There’s an old saying where I come from…

… “Just get rid of the salt”.

For instance, let’s say you like cake, but the cake being served is loaded with salt, like it’s been soaking in the ocean.

If you just get rid of the salt, then the cake (or salad) would be awesome.

So in the loan officer / branch manager world, this is when you love what you are doing, but that 1 thing that you hate, you think comes with it.  How can you get rid of that part?

See, I’m convinced that is what holds 97% of the loan officers from achieving “greatness”, the greatness that they deserve and are worthy of.

They think that there’s part of being a top producer that is totally uncool that comes with the package, so they settle in mediocracy, robbing themselves and their family of what would otherwise be totally doable.  

For me it was working more than a 32 hour work week, and working evenings and weekends.

For others it would be investing in large sums of money that they currently don’t have or perhaps working on worthless internet “leads” or other “high work and low productivity” activities.

I was talking to somebody the other day that had been falsely lead to believe that she had to provide Realtors leads before she could ever talk to them (not a scalable way to build a mortgage business) and in reality fed to her by somebody trying to make a buck – but had never actually closed a loan… (weird, I know).

Whatever the thing it is that may be holding you back, because you think “Well, that has to be a part of epic or even modest growth”, just know that there is no one thing that has to be done, or at least not done by “YOU”.
One of my favorite questions is, “How can you close more loans without <insert anything that’s “uncool” for you>?”

I’m here to tell you that after decades of helping loan officers in all 50 states, as well as currently having one of the most successful mortgage branches in the nation, I have never been stumped on that question.

Two things: 

1. There’s always a solution, and it’s almost always way easier than you may think.

2. The answer usually comes from asking somebody that’s already getting the results that you want (deserve) without doing that thing you also don’t want to do.

Both of which results from just asking the right question to the right people.

See there, there’s the easy solution right there (which follows “thing 1” mentioned above).

So that’s your homework for now:
“How can you <thing that you want>, without <thing that you don’t want>?”

When you are ready for help with that, let me know and I’ll totally hook you up right here… <no charge>.

… unless you like salty cake…

Your homie,

Carl White

There’s an old saying, don’t buy more cows until you milk the cows you already have (ok, admittedly I’m from the South, so maybe we are the only ones that say that).

But the idea is to get the most juice out of the orange before going to the next one.

What that means for us branch managers and loan officers is, get the most referrals and new loans coming in, from the loans that you already have in your pipeline.

For example, as a high producing loan officer, I took an application on about 1/3^rd of all the sellers that my buyers were buying a house from using a simple method I’ll share with you today, and then I closed about half of those.  

So for example, for about every 10 purchase loans that I closed each month, I would close about 1-2 of the sellers to the house they were moving into once they sold their home to the buyer that I was financing to move into their home.  

So if I was closing 50 purchase deals per month, I would close an extra 7 or so of the sellers PER MONTH of those properties to the “new” home they were buying.

And if you were making $3,000 per closing, imagine making an extra $21,000 in sales commissions from those extra closings Per MONTH.  

Oh, and I would app some of the extra “7” sellers too.

Kind of a “Snowball Of Coolness”.

OK, here’s how it works…

Once a contract comes in, call the seller to introduce yourself.  (many times their number is on the contract, and other times we would simply google them for a number).

On that call to them, it would sound something like this..

“Hey Mr. / Ms. Seller, my name is Carl White with ABC Mortgage.  I’m doing the financing for Jane Doe who is buying your home at 123 Main Street.”

“The purpose of my call is to introduce myself to you and let you know how this works.”

“First of all, although I can’t go into detail due to confidentiality and privacy rules, I can tell you that Jane Doe is well qualified and I expect a smooth and flawless on-time closing.”

“I see that Realtor Randy is your listing agent that helped market and sell your home. I haven’t had the opportunity to work with Realtor Randy before (if I hadn’t), but I have to tell you I’m looking to help him and you get to the closing on-time and it looks like he did a great job getting a contract on your house.”

<Here’s the hook…>

“By the way, where are you guys moving to?”

<If their answer is to an area you are licensed in, then do your call to action…>

“That sounds like a great area.  Oh, who did you get your pre-approval from?”

<notice you didn’t ask them “Are you pre-approved?”, because you know they will likely say “yes” even if they aren’t.  When you ask “Who did it?”, they can’t make up a name on the spot most of the time, so those that aren’t pre-approved, which is most, they simply tell you the truth, they aren’t pre-approved.

Then I tell them how much smoother the closing goes if the financing for both deals are through the same lender (which, of course, is the truth).

Now, if they tell you that they are pre-approved with XYZ Mortgage, ask them who referred them to that company.

If they say “my agent, Realtor Randy”, then let that one go.  You aren’t looking to start your journey of this deal and getting Realtor Randy to refer to you his / her next buyer lead by pissing them off by redirecting their referral.

After all, they may have referred to their best friend, brother, or next door neighbor who is a LO.

But almost always, they tell me they got pre-approved with XYZ Mortgage because they used them last time or they just found them on the web and they really have no relationship with them.

At this point, simply ask them to send you the loan estimate so that you can do a free review to make sure they are getting a “fair shake” and you do this as a courtesy for all the sellers in all your transactions.

“We find it works best for you this way…”

And now you can offer alternatives and a more “smooth and on-time, flawless closing”.

This always worked for me very well.

Put it into action and let me know how well it works for you.

When you have any questions or you need more info to get started with this strategy, or any other strategy, you can contact us here

and we’ll help you with getting more referred leads <no charge>

Talk soon!

It wasn’t one of my proudest moments. I was in the 11^th grade.  

3 of my buddies were trying out for the school basketball team. Now understand that none of the 4 of us were “jocks” by anybody’s definition.

I knew there was little to no chance they would make the team.

