Let’s get the bottom line out of the way at the beginning – call reluctance can kill your business if you let it. Better you hear that from me now, than your future empty bank account. The good news about call reluctance is that you can turn that into calling for cash, once you understand what’s going on and just how much power you have to change it. (And I’m using the word ‘cash’ because it sounds cool… calling for ‘establishing and cultivating really great relationships’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)

First, know that you are ALWAYS at choice in your life. Nothing is bigger than you in your life – including call reluctance, fear of success/failure, or anything else you can name – UNLESS you allow it. So you are choosing to have call reluctance be an issue in your business after you’ve read this article.

Now there are a few factors that can contribute to call reluctance. A big one is your personal sales-esteem. Meaning, it’s about how you’re showing up in a sales scenario – confident or not-so-much? Maybe you’re new to sales, or you’ve got sales experience but you’ve heard a lot of rejection, or you have taken the brunt of people’s frustrations in your calls in the past. When your sales-esteem is low, that phone can get really heavy.

Maybe you don’t know what to say once you actually get someone on the phone. It’s that awkward moment where you don’t feel prepared with something to say or you freeze up because you can’t think for a minute. This happens in personal 1:1 meetings too. The good news is that this is easily addressed. Read on…

Maybe you have a lot of distractions – like tweets calling you out or emails pinging in or you’re trying to handle a call while getting the battery of your car fob changed. It’s hard to focus and make calls when distractions are present.  

Something that affects many loan officers is not having easy access to your call list contact information so you have to go on an archeological dig for it before you can even begin thinking about making calls. (This happens to be one I know all too well.)

If you’re like me (well, who I was back in the day), you might think you need to have more discipline to get those calls done. But discipline is a non-factor when you are fired up enough about what it is you want – think about that the next time you want Chunky Monkey ice cream at 2 a.m.! The answer on this one? When your desire (to connect with prospects) is bigger than whatever is blocking your path to it (call reluctance), you will make your calls.

It can get real easy to forget that you have the potential to change someone’s life by making that call. Their dream might be to own a home, and you might be able to make that happen for them. When you really get that, there ain’t no phone big or heavy enough to stop you from making that call.

Just like anything else in life, momentum makes achievement easier. So when you find your call rhythm, you create momentum – and you just want to keep making those calls and having conversations that matter. That’s when you finally realize calls are not about you – it’s about what you can do for the other person on the phone. When people know that, your business will just naturally grow. People don’t generally care to do business with you until they know you care about them first.

I’ve been in this business for a long time now – I won’t go into that now… let’s just say I’d have to take my shoes off more than once to count that high! Anyway, I can tell you one of the biggest secrets I know about being successful in our industry is simple — be humble. Just show up. Get out of your own way by focusing on the other person. Share how you can help someone get what they want. Make the calls. Have the conversations. Meet people. Keep it real. And, in case I wasn’t clear, make the calls.

This is a hot topic for me. In fact, I am so passionate about making calls and what gets in the way that I sat down and wrote a book with one of my good friends – Kevin Gillespie. You might know him as one of the top trainers in our business. We wrote this book to share the best of what we know. Back in the day, we didn’t have the internet or fancy marketing techniques – we had the phone and our feet. So we know what we’re talking about and we put it all in this book. In fact, it’s now a best-selling book. You can get it here: CrushingCallReluctance.com.

If call reluctance has ever been, or is right now, a factor in holding back your business growth, I’d love to hear from you. I want to know how it’s up for you… what’s your call reluctance story? How did (or does) it show up for you? What affect does it have on your business? How did you overcome it? Now is your time to make a different choice about call reluctance… how does it feel to take your power back from the phone? I’m serious — let me hear from you below.

AND… if this is something that’s a problem for you in your business today, I really want to hear from you. You can get past it – every great salesperson has had at least a brush with this issue. And many, including me, have gotten smacked by a big, heavy dose of it. Maybe it’s a rite of passage.

In any case, don’t let call reluctance be bigger than you and kill your business. This is your invitation to crush your call reluctance once and for all so it becomes calling for cash— my team and I have your back. Fill us in – we’re here to help.

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor

Loan officers are some of the most interesting, engaging, intelligent, creative and dynamic people I know… and that is exactly why these people can end up chasing success all over the place or, worse, never experience it.

Imagine seeing success as being a place across the river – a chaotic, rapids-filled, fast-paced river with a lot of people also trying to reach success ‘over there’. That success is about more pre-quals, more ideal client leads, more closings, more deals… it’s all just waiting for you, but you can’t get to it easily. First, you have to get across that river with challenges like fast-moving white water rapids, competition with other river-crossers in all kinds of boats and vehicles of their choice, eddies that can slow or even sink you with the distraction of trying to get out of them and maybe some alligators are in there too.

