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The Worst Presentation I Ever Gave!!!

mortgage brokers marketingNote: This post is for entertainment – Nothing to learn here today other than some cheap laughs at my expense! Enjoy!

Have you ever had something happen to you that was so embarrassing you later found it impossible to think about without your face turning red? Do any of those events take place while at work, or in the field presenting to  a potential client? My friends at SBTV are hosting a contest to see who submits the most “horrifying presentation story.” I entered my story yesterday. Read it and weep for me ok? Yes, it really did happen, and yes I still embarrass myself talking about it to this day. Here it is:

My presentation horror story is one of those “cringe worthy” events that hurts to even think about. This happened when I was a brand spanking new sales rep for a rather well known telecommunications giant. (So please cut me some slack for my reactions ok? I was still a youngling!) I had scheduled a presentation with a potential client that was far bigger than any I had worked with up to this point, so I was stoked as you might imagine!

Practically walking on air at this point as I had worked nearly 6 months to land this appointment with regional manager and VP of this massive firm. The only issue I had to overcome was the client could only meet with me at 7:00 in the morning, so I had to ask my boss permission to go straight to the appointment from my house the following morning. He agreed and gave me a little pep talk that amounted to a “go get ‘em” and “don’t screw this up” all rolled into one 45 second speech.

I set my alarm, put on my best attire, and left the house early to beat rush hour traffic… Traffic was great, I was set to arrive professionally 5 minutes early- everything was going my way! It would take a Yak and 10 oxen to pull the massive smile from my face! Or so I thought. See, even though it seemed as if the stars were aligned in my favor at this point, apparently fate has a wicked sense of humor and decided my smile was a tad bit too large and perhaps even mildly offensive as I was about to discover.

I pull into the lot exactly 7 minutes early and park the car, careful to avoid any of the “reserved” spots.  Before exiting the vehicle I did one of those last minute review mirror checks to make sure I was “studly” enough to make a great first impression. Come on, you all know what I mean. Where you look in the mirror and check your “angles” from the left to the right to make sure there’s nothing funny hanging from your teeth, or a suspicious smear on your face…

Go through the process with me now: Tie looks good? Check… Right side of face free from errant food or hair? Check… Left side of face? Chec…. Er, HAIRY? Wha??? What is this? Some kind of bad dream?My  pulse accelerated from zero to 500 in a fraction of a second as it suddenly dawned on me that I had stupidly managed to completely shave one side of my face, while the other side remained untouched by my trusty razor! I believe my inward response was something akin to “Nooooooooooooooo!”

At this stage I I must of looked like a mad man as I clawed at the hairy side of my face a bit making sure I was actually awake and not caught smack in the middle of a cruel, but very realistic nightmare. My mind raced as I noticed that in less than 4 minutes I’d be standing in front of 2 very important, and very demanding executives looking far more like a mildly crazed Batman villain (2 Face) rather than the polished professional you trust with a 6 figure contract!

No amount of words could describe the look of sheer terror that spread across my face at this moment, so I won’t even try to describe it. Just use your imagination and multiply it by 27 and you’ll likely be pretty close.

“What do I do? What CAN I do?” It’s moments such as this that you realize just how far your brain is willing to reach to weasel its way out of awkward situations such as this. Every nutty idea was entertained, but quickly dismissed. Can I make it through the whole presentation with the unshaven left side of my face resting in my palm so they don’t see my mistake? No, no… Never work. I doubt they’ll think I’m normal if I stand up with my face still resting in my palm and my elbow floating in free space. Might find that a tad bit odd…

Can I insist on walking to only one side of the prospects and only look at them from my “clean” angle so they never have a chance to witness my humiliation? No, no… That won’t work either as I’m sure they’ll find my tremendously odd and wonder why this twitchy kid can’t look them straight in the face… Doubt they’d want to do business with a man such as that.

