In this podcast episode, David Lykken, Richard Grieser, and Jodi Hall discuss the factors that distinguish successful from unsuccessful technology rollouts in the mortgage industry. They emphasize that successful rollouts are driven by strong leadership focused on solving specific problems, effective and accountable vendor partnerships, and continuous evaluation of technology to ensure it meets business needs. Jodi highlights the importance of understanding unique lender requirements and selecting reliable vendors, while Richard underscores the need for comprehensive training plans and best practices. Both stress the importance of maintaining a culture of innovation and regularly challenging existing technology to ensure it delivers expected results and remains aligned with industry standards.
Difference Between a Successful Rollout of New Technology with Richard Grieser of Truv and Jodi Hall of DandaRoad LLC
[David] Jodi and Richard, it’s such a joy to have the two of you here. A couple of my favorite people because of your professionalism, how you operate and how you work. And I’m really excited to have you share your thoughts with us now, Richard, you’re at a conference right now. Give us a little background on that and your journey and the conference you’re at. I’d love to hear that.
[Richard] I’m at conferences all the time David, our company’s Truv. That’s where I’m at right now. I’m VP of marketing and truth. And I was at sales boomerang originally. That’s how you and I first met.
[David] That’s how you and I met. As I said in the bio. Yeah. Yeah.
[Richard] Yeah. I’ve been conference hopping in mortgage for a very long time. This one’s in a different vertical, but I’m doing what I do, spreading the word, getting the news out there, showing how lenders and everybody, how we save 80% against the incumbent.
[David] There’s the soundbite. That’s what we want to hear. And you’re so smart to partner with my dear friend, Jodi Hall. Jodi is just one of those brilliant people. When I first met her, like you did, you just fell in love with it. And it’s her brain, the way it’s wired, because she values process. She is what’s a high premium on process, Jodi, tell us a little bit about your journey. You and I just met here for the last year or so. But man, I feel like I’ve known you all along, all my life. It’s just because of the kindred spirits and your focus.
[Jodi] Yeah, I’ve been hidden away as a lender for quite a few years. So operating mortgage companies and not getting out from behind the curtain very often
[David] So glad you’re getting out from behind that curtain and letting the industry get to know you.
[Jodi] Yeah, I tell everyone that I’m a recovering lender. But no, I am very much passionate about the industry and it’s been exciting to meet you, David and also Richard and it hasn’t been too long ago since we met, but the synergies are in that it feels like we have been friends and colleagues in this industry for many years and I think that when you say you fell in love with me, people really like versions of themselves and I will also say, I don’t think that anyone has described me as professional before. I have opinions. No, they might not always come out professional.
[David] Oh, no, that’s what I love about you. But when I say professional, I’m talking about, you are committed to this industry and you have a vision of where you see things should be and you’re working on some of the most exciting projects. So I’m so glad you teamed up with Richard and not surprising at all. So Jodi, the first question I have is for you. What is the process that most lenders follow when selecting tech and is it working? It’s not a rhetorical question because it’s so much,
[Jodi] It’s a loaded question for sure. Interestingly enough, I feel that most lenders are very busy operating the business. They are not technicians. They don’t have time to dig into what is out there and oftentimes they’re making decision based on Richard says this all the time. The fear of missing out. So yeah, about the bright new, shiny object that a peer has used and they often lean on social media and who’s talking the most about what and they say, let’s go try that or if it’s a sales process and you get a salesperson that, you gravitate towards because salespeople love to be sold and a lot of the owners of mortgage companies come from that sales background and they love to be sold. So, it could be the number of doughnuts that they get at the office and they really like the sales person. So they make the decision. They make the decision based on the fear of missing out because someone else is doing it and a lot of our distributed retail IMBs are making decisions based on what will least impact my branches, because the branches want to operate almost as a franchise of a lender and the decisions that are made at the top of the house are not always decisions they want to make, but decisions they feel compelled to make because they feel that pressure and not wanting to lose business from their branches.
[David] That’s one of the things I love about you. You’ve run successful mortgage companies and we’re all seeing the growth of technology, the choice of the right technology and the successful companies that are out there, ones that are choosing well are succeeding. Ones that are choosing poorly are getting buried in cost. That’s why I love what Richard’s company is doing. Truv, they are so much cheaper than the competitor out there. this is a good question. You would do a lot of advising Jodi in helping lenders select the right tech stack. So what is a good smell test listeners can take on when they’re looking at their current technology stack or looking for some improvement.
