By: Dave Savage
April 21, 2026

Daniel Sa, Division President at NFM Lending

Daniel Sa runs a division of 55 loan officers at NFM Lending. Last year they did $1.043 billion in production: 3,642 units, 90% purchase, and an average of 6.07 closings per loan originator per month. Through Q1 of this year they’re up 61% year-over-year, now averaging 8.3 closings per LO. In March, Daniel personally closed 50 loans.

I’ve interviewed a lot of great managers. What Daniel has built is among the most efficient large divisions I’ve ever seen. And when I asked him to explain it, his answer was simpler than most people expect.

“You have to understand the customer journey very well. And then you have to understand at what points of that journey you have the highest chance to create differentiation and ultimately win.”

That’s the whole framework. Here’s what it looks like in practice.

Most Loan Officers Are Losing Before They Think the Game Has Started

Daniel maps the customer journey in 7 steps:

1. The referral
2. The initial intake
3. The structured pre-approval consultation
4. Offer support
5. Contract execution
6. Closing
7. Post-closing communication

His observation about where most loan officers go wrong is worth sitting with. Steps one and two, the referral and the intake, are where the foundation of trust is either built or missed entirely. And most loan officers don’t think of either of these as something they can control.

On the referral stage: most loan officers never coach their referral partners on how to introduce them. But the language an agent uses when they hand off a client changes everything. If an agent sends a three-way text that says, “this is the best loan officer I know, do exactly what she tells you,” that buyer is arriving with a completely different posture than one who was handed three names and told to shop around. You can influence which of those two scenarios you get. Most people never try.

On the intake: most loan officers send a link. The online application does the intake, and their first real conversation with the borrower is the pre-approval consultation. By that point, Daniel said, you’re already behind.

“If you send them to your online app, you’re catching a fish just to throw it back in the ocean and hope you can catch it again later.”

His team does a comprehensive intake call on every lead. They pull a soft credit inquiry as the call begins. They walk the borrower through how credit is built: payment history, proportion of balances to credit limits, and length of credit history. They explain debt-to-income ratios. They break down PITI. Things a loan officer might assume a borrower already knows, but 57% of Daniel’s clients last year were first-time home buyers.

“I am teaching things that have nothing to do with a mortgage term. But it’s positioning me as somebody who gets it, understands them, cares about them. Before I’ve even opened MortgageCoach.”

By the time the borrower gets to the pre-approval consultation, they’re not shopping. They’re collaborating.

Authorship Is Ownership

This is a principle I’ve believed in for a long time, and Daniel’s system is built around it.

When you hand a borrower a fee worksheet, one program, one rate, you’re pitching. When you walk them through three or four options side by side, explain what each one means for their goals, their timeline, their savings, and let them help choose, they own that decision. They stop shopping because they helped build the strategy.

Daniel’s team delivers a full MortgageCoach presentation at every structured pre-approval, live on Zoom or Teams whenever possible. They go line item by line item, explaining what each one means before they ever talk about which option to choose. They identify the two or three line items that matter most for that specific borrower’s situation and walk the client’s attention through each one, getting real-time feedback.

And then that presentation becomes the reference point for every conversation that follows.

“When they send in a listing and we’re doing a payment scenario, we reference the MortgageCoach presentation and say, this is right in line with the payment goals you had. This house fits.”

By the time they get to the contract, there’s nothing to re-explain. The decision was already made together. What Daniel calls “contract transition control” the moment most loan officers lose clients to shopping, which becomes almost a non-issue because the client already owns the strategy.

The Active Agent Count Nobody Is Talking About

The second half of our conversation was about building a referral engine that doesn’t depend on any single relationship or any single month.

Daniel uses a specific definition of an active agent: someone who has referred you to a deal that has closed in the past 90 days. Not someone in your database. Not someone you’ve had lunch with. Someone is actively sending you business right now.

His target for loan officers building their business: 40 to 50 active agents. That’s the threshold where you start to see consistent double-digit closings per month, and the feast-or-famine cycle starts to flatten out.

“Once you really take care of your active agent count, that’s going to limit those ups and downs. Good month, bad month, good month, bad month – that stops.”

The way you get there is less complicated than most people make it. You need to be adding more active referral partners every month than you’re losing. Referral partners leave. Agents try someone else. That’s part of the process. The key is net growth, more coming in than going out, every single month.

Daniel runs a Monday sales meeting called “What It Takes to Win Right Now” for his entire division. Every week. He covers the eight skill sets he believes every loan officer needs to master: intake mastery, consultation mastery, contract transition control, realtor conversion, realtor retention through execution, objection handling, building additional pillars of business, and time management. One piece at a time. Consistently. This was also a topic on last week’s sales meeting with Andy Beigel, who is Daniel’s top branch-producing branch manager and sales leader.

He pulls reports. He calls on people by name. He picks the metrics he wants to see improvement on and puts them in front of the group.

“Salespeople get excited about numbers and rankings because it brings out the competitive nature in them. Nobody wants to be the one who gets called on and wasn’t paying attention.”

He’s been doing this for years. And the compounding effect of that consistency is visible in his numbers.

The Simplest Closing Thought

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Daniel whether there was anything new he was doing this year that he wasn’t doing last year.

“We’re just doing everything we were doing last year a little bit better. That’s it.”

That’s the answer. The managers who keep producing at this level aren’t reinventing their approach every quarter. They’ve built something that works, and they keep sharpening it.

Your Homework

Map your own customer journey. Before the referral ever happens, what are your agents saying about you? Are you coaching them on how to introduce you, or are you leaving that to chance? Look at your intake process honestly. Are you taking applications over the phone and establishing yourself as an expert before the pre-approval consultation, or are you sending a link and hoping for the best?

Add active agent count to your scorecard. Use Daniel’s definition: closed a referral with you in the past 90 days. How many do you have right now? What would it take to get to 40?

And if you’re delivering a MortgageCoach presentation without recording a video, or not delivering it at every pre-approval, that’s where to start. The presentation is the strategy. The video is what makes it personal.

Watch the full interview from last week’s sales meeting with Andy Beigel and Daniel Sa on the MortgageCoach YouTube channel.