I even considered calling the whole thing off and coming back later, but I knew that my boss would never excuse such a decision, and I would never get a second crack at this! What the heck? How did this happen anyway? (I remembered that as I was shaving early in the morning, the phone rang, and I got into a lengthy discussion with a friend I rarely hear from. Out of habit, I washed the cream from my face as I was chatting, and moved on, forgetting to finish up before I left the house. Mindless mistake I never made again!)

With 1 minute left on the clock, my early arrival opportunity down the drain, I sucked it up and marched right through the front door painfully aware of the eyes seemingly fixated on the lower hemisphere of my face as I announced my appointment for 7:00.

I felt like a doomed soldier marching to certain death at this juncture. Face red as an over-ripe cherry and sweat building up so quickly you’d think I was standing 4 inches from a heat lamp. I waited my fate in the cushy office chairs as I heard the elevator ding signaling my meeting was seconds away. Two well dressed men stepped out of the elevator and walked in my direction hands extended in greeting.

I had decided to admit my stupid mistake early on instead of trying to hide it, or play it off. I think I over-did the apology and killed off any chance of redemption as I was overly self conscious through the entire meeting, probably looking like a wide eyed maniac as I over-played the “Eye contact” rule in an effort to force the men into looking at my eyes instead of my half clean, half Wookie chin and neck. Don’t think it came off too well! Then again, I was new to sales, and not too polished, so I don’t feel too bad as I look back on this experience.

Naturally I didn’t land the sale. I assume the unspoken message I sent to these VIP’s was “if this guy forgets to shave half his face, what else would he forget?” Can’t say that I blame them, nor can I blame my boss for being disappointed with my performance that day! But I will say this… I learned an important lesson that day so many years ago! Always, always, always carry a spare razor in your glove-box!

That’s my presentation horror story… What’s yours? Would love to hear your comments below as well, that way I don’t feel all alone in telling my story of screw-up numero uno:

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/49018

A Brief Thought On Mortgage Lead Generation

So you’re heading back in from a 3 day weekend, officially billed “the last real weekend of summer”. I hope you had a great time, and are chomping at the bit to make some great things happen this week. I wanted to talk to you briefly about making use of the marketing opportunities that are out there right now waiting for. (Each of us has an opportunity every single day to make great things happen) If you’re still in the beginning stages of marketing to Realtors, here’s some thoughts I would like to share with you:

#1 – Start now… Right now!

Marketing to Realtors is all about momentum. Unfortunately, it’s so darn easy to question ourselves and worry if we’re “really ready” to get started, and we tend to put things off. This is why in 2010 I launched many tools that do not require you to be a marketing expert, or answer a bunch of questions to send to your agents. The newsletter series mentioned above is just one example of this, as is the SEO poster and mini e-book.

If you did nothing more than focus your efforts on getting these helpful tools into the hands of your target agents, you’d be several large steps ahead of most other loan officers struggling to get Realtors to give them loans. (Unsure of what marketing tools I’m talking about? Then register for my free webinar at the bottom of this post and learn how to implement these powerful strategies)

#2 – Follow up regularly

This one is intimidating isn’t it? I’m with you there. I still remember my first few follow ups to my “dream team” of agents. Know how I felt? Like a timid school did sauntering up to the table “Please sir… Can I have some more…” (Oliver Twist?) Really, I felt a bit like a beggar and failed to realize just how much these agents needed me. But my first success came within my very first week of following up, and it emboldened me… Then my second success popped, then another.

It’s like a snowball effect of confidence molding you into a confident professional who views follow up calls as “so darn easy” you can’t keep yourself from making those calls. I’m not lying or stretching the truth here one bit, this is how it really happens folks. These calls need not be scary so long as you’ve given yourself a built in excuse to make the call. (Calls without a purpose are still scary to me, as I don’t feel I’m accomplishing anything. Calls with a purpose on the other hand are as easy to make as… well…Something really easy to do) – Sorry, ran out of cool sounding references!

Place a quick call to make sure the agent received the latest newsletter. Ask for their feedback. See if they’d like to receive your SEO poster. Ask if they’d like your help submitting their site to Google Places ( Powerful!) and as we discussed on last weeks call, you can even offer to provide mini-sites for all their listings!