[Jodi] So I think the first piece is really knowing where you’re at. A lot of people, and people see my position is because I know what technology is out there that if I come in, I’m going to recommend rip and replace and I know how hard ripping and replacing is. And so that is not my first objective. My first objective is how can we get what you have to work better together? Because you’re usually constrained by contracts, the timing of contracts anyway and then it’s really relying on someone who knows the different technologies that are out there to help you make the decision because you don’t have time to research all of it and that’s really where I want to come in from. Danda road perspective, and then also with my work with Rice Park Capital is being able to lay out, Here’s the technologies that exist. It’s very muddied waters. Every day. We see new technology coming to the forefront and it’s very hard to keep up on. My job is to keep up on it, then you can say, hey. What do we do and what I’ll say is everyone is unique. And they’re the stacks that people have, it doesn’t work with another piece of technology that you may be wanting to put in. It might not work for what you’re trying to accomplish and there’s so many technologies that are very close to each other. That have a niche area that it might fit you better, even though you saw something bright and shiny here that you think will work for you. It’s just extreme and today I feel so bad. I did not have this problem back in 2018. It was some mortgage technology and then…
[David] Because of all that’s out there it’s just, like you said, it’s really gotten muddy. and certainly Richard, you have seen your share of successful rollouts and unsuccessful rollouts, both when you were at Sales Boomerang, which was so much fun meeting you back then that was such a fun and dynamic company. And then how you’ve managed to find another one that is just disrupting so successfully, Truv is like what Jodi was just talking about, Richard. It’s one of those new bright, shiny objects. But this one’s got some real power to it. When you can reduce costs to the extent that you have, and you covered 90 percent of the workforce. How the heck did you get here? That’s one question I have, but then also what makes for a successful rollout or a failed rollout from your perspective?
[Richard] I’ll tell you how I got here. I talked to. A bunch of lenders before I even took the job at true, I joined last year and I talked to the lenders, but I always do that before I take a job. I talked to the buyers and I say, Hey, what do you think about this product? Would you actually buy this? Because at the end of the day, if there’s not market fit, if people aren’t hungry for the product, then I don’t want to be a part of that company in SAS technology. That’s typically how it works because it’s very hard to market and sell a product. Nobody wants to buy. So I went out and I asked a bunch of different lenders. One of those is for example, Kevin Peranio before from PRMG. Yep. And before I came on board and I said, Hey, listen, I don’t actually know too much about the verification space. I was coming from TrustEngine. I said, what do you think about this? And he was said, jump on that right now. That is very hot right now. The increasing cost for verifications. It’s gone up by about 140 percent over the last 3 years, just for your verifications. What used to just be, $10 or $20 with the incumbent is now $60 or $70, and lenders are dying there. Those are huge line items, in their budgets. And Truv, this true for one of our clients revolution. They, we just did a case study where we took their costs for verifications down from eight bips down to three bips and that’s powerful. So that was all before I even. Join the company learning that from lenders and, KP is now a client at PRMG. And we have a lot of different clients from folks that I talked to before I came on board. So that answers the first part of your question. What brought me to Truv. And the second part about what’s successful and what’s not successful with technology rollouts. In my opinion, it comes down to leadership, passionate leaders who are focused on solving a problem, and that’s all they care about. What is the problem that are solving and they make sure that the technology aligns with solving that problem. You know, it’s amazing to me and I go to conferences and I talked to all these different lenders and some of them will be really unhappy with their CRMs or their POS, they’ll have a million dollars CRM, or maybe $3 million or $4 million. They’ve invested with consultants and the CRMs of implementing these CRMs and, they’re just super unhappy with it. People aren’t using it, or it could be a POS or it could even be their LOS, and it’s amazing to me that the lenders are spending this much money and still unhappy. And I think it comes down to mismanagement of those technologies, people not being laser focused every week, every month on what are those KPIs and metrics that matter for that technology, and making sure that they’re staying aligned. Maybe initially they did. Maybe initially they did. And it was it was at the top of the priority list, but then after a while, it sat on the shelf for a while and people stopped paying attention to it. They brought on new technology that they’re not integrated with. But I see it over and over again, but the difference between the successful ones and the non-successful ones, and I’m going on here on and on, but it really comes down to strong leaders who are laser focused on solving problems.
[David] Yeah. And I think then it’s also, would you not say, Richard, I want, this is really for Jodi, but it really depends on identifying who the real customer is. Because if you got the wrong customer in mind, you really are messing up. And that’s Jodi, a question for you. Who is the right customer? Is it the borrower? Is it the MLO? Is it Opts? Is it the owners and the management? What do you see in this? Because I’m thinking one particular situation with one large company in United States, it’s a client of mine and management selected their CRM and the loan officers aren’t using it, they’re wanting another one.
[Jodi] Yeah. I will answer that question first to Richard’s question about what works, like he is giving the leadership and the focus on that, but it’s also having partners that actually deliver on time and they actually produce the results that they say that they’re going to produce. And yes, management needs to hold companies accountable to that. But if you select the right partner in the space, then your job is just much easier because you are holding people accountable that are already self-accountable when you select the right partner and the right product. So I think Truv has definitely nailed that piece of it.
[David] Yeah, they really have. Yeah.
