Loan officers will pay big money not to have to pick up the phone, but they’re just not getting results. If you want to be a top producer in the mortgage industry, you have to spend time on the phone, plain and simple.

Why do loan officers have call reluctance? Because they’re afraid of being a pest or bothering real estate agents when they call and ask for business. We all grew up with the mindset that salesmen are out to get us, to take advantage of us, that they only care about money.

But that’s not what we’re about in the mortgage business. We genuinely want to help people.

Loan Officers are the Best Thing to Happen to Realtors

What if a real estate agent had just won the lottery? Would you be willing to pick up the phone and tell them the good news? 

You are basically a winning lottery ticket for your realtors. You’re here to leverage each other’s talents and connections. You’re going to help them get more leads and convert more of their deals and ultimately make them more money. Just like a lotto ticket.

You’re also going to help them have a more peaceful experience during the loan process. You’re going to help by updating them and let them know what’s going on. You aren’t just helping them a little; you’re helping them significantly. And in a very cool way. When you have the confidence to see that, picking up that phone is so much easier.

A few years ago, thousands of realtors were surveyed and asked what they disliked about lenders. They said lender:

1. don’t close on time. 
2. don’t communicate every week.
3. don’t follow up with their leads enough. 

If we can do those three things for them (which we do), they’ve hit the jackpot. Especially in times like these. 

Value Propositions for Your Realtor Referral Partners

Over the past few years of working with realtors, we’ve compiled a list of 29 value propositions that can help you earn your realtors’ trust, respect, gratitude, and appreciation—all without spending a dime. 

Once we’ve developed a relationship with an agent, do we invest in that relationship? Of course, but we don’t lead off dating somebody by writing a check. It’s just a bad way to start doing business. 

Whenever I’m talking to an agent, I work two or three of the value propositions into the conversation. You want to know these propositions like the back of your hand, so you can spit them out like your phone number or last name. I’m going to share just 3 of them in this post, and if you’d like a cheat sheet of all 29, we’ll hook you up at the end.

Value Proposition #1: We’re Experts in Guidelines and Program Fits

You don’t personally have to be an expert at everything. I run one of the largest teams in the mortgage industry, and I’m not an expert. I’m good at it, but not an expert. I’m convinced that not knowing the guidelines and program fits is what helps me close more loans, because I didn’t get caught up in that conversation. 

When I hit my first month of 10 loans, I decided to spend all my time getting new business to come in, then I’d refer them to Dave, a guy I was working for at the time, who knew all the guidelines. And I’ve never stopped doing that.

We have this phenomenal resource called Loan Officer Deal Desk. It’s a Facebook group with thousands of loan officers, along with processors and underwriters. It’s completely free. You describe your scenario, and there will be someone in there who can help you with guidelines and program fits. It’s amazing. You’ll ask a question and get 20-30 people giving you helpful answers immediately. So you don’t have to be the expert yourself, but you have to have access to an expert—a lot of experts.

Value Proposition #2: We Are the Last Stop Shop

We have the who and the what for all situations. We never tell a prospect no. We might say, yes, I can help you, and here’s what you need to do first. Maybe it’s “go get a job.” Or “work on getting your credit score up.” Even if they’re asking for a situation that I personally don’t do loans for, we’ll find somebody that does, and we’ll refer them to a buddy.

Basically, you want to be the Amazon.com of mortgages. You tell people: “You want something, come to me. If I can’t help you, I know who can.” You tell them they don’t have to call 15 different loan officers. I’ve got you covered. And even if it’s not with my company, it might be with a buddy of mine in the Freedom Club. That solves a huge problem for real estate agents. They don’t have to go shop around for loan officers. You’ll do it for them. 

It creates more trust in your expertise, and you become their advisor, their first point of contact. Whenever that agent has any questions, I want that conversation. And ultimately that will create more referrals. They trust me, and they know I have a circle of people they can also trust.

Value Proposition #7: We Help Agents Make More Money

Another reason my realtor referral partners want to refer their business needs to me is that I’ll help them make more money. There won’t be any loss leads. I tell them that I follow up with their leads on their behalf. We know most real estate agents aren’t following up with their leads. They send over a lead and work on it for a day or two, then it goes cold and off everybody’s radar. 