What do all these calls have in common? VALUE! You’re offering something they benefit from. If they turn you down, then too bad for them right? There is no reason to feel sheepish, or embarrassed for offering something they need. That’s my take on the whole follow up process, and I hope you decide to follow suit. With all the powerful tools at your disposal, there’s no reason you cannot have several new referral partners by the end of this month. Make it an awesome and productive week, and I’ll see you on the Lab!

Want to learn how to implement some of what we’ve discussed in this post? Here’s the link to our next 4 day FREE marketing webinar series: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/140581546

Final Loan Officer Unleashed of 2010!

Quick reminder for you that this coming week is your final chance to participate in the complete Loan Officer Unleashed training series. The training begins on Monday July 19, at 1:30 CST. (That’s 11:30 PST/2:30 EST) Here’s the registration link:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/346619458

We’ve managed to shorten this session to just 4 days this time around, 1 hour per day. What will you get in return for attending these 1 hour per day sessions?

How to target only the best agents who have loans to refer

A unique “approach” that is both easy to implement, and works almost every time you use it

A strategy that absolutely blows agents away, and makes them want to meet you

A step by step follow up approach that makes getting referrals an “after-thought”

How to place your Realtor marketing on auto-pilot

As you can see, we’re going to pack this 4 day webinar series with usable information that you can begin using right away. You really don’t want to miss this! I’ve been told an extra special guest will be making an appearance during one of the webinars to share some marketing nuggets that we haven’t touched on yet. Want in? Here’s that link again: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/346619458

Mortgage Lead Generation – How’s Your Results?

Great call yesterday for Day #2 of Unleashed. I am especially grateful to Michael and Roy who shared their results with us live on yesterday’s call! Very unexpected, but very pleasant to hear listeners speaking up to share their results. So how about you? What are you doing to create momentum right this minute?

It’s easy to think up reasons to “hold off” on taking action that we might find uncomfortable. But most of those ‘reasons’ are dashed to pieces when you see what’s possible when we stop putting things off, and take action right now. Reality is a wonderful teacher. You will learn more in 1 hour of taking action than 30 days of “thinking about it.”

So how about it? Will you be our next listener to speak up and tell us about your great results? Roy shared with us yesterday that he landed 7 “yeses” from the Realtors he spoke with (Out of 12) + 1 agent who asked to schedule a meeting right away! Not bad for less than 2 hours of work! Imagine what would happen if he stuck with this for the rest of the month?

See, this is the best part about marketing to Realtors. Eventually you can toggle down your efforts. Imagine if Roy kept this up for a full month, and landed several high producers Realtor partners? He would then be able to toggle down his efforts, and spend more time on closing the referrals than on getting new Realtor partners. But his ability to get these appointments will never go away, so long as he is willing to take action “as needed”. Nice feeling isn’t it?

I look forward to hearing from more of you during Loan Officer Unleashed! Mortgage lead generation is a whole lot more fun when you get results isn’t it?

Loan Officer Unleashed Day #1 – Round 2

So here we are – Back to day #1 with Loan Officer Unleashed! We have 500+ loan officers registered, and I’m looking forward to answering as many questions, and challenges as possible with these participants. To help get the most out of these sessions I recommend:

- Taking notes (We’re covering a lot of information, you’ll want to refer to these later)

- Complete the assigned marketing tasks ASAP (Yep, I’m giving you homework! haha – You want results? Take action!)

- Make the sessions live – I know it’s great you have the videos to refer to, but it’s nt the same. You can’t ask questions and get immediate answers when watching a video

We begin at 1:30 CST, and we begin on time! (Haven’t been late yet!) See you there!

Registration link:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/666206915

Loan Officer Unleashed Round 2

So we wrapped up our first ever Loan Officer Unleashed 5 day training on Friday. We covered everything from effective scripts, how to select productive Realtors, step by step marketing plans and far, far, more. Heck, we even had some fun while we were at it.

