done some e-closes now, and about 15 or 20 minutes at home on your couch. So you'd have to drive anywhere. But what the agents need to realize is they have an opportunity to take those keys and meet the buyer at their house, and really have a celebration moment. Instead of being at a title company, somewhere, a bunch of people, they get to see the house, is that going to be to really do something big and make it feel special and video that thing. So as far as the marketing aspect and what the agency and all that, you know, sometimes it's kind of funny to hear what they'd say, but man, I think it's going to be just kind of get a little bit neater, what comes from this so easier, more fun.
Stephanie Budnik:
I like it. What type of things like where things are starting to change things. I mean, they were getting a little bit better now. They're kind of at a standstill, but again, still going somewhere. What obstacles do you foresee still being a challenge after all of this is over now kind of.
John Donnelly:
I think that it's going to be it depends on what happens with inventory, you know, and, and how that drives our our approach to just getting business. But I think that the market will kind of normalize it at least for a little bit. And so the challenge I see with real estate agents, loan officers, title reps, everybody in our industry is we're going to have to be proactive to go actually market and get business. What were you were so used to over the last couple of years, two or three years, just answering the phone and building systems around being busy. And so we have to learn how to market again, and we have to learn how to overcome objections and we have to learn how to stand out and be different. And there's even people in the industry that have never had to do that. So they don't even know that's a real thing. They just think she's awesome. And the phone rings all the time. You make money, that's not the case. And so that's probably one of the things I see as a, as a really big challenge that we're facing almost now. Like it's turning, starting to turn right now to where we have to be very proactive in our marketing efforts.
Stephanie Budnik:
I have, we have a training, that has do to with a success beginning with the plan. And that's one of my points, like what happens when the phone stops ringing? Cause that will happen. You have to think past the craze that is right now. You talked a little bit about it staying top of mind or your marketing and having that be something that people are going to have to focus on. But from a management standpoint, how are LO's going to continue to stay top of mind within the industry?
John Donnelly:
Well, there's two things I want to talk about. One is something our company did during, I want to kind of add this to it, but it speaks to top of mind. So during this pandemic, we know refinance was a real opportunity and we're really a referral-based mortgage company. We do mainly 90, 95% purchase. And so we put together a team, we call it the CAT team, customer advantage team. And what they did was outbound marketing to all of our past customers and set appointments for our loan officers, for the people that we thought could save some money refinancing. We're going to pivot those efforts to our customers and in the future, we're going to call with additional offerings things. Have you ever protested your taxes? Your values have gone up. We have a tax protest service that is, you can use, there's no upfront fees. If they save you money, then you pay a small percentage. We've vetted the company and they're great. We have some other services that are around, you know, protecting your identity and your credit that we can share with you. We can talk about other purchases or ways to help your credit get better through that. We also have some other offerings that just could be simple. Like they, their insurance is renewing and they want to know what their options are, that type of thing, or by us calling in and engaging with them. We might find out before anybody else that they were thinking about adding onto their house and they need another loan, or they may decide they want another house. So our team is going to be very proactive in reaching out and hopefully giving value to our customer and in offering other solutions to some of the challenges they face around. Just home needs. We have a my utilities group that when, when our customer closes, they can for free just sign up and they'll connect all of their utilities services. We have another service called AP that is just kind of like a bunch of contractors that we've vetted. If you need other services like a plumber or something, then there's some resources there. So we have all these little things that we can help a homeowner with that they don't even know about sometimes. So we're trying to like give extra value. So they think of us when they need to come back for their mortgage as well. So that's one of the things that we're doing as a loan officer, you're going to have to be on social media. You're gonna have to be proactive with getting to know people and your phone's just not gonna ring. So relationships are gonna matter, you know, just like they have in the past. That's not going to change. Sales is sales. You have to make phone calls. You have to connect with people in order to get referrals. It's still going to be the thing that we have to do. It's not, it's not going to be some magic pill or magic that we can take to make everything work. We got to work at it a little bit going forward.
Stephanie Budnik:
Okay. When we think about the industry and you talked about some people don't even know anything different than what it is they got in and they thought it was great, but how do you, you know, what are some of your biggest challenges that you face with recruiting and bringing in new individuals and keeping the ones that you have currently?
