We have eight people on our pre-approval team who are far more diligent and academic than I ever was, who know lending guidelines 100x better than I ever did, and who are simply smarter than I am in many ways.
I share that because numerous agents replied to my blog Monday about Big Teams Reigning Supreme – and asked me something to the effect of “how do big teams help clients?”
Our team’s specialized expertise is just one way, as there are very few if any loan officers who could ever provide the information and the airtight pre-approvals that our pre-approval team does (I know I personally could have never matched their expertise).
PILES OF STICKY NOTES AND ANGRY CLIENTS
Back in my loan officer days, I would consistently get two to three times more referrals than I could even begin to handle – despite having three assistants.
My office was piled high (literally) with sticky notes and phone messages from angry clients that I was not able to call back.
I was clearly a bottleneck and could not begin to maintain desired service levels – until I expanded my team.
With our large team now, we can guarantee 60-minute response times (something I never could have done back in my loan officer days).
LOWER RATES
And lastly – we are able to offer much lower rates to our clients because our team setup allows us to do so much more volume without having to bake commissions into every transaction.
In summary – our large team offers (1) far more expertise; (2) far faster response times – particularly when business surges – and better service overall; and (3) lower rates.
REAL ESTATE TEAMS
We work with many extremely successful real estate teams and some not-so-successful teams.
The successful teams seem to have similar specialization, and given that most blog readers are agents themselves they know the roles: (1) attentive, knowledgeable and aggressive selling agents; (2) superstar listing agent(s); and (3) skilled lead takers, marketers, stagers, transaction coordinators, etc.
The team leaders run their operations just like a business – in it for the long haul, as opposed to just generating volume – and they seem more willing to share the wealth (as opposed to paying their staff “Jimmy Johns wages” – a phrase I stole from one of the responses I got yesterday 😊).
One team leader in particular told me how proud he is because most of his specialists have much higher incomes on his team than they did when they were on their own because he is so good at generating volume.
Anyway – the successful teams appear to be great for their clients because the clients we work with are very happy; the clients continue to come back and refer others; and the teams themselves continually grow organically and not just as a result of high-powered marketing.
I am no real estate expert obviously, but I do think well-run teams are definitely good for clients.
I also welcome more feedback.
Jay Voorhees
Founder/Broker | JVM Lending
(855) 855-4491 | DRE# 1197176, NMLS# 310167