In total, we had more than 623 loan officers participate, with another 1,000+ on the waiting list. Guess what that means? That’s right… We’re hosting another round to accommodate those who are on the waiting list, but weren’t able to make the first Unleashed. So here you go! If you missed our first round of Loan Officer Unleashed, you are welcome to join us for round 2 at the link below:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/666206915

Important: We’re cutting off registration once we have 500 participants for round 2

Objections and Challenges

When it comes to marketing to Realtors, there is no shortage of objections and challenges that you’re going to need to overcome. Recently we scheduled another round of Loan Officer Unleashed, and we’ve had one heck of a response! Despite the 300 loan officer limit I placed on the call, we’ve already packed in 310 registrations!  

This is definitely no ordinary “webinar” as participation is the order of the day here, as we want to see results right? So here’s your chance to help get your most pressing challenges addressed during the Loan Officer Unleashed workshop. Simply comment below, and we’ll be watching. Here’s what I want to know:

#1 – What’s the most common objection you hear more than any other from Realtors? (Or the most challenging)

#2 – Until now, what has been the single biggest hurdle for you in marketing to Realtors?

Let’s have it! Comment below, and we’ll be paying attention. The more we see an issue or objection posted below, the more likely we are to address it during teh webinar.

If you have not yet reserved your spot, please do so now: (We’re closing the doors on Friday to new registrations)

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/346619458

How To Find Real Estate Agent Referral Partners

We’ve been talking a lot about focusing your efforts on high performance real estate agents this past week or so. All of this sounds great, but the question remains: “Where do I meet high production real estate agents?” Surely we’re not going to ask each agent to tell us how many transactions they’ve closed this past year right?

Here’s how I did it. Two methods were used. The first was a quick phone call to my title rep. I had a great relationship with this company, as most my loans closed here. (I understand this call will not be possible for those of you in Attorney states) A quick 3 minute conversation ensued where I mentioned that I had a great new marketing plan that involved high producer real estate agents, and asked if tehy’d be interested in participating.

The answer was easy for him, as he knew the more real estate agents I did business with, the more likely they were to close at his office. He agreed to help me. The best part of this call was that the help I needed only required about 5 minutes work to provide. I asked the title rep to simply pull up a production report within MLS. All I needed was the results for the top 250 producers.

This list was shot over to me within 10 minutes. I now had access to a list that was worth its weight in platinum, and all it cost me was a phone call. I was now free to spend my time marketing to any agent on this list without fear of wasting my time with someone who had no referrals to share. It was a great feeling.

I already knew that my conversion rate was somewhere around 10 – 12% when marketing to agents, so even on the low end, if I completed my full marketing cycle, I could expect somewhere around 25 – 30 agents to work with. Sounded like wishful thinking at the time, as there’s no way 2 loan officers (My partner and I), much less 1 could handle all the referrals coming from such a large group of high end producers. (The results were better than I anticipated, but we’ll talk more about tha during Loan Officer Unleashed)

I used the list, as the basis of my marketing campaigns for nearly a year. The results were astounding, but as we grew and brought on more loan officers to the team, I needed more agents to include in the marketing efforts, but was unwilling to slow things down by randomly marketing to just anyone.  Here’s where things went low tech. I ran to the local department store and picked up a few copies of the latest real estate publications. Harmon Homes, Land and Homes, Homes Magazine, The Real Estate Book are just a few of the local publications. (Most are national, and should be available to you)

I flipped through the pages looking for signs of success. To put it plainly, I was looking for agents who had lots of listings – haha. I’ve done a fair bit of advertising in these publications myself, and I know that it had cost me around 400.00 per page for just 2 weeks. When I found an agent that had a full page, or even multiple pages filled with listings, chances were good we were looking at a decent performer. (While not fool-proof, it was still a great litmus test of who could afford to advertise on a regular basis – Plus, the more listings an agent has, the more activity – More often than not)

After several hours of flipping through the pages, and looking for “signs of success” I had added anotehr 100+ agents to my list. Of course, in todays market you now have access to other tools that can speed the process. Social networking sites such as Active Rain, groups from LinkedIn, and even visiting the home page of the real estate publications mentined above means you don’t even have to leave your office to perform the research.

