SWBC Mortgage’s Amanda Sessa’s target-setting approach has made her a top originator for nearly 20 years
When Amanda Sessa first entered the industry in 1993, she worked as a setup girl for CTX Mortgage Company soon after college. Just after a few months, she was processing for some of CTX’s top originators. From her position, she would closely watch the originators and assist them with whatever she could, all while knowing she was meant for originating herself. “I moved from processing into processing operations manager, all the while knowing my true calling was originating and sales. I was a sponge and learned all I could, and watched my originators and how they handled their business,” said Sessa.
In 1997, she became an originator, with her eyes set on working in a location that her company did not have a presence in yet. “CTX Mortgage was not known in the Boulder area at all,” she said. Every morning Sessa would pack up her car and drive the 35 minutes from Denver to Boulder, Colorado. She would market to realtors in the city and created her database as if she were located in the area. “I visited realtor offices and pounded the pavement to get my originating going. I made lists, wrote business plans and goals,” she said.
Sessa’s career path has been paved in part to her diligence and goal-setting attitude. “I am a goal setter. I am kind of a ‘what gets measured gets achieved’ kind of girl.” From the start, Sessa would write down marketing and origination goals to keep the plan in action. “In the beginning, it was a real plan. I wrote a five-page business plan each year.” She would write down the realtors she wanted to target, the realtors she wanted to continue to build relationships with and map out each month with monthly goals. Now that she has been in the business for over 20 years, she sets overall plans for herself and her husband John, who became her business partner in 1998; and those yearly goals have surely paid off. For the past 18 years, Sessa has been among the Top 200 originators in the nation. Now with SWBC Mortgage, Sessa and her husband ended 2015 at $115.7 million and are at the top of their company. In their careers, they have closed nearly $1.7 billion in loans to date.
“We really try to go above and beyond for customer satisfaction and we’ve made that paramount and #1 over the years. I think that has really served us well.”
