The Challenge
Lower.com’s mission is simple. They strive to make homeownership more accessible and simple for people. By combining innovative technology with hands-on, expert-level team members, Lower provides customers with everything they need to own a home, including saving for a down payment, financing and refinancing mortgages, and providing insurance.
As a financial technology business, there are a ton of complex products, mortgage topics, and processes for employees to understand. Additionally, many new teammates join Lower with little-to-no experience.
“Unlike others in the industry, we develop talent from the ground up,” explains John Lanz, Lower.com’s Vice President of Training and Development. “We teach them about the industry alongside their position with the goal of getting them to the next step in their career.”
In its early days, Lower relied entirely on in-person training and stored training resources in a shared drive. But, when the pandemic hit, it was evident that in-person training no longer made sense. The company also experienced unprecedented growth and the training department, which at that time only included two people, needed a better way to scale and deliver training to the rapidly growing team. Enter Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly).
Dru Delaforet
Corporate Trainer
The Solution
With the help of Seismic Learning, Lower transformed how they deliver training on complex topics and processes by rolling content out in a more consistent, learner-friendly format to their sales and operations departments. “The original goal was to get people on board very quickly and decrease the time they needed to ramp up and become proficient in their jobs,” shares Dru Delaforet, Corporate Trainer at Lower.com. “Now, it’s evolved to provide pretty much anything you can think of so that people have the resources they need to make them better each and every day.”
John appreciates the ability to create consistent training for the entire sales force. Instead of each member of the training team—which has grown to nine teammates—delivering content in different ways, everyone receives the same information. “It’s a big investment to find another subject matter expert,” explains John. “With Seismic Learning, I know the content that the team is pushing out is going to be consistent across the board.”
Additionally, Lower uses a variety of Seismic Learning’s features and integrations to create training that appeals to different types of learners. Whether it’s incorporating knowledge checks or sharing click-by-click how-to videos with Iorad, the team has found intuitive ways to optimize training for greater engagement. “Seismic Learning has really allowed us to teach in different kinds of ways for different styles of learners,” explains John. “It’s also a better way than standing in front of a room of ten people and delivering the same training over and over.”
Lower is also incorporating Practice for even more hands-on learning. “We have this initiative called High-Performance Sales where we take apart our five-part sales process and focus on one component at a time,” explains John. “The goal is to have each rep review content in Seismic Learning, do the homework before a training session, and then we review everyone’s practice exercises in class and provide feedback so everyone can improve.”
Dru Delaforet
Corporate Trainer
The Results
The Lower team started 2020 with 87 salespeople and 100 operations teammates. Now, the team includes more than 350 reps and 350 operations workers, and they deliver onboarding and ongoing training to all of these teammates with Seismic Learning. In fact, they’ve been able to reduce ramp time by 50% so that nearly everyone is already doing some part of their role on their first day.
Seismic Learning also helped Lower maximize their training team’s time so they no longer spend 40 hours a week delivering in-person training. “With Seismic Learning, we’ve been able to achieve more of that 50/50 balance between in-person and online learning,” explains Dru. Additionally, Seismic Learning saves the Lower team from having to pull a subject matter expert out of the field to deliver training. “Now, we don’t have to get everyone together to talk about a new process. We create a lesson around it. We assign it out, quiz on it, and provide managers with feedback and insights on training progress,” adds John.
To date, Lower has created more than 450 lessons that range from onboarding content to final exams for certain roles. And, John and Dru aren’t the only Seismic Learning fans within Lower’s organization. In addition to getting accolades from other team leaders and executives, they’ve received more than 9,000 lesson views and a 95% satisfaction score with their learners.
And Lower.com isn’t stopping there. In light of their ongoing growth and momentum, the company plans to expand their product offerings and services, which will, of course, be supported with training powered by Seismic Learning. “Seismic Learning has just really exceeded my expectations in a huge way,” exclaims Dru. “This has been a coming-of-age project, and we would not have been able to grow as quickly without Seismic Learning.”