We follow up for them and help build their pipeline. And everybody that we pre-approve, we call them every Thursday with our pre-approved and looking script and ask them how the house hunting is going. Every single lead you send over to me is going to be nurtured. I’m going to help you make more money by converting more of the leads that you’re already getting.

We’re even getting referrals from those referrals. And we have a customer for life mentality. Every time a realtor refers someone to me, once we close on that person, we’re going to be calling them four times a year, snail mailing them once a month, emailing them once a week, and running Facebook ads to just our past database.

And, when one of your referrals sends me a referral, which they do, I’m going to make sure you’re the agent they choose to work with. My first conversation with them will be, do you have a realtor yet? If not, I’ll tell them about you. I’ll even call you for them. I bring the realtor up to speed on the client and get them set up for success.

Now Go Help Those Realtors Win the Lottery

So, you’re not being salesy. You’re offering incredible value to your realtor referral partners. When it’s time to pick up the phone and call those agents, it’s so much easier because you know you’re helping them by having experts in guidelines and programs, being the last stop, and making them more money.

And that’s just 3 of the 29 value propositions. Can you see how it’d be so much easier to pick up the phone and make these calls when you have 29 different ways to enhance your referral partner’s life?

Click here to schedule a strategy call TODAY and we’ll give you a FREE copy of these 29 value propositions. We’ll look at what you’re doing and pick out the best three or four to start with in your business. What have you got to lose?

This time of year is always one that I cherish and while 2020 has certainly been one for the books, I believe it’s important that we keep in mind what is truly important…love, friendship, and support. Everyone’s journey is different, but I want you to know that I am here for you and I sincerely thank you for continuing to be here for me too.

Happy holidays, my friend! 

– Carl White

So I was on a group page on Facebook and an LO was telling a story of how a prospect said he was being quoted some super low rate at another mortgage company.

This LO was looking for scripts to reel the borrower back in because the LO was seeing this as a disaster in the making.

I had a question and a thought.

Question:  “How’s it going with the other 39 people that you have pre-approved this month?”

Thought:  “This is too late in the process for a script to work, we need to address this on our first conversation with them.” (I’ll give you a script for this in just a minute)

First let’s cover the question.

I have found that as a general rule, for every 4 leads, I have one closing. (my team and I have closed 10’s of thousands of loans…. literally).

How that works is approximately half of the referred leads we get are “approvable” and we close about 50% of those.  So if we get 100 referred leads, 50 of them are approvable, and we close 25 of those.

The other half of those either…

1. End up not buying or refinancing
2. End up shopping us

We understand that matrix and instead of focusing on trying to change an industry wide matrix (that is very likely not to be changed on any large scale)…

…. we focus on getting more referred leads…

You see, shoppers are going to shop. 

So instead of spending a ton of time chasing those shoppers, which is like herding cats, we focus on Getting More High Quality REFERRED LEADS.

How do we do that?

We have 4 different strategies that we strategically implement that does just that.

Zero cold calling, and not a bunch of magical fairy dust widgets that promise the moon and deliver only a “money sucking noise out of your wallet”. 

We can show you the 4 strategies here on a quick zoom meeting…. For free ☺

Now, we do have a script that we use on the shoppers, but we use it BEFORE THEY START SHOPPING US.

It’s called the “If I can <insert in blank> will you commit to me being your lender on this purchase / refinance?”

It sounds like this…

“Ok Bob and Sue, so based on our conversation and preliminary information, it looks like your monthly payment is going to be <insert in number> with a down payment of <insert in number>, and funds to bring to closing will be <insert in number>. 

So if I can have <insert in number> as your monthly payment with you bringing <insert in number> to the closing table, will you commit to me to be your lender so that I can commit myself and my team to start working on it so that we can close on time?”

Once somebody verbally commits, it’s against human nature to go against that.

And if somebody says that they won’t give that commitment, well then, you have identified this person as a shopper and it will likely not be a good use of your time.

I get it, there are some scripts and spreadsheets, things like mortgage coach, and other great products that do help.  We use all those things too, but if somebody won’t commit on that initial call, then we know what to expect… and are not disappointed when they do what we know they are likely to do.  Shoppers are going to shop…

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 won’t ruffle your feathers as there are soooo many of “them” and only 1 of you ☺

To your success and coolness,

Carl White

PS.  This is the link where we’ll show you how to get referred leads without buying leads or paying for online ads.