Full Transcript is Below:
Greg Sher: Welcome into a very edition of NFM TV, I am your host Greg Sher, and I’m delighted to be joined by SVP, senior vice president of NFM Lending, and branch manager out of Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Daniel Sa. Daniel, I’m so excited to have you here in our studio. Thanks so much for coming in, it’s our first time having you inside here.
Daniel Sa: It’s pleasure to be here.
Greg Sher: Yeah, we’ve a lot to talk about. Let’s start off with a staggering statistic in a time, in a market where people’s production is trending downward, somehow you’re able to be up 42% year after year. Last year your branch closed $90 million introduction, this year, you are on your way to 135 million, how in the world are you doing it?
Daniel Sa: Well, Greg, the first step, it all starts with the mindset, right? ‘Cause many people, they just become a statistic of whatever the industry, whatever is happening within the industry, right? So what we’ve determined is hey, we’re not going to be the result of a shrunk industry, we’re going to take the steps and do the work that’s necessary to succeed in an environment where most companies are reducing their volume, or many loan officers are not doing as well.
Daniel Sa: We’re really focused on three things; number one, culture. Okay? Number two, training and development, and number three, processes.
Daniel Sa: Okay. First of all my definition of culture is the collective character of all of those within the organization. So the first thing that we take in consideration is are we bringing in A players?
Greg Sher: How do you determine what an A player looks like?
Daniel Sa: So my definition of an A player is having a great customer feedback from a client, or going the actual way for one of our realtor referral partners to really show that we truly care about them and their clients. So those are the things, these are the type of actions that I look for, that are constantly impressing me on either a daily or a weekly basis. And if somebody can deliver that to me consistently, that’s my definition of an A player.
Greg Sher: Okay, well that makes a lot of sense. I know you mentioned three things, so let’s get into the training component. What goes into that? What does that look like?
Daniel Sa: So when it comes to training, what we do is we do a weekly training on every Monday, so where it’s a dedicated sales training, so from 11 to noon, we spend a lot of time role playing different sales methodologies. So for example like how do we overcome the rate objection, or how do we call prospects to set up meetings. So we go over proven methodology on what we should do in order to achieve the result that we need.
Greg Sher: You yourself and your team, you’ll do 80 million this year, so that’s no small feat for sure. You’ll help over 400 families in the Columbus area, so kudos to you on that.
Daniel Sa: Thank you.
Greg Sher: You get there through a lot of detail. You’re a detail guy, just going to what some of those things are.
Daniel Sa: We have to track every single aspect of everything that we need to do. So we really track … For example we know in order to be able to close 38 transactions in a given month, which is what we do in average, we must have a minimum of 200 referred leads, and then we have to do x number of credit polls, send out x number of preapproval letters, and ultimately get x number of contracts in every single week. So we really track quite a bit of everything that we’re doing.
Daniel Sa: Beyond tracking then is on execution. So for example when a lead comes in, okay? A client was referred to us, what is the message that we’re delivering to our consumer? And have a consistent message across the board. So if they ask us a question, we’re going to have the same answer, we’re literally going to have the same tonality, inflection, pose, even the accent is going to be similar.
Greg Sher: Like that, like your accent?
Daniel Sa: Like my accent, yes.
Greg Sher: Everyone in your office talks like you?
Daniel Sa: Not necessarily, but everybody … We do train tonality, we train inflection, we train the pose, we train … So like script training is extremely important, we do a minimum of 50 minutes of script training per day with all sales staff.
Greg Sher: That’s remarkable. It’s no wonder you have the success you have. And not just personally, I’ve gotta throw this out here, your lowest producer in your office closes 80 units per year.
Daniel Sa: That’s what I’m-
Greg Sher: Is that true?
Daniel Sa: That’s what I’m most proud about. It’s because we have a system in place that is such plug-and-play that producers that come in doing 50 units per year or less, right? We can very rapidly turn them into 80, 100, 150+ unit producer, and then off they go.
Greg Sher: I wanted you to just tell everybody out there just how far you’re willing to go to make your realtors feel loved and appreciated.
Daniel Sa: Our referral partners mean the world to us, right? So a lot of loan officers, they will do everything possible to get in front of a realtor, and then they expect that all of a sudden they’re going to start referring them clients.
Daniel Sa: There’s constant action and things that we do that they view and see, right? That ultimately results in a relationship continuing to grow. Which one of the things I’m most proud of is less than four years ago, I had less than four people that referred me, four or more transactions per year. Fast forward to where we are today, we have 40 people currently that refer us for, or more, close transactions per year.
Greg Sher: That’s remarkable.
Daniel Sa: And that shows the depth of the relationships though.
Greg Sher: Awesome stuff. Thank you so much for your time, continued success. Daniel Sa, senior vice president of NFM Lending, also branch manager of Columbus, Ohio. I can’t wait to talk to you next year, I mean what is it gonna look like next year? You’re already up 42%, so next year if you’re up another 42% we’ll be talking 200 million.
Daniel Sa: 170 million or more.
Greg Sher: Okay, that’s the goal?
Daniel Sa: That’s the goal.
Greg Sher: You’re stating it now. All right, awesome, 170 million or more in 2019 in a market where things are shrinking. I can’t wait to talk to you about that. Thank you so much.
Daniel Sa: Thank you very much.
Greg Sher: All right, I’m Greg Sher. This has been a long edition of NFM TV, but I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you wanna see more of our work, you can go to NFMTV.com. Also if you wanna find out more about NFM, and get to Daniel, maybe be mentored by Daniel, you can go to www.NFMLending/advantage, and you’ll find your way. Thanks so much, we’ll talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.