Businesspeople love to talk about relationships. We say things like “I don’t want to just sell stuff to people, I want clients that I build relationships with.” And that’s a worthy goal – work’s a lot more fun when you know your clients and like doing business with them.

But what about the clients you don’t get to build that kind of relationship with?

For AMCs, that’s the borrower.

Sadly, most AMCs focus entirely on the lender because that’s who they interact with the most. 

But that means the other client – the borrower – is ignored.

And that’s what Every Valuation is Personal is about – remembering and serving the borrower. That’s why our internal culture building focuses on “One.” We want all of our people to remember that the person behind every order – the borrower – is the One we’ve got to think about, not the order number.

There’s a saying “brownie points have no shelf life” that’s usually meant as a warning to those who think that doing things around the house might get you out of trouble for doing something stupid later (author’s note: it does not!).

To put that saying in the context of our business, we may get some brownie points from lenders, but borrowers can’t give us credit for other orders: they don’t have any!

For the one borrower on that loan, it’s the only order. It’s a One of One. This is their home. Or it could be their business. It’s where they want to start a family, or retire, or vacation. In other words, this order is personal.

And whose job is it to make sure they get in their home? Ours.

Because the lender doesn’t want to hear that someone on their end forgot to upload the old appraisal with the correct square footage or that the borrower waited until two days before closing to schedule the inspection. 

Why? Because the borrower doesn’t care – they just want their home.

And there are no “business days” when you’re waiting for that.

Every order is an opportunity to help make one person or one family really happy. And we may never even interact with them. We believe that if we focus on that – the One borrower on every order – then our relationship with our lenders will take care of itself.