After they did their team tryouts, the results were announced on who made the team and the new roster was put on a large white-board in the school main lobby for all to see.

When I found out they didn’t make the team, I caught up with them in-between classes and said in a snarky tone, “I see you guys didn’t make the team..”.

One of them looked me square in the eyes and said something that changed everything for me from that day forward…

“Yeah, well Carl, at least we tried!”

Wham!  There was that!

It was not normal for me to have said such a “jerky” thing in the first place, but the lesson I got back from him was invaluable. 

If we try and don’t get, well, we have nothing to lose.  

We didn’t have that “thing” we tried for in the first place, so by trying to get it, it doesn’t make it any worse if we don’t get it.

But if we try and do get “it”, well, we get the benefit without any of the risks (nothing to lose).

For instance, let’s say I call the listing agent on a deal I’m doing to see about them sending me their next buyer lead, if I don’t call I have ZERO chance of that happening. 

If I call that listing agent with the “Just Ask” script, well, some will start referring to us.

So the worst case scenario is you ask and they say “no thank you”, the best case scenario is you ask, and they refer to you, and you make yet another $3,000 (or whatever your typical closing check is).

So worse case scenario: you have what you already have (none of his / her deals).

Best case scenario: You start cashing $3,000 checks.

So when my buddy said “At least we tried…”, it flipped a switch in me to start swinging for the fences.  I never looked back and I’m so grateful for that day.

I’m reasonably sure he may not remember that day many years ago now, but I wish I could catch up with him these days and thank him for that moment.  It’s made all the difference.

So what’s the take home message today?
Point to the left field fence and let’s take a swing of that bat and give it all we have.

Afterall, we have nothing to lose.

Talk Soon!

“Ok, I screwed up and I think it’s going to delay the closing, what do I tell the borrowers and Realtors?”  

That was the question I asked my branch manager my 2^nd month in the business (over 2 decades ago). He gave me a formula that I’ll never forget.

This simple formula that I’m going to share with you today saved my bacon more than once over the years.

First of all, understand that things happen, and everybody makes mistakes.  We just don’t want to make the same mistake the 2^nd or 3^rd time.  We learn from it, make adjustments, and press on.

Also remember that successful agents, the one’s we get our referrals from, have several deals going on at any given time and as such, your “problem” or issue isn’t their first one and they also know that things happen sometimes. 

It’s the ‘struggle bunny’ agents that get all out of whack because they don’t have any other deals closing to make their own mortgage payment.  (who could blame them for panicking when it’s the only one that they’ve had for the last several months…)

So when something goes wrong that puts the closing in jeopardy of closing late, immediately call the agents and the borrower(s).

The important thing is to communicate, and here’s how you do it:

1. Here’s what happened.  Tell them exactly what happened.  Take responsibility. It’s what leaders do.

2. Here’s what we are doing about it / here’s where we are now.  Let them know what’s happening now and what action steps you are putting in place and your prediction of if and when it will solve the problem.

3. Here’s what we are doing to prevent it from happening again.  Tell them what action steps you are putting in place so this won’t happen on the next referral that they send over to you.

This formula helps to de escalate the emotions AND it helps you put together a better team / system for your ever growing business.

Trying to ignore the issue and / or hiding in the closet, well, that just never turns out well and it just adds to the stress that you may be experiencing.

It is seldom that I lose business relations when I follow this formula, and frankly, following this formula, my business is a well oiled machine because we continue to improve the systems and make sure the team are all “A” level players, all because of past issues.

Nobody likes it when things go wrong, but when it happens, do what leaders do… communicate.
The true key to all of this is, GET MORE REFERRED LEADS!!

It’s way more likely that you’ll close more loans when that is your focus.

How do you do that?

We’ll show you how to get more referred leads here on a quick zoom call.

Once you have more high quality referred leads, no 1 individual deal going sideways will ruffle your feathers as there are soooo many of “them” and only 1 of you. ☺

To your success and coolness,

Carl White

Do you kind of feel like that “mortgage wind” is blowing you a bit sideways?

Here’s a little known weird fact:  A sailboat actually moves faster with the wind blowing from the side rather than when it’s going downwind.

See, when it’s going downwind, it can only move as fast as the wind.  When it’s blowing from the side, it can move multiples of the wind speed.  A few years back, a catamaran sailboat set a record speed of 50.8 mph, with a wind speed of only 18 mph.

So how does this help us close more loans?

The last few years, the wind has been at our back.  Rates low, plenty of equity in existing homes, and plenty of money floating around… 

… but let’s face it, it was easy to get “sluggish” and just sit in the easy chair and let loans just fall out of the sky.  

“How do I close all these referred leads” was the biggest challenge.

The challenge now is, getting back to actual prospecting. You know, those things that we used to have to do for every loan…. it’s getting back to “normal” now.  The last handful of years have not been normal.  Rates in the 2’s and 3’s are not even close to normal for those that have been at this for a few decades.

This is actually welcomed news to many of us.

Just like going through the mortgage meltdown of 2008-2009, most loan officers fell off the face of the Earth… they didn’t know how to prospect or they simply chose not to do it.

But here’s the thing, those of us who did prospect ended up making way more money after the meltdown than before it.  I didn’t have my first 7 figure income year until AFTER that challenging time.  We made more on each loan and closed way more loans because only a handful of us were left, there was like no competition.
I’m confident that history repeats itself and I’m confident that you will do record speeds during this “side wind” time… well, assuming of course that you know how to prospect and actually do it of course.  I believe in you!

I’ve never found prospecting to be hard at all. 

It’s a simple 4 step process that we use with our Loan Officer Freedom Club members that I’m happy to share with you <no charge>.

I’ll give it to you here on this demo call.

See ya on the inside and let’s enjoy some sailing ☺

Capt. Carl White