Turning Mortgage Data into Actionable Leads with Kortney Lane-Schafers

On today’s episode of Ain’t My First Mortgage podcast, Skip interviews Kortney Lane-Schafers, VP of Growth and Client Advocacy at MMI, about using mortgage data to drive production and reduce the LO rollercoaster. Kortney says the best part of the industry is relationships, while the biggest challenge is shifting market cycles. She explains MMI’s evolution into “MMI 1,” combining the MMI Data Center, a communication platform, and MonitorBase monitoring so loan officers can find opportunities, communicate, and track their database in one place. 

Key updates include the MMI 1 mobile app with integrated Chat MMI voice-driven AI for fast reports and a real-time leaderboard. They discuss retention challenges and how monitoring alerts, opportunity surfacing, and consumer tools like Pathways Home and a branded private home search help deliver value, confidence, and proactive outreach.

Episode Highlights:

00:00 Welcome and Setup

00:30 Meet Kortney Schafers

01:59 People and Market Challenges

03:44 Data to Beat Volatility

04:36 Napa Wine Interruption

07:01 MMI One Platform Overview

08:52 Pathways Home and Search

10:13 Mobile App Launch

11:00 Chat MMI AI Search

12:37 Export and CRM Integration

13:27 Conference Takeaways

14:02 Talk To Search

14:25 Real Time Leaderboard

16:35 Why Data Wins

17:22 Bring Value To Meetings

19:33 Retention And Monitoring

24:19 Predictive Opportunity Alerts

26:01 Remove Friction Take Action

27:36 Adoption Make It Easy

28:09 Connect With Kortney

28:44 Closing Thanks 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Yeah, that's right. We're back, and this ain't my first mortgage podcast. Welcome to the show where we discuss all things mortgage sales, industry news, interviews of the top mortgage professionals, and more. Strap on in, enjoy the ride, and welcome to Ain't My First Mortgage Podcast. Courtney, welcome to Ain't My First Mortgage Podcast. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Well, I am doing very well. How about yourself, Skip?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Fantastic, fantastic. I am so excited to have you on. Gonna talk about all things data in the mortgage industry and all that kind of fun stuff. A lot of listeners probably have seen you speak at various conferences and shows and that kind of thing. But in case they don't know who you are and what you're all about, take a second and introduce yourself for me, please.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Well, for those that do know me, I am Courtney, Courtney Lane Chaefer. I have been with MMI. For those of you that know MMI, and hopefully all of you out there listening are super fans of ours, that I title VP of Growth and Client Advocacy Hats that I wear, pretty much you name it. I could even be the janitor some days. I don't know. I mean, just sweeping the floors, right? You know, we all really honestly, it's such a great group. I do get the pleasure of working directly with our CE, which is fantastic because I love seeing Ben Tierling's vision and what he wants to do. I guess another way you could say it is brand ambassador, maybe. But really, when it comes right down to it, I just get the opportunity to work with the mortgage industry, work with the amazing people that are in this industry, and and build those relationships together. And that's really what it's all about is building relationships and learning how we can all be better and help each other.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. So I'm gonna tell you before we get into like the nuts and bolts here, all right. Before we do that, let me ask you something totally off topic. All right. In your time working in the mortgage space, all right, what what would you say? That's a two-part question. What would you say has been your favorite part of working in this industry? And then the second part will be what has been your biggest challenge?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Well, I would say my favorite part by far, and I kind of said it already, is the people, right? There are so many different versions of the relationships that we do have, right? And there's so many different personalities in this business. And so it's it's always fun to run into good friends. And what's crazy is you meet those friends, you know, and I say friends, because that's what they become, this, you know, they become your friends. And you meet these folks that you share this interest with, or you get talking in a conversation and you meet them, right? And then you learn more things about them. And now all of a sudden they're part of your tribe, right? And they're always gonna be there. So I always say relationships matter, and and that's what fuels my cup. So I would definitely say the people. And then I would say the most challenging, and I would probably say that everyone would agree with me on this, is is, you know, just the market in general, right? You know, we've all had that dip, right? We've all had that scare, you know, like 2020. I mean, stuff was just falling out of the sky, right? I mean, like, you know, I mean, everybody was on fire. I mean, you know, like, and you know, coming out of, you know, COVID, and while that was not fun, right? You know, when we couldn't see each other at the end of the day, though, the refines and and the market, man, we were just boom. Yeah. And then the last couple of years, you know, unfortunately, you know, we've seen folks that had to close their doors. And that's sad, you know, you know, because you feel for those people. Because again, going back to those people that you meet, you know, and then you might hear that, you know, maybe they didn't get scoofed up. And so yeah, I think we've all had the same challenge, right? In some capacity, we've all suffered from what happened.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Well, I like that you said that because I planned this, but I didn't. So one of the things that that I train on a lot is trying to avoid the roller coaster of death for mortgage production, right? And of course, MMI, which we'll talk more about some of the stuff that y'all have going on there in just a minute, makes that very clear. You know, you pull up production of LO's, realtors, whatever, and you can clearly see that a lot of folks have that up and down, month to month, much less year to year, right? Right. And, you know, one of the things that then we're able to do to try and avoid that roller coaster of death is by focusing on certain things that can be derived from the data that you guys provide, right? Right. And so what I want you to do is uh Courtney is share some of the new stuff that MMI's got going on. We've got we've got a lot to talk about, you know, not just to not to steal your thunder, but there's two big things that, you know, in particular. So you start with whichever one that you want to cover first.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Well, so first and foremost, you know, we we talked about the market, we talked about the ups and flows, we talked about, you know, just the challenges, right? And so the beautiful thing about MMI in general is that the MMI data, and that's where MMI originally started, right? You know, we really started providing this amazing data for you. So we've got the MMI data center. About three years ago, we purchased a communication platform that joined forces with us. About a year ago, we purchased monitor base, which is the monitoring aspect. Now, you think about that. Now we've got three amazing products in one. So now we've got what we are starting to call MMI one.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

