Q. Given how tough the market is right now, what can I do to boost my bottom line?

A. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

This Dickens quote could well describe the mortgage business over the last couple of years to the present.  What can one do to survive in these trying times?  Start by stopping. Stop, step back for a minute and really look at your business. Ask yourself, “Am I keeping it simple?” “What can I do to un-complicate my business?” When you start with these two basic questions, you can unlock the secrets to survival in tough times.

Start with the tangibles. Examine your vendor relationships, and consider leveraging the key partners. There is a general rule that business complication equals the number of vendors that you work with squared. The “Total Origination Solution” that we pitch is an approach to align with limited vendors and work closely as strategic partners to be successful together.  Without delving too deeply–just think about aligning on product and technology alone and how helpful that would be in terms of reducing complication.

Technology, as we know is a mixed blessing–it can greatly add to our productivity, but it can also take time and effort to learn.  The best way to approach this matter is to pick the technology that you are going to use, spend the time to learn the ins and outs thoroughly and then the productivity will take care of itself.  Credex is a technology tool that takes a simple concept–a credit report and turns it into a suite of business solution tools.  The problem that we see at Credex is that only our most productive customers take the time to learn all the nuances of our technology offering. Those who do not take the time are missing huge opportunities.  Since it is my column– I feel empowered to take the time to review a few of the points.

Manage your credit costs.  When times are tough, it is not the time to throw away money through wasted operating costs.  Use our AppWizard™ tool to get your consumers to pay for their own credit reports.  They don’t mind because they want to see their true mortgage credit report and the actual scores.

Speaking of credit scores – what are you doing to help your borrowers make adjustments to increase their scores so that they will qualify for the better mortgage programs?  Today, if your credit score is below 620, available mortgage programs other than “hard money” are increasingly limited.  We built the industry-standard CreditXpert tool into Credex so that you can seamlessly pull your customer’s credit report and explore options to improve their credit score without ever leaving Credex. Strategically placed vendor relationships in Credex, work to your benefit.

Keep your nose clean. Intel’s Andrew Grove wrote a book called Only the Paranoid Survive. When it comes to compliance, if you are not paranoid about your people and their possible compliance lapses — you may not survive!  Look for ways to utilize technology that automates as many compliance steps as possible and your ability to monitor compliance will increase dramatically.  Leaving to chance, the idea that, all loan officers will always act in a compliant manner is not a recipe for success.   

Work on your marketing platform.  Any business in any industry without a marketing platform is dead in the water.  The mortgage industry is so competitive today that you need to have a marketing system and be way ahead of the pack if you want a shot at competing.  A great reference is David Hancock’s, Guerrilla Marketing for Mortgage Brokers, for ideas to jumpstart your marketing plan.

Have a website.  Does everyone have a website today?  One of the broker shortcomings that we have noticed is that many brokers still do not have a properly conceived website.  Without a website, your AppWizard™ link is sitting around, unused. Remember, you want to leverage technology.  Without the link posted on your website, you are missing enormous opportunities for attracting qualified customers while you sleep, while you’re busy with other clients, or while you’re at your daughter’s soccer game.  See our website for further details.  See what I mean?

It might seem intimidating, but these days there are plenty of services, like Myers Internet, that can help get you up and running in no time.

The key to survival is first to simplify. But it won’t happen unless you are willing to jump in and get the process started. And, that’s probably true of most things. You’ve already come this far – why not just go for it?

Please feel free to email me with any questions or comments at pphelps@nextomt.com.