Managing your pipeline (to prioritize selling)

Jake Vermillion	Welcome to Up-Market Sales Success, a series designed to help U.S. Bank loan officers, just like you, make the most of high-volume markets. My name is Jake, I'm a member of the Mortgage Champions team, and we we are incredibly excited to bring this powerful offering to U.S. Bank thanks to Beth Ryan, Todd McFadden, and the entire executive team. Let's dive into the topic at hand, Managing your pipeline (to prioritize selling), with Dale Vermillion. Hi Dale!
Dale Vermillion	Hey Jake.
Jake Vermillion	Dale, you constantly preach that pipelines should always be managed in a way that keeps loan officers focused on production. When pipelines are swollen to the breaking point in up markets, how can a loan officer manage their time—and mentality—to prioritize selling? ,
Dale Vermillion	Well, you have to remember first and foremost what your role and your responsibility is. Okay. We were hired as salespeople. That is our area of the process that we are experts at. And therefore, we've got to stay in our lane. Where I find the biggest difficulty is where we become glorified processors, and glorified underwriters, and glorified closers, and funders, and problem solvers. And that's not your role. Look, you've got to first and foremost make sure that as you're setting up each and every day, that you are not starting your day with pipeline management. That is such an important point that I just made there, because I see this a lot. I've talked to a lot of loan officers that they get up in the morning and the first thing they do is check their pipeline report. Two questions I want to ask you: Does it make you more positive or more negative? In other words, does it frustrate you or does it motivate you when you look at that? Does it end up becoming a time suck for most of your day that you find there's days you don't sell anything? And the answer every single time is, "Oh my gosh. Yes. It frustrates me. It demotivates me. And, it is a time suck." Then the answer is don't start with that. Look, whether you start at eight o'clock, nine o'clock or 10 o'clock. Nobody knows what time you start. So, here's my advice. If you start at eight o'clock or nine o'clock, I want you to start your day with sales. Spend two hours each morning, focusing on generating pipeline opportunities, creating a bigger pipeline, selling more deals. And then, once that's done, now I want you to move into your pipeline management. And I want you to control the time you spend on that. And I want you to make sure that you're only focused on those deals in your pipeline that need attention. If you've got 25 deals in your pipeline, I can promise you they don't all need attention today. There's one or two that does. So, keep a good pipeline report that gives you markings or highlights or milestones in there that tell you the ones that need attention. Always make sure you're attending to those a day or two before whatever's needed to be done is done so you don't put massive pressure on yourself. And only focus on those deals that need that. And time your pipeline work in the time of the day when sales are at their lowest capacity. You have times in the day where you get more opportunities to talk to customers and more opportunities to sell than other times of the day, because referrals and leads are up. Save those times for sales and use your slower times for your pipeline work. And now you're really managing your day much much better, much more efficiently than you were before. And you're getting the most out of each day.
Jake Vermillion	So, we all know in the mortgage industry, changes are inevitable—especially in high-volume markets. Conditions are going to come back, new information is going to come to light, and borrowers are going to make decisions that maybe they shouldn't have made. How should loan officers communicate changes that affect borrowers in a way that maintains loyalty and momentum?
Dale Vermillion	That's a great question, Jake. Here's the number one rule—I want you to write this phrase down right now, it's simply this: "Don't over react." We make the proverbial mountain-out-of-a-molehill. Okay? I don't want you to "major in the minors," if you want to be successful. So, the key here is when things come up, look, you should be establishing your day so you're able to adjust to priorities that change—because they're going to change. You start your day in the morning, you know the things you need to do that day, or at least you should know those things. You should have established your priorities in the morning for the day and time blocked those out. But, we also have taught you to flex block so that you're creating a couple of hours in your day that is just basically a time bank for those kinds of things that'll come up in your day. And when they come up, don't overreact and think that you immediately need to respond unless you immediately need to respond. I see it way too many times where something comes up on a file, we're still two weeks from closing on that file, but we drop everything to fix this one thing and we didn't need to drop everything. That could have waited till later today, that could have been something we could have scheduled tomorrow, it didn't need immediate attention. So, don't overreact to it from a timeframe standpoint and don't overreact emotionally either. Make sure that when things come up on a file before you pick up the phone and you call your customer, or you call your partner and you're like, "Oh my gosh! I can't believe this happened." Stop. Think about what happened, think about the solution, get with your internal team. So, you got an appraisal that didn't come in, you've got a problem on a file, you've got a document that you need, you've got a change in their income you didn't know about, you've got something that popped up on their title report. These are things that you don't overreact and immediately respond to that by calling your customers or your partners. Instead, you sit down and say, "Okay, there's the problem. What's the solution?" Immediately pivot to solution. Get involved whoever you need to get involved in your internal team, come up with the solution, and then calmly and strategically contact your customers, contact your partners, let them know what's happening. And the last bit of information I want to give you on this is: be timely on this, be responsive to this, okay? Don't overreact and don't act too quickly; but also, if you do find out things on files that are important, don't sit on important things and not report bad news. You've got to get back to your partners, and your clients, and your customers, in a very timely fashion; but, you don't want to overreact to the point that you sound negative, that you sound worried, that you sound upset, because they will react to your reaction. You want to be very careful with that.
Jake Vermillion	Any parting thoughts on this topic Dale?
Dale Vermillion	I think the most important thing to remember about your pipelines is that you want your pipeline to be a pipeline and not a pipe dream. That's the number one tip. That means that we put good stuff in—high-quality stuff. We don't just jam stuff in that jams up the system. And then as we work with our customers through that, be methodical in your pipelines, check them every day in the morning for the total, but only focus on the ones you need to work on. Don't sit every day and spin through all of the deals on your pipeline every day to see what's happening. You should build a good report that categorizes all the things happening on your pipeline, with color codes that you can use, so that on Monday you can do a complete review of your pipeline, and then you know that every day you only got a couple of things you need to work on. Be methodical and you'll be much more successful.
Jake Vermillion	Don't forget to complete today's skill challenge by taking a deep breath when you next encounter a change problem, solving for solutions and then responding quickly, but not urgently is key. And then let us know how it felt and how your customer responded by clicking on the feedback link in the show description. Coming up next, Resolving conflicts (with customers and colleagues).