There are books, online courses, and plenty of in-person instruction to help you earn your mortgage license. It’s a very linear path with well-defined milestones and an obvious conclusion. The difficulty begins once the structure disappears, and you have to sink-or-swim on your own in the mortgage industry. Moreover, in this industry, building a prosperous business is no easy task.

Getting your mortgage license is just the beginning of your career as a mortgage loan originator. Follow these tips to get a jumpstart on your future successes:

Find a Mentor or Coach

Coaches and mentors come in various formats and will be invaluable in helping you develop the skills and processes needed to quickly move through the early stages of your career. Coaching organizations leverage some of the best in the mortgage business to provide education and accountability to their charges.

Some of the most respected mortgage coaching organizations include:

• The CORE Training
• The Duncan Group
• Mortgage Marketing Animals

Define Your Product

For loan officers, the product they’re selling is not a home loan, it’s the experience they provide for their clients. (Almost) Anyone with a mortgage license can sell premium rates, but the question is this: do clients want a great rate or a good rate with a great experience?

The best originators have cultivated a smooth process, allowing them to alleviate anxiety, exceed borrower expectations, and close loans quickly. Their process is what earns them positive reviews, and continued referrals from business partners and clients.

Start Building Your Tech Stack

You will need to research and decide on a loan origination system (LOS) right out of the gate. The LOS handles the backend of your loan files and helps with compliance documentation. In addition, it’s also typically integrated with decision and pricing engines.

Another building block of your tech stack will be your customer relationship management (CRM) database. A good mortgage CRM not only stores your client and prospect data but also provides marketing tools designed to help you stay top-of-mind and provoke new business.

To truly build a scalable business, you will need to leverage mortgage automation solutions. This type of mortgage software, like Floify, allows loan officers to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks like status updates and document collection so they can stay out of the loan file time sink.

Mortgage Leads!

You will need to develop consistent lead sources in order to have long-term success as a mortgage loan originator. Many new LOs will leverage their immediate network as a source of quick business and referrals. So what do you do when that resource is exhausted?

• • Lead catching mechanisms: First and foremost, you have to have an easy-as-pie method for any potential prospects to get you their information. In today’s environment, it is basically table stakes to have a dynamic, web-based loan application as a primary way for leads to “Get Started”. Check out this article for more information on optimizing your site for conversion.
  • Generating traffic: Once you’ve made it easy for prospects to work with you, it’s time to drive more visitors to your site. Use high-quality content as a lead magnet to build trust and authority. Learn more about the different traffic channels and how to leverage them.
  • Referral partner networking: It’s no secret that the majority of top producing loan officers earn most of their business from partner and client referrals. Developing relationships with partners takes time, but also have the potential to consistently generate new business. Here are some tips for diversifying and managing your partner network.

Reflect and Improve

Rome was not built in a day, and neither will your mortgage business. Take the time to pause and reflect on your successes, and failures, as you continue to hone your skills. Incremental improvement in your process may be the difference between earning more business or losing it.

Mortgage License CE, E+O, and Bond Renewal

Finally, don’t forget about your continuing education, errors and omissions insurance, and bond renewal! Take care of the fundamentals early so you can get back to what you do best: helping people get into their dream homes.