Reflecting Specific Needs, Sales Goals

Private-labeled customized sales training programs have an advantage because they represent the voice of the company and thus have a bigger impact, some of those providing that education say.
Dale Vermillion, the founder of Vermillion Consulting Inc., explained, “We get to know our clients so well in a customized training environment that we speak their language, we understand their processes, we understand the acronyms they use and the terminologies.
“So when we roll out the training, everything is geared toward that client.”
Customized sales training programs gives originators the right tools in order to fix the areas with the biggest problems. Off-the-shelf programs might not address an individual’s or a company’s specific needs.
Many times, he said, managers pooh-pooh the off-the-shelf program as generic and possibly not even specific to mortgage originations.
While his business is picking up, Vermillion talks to people who say they are so busy with refinancings that they will worry about sales training after rates go up.
That is too late, he declared, adding, “If you wait until rates go up, you may not have a business to run anymore.”
So Vermillion is preparing clients not only to sell in this market, but also to sell in the market is coming, with techniques that work in a rising rate environment.
Atlanta-based Xinnix provides “flexibility to our customers and the understanding that our content is applicable to every company in the market but if there are any minor customization,” it is willing to work with the client, said its president Casey Cunningham.
For example, Xinnix has a template for a business plan. Client SunTrust Mortgage calls it “a PDP, a personal and professional development plan.”
In creating a custom training program, Vermillion said his firm interviews the client on its business to find out what its needs are, what its challenges are and what it sees as the strengths and weaknesses in the organization.
From that, Vermillion Consulting will work up a proposal that discusses the areas that need to be addressed. For example, its program for converting leads into loans will be tailored each of the different lead sources a company might use. This brings a whole lot more impact to the training.
In some cases, Vermillion Consulting goes in to a company’s office and spends the whole day looking at all aspects of the operation including marketing, sales approach, product line, positioning, culture and management philosophy.
Doing that allows the firm to report to the client these are the things it is doing well and these are the things it recommends “we come in and help build training and consulting together to help you get where you want to be,” Vermillion said.
“We believe in a holistic approach to training, so it is multifaceted.” For its customized clients Vermillion Consulting will combine live training seminars, training manuals, reinforcement materials and follow-up seminars. There are all kinds of distinctive ways it works with clients.
Then, what makes Vermillion Consulting unique, he continued, is that it provides consulting services in conjunction with the training.
Vermillion says he draws on his experience in the mortgage business, from his time as loan officer up through being the president of a national mortgage company. So this translates into being able to work with a company’s management team on how to manage the business to match the sales training being provided.
Training can be customized to the type of operation a lender has, no matter if it is a call center or an outside sales team. Leadership training can also be customized based on the management level.
“The one thing we focus on as a company is behavioral change. It is to take the clients and not just give them short-term that has a short-term impact that just goes back to normal behavior, but to truly change behavior,” Vermillion said.
“We’re building a sales system and a management system for our clients that they can follow and that they can apply.”
Vermillion Consulting is now the exclusive trainer for LendingTree. When it trains LendingTree clients, Vermillion not only trains them on converting LendingTree leads, but converting leads from other sources as well such as Google, direct mail or broadcast advertising. The program discusses the nuances in each approach.
SunTrust Mortgage has renewed its corporate partnership agreement with Xinnix for a third year to provide sales training and leadership training.
Originally, the sales training program for the lender had been classroom based, but now Xinnix offers a private-label version of its Edge Online program.
Cunningham said her firm allows certain lenders, based on their size or volume, to private label the Edge Online. SunTrust calls the program “Sales Masters for Loan Officers.”
There has been some customization to the program so it applies to SunTrust’s needs “and help them create a sales culture of accountability, which was their ambition,” she said.
Vermillion Consulting co-brands the training and puts the client’s logos on the materials, so it looks for all intents and purposes like an in-house program. For the employees, they feel it has depth and that it is about their firm, so they are more apt to apply it quicker, Dale Vermillion said.
At the beginning of the relationship, SunTrust put Xinnix through a due diligence period, Cunningham recalled, while putting people through the Edge and leadership training courses.
“They found that it applied to their company and asked me if they could private label. We completely embraced that with them, because we wanted to help them have a recruiting advantage in the marketplace as well as have a customized product that specifically fit their needs,” she said.
Even though SunTrust has put its own stamp on the online training program, the title still includes the words “powered by Xinnix.”
Cunningham notes Xinnix still controls the content. “It is our content, they have not purchased our product, they have just private-labeled it.”
The leadership program also started with classroom delivery for SunTrust but is now delivered online, she said.
As part of the corporate partnership program, Cunningham speaks on their sales conference calls once a month, on the specific topics the lender has chosen to help reinforce the content. There are also video messages sent out every month as well.
Cunningham has done one-on-one private training with Sterling Edmunds, the president and chief executive of SunTrust Mortgage so he understood the program. In turn, Edmunds is one of the members of Xinnix’s newly created nine member advisory board.
In 2011, Xinnix will be doing webinars specifically for SunTrust and its leadership team. The topics will be related to things already learned, but the goal is to “reinforce it in a different format and take it deeper into the company,” Cunningham said.
The advantages of online training over classroom training are that it saves travel costs and other expenses, she said. In addition, online is more effective because users can take it in “bite-size chunks, go implement it and come back.”
From SunTrust’s perspective, Xinnix had a strong reputation in the southeastern part of the country, Edmunds said. “We had a desire to expand our training, especially sales training and sales management training” and felt Xinnix would be the best fit.
Originally, SunTrust physically sent its loan officers to Atlanta to get trained. But as the company grew, it found there were limitations, including the time lost from work.
Edmunds described the program as facilitated online training, which is interactive and prescriptive on the tasks it requires the loan officers to perform.
Leadership training is important because managers need to understand what the loan officers are learning. In this way, the managers can support what the loan officers learn as well as hold them accountable.
“A lot of loan officers, they’ve got a lot of natural sales ability, they are willing to work very hard. But they need to know the plan in order to really unlock that inner talent as loan officers,” he said.
The result of teaming with Xinnix: More of SunTrust’s loan officers are doing the right things that will ultimately produce more loans and produce a better customer experience for our client, Edmunds said.
Tailoring the program for SunTrust under the Sales Masters banner, he said, means it has a lot of the company’s culture embedded in it. “It is tailored to our company, it is not just off the shelf,” Edmunds said.