It’s no secret that the bulk of our referrals come from agents who have closed 8 or more buyer sides in the past year.

However, my mortgage team and I have also seen a significant number of closings from agents who only complete a few deals annually.

Wait, whaaaaat

You might wonder how we manage to achieve this feat, given that it involves collaborating with hundreds of these lower-producing agents to get even a handful of closings each month. The secret to our success lies in a strategy we’ve perfected over time, which we call:

High Touch, High Tech, Low Time

This approach ensures our referral partners receive personalized attention (High Touch) through the use of advanced technology (HighTech), all while demanding minimal time investment from our team(Low Time).

It’s the formula that makes working with a vast number of lower-producing agents not only feasible but also profitable and scalable.

Many loan officers (LOs) find themselves stuck in a cycle of High Touch, Low Tech, High Time efforts. This approach is time-consuming and often leads to frustration and burnout.

If you’re looking to break free from this cycle, it’s crucial to shift your focus.

I’m known for showing LOs how to focus on relationship marketing with Qualified Agents—those closing 8 or more buyer sides in the last 12 months.

However, there is plenty of gold in lower-producing referral partners, but you must adopt the High Touch, High Tech, Low Time strategy.

This balance will allow you to maximize your closings without overwhelming your schedule.

To help you implement this strategy effectively, we’ve identified a tool that hundreds of LOs are already using to maintain High Touch, High Tech, and Low Time interactions with their referral partners.

Discover the Tool That’s Changing the Game for LOs

Your success is well within reach. Embrace the right strategies, and you’ll see your referral numbers soar.

I’m reaching out to share some groundbreaking findings from a recent study conducted by my mortgage team.

Over the years, we’ve meticulously tracked the Realtor referrals we receive while closing hundreds of loans each month by my personal mortgage team.

The insights we’ve uncovered in our latest analysis are nothing short of astonishing.

To get a clearer picture of the impact of Realtor referrals on our business, we divided the agents into two distinct groups:

Group A: Agents who closed 8 or more buyer sides in the last 12 months.
Group B: Agents who closed 7 or fewer buyer sides in the same period.

The disparity in results between the two groups was shocking.

We discovered that for every 2 agents from Group A we worked with, we secured 1 closing each month.

By comparison, it took referrals from 20 agents in Group B to achieve the same outcome.

This means that agents in Group A are ten times more effective in contributing to our closings than those in Group B.

To put this into perspective, if our goal was to close 5 loans in a month, we would only need to partner with 10 agents from Group A, compared to 100 agents from Group B.

Clearly, focusing our efforts on qualified agents who are actively closing deals is not only more efficient but also significantly more effective.

However, a surprising revelation from our study was that only 4-5% of agents nationwide qualify to be in Group A.

This highlights a critical insight: a mere 5% of agents are worth the investment of our marketing dollars and time.

Randomly selecting agents to approach at open houses or through networking events is likely why many loan officers struggle with these strategies.

The key to avoiding frustration and disappointment lies in targeting your efforts towards qualified agents.

Working without a clear understanding of which group your Realtor partners fall into is like spinning your wheels without making any real progress.

To help you, Here’s A Source For A Qualified List of agents in your area.

This list is designed to help you identify and connect with agents who have a proven track record of closing deals, ensuring that your marketing efforts are both strategic and effective.

Get The Qualified List Of Agents In Your Area Here

You deserve to work with the best, and being selective in your partnerships is not only advisable—it’s essential for your success.

Be picky, you deserve it!

Great news!!! The newest numbers are in and 2024 is projected to be the 3rd best year ever in purchase mortgage volume!

This chart below measures 2002 to projected 2026 mortgage loan volume.

The blue line is purchase volume. Other than the record setting 2021 &2022, we have to go back to 2005 to match what we are expecting for this year.

That’s great news for those of us that focus on purchase business.

By the way, did you know that 67% of all purchase loans close with the loan officer that the real estate agent recommended?

I find that to be true with the hundreds of loans that my own personal mortgage team does each and every month (like clockwork and with very little stress, by the way).

I find the key to getting your share, or even more than your share is to market to agents that are actually doing the lion’s share of the purchase business.

About a dozen top producing LOs and I were meeting at my house a couple of weeks ago and we were discussing where to get the best leads, you know, those that turn in to actual closings (not the time wasting TikTok type leads).

One of them piped in that he had a source of leads that cost almost nothing and gave him about 7 closings each month… month after month…. Year after year…

We all leaned forward to hear this secret source of money producing mortgage leads…

Then he shared with us something that we all know, but I had never heard it put this way…

“Remarketing to existing leads, past database, on “old’ leads costs almost nothing and brings me in about $21,000 in personal income each and every month” he said.

I was once again reminded of the old song lyric:  “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man, that the Tin Man didn’t already have…”

You see, he’s raking in 21 Thousand dollars per month from simply reaching back out to leads / people that he already has talked to or leads that he didn’t hook up to in the first place.

For today, let’s just go over a quick way to cash in on the “old leads” that you just didn’t hook up with, maybe they ghosted you, maybe you got busy and ghosted them.

Here’s the simple 10 word script….

“Are you still looking to buy a home in <insert in your state>?  <your name>

Now, you may remember me sharing this before, but I know that 98% of those that read it, probably didn’t do it.

This time, well, go do it.

Remember, don’t change a thing and don’t add on to the script.  Every time we changed it up, it converted less… every time.

I’ve done this one as text messages and as emails (and both to the same person).  All 3 ways worked very very well <translated as:  a bunch of new business with virtually zero marketing dollars spent>

So many LOs are chasing 101 ways to “create leads” while ignoring the leads that they already have.

I get it, the “hunt” is sexy, and the cleaning of the hunt isn’t as sexy, it just pays very very well.

Focus on what actually works and not on the distractions.
So the take home message this week is:  Before doing anything else, Remarketing To Existing Leads Costs Almost Nothing And Produces Great Results For Us (measured in closed loans).

That’s it.  Short and sweet.

My first branch manager told me one time, “Don’t market to your past database if you hate money, because it will make you a bunch of money”.

25 years later I have discovered he was soooooo right.

I have brought in probably between $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 in income revenue by simply marketing to my databases in recent years.

I’m seeing a lot of loan officers really ramping back up by simply doing that, marketing to their past database.

For example, John Fortener, a loan officer in a small town in Georgia.  Get this, he currently has:

1. 4 pre-approved and looking from his past database

2. 1 past database that let him know today during a phone call that he is looking to sell a couple of his properties, so now John is referring those listing referrals to an agent that refers to him

3. 1 past client referral that is under contract right now and that client has sent John another 2 leads

4. Oh, and did I mention John has 3 new referrals from agents that started referring to him because of the Daily Success Plan that John is now implementing.

5. And he has 3 new deals in the loop to close this month that has listing agents that John hasn’t worked with before, which is yet some more opportunities for John by working the Just Ask Campaign.

See how all of this snowballs?

“From 1 deal we get 2 more” kind of thing.  It’s really just that simple… well, assuming we are following the Daily Success Plan…

Congrats John for taking action and leading by example.

So for all of us, we need to make sure we are marketing to our past database, because it’s likely the easiest loans to get with minimal marketing costs…
… and that’s a beautiful thing!

Inspiring you to achieve what you deserve!