And as we talk about that, what does that mean? It's it doesn't, MMI one is the it's the one place that you can go now, right? It's the one place that you can find everything that you're looking for. And so you start with the data, right? You start with this data, you start with, you know, your book of business, you start with, you know, finding, you know, what's happening with your own referral partners, you know, finding new folks to work with, you know, looking for new opportunities out there, right? You know, understanding your market. How do I want to grow, right? But then how do you communicate that effectively? So you've got that part. So that is exactly why we purchased our own communication platform to tie that in. Right. Now you don't have to go necessarily log in somewhere else to do that. You can do it all in that one. It's all in one place. In one place, exactly. And then furthermore, you know, those folks that are in your database, monitoring those folks, you know, what are they doing? You know, what's going on with their credit? You know, do you do you see opportunities that are surfaced there? And uh and then, you know, additionally, we've continued to build things that are also still a part of that one place that you can go. And that is where we provide what we call our pathways home. So that is something that you can buy provide to that consumer that's going to let them know what's going on with their home, right? What kind of equity do they have in their home? What if they want to, you know, do they want to invest in their home? Do they want to find a larger home? Do they want to, you know, do they want to pull the equity? Do they want to do a cash out? You know, what do they want to do? Right. They can play around, they can see. And then additionally, what we also decided that we would link to that is a private home search. So rather than you sending your borrowers, you know, to go to Zillow. And then now they've got 25 people calling them because they they were interested in one house on Zillow, right? And everybody in the world is like, hey, I saw that you were like house, right? Um, now we can give them this private home search that's branded to the loan officer. So the loan officer's not giving away their lead. Why did I tee all of that up and say all of that? Because one of those things that we are offering, and I'm pulling it up on my phone to kind of do a little sneaky peek, right? Is we now have, and I don't know how well I'm gonna do that with the glare.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

But this is the MMI1 mobile app. So everything I just talked about is right in the palm of your hands. So we are now, you know, met with met with a group last week when I was in Utah and um and met with a bank there. And the gentleman that was sitting across from me said, you know, we don't want our loan officers sitting at their desk. We want them out there closing business. Guess what? Take this with you.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

You're not at your crack open the laptop.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

But you have every single bit of that data that I just talked about. And then also right at the very bottom, right here, is our chat MMI that is built right into that mobile app as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Well, that's what I was gonna ask you about next.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah. So the chat MMI, what we decided to do is, you know, I mean, come on, let's face it. We're all supposed to learn from all the sayings that we hear, right? We're smarter, not harder, right? Well, we said, okay, instead of you having to go into the data center and you having to figure out what search you want to do, well, chat GBT, Claude, all these AI systems out there, right? Well, now, I mean, they made it to where we are all lazy, right? I mean, none of us want to type anymore. None of us want to like go actually figure out how to search. So, you know, most of us have Alexa sitting in our, you know, kitchen or somewhere else, and we didn't ask questions, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:49

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

All you have to do with chat MMI is just ask a question. So you could literally say, I had a guy email me today and asked, Hey, is how easy is it for me to find the top 50 real estate agents in a certain area and then be able to export that out and share with someone on my team?

