The wholesale mortgage industry in the first quarter of 2023 is experiencing significant headwinds. Even with four weeks of decreasing mortgage rates, volume has been unstable. As a result, more lenders are competing for a smaller pie. However, leading organizations are using this opportunity to improve their sales and marketing efficiency to gain a competitive advantage.
On the surface, many leading wholesale lenders are recognizing old school workflows no longer work in today’s market. Copying and pasting information from loan origination systems (LOS), checking Excel spreadsheets, and manually synching info into CRMs have become way too slow, error-prone, and labor-intensive. It has led to a generally poor customer experience.
To fight this, sales managers across the industry are looking to become a data-driven organization. But what does that really mean? To some, the plethora of CRM apps/tools/solutions/platforms is a smorgasbord of options to hyper-charge their account executives (AEs). A 2022 survey found that an average AE uses 4.7 different tools in their daily work.
On top of that, 46% of interviewed sales managers say they plan to add more tools to their stack this year. Only 10% say they’re looking to simplify. Here’s why that minority may be on to something:
More CRM tools means more stuff to manage (and pay for)
It’s a basic fact that more tools means more resources to make sure that they are operating at maximum capacity. If these tools are integrated – and 72% of those surveyed sales managers say they should – IT staff need to ensure the right data is showing up in the right place at the right time. Adding to that internal network results in more places where something could go wrong. Couple that with the fact that most CRM providers haven’t built solutions with wholesale mortgage workflows in mind, and the resulting burden falls on you. Reducing the number of tools helps keep your overall overhead down.
More CRM tools means more places to check for information
A wholesale mortgage AE has a variety of data points to manage. For a given broker, they have to track their loan volume, loan size, submission rates, and even personal information to maintain a close relationship. Growing their tech stack means relevant pieces of information may be stored in new places, causing pieces to fall through the cracks. AEs may enter into a call with an incomplete view of their broker’s current situation or, worse, lose out on business due to missing some behavioral red flags. Creating that holistic view with fewer tools helps AEs adapt more effectively to their book of business.
More CRM tools means less accurate data
The more places data is stored or referenced increases the likelihood of errors propagating through your tech stack. Even with strong data governance rules (e.g. who has the authority to enter/edit data, how is data presented to different users, etc.), one wrong entry in one system can lead to issues in others. This can lead to rate sheet pricing issues, slow or incorrect responses to loan scenarios, and inaccurate views of individual accounts. A simpler tech stack means better data integrity.
Streamlining your Wholesale Mortgage tech stacks
The desire to acquire more tools to assist your AEs is normal. However, many big-name CRM providers do not have wholesale-mortgage-specific options. As a result, many teams turned to cobbling together these tools into a passable solution for their AEs. That complexity, however, has led to poor user adoption and adherence. The issue has not been selecting the right mix of tools; it has been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
In 2023, look beyond nonspecific solutions and see what a CRM platform purpose-built for the wholesale mortgage industry can do. OptifiNow TPO is that CRM. It handles all aspects of sales and marketing management, from account and contact distribution to targeted email campaigns. Key features of OptifiNow TPO include mortgage LOS integrations, automated broker scoring, and automated rate sheet email campaigns.
If you’re curious to learn more about how a centralized CRM solution for wholesale mortgage can benefit your team, schedule a demo of OptifiNow TPO today!