But even using the most up to date networking sites come with the same danger we’ve been chatting about all week – Spinning your wheels trying to squeeze loans out of someone who has nothing to give. Keep looking for those “signs of success” no matter which method you use to create your own list of target real estate agents. We’ll go deeper and show you what comes next during Loan Officer Unleashed. See you next week!

Here are some direct links to the publications mentioned above:(Use to search for agents, and view their number of posted listings)

http://www.realestatebook.com

http://www.homes.com

http://www.homesandland.com

Predict your Success Or Failure

One of the most telling indicators of who will be successful, and who will fail when it comes to mortgage marketing is the mindset. Often dismissed by many loan officers as “mumbo-jumbo” it’s uncanny how accurately you can predict someones eventual success or failure based on their mindset.

Knowing this, it’s best not to leave this to chance. I’ve prepared a downloadable document that you can print, and then complete. With only 5 questions for you to answer, this should be a quick, but very productive exercise for you. During the 5 day Loan Officer Unleashed session, you’ll have a chance toput your answers to good use. Here’s the form:  Download Form Now

I recommend filling in your responses, and then place this document somewhere visible until the training begins. You’ll put these to good use at that time.  Feel free to add your comments below!

Loan Officers: A Question For You…

Being a loan officer in today’s market seems like a whole different world when compared to just a few years ago. So much is changing, or already has changed. But wouldn’t you agree that most situations can feel so much more simplified when you ask the right questions? For example, let’s say you wanted to get more loans from real estate agents, but things haven’t quite gone as planned.

Loan Officer #1 asks: Why does this always happen to me? How come nothing ever works!?

Loan Officer #2 asks: What were the 2 or 3 three sticking points in this process? What can I do better next time?

I’m sure you’ll agree that the person asking question #1 has no intention of finding an answer. More of a rhetorical question asked out of frustration. Person #2 however is on the right track! See, when you’re marketing to real estate agent there are really only a few things you need to focus on in the beginning, as failure is often the result of the same 2 or3 causes time and time again:

1. You cannot get the agents attention

- This is often due to a lack of value, poorly crafted message, or failure to target

2. You get the agents attention, but are dismissed

- Same as above. You did something right in the beginning, but now you’ve lost the agents interest due to lack of value, or credibility

3. You initially met with the agent, but cannot get loans

- This one can be the most frustrating, as you think you’re getting somewhere only to be stopped dead in your tracks. Typically this is caused because you’ve either lost the agents interest, or they simply have little if anything to refer – Which means you did not target mid – high producers.

You know what’s great about all those situations above? They are all avoidable. For most of us, we can solve 70 – 80% of our realtor marketing problems simply by finding a way to get, and then keep our target real estate agents attention. Think about it… 80% of the battle is getting someone to listen to you in the first place – Regardless of what you sell! Once you get their attention, it’s relatively simple to sell them as long as you have targeted your niche up front.

It’s kind of like selling pizza to a group of people you targeted because  you knew they were hungry and had missed breakfast! Would that be hard to do? Nope… Likewise, if you target your real estate agents up front based on production, you know that your marketing message will be aimed at a  of “doers” not a bunch of time wasters. These types of professionals will be quite interested in the message we’re going to teach you during Loan Officer Unleashed. How nice would it be to have high performance agents looking forward to hearing from you instead of ignoring you… Nice change of pace right?

Imagine how nice it will be to have 95% of your challenges solved right out of the gate!

Problem #1 – Wasting time due to marketing to the wrong people

Problem #2 - Getting and keeping the attention of your target market

So while you eagerly await (Ok, so I’m just assuming you’re eagerly awaiting) Loan Officer Unleashed to begin, it might be a good idea to put some thought into what your sticking point is as you market to realtors. Is it similar to above? Are you finding it difficult to get, or keep the agents attention? Write your sticking points down, and we’ll discuss it during the 5 days. See you there!