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Pretty easily, actually.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

I was like, I was like, You got like 30 seconds?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah. I mean, 30 seconds because all you have to do is literally ask the question.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, I mean, it's got the it's got the voice prompt right there, you know?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yep, got the voice prompt. So again, you don't even have to type that question seconds later, it's gonna spit out that report. You can be really specific. You can say, show me those top agents in this area. You could even say doing X number of transactions in the last six months because maybe you want somebody that you know is busy, right? Instead of sitting around not doing anything. But again, 30 seconds later, you've got the report, you hit export, there, boom, it's done. Or you push that information over to your communication platform. If you're using ours, it is a very simple, seamless transition. But if you are using something else, we don't discriminate. If you're using some other CRM system, you can still take that amazing data. You can push that right over to that CRM. It's just a simple webhook that you connect. And then now you can start communicating with those new agents. So very good at that. A lot of stuff that we've tried to create and put it all in one place for you, right? So you don't have to A remember a lot of passwords, right? And B, you don't have to remember what window you're supposed to be jumping in because really you're just kind of in that one place to do everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Yeah, and that's big, you know. It's I you know, I most recently saw you and Morris Bangers in Georgia, right? A couple weeks ago, whatever. And you were giving a talk about some of the new stuff that was going on and showing us, and you know, and I spoke up about the channel in my feature in particular, and because I'll be honest with you, I hadn't really used it until very recently. I mean, I know I hadn't been around very long, but until, you know, very recently. And it just it's so much easier when you're in the middle of doing something where you can just talk, say specifically what it is, instead of having to, you know, so you know, let's say, hey, the more folks, we're you know, we're an aging group, right? In case you don't want to break out the readers, you know, and go down here and do all that, you just talk to it. Let her you know, and so I really meant the comment that I said this is like, hey, look, you can do all the functionality right from there, in case you don't want to screw around trying to figure out the best way to search, let it do it for you, right? And I think that's really important. But the full before I before I go to the next topic, was there anything else that you want to share about that?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Well, I was just gonna say, so just a fun thing. So obviously you can look up data all throughout our system, right? Something that we are getting ready to, it's actually available, it's actually inside of Chat MMI right now, but we are doing kind of a promote promotion, if you will, next week to kind of highlight what we've added. But but we have created a leaderboard inside of Chat MMI. And um, and so that leaderboard is going to be a real-time update. So essentially we've got, you know, four categories in that leaderboard. So we've got top volume, we've got rising climbers, you know, we've got, you know, gross, you know, growth builders, you know. So again, we've got different categories. You can go in, you can look at all time across, you know, you can look all across the country. You could narrow that down to your state, but unlike some of the folks, and not to say that it's not so great that some of our other data providers will post, you know, like, oh, this was the top so-and-so in, you know, Florida, you know, last month or whatever. And that's still great. I mean, and we want to celebrate those folks. The difference is that's somewhat static when that's posted. The chat MMI will always be a real-time update. So, so, you know, I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit of a competitive person myself. And while I'm not a loan officer, so my name won't be in there. Like, we were just recently in a fitness challenge with someone, right? And like, and I was constantly looking and be like, okay, yep, I'm still leading. I'm still leading.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

You always gotta say. You always don't know.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Well, so again, I think I'm pretty safe to say that most of the folks that are producing originators, they've got a pretty competitive bug, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

I mean, if you better be at least a little bit competitive, you know?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

So what fun is that? You know, to be able to go in real time and and see, right? Like, so if you see that you are leading the path, right, you can constantly make sure someone's right on your tail by going in and checking out that real-time leaderboard.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

