Filling a need for content in the new business environment.
Content is important for mortgage sales training meetings, especially in this era of rapidly changing market conditions. To meet the need for sales managers to provide their staff with the latest tools and information, Atlanta-based Xinnix has come out with Rapid Coaching, a one-year-long, 20-presentation cycle of sales meeting videos.
The program started in January, and according to Casey Cunningham, president of Xinnix, during her company’s planning cycle last year, it found that one of the biggest needs and threats was that sales managers did not have the training or equipment they needed to hold dynamic sales meetings with rich content.
Enter the Rapid Coaching program. The centerpiece is a series of videos ranging from four to eight minutes long (typically they run five minutes), with Cunningham speaking on a specific topic designed to accompany sales managers’ presentations in such a way that they rise of the level needed.
“Our goal was for the managers to be able to have something that was topical and that was timeless in their meeting,” she explained. Included with the video for the sales manager is a sheet of talking points to go over—“the questions you should ask to create dialogue among your sales people where they can either comment on the content of the video or comment on the content of their business and how they are applying it.
“So it was really to help empower sales managers to have more dynamic sales meetings,” she said.
There will also be handouts available for managers to give to sales people. At the end of each video, Cunningham has an assignment for the viewers. The manager does have the discretion on when the assignment needs to be completed.
Companies can also tailor the in-house portion of the presentation to their company’s needs. The entirety of the Rapid Coaching content is designed for a 30-minute meeting, including the manager’s post-video discussion.
Cunningham has spoken quite often at sales meetings and in her experience she has found many managers are good presenters but don’t have the good content needed to drive the meeting and make it more engaging. So Rapid Coaching helps managers keep the meeting focused on what she called the timeless principles of sales.
The topics for 2011 stem from what skills are relevant for today’s managers. These include changing the way your sales people think and understanding effective planning. Other topics are built around prospecting, like creating key target lists and what types of marketing should originators do.
Cunningham said they looked at all of Xinnix’s class offerings and pulled out key topics for sales managers. The next step was creating the videos.
So, the sales manager can play the video for his or her staff in a controlled setting and ask questions and “create a dynamic discussion among everyone.”
She said Xinnix found nothing similar in the industry, where a program was designed for sales manager to help his or her sales people.
Sales meetings can be either weekly or monthly. But Xinnix said managers should meet with staff more frequently because of the changes in the business.
At a minimum, managers hold meetings every two weeks and that is how it determined the series should be 20 videos, Cunningham explained.
The videos are being released every two weeks; at the time of this interview, only two of the 20 videos had been released.
Xinnix will eventually have a library, but sales managers will not be able to pick and choose; the entire program needs to be purchased. Although the videos will stand on their own, the company wants managers to have an order of presentation.
There will be a new series of Rapid Coaching videos created each year.
“It is all about best practices and driving them home in each of your meetings and not letting a meeting go to waste where you’re not bringing value,” she said, adding the lenders that will win long term are the ones that enhance the skills and knowledge of their sales staff to help them grow their production.
Another new initiative from Xinnix has been to take its Recruiting Class course from its Leadership Online training curriculum and now offer it as a standalone program.
The course is designed to teach managers effective recruiting strategies for attracting and keeping the most qualified loan officers in the shortest amount of time.
Until now, Xinnix offerings had not been available to be purchase as individual classes, Cunningham said.
“We have had an overwhelming demand of companies wanting to buy a recruiting class because of the nature of the market,” she said, so Xinnix made the decision to pull this class out specifically because of what is happening in the market today. She added it could be offered either live or online.
The Recruiting Class provides “great examples and emphasis on having a more coordinated approach to the recruiting process,” said Frank Petrie of Fifth Third Bank. “Agenda and presentations with an emphasis on 'wowing’ the candidate are things I will be more focused on.”
The Recruiting Class details five fundamental elements that ensure success in the recruiting process: how to locate productive loan officers, profile how to qualify potential prospects, how to screen effectively via the phone, how to conduct a behavioral-based interview and how to conduct the critical follow-up after the interview.
Lately, Xinnix has seen “a spike in interest” among top 20 lenders for its services, because they want solutions because of the changes in the market, she said.
Cunningham said she has heard that 50% of current loan officers have been in the business five years or fewer.
That means those in the market now do not know how to generate their own business because the past five years are not a true reflection of challenges that they face today.
So the company is excited about what it sees for 2011. Even during 2010, when much of the market was focused on the refinance business, loan officers were “too busy to actually retool themselves and to learn” new sales skills. With rates going up and application volume dropping, “now they have the time to learn,” Cunningham said.
