Mortgage interest rates are at an all-time low right now as a result of COVID-19. In response, the number of people looking to refinance or purchase a home has skyrocketed. While this growing demand has likely been great for your business, chances are that your team - from your assistants to your loan officers - are overworked and on the verge of burning out. As a result, our sales team at Blueboard has actually seen a recent surge in mortgage broker clientele, including new partnerships with Bond Street Mortgage, Fairway Independent Mortgage, and Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
Although I currently work for Blueboard, I’ve been a licensed California real estate broker working with countless mortgage professionals over the last 18 years. I’ve seen firsthand how dangerous burnout can be to the productivity and well-being of teams in the lending industry. In this post, I’ll explain why it’s time to explore fresh ways to motivate your team and how Blueboard could be the right solution for your business.
Why it’s critical to find fresh ways to motivate your mortgage team
If you’re a broker-owner or branch manager, you’re likely juggling many priorities. Not only do you have your own book of business, but you’re also trying to recruit the best talent to your team, build a strong culture, and differentiate yourself from competitors. It’s a lot.
Now, with the added pressure of COVID-19, you may feel like you’re grasping at straws for a solution to prevent your team from burning out and keep them feeling appreciated - without sacrificing the amount of time you spend in your genius zone. Maybe you’re considering defaulting to the status quo of cash bonuses because it’s easy and scalable. But your team probably makes enough from commissions, so any additional money they receive will go straight to paying off bills or buying groceries. Not super meaningful.
You might also be thinking about gift cards. But these are boring, impersonal and, to be honest, feels like something they would receive over the holidays from an aunt or uncle who doesn’t know them very well.
This is your team - people you interact with almost every day and have come to develop close relationships with. They deserve something more personal.
So, in short, you need to find an employee recognition solution that:
1) saves you time
2) is unique enough to differentiate your business from other competitors and
3) makes your team members feel personally recognized and motivated.
That’s where Blueboard comes in.
Why Blueboard is the best solution for rewarding your lending team
Blueboard is all about bringing personal, memorable, and shareable experiences to your team. You or your designated assistant can send rewards in less than 30 seconds through our centralized recognition platform. From there, rewarded team members browse through our menu of experiential employee rewards, which contains everything from in-home experiences like indulging in that Peloton bike to out-in-the-world adventures like Michelin star dining, golf trips, and bucket list travel adventures (like that national park RV trip you’ve been craving during quarantine). And once they choose their favorite, they’ll work 1:1 with a dedicated personal Concierge who handles all the planning, payment, and logistics.
There are other key features of our platform that makes sending meaningful sales rewards easy and exciting for mortgage teams:
Multiple levels of sales rewards
We offer eight reward levels that accommodate a wide range of budgets - starting from $150 to over $25,000. This means that our reward offerings are flexible and can be utilized in many different scenarios - whether that’s giving an assistant or loan processor a lower-value reward as a “thank you” gift for their hard work or in celebration of an anniversary milestone or using higher-value rewards for recruiting, sales incentives, or as your version of a President’s Club.
Easy to send
You might be internally groaning and thinking about all the time and logistics that have to go into planning and distributing a single reward. Think again! Our platform is designed to be simple and intuitive. It takes less than 30 seconds to get a Blueboard reward into your employee’s inbox.
Flexible reward approval process
If you’re interested in having an approval process for sending sales rewards, our platform lets you customize a workflow to make the approval process quick and easy. For instance, you can have your assistant approve and distribute rewards or queue them up for your quick review.
Launch kit & marketing support
We recognize that it takes a lot of heavy lifting from a marketing perspective to launch a new program or initiative. That’s why our team is here to support you with this process. Whether that’s helping you plan a contest, developing a co-branded announcement landing page, or strategizing ways to build anticipation and excitement, our team will make sure that your launch is a success.
And the best part? All of these marketing services are packaged in our standard service fee - no add-on fees needed to bring your program to life.
How to reward your mortgage team with Blueboard
So what exactly would Blueboard look like in action? We offer rewards to support a variety of programs and use cases for any celebration - and will help you craft a recognition program that makes sense for your business. To get the wheels turning, below are four specific use cases for consideration:
Spot recognition:
When someone on your team goes above and beyond - whether that’s crushing their metrics, gracefully handling a challenging client, or staying up late to finish paperwork - you want to recognize them in a timely, personalized way.
Referrals:
One of the most challenging aspects of being a broker-owner is retention and recruiting. This means that it’s critical to have a talent pipeline ready to go. Referrals can save you time and come with tons of other benefits. But you need to give people a reason to bring in talent from their network. Blueboard rewards are a great way to incentivize and recognize those who are making an effort to help grow the team.
President’s Club:
If you want to truly motivate your top performers, you may consider investing in a President’s Club. With Blueboard, our President’s Club looks a bit different from what’s traditionally been done. Instead of sending your top people on a group trip to Hawaii, we let them choose their own individualized, high-end experience that fulfills their unique passions and interests. It’s a great way to recognize your best performers without adding extra work to your plate and a fantastic alternative to group trips since those are off the table with COVID-19.
Anniversary awards:
Blueboard gives you the opportunity to celebrate those achieving tenure milestones with ease. With our Anniversary Engine platform, you’ll have the opportunity to upload employee start dates and automatically send rewards of your choosing as that date nears—we’ll notify you when you have an anniversary coming up and make sure the reward gets sent out on their anniversary date automatically (so you don’t have to stress about forgetting anyone’s special day).
During these busy and high-pressure times, it’s easy to put your team’s needs on the back burner. But doing so could lose you top talent and weaken the company culture you’ve worked so hard to build. Instead, use this time to think of fresh and innovative ways to motivate and celebrate your team and consider how Blueboard can help you in that journey.
If you’re curious to learn more about Blueboard and how to level up your incentive program, grab a copy or our sales incentive toolkit. For more information about Blueboard rewards and experiences, request a demo today!
