Full Transcript is Below:
– Welcome into NFM TV. I’m your host, Greg Sher. Daniel Sa has given his heart and soul to this company over the better part of five years, and recently, he was named divisional president of the Great Lakes Division. And wouldn’t you know it, one of the first stops he’s making is to NFM TV. It’s good to see you, Daniel. How are you?
– I’m doing great, Greg. Thanks for having me.
– It’s a pleasure to have you always. Congratulations on this new undertaking. Tell us what it means to you to now be the divisional president of the Great Lakes region.
– Truly what this means is the combination of quite a lotta work that has been done by a very talented team here in Columbus and across the state of Ohio to get us to where we are today. I mean, we’ve built a really strong foundation, and transitioning to becoming a division shows that NFM has a lot of confidence in the efforts that we’ve put forward, and now they’re ready to deploy additional resources and assets for us to continue to evolve on something special that we’ve already built.
– And you have really built something special. I just wanna touch on numbers. 2018, your regional numbers, everything that rolls up under you, 800 units for 130 million. 2019, 1,030 units for 220 million. And then this past year, 2020, you really went gangbusters, 2,400 units for 530 million. It certainly starts with you, but I know you’ve got some extraordinary people there that you plan to build. You’ve got a great foundation. Touch on that.
– Over the past few years, we’ve focused not only on hitting big numbers and putting out great production, but truly developing a great foundation from a marketing standpoint, from a sales standpoint and from an operations standpoint to not only help everybody who works at NFM to develop their careers and do something really special and fulfilling for themselves, but also to deliver great service to our clients and our referral partners.
– Let’s peel back a couple of layers. Let’s talk about marketing and what you do to help bolster the folks that work with you.
– We focus on a few different things. Number one is the loan originator brand. Secondly, we focus on the acquisition of new referral partners, really helping the originator identify the right people for them to do business with. And then third, we focus on the onboarding of those referral partners so that they feel like they’re part of a family and they’re working with us for the long haul and building a really strong relationship with our team.
– What is it about your system where you can take somebody who doesn’t have any experience in a work environment and you can turn them into a six-figure earner within two years?
– From a sales standpoint, we focus on extreme coaching. That happens on an individual basis where the loan officers are coached at a very, very high level either on a bi-weekly or a monthly one-on-one basis. And then we have a weekly sales meeting that we talk about best practices and what is going on right now that can help our loan originators to help our referral partners grow their business. A loan officer that joined us three years ago, she used to close between around 50 closings per year for the past six years prior to coming to NFM, and fast forward a couple of years, we’ve tripled her business, and she’s on track to quadruple her business on year number three. We have another example where somebody who was not even licensed joined NFM, got licensed here, and he posted nearly 250 closings. And what’s more impressive about that is that 80% of that was purchase transactions.
– And I should mention there are no limits when you use the word growth. You literally mean as big as you can possibly get.
– We want anybody that is joining NFM to be able to go wherever they want. So if you’re coming in as an originator, we want you to eventually become the president of NFM, right? We’d love for you to be a loan originator who then has a team developed around you, and then we’d love for you to have your own branch. I mean, the path is there. So that’s really what it’s all about.
– So we’ve touched on two very important components to the mortgage process. One is marketing. One is sales, but, of course, the thing that glues it all together is operations. Touch on the staff that you have and how you’re built to continue to grow at this rapid pace.
– Number one is quality, and number two is speed. So from a quality standpoint, we have different types of assessments that constantly coach our processors and loan managers and openers and junior processors what they can do to become better at their jobs. And then number two is speed. So we have so many different ways to track every step of the process. So we’re constantly providing transparency on the timelines and the turn times, so that we’re constantly shrinking the amount of time it takes to close a loan.
– Daniel, while your team is growing, your family is also growing. I know you have a newborn son who is just approaching a half a year. What has being a father done to you, and how do you think it’s gonna impact the way you run your business moving forward?
– Being a father is something that you just can’t explain, the feeling of that. And I’m just so grateful to be a father to Bruno and just to have him and know that he’s gonna have every possible support that he can from me, and I will be the best person that I can be for him. And that goes along with business. While I’m trying to become the best version of myself so that I can raise a good family, this is gonna translate right into everything else that I do in life.
– Daniel Sa, congratulations on the promotion, now the divisional president of the newly formed NFM Great Lakes Division. It all sounds great. We know you’re going to the moon. We can’t wait to see you get there.
– Thank you, Greg.
– All right, we’ll talk again real soon. That’s Daniel Sa. I’m Greg Sher from NFM TV. We’ll see you again next time.