We are coming into the holiday season already. 

The question that always comes up is, “Should we take time off, or should we “grind” while everybody else is taking time off?”

Here’s what has helped me the best…

First of all, do good focused work on a 32 hour work week for 11 months out of the year, and, as long as we have focused on building up our referral network, and not focused on chasing page 3 of the bank statement, we will build up our business so much that you will have earned the right to take off the entire month of December.

But here’s the thing, most LOs are so busy “waiting for things to get better” that they don’t take the time to work on building up their referral network.  

We are coming into the holiday season! What is the one thing that most loan officers and real estate agents stop doing as the holidays approach?

That’s right! They stop selling!  Have you ever heard this from one of your real estate agents? Let’s wait till after the first of the year. Or, Let’s talk later.  Or, Hey I want to take some time off! Have you perhaps said those words yourself?

Let’s chat about that for just a second.  As you know, I am a huge NASCAR fan! Did you know that on the superspeedways like the Daytona 500 that they virtually never put their foot on the brake the entire race, other than when they come in for gas or tires.  They have their foot on the gas pedal the entire time.  When they need to slow down they just take their foot off the gas for a second and then back to full throttle.

This holiday season, take a lesson from NASCAR and consider not slamming on the brakes!

Continue to make your phone calls.
Just consider different topics.  For example, invite them for a coffee just to catch up! Ask about their families.  Ask about what kind of presents they are going to get for their spouse or their kids. Ask what they’re going to do for the holidays. Do they get a real tree or an artificial tree? Do they Open their presents on Christmas Eve or on Christmas day? Meet them at the mall and have the coffee with them while they’re shopping!

Of course we don’t call on the actual holiday day, but the days leading up and immediately after, these can be very productive days.

And as always, we only work from 9am to 5pm.  The mornings, evenings, and weekends are times that we spend with our families, friends, or just recharging our batteries because we have earned the right to do so (and our families deserve our time).

The key is, when January comes, instead of trying to restart your cold engine, simply change your conversations back to “sales mode” and start asking for the business again.

You can encourage your real estate partners to do the exact same thing. It’s much easier to go from 50 to 200 miles per hour than it is to go from 0 to 200. There’s a lot less wear and tear on the car and the engine!

This holiday, do what other loan officers are not willing to do! Keep making your calls! Come January, you’ll be thanking me.

When you are ready to have me hook you up with a step by step plan of exactly what to do to close an additional 4-6 more loans per month in the next 90 days, we’ll map it out for you on a 1 on 1 zoom call <no charge>.

This is the same plan that the Top Producing Loan Officer Freedom Club are currently having continued great success with.

Get Your Free Plan Here

To Your Success!

One thing we must do, particularly in this new market that we find ourselves in….

PROSPECT NOW with the DSP (Daily Success Plan).

Here’s why…

Understand that the effort you do in prospecting this month will give us our results for January, February, or even March (which historically can be the slowest months for LOs). 

See, we are in a pipeline business.  The pipeline is at least a 90 day process.

I get it, sometimes when we prospect, we get a deal right then.  But most of the time, the vast majority of the time, it’s about a 90 day delay from prospecting till file in process.

First of all, 67% of all home buyers get their financing from the loan officer their real estate agent recommended!!

So….

We have to make sure that we take around 2 hours at the beginning of each day to:

1. Prospect with agents in our area that are closing at least 8 buyer sides per month but not currently referring to us.

2. Giving appreciation and asking for even more referrals to agents that are already referring to us.

3. Updating the buyer agent, the listing agent, the borrower, the co-borrower, and the title company and then using my “3 X 3” script to ask for even more referrals from those people in a super cool way that has even more referrals rolling in.

4. Marketing to your past database by phone, text, snail mail, email, and targeted social marketing.

5. Calling your pre-approved looking prospects with the “Future Casting” script to help ensure we actually close on those people that we have already put all the effort in getting the lead and pre-approving them.

6. Texting our referring agents with the “Thursday Text” to get even more referrals on Thursday and Friday so that we can take the weekends off.

The reason why most LOs are down this season is because they forgot how to prospect or perhaps they never had to because with rates in the 2’s and 3’s, we were too busy patting ourselves on the back with all the business that was coming in… heck, who could blame us..
We started thinking that we don’t need to prospect like every other sales people do because loans were just pouring in from everywhere.

That thinking is costing most LOs from achieving truly epic results.

Understand that it’s not your fault if that is your thought process, it’s likely that nobody has ever shown you how to actually prospect in a super cool (and easy) way and how to have ever increasing production (ie, EVEN MO’ MONEY IN YOUR POCKET)

If you want to see a step-by-step approach on how we time block our week so that we can do all those things, about who does what, resulting in even more $$$ to you, all while taking evenings and weekends off….

