Are you helping your agents find buyers now? If you’re not doing this, it creates massive, massive pain in your life.
The pain could be anything from lack of loyalty on behalf of an agent, because you’re not helping them win. It could be lack of financial prosperity for you, because you’re not helping them win. It could be that in that process, you are not distinguished or differentiated from any other lender out there, because you’re actually not helping. And at the end of the day, I think it’s really critical to begin to understand that famous quote by Zig Zigler, that “In order for me to get everything I want, I got to help other people get what they want.”
Your goal should be to help your agents win
And so the goal, let me just kind of back up a little bit, I believe the goal is to help your agents win and win financially. I believe your goal as a lender is to help your borrowers win and win financially. I believe that if we keep this focused on kind of business building with my agents, I want you to step into a new world where the agent needs you more than you need them. Now, I don’t want that to sound flippant. I’m certainly not coming at it from a point of being condescending or anything like that. I coach millionaires. I coach loan officers that are multimillionaires. I have this year 33 of them that I’m coaching. And I’m going to tell you right now, all of them will generate north of a half a million dollars in business to their agents.
And the very, very top of the group is going to be able to generate between two and a half and three million in commissions, back to their agents and referral partners. Now, I want you to be in the driver’s seat on this, and I want you to begin to understand that’s the recipe for them needing you more than you need them. This is not about being needy. It’s just about if they give you a borrower, and that borrower converts, and you’re able to help that borrower buy a home, your job is to keep that borrower for life.
Your job is to keep your borrowers for life
We already know that most lenders and agents don’t understand this. And my good friend, Jeff lake told me 23 years ago, when he showed me his business card and on the back, it said lender for life. I asked him, I says, “What does that mean?” And he goes, “It means I’m going to be your lender for life.” And I’m going to assume for a moment. You’ve heard that maybe ad nauseam, but in order for you to be somebody’s lender for life, you got to talk to them during their life. And that’s the annual mortgage review, the annual client review, the annual business planning review. We’re not going to get into those this session, but we’re going to get into the nature of how that works for you to generate business.
The Consumer Referral Program
Now, the other thing I want to say about this is the idea that when you are helping people achieve economic prosperity, you’re helping them remove the greatest stressor that most people have in their life. Somewhere between 78 and 86% of consumers say that financial stress is number one in their life. And we take a look at real estate agents that are maybe doing six deals a year or eight deals a year or 10 deals a year. What would happen if we could get them to 16 to 20, 22, 24? Right? So the program that we teach is called the Consumer Referral Program, and it basically takes a referral from an agent, a builder financial planner, doesn’t matter who. It has an unbelievable first impression handoff from the referral partner and borrower to you, so you’re already kind of pre-sold, which increases conversion rate.
You have, what’s called a pre-purchase consultation. And that is to set the stage for when they ultimately are going to go live with the property. We can have that be referenced as a TBD if you’d like. Again, follow up! We recently had another post focused on follow up, so check that out. And then I’m going to put them into that funnel.
I taught you in another video, platinum, gold, silver, green, right? Every 14 days, every 21 days, once a month, once a quarter and up to 36 months on the green category. And then the art of that is as they kind of fall down in the funnel to taking action, you have a referral. So if a real estate agent in a period of time refers 10 potential buyers to me and two are ready to go, and eight are not, the eight have to be brought back to that real estate agent when they are ready to go. The two that are ready to go, when we go and we take them, we get them into the right product, the right mortgage planning recommendation, strategy management on that, and then boom, off to the races. And the loan closes and they get the keys and they’re in their house. From that moment on, I as a lender am going to work that person, that couple, whomever, and I’m going to generate referrals from them. Those referrals are going back to the real estate agent that gave me the buyer that’s now generating the referrals.
Conducting Retention Marketing for your agents
And again, could an agent do this? Sure. Could they have an onboard client concierge? Sure. But they don’t. Okay? And there is this huge disparity between retention marketing, and then new automated approach marketing. Retention marketing is video, and emotion, and reaching out, and honoring special events and occasions, and doing annual reviews. And I’ll give you an example. So if I’m a lender and I have a borrower, and I’m doing an annual mortgage review, one of the questions I’m going to ask them is, “What are your real estate dreams and goals for the next three to five years, and five years plus?”
Now I already know that about 99% of realtors don’t ever do this. They don’t do an annual review with a seller. They don’t do an annual review with a buyer. But if you do the annual review with a buyer, you’re going to know if they’re going to be a seller. You’re going to be able to do the loan on the home they buy. You’re going to be able to refer the listing to the agent that referred to you the borrowers before you close the loan on that home. You’re going to be able to do the loan for the new people making an offer on your current client’s home. So you got one loan, two loans, and a listing referral, and a purchase referral all in one fell swoop. So at the very least, what I should be doing is if I’m going to help agents generate more buyers and sellers, I should be doing this.
