Setting Clear Expectations With Customers and Partners

It is a busy time in the mortgage industry and managing today’s workloads can be challenging. Whether you are a sales leader at a mortgage firm or an individual mortgage loan originator (MLO), when organizational capacity is limited and competition is strong everywhere, setting clear expectations with your customer base and referral partners is crucial to your sustained success.

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Do you know how to navigate expectations when organizational capacity is strained?

As volumes surge, pipelines swell, team members become overwhelmed, customers and partners can grow impatient. You can approach this cycle by setting clear expectations with your stakeholders from the start.

Nothing upsets a mortgage customer more than unmet promises. A key aspect of any sales function is to never over-promise and under-deliver. Set the right expectations with your customers from the start. A good practice is to under-promise and over-deliver.

Use education and honesty to set clear expectations with your stakeholders.

Setting Clear Expectations with Customers:

Customers’ expectations are largely based on what they know. To set realistic expectations with your borrowers, you’ll need to first teach them about the complexity of today’s high-volume mortgage market conditions – and consequently the stress being added to organizational capacities at businesses everywhere. Strained organizational capacity is a pattern in high-volume markets.

Strive to help customers understand that your competition is experiencing the same strained capacity as well. Doing this will help your customers understand that the grass isn’t necessarily greener when working with other mortgage firms, as certain obstacles, market conditions and high-volume activity will remain relevant for their situation as well.

Set the expectation that a strained organizational capacity isn’t unique to only your organization and that you will do everything within your control to service them during this time. Communicating this will diffuse the customer idea that they will be faster served taking their business elsewhere. If you have clearly articulated what they can expect through the entire process including approximately how long each phase will take, and who they are going to be working with – then you’ll have succeeded in setting expectations.

Setting Clear Expectations with Referral Partners:

While every referral partner wants to get compensated sooner rather than later, the best partners want to deliver on their customers’ expectations as much as you do. Rather than promising a 30-day contract and then having to ask for their forgiveness when you request an extension – tell your partner up-front when you will realistically be able to close the deal with respect to what else is on your priority plate. Then, work with your referral partner to set an agreed-upon expectation with their customer. Requesting extensions and delays do not help your goal of meeting your partners’ expectations. Be honest with how long you anticipate it will take to close their referral business.

When capacity is limited and competition is fierce, setting clear expectations with customers and partners is critical to your sustained success. The key to setting clear expectations with mortgage customers and partners is to under-promise and over-deliver. Educate your customers about the current market conditions and the overall process. Be honest with your referral partners about how long your business cycle will take. Remember that setting clear expectations up front will help you deliver sustained business success!

OnCourse Learning offers comprehensive compliance and professional development education that includes mortgage pre-licensing, exam prep, continuing education and governance, risk and compliance courses. Our Mortgage HQ learning platform provides loan officers an affordable, all-in-one training solution that includes access to a comprehensive and ever-evolving library of sales, compliance and professional development topics that can be accessed and completed anytime — all under one roof. 

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By |2021-11-10T14:01:41-06:00November 10th, 2021|Financial Services, Mortgage|Comments Off on Setting Clear Expectations With Customers and Partners