At first glance, it may seem like there aren’t any similarities between a Major League Baseball team and your small commercial mortgage lender. However, if you look a little more closely, you’ll see that succeeding in the mortgage industry and mastering America’s pastime both require strategy, the right mix of talent, and knowledge of the fundamentals. So, if your small commercial mortgage lender was a baseball team, what positions would the employees play? And how do you fit into this team?

• Mortgage brokers are the starting pitchers. You play a crucial role on any mortgage team, just as starting pitchers do in a baseball game. You make first contact with the borrower and set the tone for the deal, just as each hurler does when they take the mound at the start of the game. Given this crucial role, it’s important for brokers to stay focused and work with the rest of their team to make sure each deal closes.

• Your sales representative is the catcher. The relationship between a pitcher and a catcher is of the utmost importance in the game of baseball. It requires a lot of trust and excellent communication skills on both sides to build the rhythm necessary for successful outings and a winning record. This applies equally to you and your sales representative. In order to get borrowers the commercial mortgages they need, you and your sales rep need to build a good relationship, and you both need to trust and listen to each other.

• The underwriting team is the veteran utility player. If a baseball team is lucky, they have at least one veteran player who capably does their job on the field and inside the batter’s box. These players doesn’t always get the attention they deserve for making key plays and knowing where to place the ball to best benefit their teams offensively, but they’re an integral part of the lineup. Likewise, a mortgage lender’s underwriting department does a lot of behind the scenes work to move a deal forward. Without the underwriters, many problems would go unsolved, and deals wouldn’t be able to progress.

• Department managers are your base coaches. A team’s base coaches are incredibly important. Their job is to guide the team offensively to score as many runs as possible. They’re responsible for giving runners the go ahead to steal or take an extra base, but they’re also there to pump the breaks when things look too risky. Likewise, the department managers at a small commercial mortgage company are the guiding force throughout the lending process. They steer their teams in the right direction in order to get your good deals closed.

• The processing team is the power hitter. Just about every baseball team has one player in its lineup whose sole job when at the plate is to knock the ball out of the park (or at least deep into the outfield). Power hitters need a keen eye and an excellent intuition about what’s coming at them. Likewise, the processors need to pay close attention to detail when working to close a loan and the ability to see problems coming from a distance so that they can be solved quickly. Once these issues are rectified, it’s easy for the processing team to knock your deal out of the park.

To win a game, each member of a baseball team must do their job, and all of the players need to work together. Likewise, when working to close a mortgage, each member of a small commercial mortgage team needs to play his or her part. If everyone cooperates, every good loan you submit should be a home run.

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