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With much of the mortgage industry still grounded, I’ve been reflecting on how much things have changed since the ‘good old days.” Not only the “good old days” pre-pandemic when we could freely meet and greet one another but also long before we had so many tools to use to connect us when we are not together face-to-face. Tools in which looking back, weren’t all that “good” in keeping us engaged and connected.
Conferences have gone virtual, sales calls are literal house calls, mortgage trade publications are now hosting webinar ‘demo’ days to connect lenders with the latest vendor technology and companies are team building remotely through instant messenger.
This is quite the shift from the planes, trains and automobiles we used to crowd each and every week to do business. Back when I was starting out in mortgage, phone tag and office visits in suits with presentations printed and pulled out of brief cases were the name of the game. When is the last time you stopped at a 711 to use a payphone to get directions? It’s fun to think back but grateful not to go back to that.
We are all clamoring for it to be safe to return to ‘normal,’ no longer social distancing and attending one of the industry’s grand networking events, What I have come to realize from my home office, is that these new ways we are connecting have added a great deal of personal interaction to the way do business in between all our in person visits.
I know much more about my colleagues from other offices through our company’s Daily Quiz posted in Slack, launched when all our LoanLogics associates were asked to work from home. David’s family is almost as big as Sharon’s garden bounty. So many have had a notable 15 minutes of fame and/or have big plans for retirement.
Our teams are picking up the video – not phone- more often. Sure, Facetime and webcams have been around for years but who really used them with clients and even their colleagues for a simple check in?! Kudos if you were. In my role, performing product demos to those interested in LoanLogics’ solutions, those groups can now see me and I them when we’re physically remote from one another. Well, they can at least see my crisp blue LoanLogics Polo shirt, not the possibly wrinkled shorts they are so well paired with while working from home.
We’re also seeing more literal faces during webinars. My colleagues just gave a webinar on the impact the pandemic is having on loan quality to The Mortgage Collaborative last month with their home offices taking center stage, as they presented.
Company budgets can allow more industry professionals to attend events and education when they’re virtual. There is certainly a lot more opportunity for vendors to participate in that too. LoanLogics has already signed up for Housingwire’s July 20th demo day to showcase our latest doc processing technology. (Stay tuned for more info that.)
The pandemic may have restricted our physical connections, for now, but aside from the occasional “Can you hear and see me now?,” we’re asking over Go To Meeting, we’re certainly connecting a lot more personally and frequently with one another and that’s something to be encouraged by as we look towards what’s next.
Be sure to check out my previous “Hey Boomer” posts from earlier this year. Here’s a link to my first post which discussed how reverifications were once done.
