If loan officers want to grow their business and increase performance, they need to measure their progress to determine what needs improvement. When it comes to sales goals and work goals in general, how do you know when you’ve reached them? In what ways can you determine if you’ve been successful? The answer is by tracking certain performance metrics. Mortgage lenders who want to assess how they’re doing and make the necessary adjustments to improve should look to these metrics for the insight they need. Here are some of the metrics LOs should use to track their success:
General productivity
LOs should track things like their number of leads, prospects, and clients at a given time and the amount of closings they’ve been successful with over a month’s span for insight into their progress. Other measurements, like the number of pre-approvals and appointments they’ve made, and the number of credit reports they’ve pulled are also telling numbers. The key is to regularly track and check in with these numbers. The more data you have, the better you’ll be able to identify trends and weak spots.
Client satisfaction
Clients fuel your mortgage business, so it’s crucial that you track their satisfaction rate. Were your past clients satisfied and happy working with you? Did they leave you testimonials and reviews? Were they were willing to give you referral business? The best ways to measure their satisfaction is to read their reviews and keep track of referrals. You can also ask past clients to fill out a survey post-closing to rate their service. Keep this survey simple to encourage them to complete it. Once you have a good amount of feedback, you can analyze it to see if you’re making your clients happy or where you may need to improve.
Online marketing
If you’re engaging on social media for your mortgage business, there are often easy ways to track how successful your posts are. On Facebook, you can gain insight into engagement to see which posts are more popular. Particularly if you’ve created a Facebook ad, you can easily view metrics for information on its success. As you track which posts have been effective and which haven’t gotten the engagement you need, you can tailor your marketing strategy accordingly.
Website statistics
Similar to measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts, you can also track your website to see what is and isn’t working. Your online marketing, especially from social media, should bring traffic to your website. Make sure that once prospects have landed on your website, you’re engaging them with informative and entertaining content. Google analytics is a great way to track website statistics. You can easily see things like how many website-visits you’ve acquired. You can also track your “bounce rate” — how many people leave your site after only viewing one page. If your bounce rate is high, it can mean your website isn’t effectively engaging visitors or that it’s simply not what they need. These analytics also tell you which pages are the most popular. This information can help you determine what visitors are looking for so you know how to deliver.
First-submission approval rating
How often do your loan files get approved by underwriters the first time? This rate is often telling of your progress and success, so loan officers should track this metric. If you find you have a high first-submission approval rating, this suggests your workflow is strong. It likely means you’re being efficient in your process of collecting documents and assembling loan files for submission to underwriting. If not, you’ll be able to set a specific goal for improvement.
Loan-cycle length
Tracking your loan-cycle length tells you how effective and efficient you’ve been. If you can measure the length of your loan cycle and the individual stages within, you can get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses in your process. The key here is to focus on the individual stages for clues as to where to direct your focus for improvement. If your overall loan-cycle length isn’t where you want it, you can look into those more specific metrics for what is causing the delay.
Loan-origination profit
While it’s great to track the speed and efficiency of your loan origination process, it’s equally important to track the profits you’re bringing in. LOs should track their profit per loan originated to see if their process is financially efficient. Evidence of success would show things like less working hours needed and fewer sunk expenses.
Measuring your hard work allows you to understand your progress and grow in your career. If you aren’t measuring your efforts, it’s difficult to determine if you’re improving and how to accelerate your progress. Loan officers who want to measure their success should track all relevant performance metrics to assess their achievement and plan for future improvement.