So what do smart loan officers do? They start building bridges.

For example, one bridge might be using Facebook marketing, so you get signed up and really get into the process – maybe even 80 % done with it – when you see there’s a new LinkedIn ad that promises success. So you jump straight into that, leaving the Facebook ‘bridge’ incomplete and, while you’re researching how to make the most of the LinkedIn ad, you learn about a new marketing technique from YouTube, so you get into that. You hop from one bridge to the other, never finishing the first one, and the result is that can’t reach the land of success across that river.

When you don’t finish a project (bridge), you won’t get the results you want. Then, 3–4 months down the line, you might think, “Geez, none of this works. I’ve tried everything and nothing works.” You’re still standing where you started because you never finished any of your bridges. The secret to success is focusing on one bridge at a time until you finish it, so you aren’t leaving your bridges half-built. Like my daddy used to say, “good bridges keep your boots dry.”

The 4-Part Formula You Can Use to Reach Success

I have a four-part formula I use to make sure I’m not starting a bunch of projects all at once. Maybe it can help you too.

The first thing I do is consider all the potential strategies available – I want to see my options. Then I decide which one is going to make me the first dollar or give me the first closing. At this point, it is important I not get greedy by choosing the one that’s going to make me the most closings or the most dollars. Instead, I choose the one that’s going to give me the first return the fastest. As in, I choose the bridge that will get me across to success island the soonest. Why? Because once I’ve crossed that bridge, I have income, which means I can start hiring assistants to help, and that changes everything. You are probably like me in thinking things just get easier with a little money in hand, right?

This next second step requires brutal honesty. You need to ask yourself, “How likely am I to complete this strategy (bridge)?” You have to think about your history, what you’ve achieved to this point, how much you’ve got to put into this strategy and rationalize whether it’s a strategy you are likely to complete. Does this mean you have to be able to complete every step and all the ins and outs of this project with the dotted I’s and crossed T’s? No. This means you need to be able to start with a simple project, finish it to get some cash in the door and hire people, let them flesh out the refinements, and you move on to something more complex.

For me, when I start a project and realize I’m not going to complete it on my own, after years of working with myself I have finally come to understand I need someone else to help me get through each step. This is not a pride thing! It’s a ‘gotta get it done’ thing. So be smart – get the help you need as you need it. Find a way – hire an intern, bribe your kid, go to a support group – to get enough help to get you through the bare minimum of building that bridge.

The third step is “Can I delegate it?” In other words, once you’ve made your first dollar with your completed bridge, is refining and maintaining the bridge something you can delegate to somebody else?

Remember, your biggest responsibility is to be the rainmaker – you need to make the phone ring and get the deals in the door. So when that bridge is built and you’re getting closings from it, you’re getting money to build your infrastructure. The money you’re bringing in is your tool to hire somebody to help you – so delegate that bridge and focus on doing what only you can do to build your business. That means you’re getting the benefits from getting this bridge (strategy) up and going, someone else is doing the work to keep it going and make it better, and then you can go back out to build your business. If you cannot (or will not) delegate that bridge, you have just created a job for yourself – and that’s not business-building, that’s a job.

The last step of this formula is “Does it look like fun?” In other words, is this strategy (bridge) something you will enjoy working, at least in the early stages? Let’s face it: people do what they like doing. If you don’t enjoy something, it’s going to feel like a chore and you’re not going to want to work it. Or, if you’re like me, you might even end up sabotaging it because you sideline it, or it somehow ends up on a reject pile no matter how much you want to get it done. Go with a strategy you’ll enjoy and the whole thing will be that much smoother – I guarantee it.

One last point – here’s a good way to keep track of all your bridges and ideas for bridges. You might be more high-tech than me, but I find it works to keep a little spiral notebook in the front left pocket of my jacket. I keep an ongoing list of good ideas I hear so I can refer to them whenever I’m ready later. Why? Because I want to keep going on my original project – my current bridge – so it gets done.

When I have finished that bridge, say No. 1, then I look in my notebook to determine my best options and start this process over again. I determine which is the fastest-producing strategy and start working it – let’s call that one No. 2. I do not even think about No. 3 until No. 2 is complete. But when I’m ready, I pull out my notebook and use this 4-part formula to help me choose the right strategy and stay focused on building and finishing my next bridge.