So if I make 500 calls a year to people I’ve already done business for, and I ask the series of questions, but particularly that one, I called Debbie and go, “Hey, Debbie, it’s Todd at ABC financial. Hey, remember the Jorgensons?” And I hope she says yes, or hope he says yes. And I go, “They’ve been in their home for four years. They had two kids when we closed. They are now pregnant with triplets. They need bigger space. So I just want you to know, I talked to them. They’d like to move from a 2100 square foot home to somewhere around 4,000 square foot home. They want to go to this market, which is about eight miles from the current home. You need to contact them because you need to list that property. You need to also start looking at property in the neighboring city that they want to move into. And I’ll obviously do the loans on the buyers that buy the home they currently own, and obviously help the Jorgensons finance the transaction on the new home.”
Boom, done, and look at she’s going to go, wow. So now you’re in control. Right? Now you’re in control. And I believe that you could even talk conceptually to an agent. Are you doing this on every closed transaction? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a seller. You know sellers 75% of the time or moving to a geographical area that the agent can still service? So that means you can do the loan. And if you’re licensed like Kristen is in many states, you can do the loan anywhere. If your company is licensed, you can do the loan anywhere. So think about this, think about this.
The questions you should ask agents
And the more that I understand the discipline in working with agents and asking questions, the more I can help them win. So two of the questions we teach all the time are every week, I want to ask an agent, “Who have you met in the last seven days, and you’re not sure they’re going to use you, but I could contact them and nudge them over your way?” That’s part of the lost leads conversation. We did a video on that. Go check it out. If the second question is, “Who are you showing property to this week? That I’ve not yet had a pre purchase consultation with?” Boom, right? So that piece has to be done, because then what I can do is I can start meeting people. They might be approved somewhere else. Their uncle might know a lender, doesn’t matter. But at the end of the day, I can have a different conversation with them and we call this commission insurance.
Be the second opinion for your agents
So what we like to tell loan officers is, be the second opinion. Okay? Be the second opinion for your agent on any borrower, because every agent in the world has had pre-approved borrowers not work out. Any agent has given up control and let a borrower work with a lender they’re not familiar with. That can be disastrous. And so at the very least you’re a second opinion. And then if you follow the High Trust interview, and by the way, if you have not downloaded those guides, download them. Download the High Trust interview guide. Download the Talk Less, Sell More white paper, because these are going to teach you how to add massive value to borrowers, which then unleashes the referral universe to you.
How one referral turned into hundreds of great leads and 25 deals a year
And so I’ll tell you a story that I’d like to end with, because I think this puts it into play. So my top real estate agent was a gal named Debbie Johnson. And Debbie was the number one real estate agent in Anaheim, California, arguably probably one of the top agents in the state. She and I did about $60 million in volume together over almost four years. I think the average listing sale price was probably 110 or something like that, pretty low, but we did a lot of business together. And one of the early success stories we had is a borrower that she had referred to me. He was a physician and we did a great job on the loan. And they were able to move into their home, super happy, great reviews, all that kind of stuff. And I remember on the seven day post closing call, I was talking to Tom and I said, “Tom, is there any people that within your doctor’s circle that I could also give to them what you have experienced with me and my team?” He said, “Absolutely.” Within about two weeks, I had four other physician referrals.
Now it gets better. So the four physician referrals resulted in two listings and three purchases to Debbie, but it gets even better. So when Tom, a year after we closed, got promoted to the executive director for Western Medical Center, which was a hospital in the city in which I did loans, he called me and he said, “Listen, I’ve got about 250 doctors with contracts with this hospital. I think they probably each have at least 500 to 700 patients. Can we set up an interview where you actually talk to the doctors about a joint venture? And could you also become the lender for Western Medical Center? So we’ve got nurses, we’ve got we’ve got admin, we have janitors. We have, we have about 1700 people in this hospital and I’m sure at one point or another, they’re all going to maybe need a mortgage.”
And so it ends up that this one hospital becomes a referral magnet for Debbie. And I think every year, if I’m just trying to recall, I would guess she got at least 25 real estate deals out of that hospital every year. And a hundred real estate deals is a million dollars at $10,000 each. Right? You think about that. And it’s just like, wow. And all it is going deep, going deep. I got Tom, who’s a doctor and I want to get as much out of Tom as I can. I don’t want to go wide. I want to go deep. All right? So you have got to understand this. And it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re helping builders sell homes, or agents sell homes, or reversing this and helping your financial planning clients, insurance clients, find more clients, it doesn’t matter to me.
The role of the loan officer in the modern society in which we live is you better be an economic solution to your clients. And if you’re that, then people will stay with you forever. All right? Own this.
