Sales managers of a mortgage branch have the responsibility to not only do their best work, but also to inspire that of their team as well. If you don’t feel motivated each day, this will reflect on your entire branch. If you can keep the morale of your branch high, even in times of less sales success, you can better motivate your team to keep working at their best. By empowering your team, you can inspire them to strive to improve. Different motivational approaches work for different employees so explore what works for individual employees. Here are 5 tips to get started:
1. Goal-setting
The first step to creating motivated employees is to encourage them to set goals. These goals should be for the entire branch as well as on an individual level. Set up a meeting to discuss the kinds of goals your team will strive to reach so that everyone can give input and be on the same page. It’s equally vital to create goals in one-on-one meetings with your employees. When you’re evaluating each employee’s performance, you can help them create goals based off their own sales quotas as well as personal goals focused on other aspects of their professional development. Make sure you encourage their goals to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) so they create actionable goals that can be achieved. Without creating these kinds of milestones and plans to succeed, your employees will be left without a sense of ownership of and motivation towards their success.
2. Give them the training and tools to succeed
In order to set your employees up for success, you need to coach and train them. When they are new to the branch, make sure you give them the tools to do well in mortgage sales. While working with new hires is important, don’t underestimate the importance of training your team even when they’re no longer newbies. Create opportunities for professional development along the way and ways for them to refine skills they’re less successful with. For example, if cold-calling is where their weakness lies, model this by cold-calling with them or having them shadow an employee who excels in the area. It’s your duty to ensure they have the tools to succeed even as they progress in their career, and this will motivate them to continue towards their goals.
3. Create trusted relationships
In order for your sales team to feel motivated to excel, they need to feel supported by the rest of the branch. Managers should work at building trusted relationships with their employees if they want whole team to succeed. Loan officers need to know that the doors of communication are open with their managers and other employees. You should also emphasize your commitment to solving problems instead of discouraging your employees. This culture of trust starts at the top. If managers show respect and create trust with their sales team, their employees are more likely to exhibit the same respect for each other. Your team needs to believe that you have their best interests in mind in order to feel driven to succeed and continue working at your branch.
4. Acknowledge their success
One of the top reasons employees say they’re unmotivated or why they’ve chosen to leave a job is due to lack of acknowledgment. Managers who recognize the success of each member of their team will help employees feel noticed and appreciated for their hard work. Even more motivating for your sales team than their salary alone is feeling appreciated publicly. Make a point to note when someone achieves their sales quota or has a great client interaction or review. This in itself is a reward, more so than anything monetary. You can also choose to create this culture of recognition by rewarding them with something like a dinner for the whole team to recognize one employee’s achievement. This motivates the rest of your team to work harder as well and continue striving towards their own success.
5. Team-building events
A team that hardly knows one another doesn’t often work well together. Managers should implement team-building activities throughout the year. This is especially necessary when a new employee joins the branch, but is even effective to continue the camaraderie of a seasoned team that’s been working together for years. With good planning, you can come up with events that allow your sales team to get better connected and genuinely enjoy themselves together. This helps create a more motivated and stronger team that works well together.
By putting in the effort to motivate their sales teams, managers will be more likely to see the performance of their branch increase. Money, while important to employees, can’t solve a motivation problem on its own. It’s up to sales leaders to give employees the tools they need to feel empowered to achieve. Managers need to understand each employee and help them excel as well as create the supportive environment where employees can feel acknowledged.