So yeah, love it. I love it. Okay, so you know, data is obviously only as good as what we use it for or what we can do with it, right? And the stuff that that MMI provides, there's a world of opportunity out there. But let's I want to do this in again, two parts now. All right. So for those and so for those of y'all out there that are not current MMI users or don't use anything like this, you know, what would you say is the one biggest motivator into wanting to say, hey, you know what? I am gonna go ahead and start using MMI.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Well, first off, I will start by saying data is, you know, the knowledge and the knowledge that you're getting from the data, that's your power, right? I mean, that's how you're going to be able to take the right action. I mean, again, knowledge is power. And so if you go in blind, right? I mean, I don't know, let's say that you find some, you know, you find somebody's name, referral partner's name online, sure, I could, I mean, I could click on their Google, I mean, I could click on their Facebook, I could click over here, right? And I could find out maybe some personal insight on the individual, right? And I could probably get a little bit of a dabble of what he or she is doing. But if I really want to go into that meeting the first time I meet that person and I want to bring instant value to that person, I I mean, again, going back to our, you know, our business, you know, tends to have, you know, competitor, you know, competitive nature. People want to celebrate themselves, you know. I mean, you go into that meeting and you go into that meeting being able to talk about that person, but celebrate that person, right? Find out what you can from a data standpoint so that you go in and you can comment on the things that, you know, what kind of business has that person been doing? What does it seem like their sweet spot is, right? What does it seem like maybe you notice something that they're not doing? So maybe then that's where you can ask, like, oh, well, have you not ever had a chance to work on such and such, right? Or work with someone, you know, in regards to this particular loan type or this particular customer base or what have you, right? Help me fill that, you know, fill that gap for them. So doing your homework and having that data, you can come in with the right message, the right questions, really target that conversation with intentionality rather than just, you know, going in and going, Oh my gosh, thanks so much for meeting me for lunch. You know, like I see you like so and so, right? I mean, it's great that you might know that personal, you know, thing about maybe they like a certain football team or something.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

The reason that you're meeting there is to do business.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Exactly, right? And then take that narrative and now talk about our borrowers, right? So again, you know, it's one thing if you call somebody up, and even if you've done their loan before and you think to yourself, I mean, this isn't the bag for me, right? Like I was already their loan officer, statistically, you're not gonna be their next loan officer, right? I mean, like, it's just that's not it doesn't really play in the cards like that, right? You know, yeah. I mean, really, I mean, typically speaking, a retention rate is about 18%, right? You know, so why I mean, why is that? Why do you want to lose those customers? You have so much power sending in your own database. So talking about the right message at the right time, the part with us, you know, doing the monitoring aspect, and now you've got this booking business, right? We can now see what's going on with our past clients. We can have all the information at our fingertips, so much so that if I open this app right now, now I have to use someone's NMLS ID to make it real, right? But if I open this app right now and it tells me, by the way, it tells me to take action, right? So it tells me to take action, it surfaces up alone for me right now. The very first thing that it says to me is that this person is a hot lead. And why does it say that? Because it says that reading glasses.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

No doing it.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

It says that I could instantly save them $385 a month, right? I know that because I had that layer of that monitoring aspect over the top of my, you know, my customers that I've already done business with. It goes on to tell me what their rate was, their estimated savings, goes on to tell me the different money moves that I have available with this particular individual. So now when I reach out to this individual to talk to them, again, I'm bringing instant value, I'm bringing knowledge about what's going on with their mortgage right now. And I'm also gonna then provide them with one of the property intelligence pages and I'm gonna say, hey, listen, right? I wanted to talk to you about XYZ, right? But I also want you to see it for yourself. I want to provide this for you. You know, I've talked a little bit today. I want you to absorb that. I want you to kind of, you know, take it all in, do your own little research here, right? Let's come back, let's meet again. But again, if you didn't have that data, you know, that data in front of you and you didn't research that data, I mean, what were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_01 20:09

