The average loan officer in the industry has a database of 300 to 400 contacts and 90% of them are either previous customers or real estate agents. This sphere is the key to production referrals and will be the key to quality recruiting, quality mentoring and quality production.

The components of your sphere of influence are:

• Personal: friends, family, and neighbors
• Present and previous customers
• Present and previous prospects
• Present and previous co-workers
• Vendors
• Professionals
• Associations
• Referral sources

This sphere will be the spearhead of your efforts in meeting or getting referred to loan officer candidates. Most every business person in your sphere knows a loan officer. Real estate agents, financial planners, title companies and more. You can get as many personal introductions as you desire. And even more importantly, you can also get information regarding these loan officers, information that will help you make a determination of whether they will be an appropriate target.

Though your sphere is important for producing and recruiting, the prioritization of contacts will be different. This is very evident as we cover the most important component of your sphere with regard to recruiting. Unbelievably, it is one that we often ignore. What is this component?

Your present loan officers and employees

Why? There are several reasons:

• Close. They are not only close to you, they are right under your nose. When solving the issue of where to find the time to recruit with so many responsibilities, it is important that your activities be synergistic. That means that they must not only help you achieve other objectives, but also not take you in a completely different direction far out of your way. The tendency to recruit in a different direction is exactly why recruiting does not fit into your everyday plans.
• Additional objectives. We have already discussed using your outside loan officer contacts to increase your own production. How can leveraging your own loan officers for recruiting help you meet other objectives?
• Loyalty. A loan officer that is helping you recruit is focused upon what is right with your organization. This increases their loyalty and lowers turnover on your end. If someone is recruiting their best friend to come to work for the company, they are not thinking about leaving the company.
• Mentorship. Those loan officers that recruit can provide mentorship, which is something we will discuss in a different column. This will take a load off of your management shoulders.
• Management training. Another factor which reduces turnover is the provision of upward mobility to your employees. If your loan officers are recruiting and mentoring, they are getting trained to be managers someday. And if they help you grow the office, you are likely to need more managers.

It should be noted that your operations personnel also know loan officers and other operations personnel, thus the call to participate in recruiting should be universal within your staff.

What will help facilitate getting your employee involved?

• Incentives. Especially among competitive loan officers, money talks. The incentive might be:
  • A flat fee. It might be the same amount for each recruit and might be paid upfront or at the first anniversary of the hire.
  • Override. Especially if the loan officer is mentoring the recruit, they might earn an override on their production.
  • Additional help. If the new loan officer is a novice, the loan officer recruiting them might receive their help as an assistant for a certain period of time.
  • Awards. Perhaps an employee recruiter of the year award given out yearly.

A sales meeting is a good time to ask you loan officers for help on the recruiting front. Spending time on recruiting during a sales meeting enables you to focus on the positives of the company. The more your loan officers are focused upon the positives, the more productive they will be.

Dave Hershman is Senior VP of Sales of Weichert Financial and the top author in the mortgage industry. Dave has published seven books, as well as hundreds of articles and is the founder of the OriginationPro Marketing System and Mortgage School – the online choice for expert mortgage learning and marketing content. His site is www.OriginationPro.com and he can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..