Find out his secrets to success
If Matt Weaver (pictured) wasn’t an originator, he could make a serious go as a professional coach or a management consultant. The VP at Cross Country Mortgage, in Boca Raton, has built a highly successful practice around intentionality, scalability, and a highly specialized team. He’s found his niche in dedicated service to real estate agents and uses a well-organized team to execute on his goals.
Weaver’s focus is dedicated to purchase business, facilitated by a team of specialists that “stay in their lane.” While Weaver leads sales operations and stays involved with his wider team, his analytical-minded team members do diligence work, his relationship-minded team members prospect for new clients, and his closers focus on getting deals finalized. It’s a systematized arrangement that Weaver believes leaves every member of his team more satisfied with their work. To hear him say it, they’re all giddy about what they get to do.
“If you take a look at a typical loan originators life, it’s not pleasant,” Weaver said. “They have multiple hats they have to wear, they have multiple personalities, which in turn doesn’t allow them to really work at their best. You can take a look at the loan origination process from beginning to end. Within that there are a lot of different lanes that we’ve created. We’ve segmented our process so our team members can stay in their specific lane and do what they do best.”
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Not only does this segmented process make Weaver and his team members happier, it makes them more efficient. In a 2020 defined by incredibly slow turn times, more than a quarter of Weaver’s purchase loans closed in 15 days or less. He was able to take over a midstream transaction on December 21 and close it on December 30.
Some of that speed is because while so many originators ran to the refi boom last year, Weaver largely ran in the opposite direction: towards his real estate partners and their purchase business. While he dedicated a small channel of his business to handle any refis that came his way, he directed the vast majority of his resources to purchases, meaning that when so many originators were too swamped by refis for quick turns on a purchase, Weaver could deliver those loans with incredible speed.
Weaver avoids the temptation of refi booms by focusing on his passion. He is passionate about the purchase business and said he enjoys the “win” of tackling a complex purchase and succeeding for his real estate agent partners more than just counting commissions on refis.
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Weaver doesn’t think his particular niche and focus is for everyone. While he doesn’t necessarily seek out financial advisors as referral partners, for example, he’s not about to knock that as a model for another originator. What he thinks can be applied more universally, however, is a deep assessment of the team’s mission and goals. In addition, he thinks originators should determine the tasks each of their team members is best at and systematize processes accordingly. Going into what will likely be both a busy and fast-changing year, he believes taking a structured approach built around well-planned processes can be the key to consistency and success for originators.
“If you think of some of the best restaurants that we all love to go to, we love them because of their consistency,” Weaver said. “Their food follows a recipe and for us the recipe is the script. Agents could see the new lender coming into town with all the neon lights and shiny objects but they’ll always find their way back to our restaurant because they know exactly what they’re going to get each and every time. Consistency is our thing.”