[Richard] There’s been some very popular posts on social media. Greg Sher was talking about it, about how folks get stuck into these two year contracts with a lot of technology partners and it’s a technology that’s not working and they can’t do anything about it. That’s got to change I think, you need some accountability for your vendors as well. And I agree with you Jodi.
[Jodi] So who is the client? I think it depends on the technology. And I think, and I was on social media today. I’m not super big on social media, but I got called out and I was like, perfectly for what for a response of how do you bridge technology versus your opts team? So how do you bring that together? and I really think that, we as lenders can do a better job for our vendor partners who are coming in and needing to sell in clearly setting up a culture of innovation and knowing what your one true objective is. If you know the one true thing. So if your objective or your mission is to create a consumer experience that meets the expectation of the consumer at a reasonable cost product. Then the consumer then becomes your customer all the way through the process. So the decision made off of that customer experience. However, if we are, we mentioned CRM, we mentioned point of sale, your customer is first, the sales people, I often say, if you can sell the loan officers first, that this is something that will benefit them, help them get more deals, will keep their clients and their referral partners happier, you’re halfway there. But then you also have to do top down sales and you have to be selling to the executives about why it is a benefit within the process. But really, everyone’s objective under one organization they should all be speaking the same language. So it makes it easier from a sales perspective about who the customer is, so being able to create that culture where operations doesn’t feel as though they are being eliminated is very important. You can’t do that just by one day showing up saying, Hey, we’re gonna put in a bunch of technology. Don’t worry, we got your job unless you lay the cultural trust. Trust me, you’ll like it. Yeah. Yeah. That’ll, yeah. You lay that cultural foundation to be able to set them up and realize, hey, our one true objective is our customer. And if we can’t serve our customer with the technology that we’re putting in place, then it’s not a technology for us.
[David] Yeah. And it really starts by listening and Richard, one of the things, when I look at this is it’s a lack of listing when a vendor’s talking to a lender about this or vice versa. And it really starts with that, but I’d love to get any other insights you think of what good vendors do for lenders.
[Richard] I love that question, obviously as a vendor, but I think lenders are playing in their own lane for the most part. They talk to their peers as well, but you have one LOS. Some of them have multiple CRMs. I know PRMG, for example, is very vocal about giving their loan officers the option to have many, but I think a really good vendor at the very minimum should give a training plan that they know works and tools that they can help the vendor with rolling it out. Then I think it’s also showing best practices from similar lenders, not, if you’re a midsize lender doing 10,000-20,000 loans a year, right? I don’t think you should be compared to say a Rocket Mortgage or a UWM or anything like that. That’s a very different lender, right? And they’re going totally different. You should be looking, that, a good vendor will look at their client base and say, Hey, here’s one that has the same LOS or POS if you’re a Truv, because that’s how we’re implemented. Look how they successfully implemented Truv. And this is how, this is when in the loan origination process, they do the income verification employment verification, right? And this is what they do when they do or don’t get a positive hit. Our north star is a successful, completed return verification with full reps and warrants from Freddie and Fannie. That’s our north star, one metric that we focus on. And so I’ll even continue and say that, okay. I think a good vendor should also give believable reporting and make it really simple for a vendor to understand whether something’s working or not, right? Because it’s one thing. Okay you rolled it out. You implemented it. It’s work. It’s going. But is it really working? Are you getting the ROI that the vendor sold you on originally? It’s very clear cut with someone like Truv for example, because we’re showing you all of the successful verifications that came back with full reps and warrants constantly. And I think every technology can get to a simple metric that they can go over and both the lender and the vendor can align on the same metric as opposed to I hear it all the time, like different vendors out there saying, Oh, we give 500, 600 percent ROI, 6X ROI, 7X ROI. And then you go have the conversation with their client and the client’s No. We’re not, I just, I would discount that by like a hundred percent, at least.
Important Links
Richard Grieser is a Mortgage Fintech veteran known for his out-of-the-box thinking, and for scaling highly successful fintech companies focused on innovation in mortgage lending. As Vice President of Marketing at Sales Boomerang, Richard Grieser was the man behind the curtain. In his time at Sales Boomerang, Grieser built a successful marketing department from the ground up and worked to promote both Sales Boomerang’s product and its partnerships throughout the industry. He led the company through acquisition by LLR, a private equity firm, merged marketing with Mortgage Coach, another acquisition with the PE firm, and rebranded as Trust Engine.
Richard joined Truv to lead it’s Go-To-Market efforts and help mortgage lenders and their customers easily verify income and employment, assets, insurance, switch direct deposit & more — all in one platform.
Jodi is the Founder & CEO of DandaRoad, a consulting company focused on technology strategy and execution for mortgage lenders and serving as a lending advisor to mortgage technology companies. Jodi, most recently, served as the President and COO of Nationwide Mortgage Bankers and prior to that, the COO of CrossCountry Mortgage.