Many people see their priorities shifting in life. They have a goal, work towards achieving it and then decide they would rather achieve success in a different way.
Back in the April/May 2004 issue of Broker, there was a profile of Amy Tierce, a then-14-year veteran of the mortgage industry who was just starting out to make a name as a sales trainer speaking at industry conferences.
Around six years ago she became a regional vice president for Fairway Independent Mortgage, with her office located in Needham, Mass. Tierce takes great pride in the fact that out of the 400 or so originators at Fairway, her office has the top three producers: Amy Slotnick, Sheira MacKenzie and Craig Tashjian.
Tierce said when she and her operations manager Deena Auman started their branch, their vision was clear: Tierce did not want to be a top producer herself, but to hire and support top producers. Or even grow top producers.
This represented a big shift in her thinking. Tierce's plunge into being a trainer/speaker came about during a time in her career where she was starting to “feel restless just originating loans.”
Upon reflection, speaking required her to create a product and travel a lot. However, Tierce said she could not get a vision of taking that path going forward.
Now, she realizes having a team of sales people under her management is “my little incubator of training and development, without having to be on a big stage.
“I can do it on a very small scale, every two weeks at a sales meeting. It has really been amazingly gratifying.
“You can't necessarily change an industry but you can influence it one individual at a time.”
Tierce is making it a point to emphasize that people in the mortgage industry need to do business in the right way. The Fairway New England website has what she called “the Fairway Promise,” a seven-point statement which is its promise “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in all situations.”
The Promise starts out with “Truth and transparency are what matters most to us.”
It goes on to state “there will be no hidden costs or unpleasant surprises in the loan process. You will work with knowledgeable, deeply experienced Fairway team members at each state of the mortgage process. You will always have the same dedicated individuals to speak with through out the transaction.
“Detailed explanations of all documents and costs will be provided. All information will be kept private and treated with respect. We offer the best programs, products, technology and service in the industry today.”
Tierce continued, “We live that promise every day. And the people we've recruited are of the same cloth. Everybody's committed to trying to heal an industry.”
It also includes the promise that when Fairway issues a pre-approval it guarantees the loan will close provided there are no changes to the applicant's ability to qualify for the mortgage.
Then there is the section on “The Closing and Beyond.” Fairway promises to keep in contact with clients, telling them “you will hear from us when we have something important to tell you, from economic news to college planning tips.”
And it calls on those clients to ask Fairway for a referral to another professional, “from real estate to home improvement, from estate planners to roofers.”
While her office does a lot of training and education for consumers, its efforts are predominantly aimed at the Realtor world. The topics include such things as what red flags to look for, sales perspectives and social media.
She has partnered with real estate speaker Steve Harney for some of these presentations to Realtors.
These are some of the tools she provides to her sales staff, to give them something they can take to their referral partners.
“I'm having a blast. As much as the mortgage industry has not been a lot of fun in the last six years, we've managed to find a place where we can take a lot of pride in what we do and have fun doing it,” Tierce said. She related a recent encounter with an old colleague, who told her there was something different about her office than all the other offices he walked into.
That difference, he told her, was that the people there were “all enthusiastic and happy.”
Tierce related a conversation she had recently where she said the mortgage meltdown has reinvigorated her career and has been incredibly influential on her in a positive way.
The other person in the conversation said she was probably the only person she had met who said that.
She continued that she would attend a Todd Duncan speaking event, where Duncan would talk about how important what loan officers do is, because they help finance the American dream.
But she did not have an appreciation for this message until the mortgage meltdown.
“Until my eyes were open to the kind of rotten, self-interested behavior that was being practiced in our industry, I suddenly realized what I did was important and did matter, for any income-level client,” Tierce said.
And it did not matter that whether the borrower is getting a small or large loan—people could still get in trouble with bad mortgage advice. This is why the meltdown helped her to feel good about what she does.
“It was the dynamics of the crisis that really helped me see how what we do matters and how the way you do it matters. It gave me a whole new perspective on my career and this industry,” she said. “We try to be evangelists in this market, of getting it right and taking care of people.”
