My goal in this article is to get you to do and say things, on a daily basis, which will bring you face-to-face with your desired outcomes and goals as quickly as possible. Have you ever gone "inside the numbers" in your mortgage origination business? Is it boring and maybe tedious to go inside the numbers? What is going on inside the numbers anyway? If you've ever watched sports on television, you know what "inside the numbers" means. Every sport involves numbers in one way or another. If you take any superstar athlete, you will find that numbers play a gigantic role in their success. The numbers not only tell us how great they are, they also tell us why they are so great. Jerry Rice, one of the National Football League's best receivers of all time, catches between 100 to 300 footballs per day in practice. He is outstanding on the field because he is outstanding off the field. He is outstanding off the field because he works the numbers. There's not an athlete, a politician, a business executive, a salesperson, a doctor, a lawyer, a musician, an astronaut, or anyone else for that matter who has achieved outstanding success without consistently working numbers in one form or another. When I say working the numbers, I mean that you must track, evaluate, measure and improve processes in order to improve your numbers. This is "numbers discipline."

In fact, everything we do in life involves numbers. It's a way of keeping track and measuring so that we can see where we're at and evaluate our growth. It's a way of deciding how well, or how poorly, we are doing and more importantly, what adjustments we need to make to reach our personal goals. The numbers will always be with us whether we like it or not. They say that "numbers don't lie." You can run, but you can't hide. If numbers with dollar signs in front of them had a family tree, this tree would consist of lots of numbers that are associated with action. I call them action numbers. Action numbers eventually become numbers with dollar signs in front of them. Action numbers have a way of migrating us towards our success, income, and profits.

So why doesn't everyone work these numbers consistently? More than any other reason, I believe it's because of lack of leadership and management. I'm talking about lack of both personal management as well as a lack of supervisory management. If you have loan originators working for you, it's up to you to assist and coach them and make sure the numbers are being tracked. I promise you that if you implement a system of daily success, tracking consistently, production will increase. If you are a loan originator and your manager doesn't work with you to help you increase your own production, then you can implement this on your own. Every successful person that I've met in my life is tenacious with the successful tracking of numbers. They know where they are, they know where they've been, and they know where they're going. They are fiercely disciplined in the art and science of this knowledge.

It's important for managers to take a strong stance on managing their teams. Managers need to take control and make sure that this "numbers game" is being played every day. For the numbers to add the most value, they must be tied to key measures in your business. Basically, any number that adds value and service to your customers is a key number. For example, the time it takes your customer to receive a credit report, or the time it takes to get their loan approval, are both key numbers because they add better service to your customers. It's almost impossible to track and measure key measures consistently and not produce loans. If you work this right, loans will come! If you have a loan originator in your office that's not producing, I have found that 99 percent of the time it's because they're not working the numbers game. They're not tracking and evaluating their numbers or they're not tracking and evaluating the right numbers. For example, if you're tracking the time that you arrive at your office in the morning, you may have gotten there 75 times within the last 100 days before 8:00 AM. That number is not as important as how many quality prospecting calls you've made within the last 100 days.

You might say that some loan originators are doing very well without keeping track of these micro activity numbers. If that's true, I promise you that this originator is doing the things and saying things necessary to effectively produce loans without physically keeping track. They are, however, keeping track in their minds. They are taking the actions necessary to meet their production goals without the arduous job of keeping track, at least on paper or electronically. However, be careful not to assume this for everyone. The people, who can keep a tracking system in their head with all of the interruptions and potential interruptions of our day, are a rare breed indeed. Tracking your time using daily success tracking sheets or something similar is not only for those loan originators just getting started, but for all loan originators who want to take their business to a new level. Even for the most seasoned professionals, these tracking sheets produce control and growth for that next level. I believe the biggest cause of failing for some originators who want to go to the next level, is lack of defining and implementing a new system. If an originator is closing $20 million a year and wants to go to $40 million, their current system must be added to and adjusted to allow for the increased production. A $40 million system won't happen unless new ideas, tools, and strategies are added to the $20 million system.

It's like working out at the gym. You see people there with different charts they follow to keep them on track. Most health club trainers get their clients to follow these tracking sheets to support them with discipline and keep them on track with knowing what to do next. After using these workout charts for a few months, many people quit using them because the exercises on the charts become memorized through repetition. I maintain that these charts can assist even the most seasoned professional only if the charts are developed to support their particular level. The chart may have to be adjusted, but the concept is still the same. Cause yourself to do the daily activities that will bring you face-to-face with your outcomes and goals.