How Can Loan Officers Boost Their Year with This One Simple Trick?

It’s Time Well Spent

Have you heard of “Time Logging?” I do it once a year, for two to six weeks in a row, and I can tell you the dividends from doing so far outweigh the effort that’s required to do it.

What is “Time Logging?”

From when you start work until the moment you stop for the day, log everything you do in 30-minute increments. That includes weekends or even the time spent when you go back to work after putting the kids to bed. If you work on something for 30 minutes or longer, write it down!

“Will it be difficult?”

Sure, but so are a lot of undertakings. Relatively speaking, this really isn’t all that bad. In the Leadership 360 coaching program, we use a detailed spreadsheet to log the time, but you could also do this as a Word document.

“How’s it going to help?”

At the end of two weeks, or for however long you do it, you’ll have an inventory of the activities you say yes to throughout your day. It’s important not to cheat with your logging because the devil is in the details. Don’t wait several hours to write something down. Do it as soon as possible.

 “How’s it going to help?”

Figure out your hourly rate of pay. Let’s say you want to work 50 weeks yearly and take two weeks off. If you worked 40 hours per week, it would equate to 2,000 hours per year. Let’s also say you want to make $500,000 as a loan originator. Divide that by 2,000 hours, and you have $250 as your hourly pay rate.

Whether you realize it or not, you’re already being paid by the hour. The difference is that in this business; your hourly rate directly correlates to the activities you’re saying yes to.

 “And then?”

Grab a red and a green highlighter. Highlight in green the things you would pay someone $250 an hour to do, and highlight in red the things you wouldn’t. For every item you highlight in red, you must ask yourself why you’re doing it. It’s the equivalent of underpaying yourself.

The list of red items now becomes the job description for the next person you hire on your team. Every successful person in this business has, over time, made their job description very small, focusing only on things that will pay them the appropriate rate of pay and steering clear of the activities that lower it.

Try this exercise. I think you’ll find it very effective.

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Remember that while numbers are quantitative, a good loan officer can also make them relative.