Loan Officer Marketing

When I was a wee lad, I dreamed of sitting in “important” business meetings that “made things happen”.

So when I became a loan officer and then a branch manager, I found myself having a daily morning pipeline meeting every workday. 

And as my personal pipeline grew from a few loans to 50-70 each month, and then as a branch manager, well there are now many hundreds of loans in our pipeline and I found the meetings that started as a quick 15 min update, became an hour or more.

2 problems with that.  #1: Getting bombarded with information that I (you) personally didn’t need to know (my team needs to know, but I don’t), and #2:  While I was in that meeting every day, I wasn’t doing PROACTIVE outbound activity to bring more loans in for the next month.

Hence resulting in the ol’ “up a month and down a month” loan officer rollercoaster.  <can you relate?>

So I made a drastic reconstruction of my daily morning meeting that gave me all the information I needed, and could run through a pipeline report of dozens and dozens of loans… all in about 15 minutes.

Here’s the format that I strongly recommend….

It has 3 parts:

1. <me asking>, “What leads came in the last 24 hours (or since our last meeting) and where are we at with those leads?”

This helps ensure that no lead slips through the cracks and we are then able to update our referral partners and the listing agents and then asking for even more referrals from those agents going forward (resulting in getting even more loans coming in for the next month).

2. <me asking>, “What files are in jeopardy of closing late, what are the issues causing that jeopardy, and what are you people <my team member(s)> doing about that / those issues?”

See, you don’t need to know the appraisal and title work has been ordered.  Of course they have been ordered. 

You don’t need to know that the bank statements are in, of course they are in. 

You don’t even need to know what issues the team is working on.  You only need to know if a file is in jeopardy of closing late and what they are doing to fix it on this file and what they are doing to ensure this issue doesn’t happen on future files.

If we have a team that can’t do their job, then things aren’t likely to work out well for you until you replace that person(s).

Our job is to bring more loans in the door, to get more applications.  If you are tied up so you can’t do that, well, in today’s market that is poison for your stability and success.

3.  The last item we discuss on the morning meeting is what I call MOD.  Moments Of Delegation.  It’s where you say “Hey team member Bob or Jill, here’s something I need you to help me with or do for me today…”

Which is basically clearing everything off of your plate that is keeping you from doing even more prospecting.

If you haven’t noticed, the days of sitting around and watching our phones ring with the next lead, well, let’s just say things have changed a bit lately. 

We have to maximize our time spent actually doing outbound activity to bring in new referrals and applications.  If we don’t do that, well, everybody’s job is in jeopardy…
So these meetings should last a max of 15 mins if you have 20 loans or less, and 25 mins max for those of you closing 30, 40, or even more per month.

Those that are able to learn and adapt will do exceptionally well in the next upcoming months, because most loan officers will continue to do things how they did last year, and for most, well, it may not work out so well.

Also, it’s more critical than ever that we have assistants to help free us up.  Those that get rid of all their help and the LO is now chasing conditions and putting out fires, well, that is how some will plan to continue to slow up more and more until they come to a very painful stop.  Don’t put yourself in that fatal situation.

When you are ready to focus on getting even more purchase business, let me know and I’ll hook you up here.

I see a lot of LOs making a truly fatal mistake.  I call it “Swamp Marketing”.

If you think of a swamp, it’s wide and shallow AND it’s very muddy… certainly nothing that we would want to drink out of (or get referrals from).

A well, on the other hand, is a highly targeted and smaller space, but much deeper… and that’s where we get great, cool & clean drinking water… or high quality referrals.

So in our marketing, we don’t want to be email blasting out or social media marketing to a huge list of prospective strangers or referral partners, see that’s wide and shallow. 

Instead, we want to go deep with a much smaller list. 

It’s a bit counter intuitive.  A smaller, much smaller list of the “right agents” will actually get us many more referrals; more loans than a bigger generic list.

With a smaller targeted list of “qualified agents” (those closing 8 buy sides or more in the last 12 months), we connect and go deeper with those.  

What does deeper look like?  It’s actual phone calls <gasp> and perhaps face to face or zoom meetings <double gasp>. 

I flew out and was just doing a presentation to a large group of LOs earlier this month, and somebody asked me which automated tool was best to call people and drop “ringless voicemails” like SlyDial does. “That way I don’t actually have to talk to them” he went on to say.

See, that’s swamp marketing.

Come to find out, when we actually talk to a small amount of qualified agents, that has been the one thing that has been responsible for my team closing thousands and thousands of closings… literally.
While the swamp marketing may look attractive, avoid it like the plague… that’s the water that will make you sick.

Instead, we want to go deep with a few (30 or so qualified agents) at a time.

I’m convinced that everybody intuitively knows to go deep with a few, I think it’s just that they have never been taught how to do it and what to say.

I’m happy to help you with exactly who to target, how to find the 30 or so qualified agents, and what to say to them to get more referred leads (that’s the kind that actually closes).

Just go here and we’ll give you a full example of the 1 on 1 zoom calls, just like we do with our high level Loan Officer Freedom Club members, where we show them step by step how to do ‘well marketing.’

I’m betting that you will be amazed on how much you will get accomplished on this one simple private zoom meeting with either myself or one of my coaches… and it’s totally free.  No catches or gimmicks, just results… because that’s how we roll around here.

Freedom Club Demo

See ya on the inside.