Building bridges, for me, means victory. I feel like a winner because I have reached success in the way I chose and built, I have money in my pocket, and I get to keep that success going by being a good delegator. All that means I am being a business-builder by having a team and systems in place, so I can delegate keeping that success going to one of my wonderful team members or hire someone new to join our team and help. The wins just keep coming at that point.

What half-built bridges do you need to finish? They say writing them down and making them public is a commitment that helps you make it happen.

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor

It’s clear you need a team to close more loans – that’s just how it works. Think of yourself as the rainmaker who circulates in your community and gets loans in the door. From there, your team needs to handle the details. There are two primary operating models for such teams; I like to call them the Assembly Line Model and the Pod Model.

The Assembly Line Model means that, when a lead comes into your team, someone takes the application – usually you, the loan officer. From there, that file gets handed off to a team member who orders out the file, then hands it over to another team member to print the documents, which the client

signs. Then these signed documents are passed on to another person, and someone after that, until the loan is closed.

In other words, it’s borrowing the concept of efficiency from manufacturing – think Henry Ford assembly line. There are a lot of different people doing individual things. Each does what they do and passes it down the line to the next ‘specialist’. Now, I have to say I’ve never cared for this model. Why? Well, first, because it’s based on a product assembly model which is very different than what it takes to serve people well. It’s incredibly inefficient for a services-based business, and it costs more than it’s worth agonizing over. It’s also hard to scale when each team member is a specialist (what if that person is out and something happens on that file?).

Top all that off with the fact that, if a loan doesn’t close on time, we don’t know who to look at for what potential oversight or problem affected the file because there are too many hands on it. You don’t know what part of your system is compromised or broken. The picture in my mind is the file becomes a ‘hot potato’ where each person wants to get their part done and passed down the line. There aren’t any checks on quality at each step, and nobody is responsible for overseeing the whole file.

However, with the Pod Model, you know exactly where to look for issues because one person shoulders a lot of the responsibility. The loan officer takes the application, sells the deal, and then hands it off to someone who becomes the ‘crew chief’ of that file. That person oversees the details, even if they are delegated, so there is consistency and clarity about the status of that file. So the ‘pod’ within the Pod Model is that the file has its own ecosystem (think of an egg, where everything is self-contained). This pod / file is monitored, maintained and accounted for by one loan officer assistant, regardless of how many hands touch that file.

There are two methods by which the Pod Model can function: Lead to Closing and Contract to Closing.

You, the loan officer, are in charge of making the phone ring and bringing in new business. Once that phone call comes in, your receptionist answers it and directs your client to your loan officer assistant (LOA), who is now in charge of that client and file. Your assistant (LOA) will take that application and get that information back to you so you can call that client back and sell the deal. This is the Lead to Closing method and, on average, we’ve found that LOAs can handle about eight files monthly this way.

In the Contract to Closing method, you – the loan officer – takes your clients’ applications, meets with your clients and sells the deals, then hands the deals off to your assistant. Using this method, we’ve found that LOAs can handle about 12 files per month. Once you get anything higher than that, it’s a good idea to hire a second (or third) LOA to keep up with the new clients coming in your business door.

The good news is that it’s much easier to spot a problem within the Pod Model than it is with the Assembly Line Model. For example, if you have three LOAs, and each of them receives a lead as they come in (the first goes to LOA1, the second to LOA2, the third to LOA3, the fourth to LOA1, and so on), they’ll have the same amount of leads and closings. In my company, we close about 25% of all our leads, so if each of our LOAs has about 40 leads, they should have around 10 closings per month. If one LOA has 40 leads and has only closed four loans, we have a problem we can see and fix quickly.

In my opinion, I believe the Pod Model is a much better way to form a team. It’s far easier to spot a mistake and correct it than when using the Assembly Line Model and allows everyone in your team to learn the ropes of each step. If someone goes on vacation, there is coverage within the team to pick up the slack because they’ve been trained in multiple areas – unlike the Assembly Model, where people are only tasked and trained in one area.

If you have experience with either model, I’d love to read about it in a comment below. Does your experience echo mine or have you learned how to do something cool with the Assembly Model? Share your tips on managing a team so we can all learn from you because that’s how we roll here. Thanks in advance.

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor

Jack Roush is a multi-millionaire and renowned race car engine builder. He is most famous for building NASCAR engines for his race team. He’s so well-known for building the best engines that Jack’s competitors buy them to race against him. They walk into his store, buy his engines, and then use their cars to race him — he’s that good! I was listening to an interview when the interviewer asked, “Jack, what is it that makes you so great? What makes you a world-class engine builder?”

