Branch manager on the lookout for 'productive, innovative finishers'

The key to finding and shaping the best mortgage team is targeting young professionals with specific qualities, according to an industry educator

The key to finding and shaping the best mortgage team is targeting young professionals with specific qualities, according to an industry educator.
 
Chad Melin,  branch manager of Academy Mortgage’s Maricopa, Arizona location, which happens to have the second highest market share after Wells Fargo, says the key to building his successful team of 100 was locating young professionals that had specific qualities he termed a PIK – a productive, innovative, finisher.
 
Once he finds people with these certain qualities, he puts them through intense training and development under an in-house training school that prepares them to educate others in the future.
 
He says that as the mortgage professional industry ages, it is more and more difficult to find people who are willing to teach others. That is why he is devoting his time to build a productive team he knows will be productive, not only now, but in the future.  Melin was a graduate of education, in his earlier days.
 
Out of the eight branches in Maricopa, Arizona, Academy produced US $ 53m loans (261 loans) in May 2013 alone, more than half of Wells Fargo, which produced US $83m (345 loans) during the month.