Mortgage lenders once attracted a new customer and maintained that relationship with face-to-face engagement through their most crucial life events. Customer trust was built through rapport and recurring meetings.
The game has changed.
Today’s salespeople have to master the art of using best-of-breed technology to maintain consistent contact while still providing the human touch consumers desire.
The industry is flooded with high-powered brands who are winning over customers with streamlined customer experiences, multi-channel engagement and personalized messaging. It’s time to level up your strategic efforts to exceed consumers’ expectations in the digital era.
Total Expert Founder & CEO Joe Welu and High Trust Founder & CEO Todd Duncan detail what it takes to stand out from the pack and outlast your competition.
Interview with Todd Duncan and Joe Welu
Todd: So I think the biggest disruption right now is trust. When you look at worldwide confusion around trust-
Joe: Because there’s such a lack of it.
Todd: There’s such a lack of it, right? When you look at where the opportunity lies for a company, to your question, the thing that I would really square up on as a leader is, “what is my disruptive value proposition? How am I actually bringing real value that is not replicated anywhere else?” I’m not trying to catch up with somebody. I’m using my own innovative skills. I’m using my leadership team’s innovative skills. We want to package us in a way that is unique and disruptive. And, If we can do that in the world in which we are facing all of these shifts with technology, some bad, some not used, some great, some adopted highly. If we can do that, then we have an unfair competitive advantage. Here’s who doesn’t have an unfair competitive advantage – he who has no value – the company that doesn’t have any value.
Joe: Absolutely powerful statement.
Todd: Yeah.
Joe: It is. And if you think about the biggest disruption opportunity being trust, it makes a lot of sense. If you think about the last cycle, if you will, the crash, the deceptive practices, there’s still a lot of hangover from that with consumers having a lack of confidence in lenders. And we see that in terms of all the compliance rules that we have to help our customers work through in the messaging and how they’re communicating with customers, but it’s … The cause of all of … a lot of that was just the sheer disaster that was caused from the last crash and consumers still have that in their minds. And I think the companies that can lead with trust and getting customers to connect with them in a way to where they don’t have that fear, that is truly a disruptor.
Todd: And you have to make that decision because you don’t have to be untrustworthy to be distrusted as a sector.
Joe: You can just be guilty by association.
Todd: You can be in a sector that is distrusted and by association you are distrusted.
Joe: So you really have to … I mean, that’s a great point because you really have to go above and beyond and actually have a plan – as a company and as an organization – that you’re going to take at a leadership level and roll out if you’re really going to get ahead of that because you are guilty by association.
Todd: Exactly.
Joe: And, you’re also at the mercy of a lot of independent salespeople who are used to doing things one way, so if you don’t have a plan to get ahead of that, you’re not going to be positioned well over the next couple of years.
Todd: You will be deselected, sadly.
Joe: Deselected, very. From your side of the equation, you guys spend a lot of time and focus on high trust. From our side, we spend a lot of focus on the technology side, so really the blend between high trust and high tech and the fact that you’re not going to be a successful organization or a successful originator without both. I think it’s something we both agree on but love to get your feedback.
Todd: When the human connection comes into play and when trust is the leading force that an organization has, an individual has, and it is blended with technology, you get this kind of spin up. And I think for mortgage leaders, for managers, the beauty between high trust and high tech coming together is that you actually can create a phenomenon that allows your organization to convert more emotion and more heart and more brain cells to the transaction. So, the beauty of tech and trust coming together is that everything that every mortgage leader wants is going to happen – faster.
