The life of a loan officer fills with many specific tasks and time-consuming processes that must process daily. Emailing clients, sending loan process reminders, and calling prospects are well-known to-dos for loan officers. Plus, with an ever-changing mortgage market, loan officers have to manage their time wisely.
It is important to keep setting personal goals and reviewing past performances. Then, changes happen and the successful life of a loan officer can continue to thrive into the rest of the year.
A top producing loan officer realizes the need to constantly improve and adapt. So, remain successful in the evolving mortgage market and become the best loan officer you can be!
Reevaluate Life of a Loan Officer Goals
Focusing on professional goals is key within the mortgage industry, especially with significant market shifts. But, it is also important to reevaluate other goals as well. This can include financial, spiritual, physical, and personal goals. After all, there are many elements that make up you! So, prioritizing growth in all aspects of life can help you reach your full potential.
Consistency is key when it comes to evaluating your goals. When it comes to tracking sales or business goals, these assess weekly. That way, any changes that need to be made are completed and keep you on track. But, where do you begin when reevaluating your goals in different aspects of life? After all, you may have to adjust to many inevitable changes in the market and life.
Prioritize Your Tasks
Pinpointing tasks that are wasting your valuable time is crucial for success. Examples include mindless activities, unhealthy relationships, and time-consuming tasks. If not carefully assessed, these can end up causing harm to your daily life.
So, really consider how you spend your precious time. After all, you can choose where your energy is allocated. Also, don’t hesitate to ask yourself if the actions you are taking are worth the time being spent. All professionals need to consider this question as they take action.
How Do You Know If It’s Worth Your Time?
Consider the recurring tasks in your personal and professional life. Actions that result in a positive return on investment are worth taking. The higher the ROI, the more you should prioritize these specific tasks.
On the other end, if an action hinders your ROI, then it could be a time-waster. So, consider these three low value tasks.
Eliminate Taks
Any inefficient and detrimental tasks may need to be eliminated in order to be the best you can be. Tasks to consider that can be eliminated include checking social media channels frequently, receiving distracting notifications, and attending inefficient meetings. So, effectively meet your goals and continue thriving by ditching tasks that waste your time.
Delegate Tasks
Consider hiring employees to grow your mortgage business. More people can lead to more money. So, a loan officer assistant can serve you well. They can take over tasks such as managing and processing of loan applications. There is plenty that a LOA can help with, depending on your specific needs.
Automate Tasks
Automations in your mortgage business can help you gain more referrals and close more loans. So, by automating your tasks, you can organize your day more. They prioritize what is important to make sure you are reaching the right people quickly. Also, they give you the freedom to complete other tasks while marketing and follow-ups go out behind-the-scenes.
Review Daily Performance
As a loan officer, you must consider how to remain flexible as the industry changes. So, it is necessary to think about your personal goals and objectives to ensure that you keep your focus on what matters when change is necessary. Also, any actions that you make to achieve these goals may shift as the current market shifts. So, be ready to make those changes in an effective manner.
First, make sure to examine the current market. How does it look? How has it changed? Where is it headed? With this information, you can then relate it to your personal business and goals in the life of a loan officer.
Questions you can ask yourself:
How do you need to change your daily habits or strategies in order to be successful in the current market? Are there any goals that need to be refined or perhaps taken off of our list of priorities? Then, you can see what is working and what is not in your daily tasks.
What is Personal and Professional Goal Setting?
Personal goals are goals that you set in your personal life ranging from lifestyle, to family-life, to work-life balance. On the other hand, professional goals are steps that you take to reach a certain point in your career path. So, don’t be afraid to lay out each aspect of your life in order to see how they connect with both personal and professional goal setting.
For example, you can write down different categories of personal and professional goals. This can include business, financial, health, and relationships.
From there, you can break down each category and see what may need to be altered in order to be your best in each. In order to move forward in life, goal setting and honest assessments of performance are key to remaining productive.
Focus on Values
Stop to ask yourself, what are your values? This was discussed throughout Todd Duncan’s Sales Mastery Unfiltered 2021.
Hovik Shahinian, Branch Manager and Market Leader at New American Funding, says, “Come up with your core purpose. It is well worth the time and effort you put into it. Get that fix first before you try to fix anything else.”
If you focus on your values each day, you put in the work to maintain and achieve them. So, do not try to take shortcuts in life, either personally or professionally. Show up every day! Who are you showing up for? Yourself, your family, your co-workers, and your clients.
In the life of a loan officer, the values that keep many going are optimism, gratitude, and passion. So, focus on your “why.”
Make Effective Change
Similarly to the mortgage market, the life of a loan officer is constantly changing. And, it will continue to do so. Although seeking effective change may be uncomfortable at first, it is helpful for both personal and professional growth. Rather than seeing them as obstacles to overcome, view these changes as opportunities to evolve. Then, you set yourself up for greater levels of success!
After all, change is necessary for improvement. What gets measured can be improved.
Todd Duncan says, “At the end of the day, it’s not how many hours you work, it’s about how productive you are in those hours.”
If you remain the same in a constantly-changing environment, you won’t be able to keep up. So, adaptation is a crucial skill to have both in business and life. As mentioned in Sales Mastery, once you get that discipline and habit going, then you can begin to improve every day and produce successful weeks.
Connect With Others
The life of a loan officer is one that includes many daily interactions with people. So, you are not alone! Other mortgage professionals want to know about your successful processes, and vice versa.
So, connect with the people in your circle. This can look like setting an appointment with a financial adviser, following through with personal commitments, or talking to a life coach.
Consider making some of your goals public on both a professional and personal level so others can hold you accountable as well. After all, accountability is a way to ensure that actions are taken to reach new goals.
Also, accountability means putting practice into action. So, prioritize creating personal standards and then honestly working toward them if you want to succeed as a loan officer.
Bottom Line
The life of a loan officer has many moving parts, both personally and professionally. Growth and success are created by careful reevaluation of processes, creating new goals, and implementing change.
With the reality of the mortgage industry shifting often, adapting is key. This requires an understanding that what has worked in the past may not work as well now. So, reach out to other people for tips, and accept the truth that change is constant.
