Marketing Strategies For Loan Officers

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!