“It’s really quite simple,” he said. “Here’s what we do: we get an engine and put it on the engine block in the shop. We start up the engine, let it warm up until we can get it to full throttle — like putting a brick on the gas pedal — and then my team and I go get a cup of coffee. We don’t come back until that engine has blown up. Then we tear it apart and see what broke. Let’s say it’s a piston ring. I will build a better, stronger, and faster piston ring.” Jack and his team then put the engine back together again and repeat the whole process. “While all my competitors are afraid of breaking, here at Roush Industries, we embrace breakage. We encourage it because I’ll build a better, faster, and stronger machine.”

How does this relate to you? Well, I know you’re afraid sometimes to turn things over to your team. What if something goes wrong? What if it breaks? Well, it’s got to do that. Until you know what breaks, you don’t know what or where the weak link is in your system.

When something fragments, you naturally build a better, faster, stronger system, or hire a better, faster, stronger person to take on that role. The key to taking that action is you’ve got to let your current system fail – you’ve got to run your engine hard to see what happens.

Quite often, you will discover that your engine does not break; in fact, it might run just fine. That’s ok. You’re testing the edges so you can fine-tune as you go. And when it does break, celebrate because now you can make your system even better.

So what could break in your mortgage business system? It might be your call-back process, a team member who isn’t trained to recognize the signs of a deal going sideways, a referral partner who changes lanes on you. Whatever breaks, and whenever it breaks, of course it doesn’t feel good. You may lose a deal or a referral partner. That’s going to happen. You certainly don’t want it to happen… but, really, you do.

By losing that one deal or referral partner, you will gain the next 20 by figuring out what broke. You have to be okay with breaking your engine, or at least testing it to see if it will break, and when it does, find out where it broke so you can build a better, faster, stronger system for that particular piece or situation in your loan advising process.

In fact, just for fun, humor me and do a mental exercise right now. Imagine your business is 10X what it is now – meaning, everything is ten times more than it was yesterday. You have 10 times the pre-quals, the referral partners, the leads, the calls to make, the meetings to have, the networking to do. You have 10 times the marketing initiatives, the number of team members, the number of mortgages you and your team are processing. Literally take one process from start to end – then imagine that ten times all at once. Blow the doors off your business in your mind.

After the beads of sweat have dried from your palms, think about what happened in that mental picture. If it caused your heart to race in a not-good way, great! Stress-testing your engine mentally is a lot better than doing it in the real world. What happened? What did you see break in your mind’s eye? Do you need to document processes? Do you need to train your team members better? Do you need to hire new team members? Is it time to invest in better technology to streamline the process? Do you need to start taking more apps online? Do you need different office space? Do you need to become a better delegator? How did your leadership skills handle the 10X version of your business?

If you can find something to make better, faster, smoother, stronger in your mortgage business as a result of that mental exercise, great! Fix what you found. Then do it again – this time with your team members. Everybody needs to do that same exercise in a group, where you can write down what everyone sees as a potential problem. This is about team-building as much as it is about business-building. Whatever comes up, take those things on to make them better before they impact your business.

Now you’re ready for the real-world engine test. Amp up your activity to see how your business system works. Hopefully you won’t see any breakage but, when you do, give thanks because that situation will help you grow your business faster than just about anything else you could do.

When’s the last time you tested your business engine? What did you fix?

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #MortgageFinanceAdvisor #MortgageAdvisor

Is the time you spend in meetings an investment or an expense of time and resources? This is a serious topic so I’m going to be more ‘business-y’ than I usually am… why? Because business runs on information, decisions and action; meetings only help with one of those three things. But do you know which one? If not, it’s costing your business.

Mark Cuban, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos all avoid meetings as productivity-killers. If Jeff Bezos needs to have a mentally challenging meeting, he schedules it for between 10 am and noon. We’ll run through some meeting strategies in a minute but, first, let’s think about what meetings are not.

Meetings are not a place for taking action because the focus is on meeting, not doing. If your team is getting together to take action, that’s a collaboration or project work – not a meeting.

Meetings should not be about sharing information – that’s what email, chat, phone calls, memos, reports, online discussion forums and snail mail handle in advance of meetings. The only exception to this is when you are meeting with a referral partner, customer or prospective customer to build relationship. What I’m really talking about here is team meetings BUT, even in the case of relationship-building meetings, you do want to create business value as a takeaway.

Make sure people are prepared in advance to meet with you for (minimal) informed conversations to make real-time decisions. One of Jeff Bezos’ meeting strategies is to require attendees to read a 6-minute memo in silence at the beginning of every meeting because he says it’s impossible to not be informed in that scenario. If you’re meeting with a referral partner or customer, make sure you share whatever information they need to make the most of your time together – your website, any agreements, articles you’ve written, etc.