You ready for well that's so yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because that's one of the things that's like yeah, that's one of the most elemental things that I train on for LOMs is hey, you know what? If you are looking for new business without having to necessarily go out and get new referral partners, obviously your database is gonna be huge. You know, are you doing one-year mortgage checkups with your closed pipeline, right? Something that basic and elemental. And if you are, great. Hey, what do those conversations look like? And if they don't have the data there, then it's gonna be a lot of guesswork, wishy-washy, hey, I think your home's appreciated by you know the average, the market, that kind of thing. But we won't really know until we get the appraisal done, that kind of stuff. That that does not instill confidence, and confidence helps sell. And so if you're approaching that with armed with data that is very well vetted, right, oh now that puts you in a position of authority, you know? And so, yeah, I can't overstate that enough. Something so you know, elemental as that is just goes so far.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Well, and you said it, you know, confidence, right? You know, obviously you want to go in with the narrative that would be the best option for them, right? But again, empower them by also giving them a tool to take it and sit with it for a minute, right? But empower them with the knowledge and the data that you have, right? And what you can give to them. And, you know, in some cases, like part of that might even be that we're looking at, you know, they've got this, you know, they've got this mortgage. And, you know, one might say to you, you know, well, you know, gosh, they already had like a great rate, so they're probably not gonna refire or whatever. Right, right. Well, because we've layered this monitoring piece on top of it, well, guess what? They might have a really high interest car loan. They might have, you know, credit card debts in an all-time high right now, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:07

I mean, so unscured unscured consumer debt. Is it an all-time high?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Right. I mean, so what if there's an opportunity to do something there with some kind of blended rate? I mean, there's just there's so many different things. And then again, you know, snooze you lose, right? So one of the things that we do with the data that we have and the opportunity alerts that we provide is more often than not, behavior tells a story as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

And so typically about 90 days prior to somebody probably doing something, we can tell that by some of the behavior that one might take with their financial transactions, different responsibilities that they're now focused on, you know. Again, maybe, you know, we see where they've dabbled and started looking at somewhere or inquiring about something, all that to say, you know, why wouldn't you want to be the person to get that predictive opportunity alert so that you know that kind of shows signs that something might be getting ready to happen? So rather than waiting to call them 90 days from now, right? And be like, so I see you did actually pull your credit, right? Hey, good for you. You know what? They're probably gonna go, yeah, but that's because I'm working with when I'm getting ready to close, right? Meanwhile, you had all this data and all this information ahead of time. You could have put them immediately on some kind of campaign, started reaching out to them, and started communicating with them.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah. It's about intentionality and productivity. It's it empowers you to be better at your job.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Well, Cordy, we are coming to a close here. But I want to ask you, is there anything else the listeners should be aware of as far as using data, your MMI, uh with products offered, anything?

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Well, again, I mean, I, you know, I will go back to something that you said earlier, and the data is only as good as what you use it for. So, you know, figure out anyone. I mean, I listen, I pick it's a no-brainer. No one has the mobile app that we have launched. No one has all of that information put together in the way that we have done it. We have removed the friction point of anyone not taking action on an opportunity that's in front of them. We literally surface up the opportunities right to you. You can either take action right away or you can snooze it. And I don't know why you'd snooze it, but you can take action right away on the app, right? Um, we're literally saying, like, this is what you should do today. And we've removed the friction. Now, all that to say, if you choose not to go our route, that's cool. I can you know, whatever works for you, but don't what I would say to anyone is don't don't get in your own way, right? You know, whatever that may be. If you have, you know, challenged yourself that you know you're gonna change something and now you're gonna start doing video, right? Well then do it and don't get in your own way. Like don't start questioning yourself, don't, you know, whatever. Because again, the data is only as good as you use it. You know, I mean it's actionable data that you can use and you can use it now, but if you sit on it, then it's no good. Yeah, right? I mean, it's gonna be old, it's gonna be old news, and you know, and then I would say from a top-down, you know, organizations that are thinking about, you know, what's the right move, what's the right tech stack I should use. And then furthermore, this question comes up so much is like, how do I get my folks to actually engage? How do I get adoption of the product? And again, it's remove the friction point.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Yep, make it easy.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Yeah, it's hard to take an old dog new tricks, but it's make it as easy as possible.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Make it easy, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

So I love it, I love it. That's good stuff. That's good stuff. So, all right, Courtney, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, where should I go? What should I do?

SPEAKER_00 26:15

We well, I mean, first off, I encourage you to reach out, of course, follow, connect on LinkedIn. Uh, you can certainly find me there. Email is super easy though. It is Courtney at Mmi.io. But Courtney is spelt. You can see my name on here, K-O-R-T-N-A-Y at NMI.io. So you can reach me via email. But again, if you don't remember that, just look me up on LinkedIn and and join the fam. Join all the fun that we have over on the uh with the MMI fan.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

I love it. I love it. Uh well thank you, Courtney. I appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Of course, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Thanks for coming on.