Myth #2- Our sales team needs access to the fulfillment team to better manage their pipelines.
Believe it or not, I still hear this statement from Managers—typically within tier-2 lenders that either have not made the mental jump to "bigger and better" as far growing and improving the business or who are operating from an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" perspective. Having come up through the ranks from sales through middle-management, I understand the argument. I disagree with it, but I get it. Managers at the mid-level are looking to keep ahead of their daily fires and keep complaints to a minimum—not to rock the boat by changing the fulfillment environment. Unfortunately, the first place executives present ideas, such as centralization, is to their middle-managers for "buy-in," which doesn't happen. Again, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." In attempting to keep the sales force content and help push the pipeline, managers push to maintain (read "control") localized processing and even underwriting. While this approach may seem to work in a smaller environment, in actuality, it is extremely inefficient and becomes more evident as the company grows.
Why? When a sales and operations team are placed together, a blending occurs that causes everyone to lose focus on their core responsibility. Sales spends time in processing and underwriting trying to push loans through. Processing stops working on multiple files to focus on the one file attached to the "squeaky wheel." Underwriting stops analyzing loans to spend 10 to 15 minutes discussing a loan that was declined with an originator. Multiply that by four loans and one underwriter has lost an hour of productivity each day. Centralization combined with the right workflow and communication process can maximize efficiency and eliminate the sacrifice of communication to the sales team. As a company, centralizing enables you to properly load-balance fulfillment volumes across multiple sales centers and also to standardize the processes across your lending footprint, which further improves efficiency and reduces errors.
(to be continued)
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