Let’s set you up with a 1 on 1 zoom meeting where we’ll walk you through exactly how to do this <no charge>

Schedule 1 on 1 zoom meeting here to see how

We’ll also share scripts to get more referrals and past database stuff.

It’s your turn now!!

Talk soon!

 

So I was sitting in my office the other day and Sue, a loan officer that is a private consulting client of mine, sent me over a message as a quick SOS signal.  Here was her message:

“I have a realtor with me right now – here’s the question: Her brokers (she is in FL) tell her that there is a “law” that she has to recommend more than one lender. I know there is no such law, but what do I say to her Carl?  I need to know ASAP as I’m sitting with her now.  Thanks!”

How many times have we all heard the ‘ol “I have to hand out 3 cards” response from agents?!

Now, some of the time, this is a real situation that is in agents’ minds that they really think they do need to hand out 3 cards based on some erroneous information that somebody has given them.  Other times it’s nothing more than a “deflection” response from agents, you know, meaning that you really haven’t given them a reason to give out just your card…

… or better yet, YOU WANT AGENTS TO BREAK OUT IN A COLD SWEAT EVERY TIME THEY GET A BUYER LEAD UNTIL THEY HAND THAT LEAD OFF TO YOU!

You don’t actually want them to give your card to a prospect, who may or may not call you, by the way. 

Instead…..

…you want the agent to tell the prospect you will be calling them, then that agent call you and give the referral to you.  This ensures a solid connection, instead of the ol’ “well, I gave them your card, I’m not sure why they didn’t call you…” response from agents.

So here’s the script that I sent over to Sue, my private consulting client:

“Awesome, it’s an honor to be one of the 3.  At least we know that 1 out of every 3 of your referrals will close on time and you will have great communication on the loan process, and that 1/3^rd of the time that your leads will be followed up like green on a pickle, so at least on those, you will get even more referrals from them once they are in your past database.  On the other 2, well, all bets are off.”

Now, let’s talk about that script for a minute and I’ll explain why it works so well, and give you some follow up information that will help you get a lot more referrals in other ways too.  

A few years ago I sent a survey out to around 15,000 real estate agents asking them what their #1 complaint was with loan officers that they refer to.

Here’s what came back in the order of importance to them.

#1:  They don’t close on time

#2:  They don’t communicate with me on the loan process, I don’t know what’s going on with the file.

#3:  The loan officer doesn’t follow up on my leads

So I knew right then what to focus on in my marketing to agents….

I call this my “Realtor Referral Getting” Checklist

1.  Close on time!

2.  Communicate with them every Tuesday morning on what’s going on with the files we are working on together (either me or my team calls them with updates)!

[by the way, there’s another script my team uses to get tons more deals when we do those weekly updates.  Be sure to ask me about the “Just Ask” script when you do your complimentary strategy call with us by going here:  www.LoanOfficerStrategyCall.com

3.  Follow up on their leads relentlessly! 

So you want to weave those 3 things in all of your marketing and scripts because those are the things they said are most problematic with their current lender they are giving all their referrals too.

When you cover those 3 things, you’ll get a deluge of business from agents… 

…IT’S WHAT THEY WANT!!


But listen to this, it’s one thing to say you’re going to do those 3 things, it’s another to actually do them. 

WE HAVE TO STRUCTURE OUR ACTIVITIES AND OUR STRATEGIES SO THAT WE ARE COVERING THOSE 3 THINGS!

But we can talk about how to structure “who’s doing what” in your current day to day activity to show you how to use your current resources to make those 3 things happen like clockwork during your strategy call.  It’s way easier than you think…

…it’s just prior to now, nobody has shown you how…
… but once you know just a few things, you’ll see how epic your mortgage business can be, getting even more referrals and all with less stress ☺

Talk soon!

PS.  On your strategy call, we will be going over some other “loan getting” scripts too.  This call will be a great source for even more free scripts ☺

Go here now to see if there are any openings left for your complimentary strategy call:

www.LoanOfficerStrategyCall.com

Thousands of high-level LOs have invested to be in my Loan Officer Freedom Club group. At the beginning of these meetings, we start with three questions.

These three questions can be used for pretty much any area of life – and answering them is your first step to achieving your dreams:

1. Where are you?

2. Where do you want to go?

3. How are you going to get there?

Your focus for these questions could be personal or professional. You can use it everywhere. Any dilemma, any opportunity, any challenge, any problem, any DREAM you have, you can ask yourself these three questions.

Since your mind can’t ignore a question, these questions elicit resourcefulness – and resourcefulness is one of the most important qualities you can utilize to achieve your dreams.

When you answer these three questions, you start inventing a bigger future for yourself, and you can transform your life.

Best,

Carl

P.S. So… where are you? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there?

Go with me to this page and I’ll set you up to help map it all out for you <no charge>