Tops, Spinning

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Tops, Spinning

VINCENT M. VALVO Publisher, Editor & CEO

Being in sales means being permanently on a roller coaster of emotion. Close a deal and there’s a rush of joy. Lose a deal and there’s a sinking of the stomach. Over time, you learn to cope, to balance the highs and lows and figure out how to stay motivated. It’s not easy. At a networking cocktail event one night, there were a few of us sales reps from several companies commiserating. One fellow, close to retirement, was dispensing sage wisdom. One that stuck with me was when he said, “I think everyone here knows the peril of counting a sale too soon. There’s nothing worse than thinking the deal is done, and counting on it being closed, only to have it fall apart. Just remember: a deal is never done until it’s done.”

That’s certainly true for individual deals. But it’s even more true for an entire career in sales. Sometimes we hit a hot streak. But rather than recognizing it for the temporary boon it is, we confuse it for an ongoing likelihood. We count a whole bunch of future deals before they’re done.

It’s a problem a whole lot of mortgage originators are suddenly facing.

STAYING AT THE SUMMIT

We’ve just come off not just a bright-and-shiny year for mortgage originations, but a supernova one. Many originators have never seen a year this good (or this non-stop busy). The commissions are rolling the door. And the consensus is that most, if not all, of 2021 is going to be a smorgasbord of money all over again.

But, caught up in head-spinning success, wise originators should always remember that this is not a typical market. And that means that, if they’d like to see their incomes stay up in the stratosphere, they need to start planning now how they’re going to do that.

In the Broadway musical Evita, based on the stratospheric political popularity of Argentina’s Eva Peron, there is a song titled “High Flying Adored.” It’s all about how she found success so fast, and so young, that she had little to look forward to. “So famous so easily / So soon / It’s not the wisest thing to be,” it warns, before admonishing that “All the young who’ve / Made it / Would agree.”

Veteran originators may recognize the temporal nature of the mortgage marketplace. Newer brokers may not. So let’s be clear: a fortunate market helps, but it does take skill and smarts to get to the top of the heap. It just takes a lot more to stay there.

VINCENT M. VALVO Publisher, Editor & CEO