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Doug Smith, founder of Douglas Smith & Associates, is a 24-year industry veteran. His career spans the areas of loan origination, sales training, management development, marketing, personal coaching and corporate sales. Doug’s columns appear in Mortgage Originator, Mortgage Planner, The Mortgage Record and Mortgage Broker magazines. He publishes a monthly newsletter, Power Selling, and authored Climbing the Ladder of Success. For more information, visit http://www.dougsmithonline.com/ |
| Power Selling: Kick your Complacency to the Curb! |
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Complacency can be the killer of a good career in mortgage lending. “Complacency” is defined as being content with what you have or the results you are getting and not really wanting any more. Some loan originators reach a level of complacency and stop moving forward, stop growing their business, stop trying hard, and as a result, start falling backwards---even start to fail without even knowing it! I was coaching a loan originator a couple of years ago who had reached a level of complacency in his business. He’d been lending for about five years and was closing around $12 million a year and making in the neighborhood of $60,000. “That’s fine for me,” he said. “I really don’t want or need to make any more money. I just want to keep doing what I’m doing and stay where I’m at.”I asked him if he had ever heard of something called “inflation.” I explained that if he stays where he is at, over time, he is actually making less money every year. Some quick number crunching on my calculator revealed that with inflation rising at just about 4 percent a year, within five years his $60,000 income he is earning today would effectively be only $49,000. “Do you want to take an $11,000 pay cut over the next five years?” I asked him. Indeed he did not, and now I had his attention. The cost of living is always going up. Consider what you were paying five years ago for gasoline, a gallon of milk, health insurance or a pair of shoes. Now, look at today’s prices for the same items. That’s what inflation is all about, and the only way to stay ahead of it is to “out-earn” it. Working with my coaching student’s scenario, we mapped out the amount of business he would have to produce to stay ahead of inflation. Just to stay even, he would have to grow his production volume from $12 million that year to $12.5 million the next, $13 million the next, then to $13.6 million, $14 million and finally to $14.7 million in the fifth year. And remember---that’s just to stay even with inflation! He’s actually making no progress at this rate, only staying up with the rising cost of living. (It was interesting to watch his “I’m fine with where I’m at” attitude quickly disappear!) Perhaps you are producing some good business and making good money right now. That’s terrific. You no doubt work very hard and have earned your success. But don’t allow yourself to get complacent where you are. Complacency not only affects your income through inflation, it also deflates your excitement and enthusiasm for the business. You don’t want to try new things, you avoid taking risks, you stay away from establishing new relationships and business partners, and you start to get stale. That doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? The beauty of working in commissioned-based sales is the ability to grow your income at whatever pace you want and to give yourself a “raise” whenever you wish. Never get complacent. Keep moving forward. Power Selling The editor of Power Selling is Douglas Smith. Please direct any comments or input to 877.430.2329.
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