John Donnelly:
Yea that's a great question. Recruiting to me is one of the most challenging things in our industry to do. And I've found that people are when they're ready to move, that's your opportunity. In the meantime, all you can do is just be there and try to give them value and make sure they know who you are. I'm starting to see that there's a lot of change right now. And there's people that maybe weren't happy over the last year or two, at their, with their company or would their leadership or that type of thing. I like to say that most people they leave their manager. They don't always leave a company, you know? And so maybe they haven't been in a good situation, but there's so much volume and so much business that they're leaving money on the table. So why would they leave in the middle of this opportunity? So if it slows down a little bit and maybe we'll see what rates do, but there's going to be, I think, kind of a frenzy of musical chairs where a lot of people do change companies because they haven't been happy for a long time. The way I see it is we have to be an option for those companies or for those individuals when they're ready to look, if they don't know who I am and they don't know who my company is, then we're not going to be an option for them to consider. And the way I do that in our company is we make phone calls, just basic sales, try to get to know people. We post through social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, that type of thing. And I post kind of through the lens of what it's like to work at our company, what our core values are, and we're trying to attract the people that like the culture that we have at service. First, I think the hardest thing to do is portray to an individual what it's like to work at your company, because sometimes the things you say sound like when everybody else says,
Stephanie Budnik:
Sure.
John Donnelly:
You know, and when you say it's a great company and written this thing together, and there's a lot of teamwork and everybody supports each other where everybody says that. What we hear a lot is "Wow. It really is a neat place to be at our company." So the challenge for us is how do we portray that? And let people see what it's really like at our company. And it starting to be something that we're, we're getting a tipping point started here, where more people are telling more people. So it's not as hard to get that message out, but it's still always a challenge. I think that the most we can do is just keep calling and emailing and sharing our message and sharing our story and not being aggressive about it necessarily, but sharing and giving. That's how I call it. I just give as much value as I can and hope that the right people attract back to me, it's kind of my approach. So that's how I approach recruiting. And we do that on scale. For some of my managers, we have some recruiters that do the same thing. So we try to give, give, give value everyone's while we'll ask, but ultimately right. People to it's, you know,
Stephanie Budnik:
That's the biggest part about partnerships and different things is providing that value first, because you don't just, can't just ask without asking.
John Donnelly:
I agree. I agree.
Stephanie Budnik:
And when you talk about maintaining your current staff, you talked about a couple of the things that you did. I'm sure that door dash thing goes a long way. The tutors go a long way. Are there any other things that come to mind that help you maintain the current staff that you have?
John Donnelly:
Yeah, we've done some, like, it's like a run challenge or a race or run challenge. So you sign up on an app and it tracks you, whatever miles you put in, you just walk around those miles and it's a race to see who can go the furthest of the longest. We did a Turkey trot in November last year, and we had sponsors. And for every mile you went, the company donated a dollar toward the north Texas food bank, and we help pay for, I don't remember the 30,000, I think, giving dinner. So it was great. Like, that was cool to just be part of that, you know, we have all kinds of fun. T-shirts like, that's kind of a thing in our company is a lots of fun T-shirts. The dress code changed. Like we were, we wear a, t-shirts a lot of words dressed up and it's awesome, you know, and it almost got too much. And one of the guys made a joke. He said, the t-shirts will continue until morale improves. You know, was this kind of his funny little joke, but I mean, we're always coming up with new t-shirts. So I think that the community involvement is a big thing for us to get our team together. We're right in the middle of something, we call it backpack attack. Right now, we had a couple of our managers that have connections to school districts, and they said, Hey, we've got some kids that just aren't going to have school supplies, and we don't know how to get them. And so we have a culture committee, they brought that too. And then inside the culture committee, they said, let's reach out to our branches in the communities and see if there's to that in other schools, the same thing. And we did, we found that just in some of the people were connected to about 700 kids that were going to be short of backpack. So we're in the middle right now of raising money, just through a drive. You know, simply if you donate $35 that pays for two backpacks and then the company will match that. So it's really four backpacks, and then you get a t-shirt. And so we've been doing that because we have this goal of seven helping 700 kids in multiple school districts. What's cool is we're not only helping the community, but we all kind of come together for the cause and you get to pack the backpacks and it's meaningful kind of work. So I think that's really cool thing that we do. There's so many little things. We sent out glasses for blue blockers, and we saw a lot of people were wearing those, um, just to save your eyes cause you're living on zoom all the time. And just little fun things. If you're just always looking for ways to help better our team situation.
Stephanie Budnik:
It sounds like you're doing a lot of the right things. And I really appreciate your time today. I think you've offered a lot of valuable insights that other organizations in leadership roles not only can take advantage of, but somebody at an individual level themselves can really take to heart or to start to consider when they're dealing with what they have today or what they're looking for for tomorrow. So, John, I really appreciate your time today, it was very valuable speaking to you. And I look forward to connecting again soon.
John Donnelly:
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you doing this. I appreciate all the work you guys are doing. I can't wait to listen to more episodes.
Stephanie Budnik:
All right. Thanks, John.
John Donnelly:
All right. Thank you. Have a good one.
Stephanie Budnik:
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