Hello, I’m Deb Reeves and I’m National Sales Manager at The Nottingham for Intermediaries

I’m part of a team who specialise in helping brokers source the right mortgage for their clients.

As well as managing key relationships with mortgage clubs and networks across the country who have access to The Nottingham’s products, I manage our Business Development Manager (BDM) team. They all play a key day-to-day role in supporting brokers and answering any queries they may have.

Prior to joining The Nottingham in early 2017 I had built up over 17 years’ experience in a variety of financial services roles.

The role of National Sales Manager is wide-ranging and there are many different things to experience and do. There are always plenty of challenges to get stuck into and lots of interesting people to meet.

I’m proud to work for an organisation that cares passionately about supporting people to plan, save and protect their finances – and a key ingredient within that is helping families have a roof over their heads.

I would say that being organised, efficient, presentable, flexible to change, knowledgeable about the subject matter (mortgages!) and being a good communicator are key skills in my job.

To highlight how and why those things are important here is an example of a day I had recently. I hope it shows how interesting and varied the role is.

It’s Tuesday so I start the day with a run (this is my Tuesday and Thursday routine and my effort to keep fit and active for when normal life returns!) – up and out around 7am so I am back and ready in plenty of time to start the day!
Each morning I have an 8.30am one-hour catch-up with one of the BDMs. As it’s Tuesday its Janet, and we spend the time chatting through her activity and how the week is going so far, her performance against monthly sales performance and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Having time for the team with no interruptions and for them to chat through how the week is going both personally and professionally, is something I’m very passionate about.
On to the day’s first ‘external’ meeting and join Lynn from our Product Team for a catch-up over Teams with one of our technology partners, who share with us their ‘roadmap’ for 2022 and how their plans can support us and our reach in the broker community. It’s always good to understand the changing role that technology is playing in the industry and how we can benefit by being part of what’s coming.
As it’s still early in the year I’m in the process of completing a ‘2021 review and 2022 look forward’ with all the corporate relationships (club and networks) that I manage. At these meetings we share what was delivered last year and what the target aspiration is for 2022. This call is with Sesame Bankhall Group (SBG), who are one of our larger partner firms. Andrea from SBG and I update each other on any changes and focuses from our respective organisations and views on the current marketplace and discuss the numbers achieved last year as well as how these split across different products, which brokers are our biggest supporters and where we have any gaps and therefore who we should be targeting. These reviews take place on a quarterly basis, however we maintain contact via updates and relevant communications on a more frequent basis too.
My next meeting is one of my regular Tuesday activities – a catch-up call with our Lending Team Leader. It’s important our internal relationships are strong so that we can work together for positive outcomes and broker experience. Each week we share updates from our respective teams, hot topics, successes, any issues we are facing and review our weekly action log to ensure anything from the previous week has been closed off. This is not our only contact for the week as we email or speak most days, but this gives us some structure and dedicated time.
Lunch and LinkedIn – food and a little time looking at social media and trade press. It’s important to keep up to speed with what’s going on in the world, such as lender updates, news pieces etc.
Onto another corporate partner review and this time with Brilliant Solutions. I share with them their target for 2022 and we discuss how we would work together to get there both in terms of joint events and targeted activity.
Other activity today includes a brief into our marketing team for an email flyer to support our proposition that the team will use and share with brokers. I also log in to a database we use to pull down a segmented list of brokers who I believe will be interested in the new product for their clients. The BDM team will use the list as the focus for their calling activity.
I finish off my BDM meeting slides as my next monthly BDM meeting is soon, so I spend time ensuring the slides are complete and all numbers to be shared are up to date, making any notes of key points that I want to include ready for talking with the team.
In between all the above I keep close to emails and phone calls. Today’s themes include procuration fee questions – brokers like to be paid for the work they do(!) – a request from Financial Crime to support with some information on a broker registration, a sourcing system query, some questions about our mortgage porting process and supporting BDMs on a few specific cases just to name a few.
I finish work for the day, take the dogs for a walk and then decide what is for dinner before hopefully having time to relax a bit ahead of Wednesday’s challenges!

Deb Reeves
National Sales Manager