Topics for productive team meetings include planning, mapping a plan, decoding a customer issue for quick resolution, brainstorming and post-mortem analysis of projects or results. A project status update or general information sharing are not good reasons to meet. In terms of relationship-building, make sure your referral partner or customers knows in advance that you are going to be asking for their business or support as a result of this meeting.

Now, you might need to meet with an individual team member to talk about performance. Occasionally, you might hold an all-hands meeting for a company-wide announcement or status update. However, meetings are expensive when you factor in the total time for people to attend; a 60-minute meeting for eight people is eight hours of company time – a full workday! Check out this online calculator to see how your meetings are racking up time.

The bottom line is your meetings need to be both effective and efficient. An efficient meeting starts on time, stays on track, and achieves a goal. An effective meeting means quality in terms of the right people gathered for a specific purpose to generate business value. Business value means delivering clear results – a decision, a plan, a list of opportunities to pursue and/or confirmation of working together.

One way to know whether a meeting is delivering value is to monitor engagement. If you’re bored with your own meetings, that’s a problem. If your team isn’t responsive and actively listening and participating, why are you having the meeting? If your referral partner or customer keeps checking their phone, I say end it and put everyone out of misery. Your time is better-spent where it’s appreciated and delivers value.

How Meetings Can Be Efficient

I can’t say I do all these things every time. But my team makes sure these are the things that happen for our most efficient meetings. (Hey – that’s not cheating – it’s smart delegation!)

– Have an agenda to guide proceedings. If anything outside that agenda comes up, get them handled later or start a ‘parking lot’ list.

– Invite the right people. If the meeting progresses to specifics where not everyone needs to be involved, release those who don’t need to be there.

– Prepare with advance information. Make sure attendees have what’s needed to make informed contributions and decisions during the meeting.

– Start and end on time. Open-ended meetings often degenerate in quality.

– Hold stand-up or “two-pizza meetings” (like Jeff Bezos) to keep it short.

– End with a tangible result and an action plan. If follow-up is needed, make sure assignments are clear.  

– Take notes as a reference for what happened. Distribute afterward to catch any ‘loose-end’ thinking.

These might sound basic but it’s always good to have a refresher on what works for meeting efficiency.

Effective Meeting Tips

When it comes to being effective, here are a few more pointers my team offers up.

– Focus. Make sure everyone can be and is 100% present. No multi-tasking – if someone is distracted, excuse them to get their priorities handled.

– Schedule problem-solving meetings first. Early in the day means less distraction and more creative energy.

– Invite deeper thinking with ‘psychological safety’. Create an environment where people can share openly with controversial ideas, off-the-wall suggestions or out-of-the-box thoughts. Use open-ended questions to invite contributions. (This is one of my personal favorites – the best stuff comes out of blue when you let it happen.)

– Involve all attendees, regardless of role, rank or time with the company. If one person starts to dominate the meeting, handle it – give them a task, like taking notes, to transition them into listening mode or call on others to share their thoughts.

– If the goal is a decision, make sure you get it before you end the meeting.

– End prematurely if business value isn’t being achieved.

– Ask for 5-minute feedback from attendees to see how your meetings can be improved.

– Was this meeting helpful? Did the meeting result in business value?

– Was the agenda and purpose clear?

– Was it easy for you to contribute?

– Was there anything you would change to make this a better meeting?

The Big Takeaway

Your time is your most precious asset. When you need to have a meeting, it has to count – it has to build your business in some tangible way. Consider where you are investing your time in meetings wisely.

And if you have any questions on this, let’s have a meeting – NOT! But do share them below… let’s get them handled so you are investing your time (vs. spending it) when you do need to have meetings.

Carl White, Chief Officer of Coolness
Article Originally Posted on LinkedIn

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#LoanOfficer #MortgageMarketing #MortgageExpert #LoanOfficers #LoanOriginators #Lenders #MortgagePro #MortgageBroker #FreedomSeeker #Branding #Mortgage #LoanOfficerCoach #LoanOfficerMarketing #MortgageLoanOfficer #MortgageAdvisor #MortgageBanker #TheMortgageMarketingAnimals #CarlWhite #FreedomClub #LoanOfficerFreedom #MortgageLife #MortgageLifestyle #HomeLoans #LoanOfficerLife #LoanOfficerLifestyle #MortgageBoss #Entrepreneur #BusinessOwner #Success