A Case Study in the Customer Journey Experience

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, Listers, what's up, Jeff? Zimfer. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Hey, we recently lost the milestone. Yeah, it's podcast. And I want to just take a moment because we're going to be doing something special around that coming up. But the truth of the matter is I've just been too busy to do something or involved in more, you know, or elaborate, if you will. But we a couple episodes ago, I don't know if you noticed it, but we passed 200 episodes. It's right, 200 episodes. That's amazing. Amazing, if I dare say so myself, it's funny. The time has gone by pretty fast. And if any of you are ever stalker thinking about, you know, starting something, starting a project in initiative, you know, whether it's a marketing related activity, starting with video, getting started with a YouTube channel, whatever it is, right? The point is just get started because, you know, obviously when I started this podcast, it's the fifth year now, I didn't necessarily look forward and think, oh, one day I'll have 200 episodes. I was simply putting one foot in front of the other, taking one step at a time. Right? Here's the key, you keep moving forward, you keep moving forward, even when it sucked the early days of the podcast, even when I was trying to figure it out, even when I wasn't thrilled with results, even when I wasn't sure where it was going on and on and on, right? So thank you. If you've been here for any point during the journey, whether you're new here, welcome, I'm thrilled to have you, whether you've been here for a period of time or since the beginning, since episode one, where's my Star Wars music? We're going to do a prequel? I don't know. Maybe we should do a prequel. All right. So listen, before I get into this week's special guest, I want to go out and bring back for a second time, I believe, it'll be up there coming five years, you know? The other thing that we're going to be doing more of is talking about helping you achieve the goal around your purchase business, and because I'm hearing a lot of people, right, we're coming out of this refinance situation here, which is, of course, taking a lot of our attention, time and resources, the purchase market is strong, a stronger than the Reef High Market. Yes, we've got issues with inventory, inventory, and buyers offers accepted. But once again, in my Facebook group, right, for mortgage marketing radio, which if you're not a member of, go check it out on Facebook, mortgage marketing radio, you know, one of the questions that is asked when you come into join, which you have to ask, answer the questions to join. Don't be one of those people who just blow by the questions and submit and think you're going to get in. You're not used to go back and message people and say, hey, Bill, you know what, you forgot to answer the questions coming in. Well, now I don't even do that anymore. I'm like, if you can't take 30 seconds to answer three questions, that's not the group for you. Okay. But go for it, check it out and complete the questions. But my point in that little high rate is the 80% of the time, when I ask in those questions, what's your number one challenge, 80% of the time people share, hey, how do I get more realtor relationships? How do I go deeper? How do I get more consistent referrals, right, with realtor relationships? And well, that's not the only thing we do, we talk about in that group or in the other things that I do. Obviously, I'm big on digital marketing and so forth and if you haven't picked up the book yet, you know, make sure you do that, disrupt or die, you can find that on Amazon. But are you one of those law officers who's looking for more effective means of contacting realtors, reaching realtors, adding value to realtors, differentiating and earning referrals, building real relationships and meeting flow relationships? If you are, we would encourage you to listen closely to the next 60 seconds because I'm going to share with you a story from somebody who was on the podcast as well last year. His name is Chris Apagil and he's with Movement Mortgage out of Carolinas and he is a big believer in teaching agent classes and has done so for a number of years. He leverages the classes that provided by me to him and what he told me was of the last class that he did, which was we have a class that's turnkey and ready to go. It's called how to get your buyers off or accepted. We also have another one that's called 10 ways to get more listings in a low inventory market. He's showing up in his market over Zoom and we're showing, we teach people how to do it over Zoom virtually and all that stuff and how to virtually invite people of the last class that he did a week ago. He got six apps, six referrals that led to six apps following that class. He does the class pretty consistently because he looks at the class as a cold call. For those of you that might be cold calling agents or you don't want to call agents, well, what you could do is what Chris does, which is host a free educational class that puts him in front of agents at scale and is the top of the funnel for him, the wide net strategy through. Then he follows a process that's laid out about sifting and sorting, driving conversations where agents just book time on your calendar via the link, you give them. Now what you've got over the course of 30 days is you have a system to deliver you agent conversations every single month like clockwork. My question is, if you're one of the 80% who wants better, more effective process for realtor engagement and conversation and conversion, what are you doing? What do you lead with? Find me out, you'll lead with, you know, we close in six days, where do you lead with something that's different and that changes the dynamic and puts you in a positive light and actually puts you in a position of control, right? Maybe you'd want to check that out further. You like Chris, get six apps from one class. I know last year his business was approximately $90 billion and I'm going source of purchase business for him is through agent classes. So if you want to learn more, you can go check out mortgagemarketing.pro. There's a brief video we've put up there. The thing is pretty for Zoom, virtual delivery, right? Walk you through, show you how to do that, the PowerPoint, speaker notes, handouts, any additional freebies and downloads and checklists and social media images and all that goes with creating awareness, helping you become known and changing the conversation with your local real estate agents, mortgagemarketing.pro, check it out. All right, that's the transition over to my special guest on this episode is a good friend from way back in the day. I don't know, 15 plus years ago we've we met each other. As a matter of fact, speaking of classes, that was one of the early things to do with her and I did when she was originating is we helped her put on a class in her local area. We had 85 agents show up in person and by the way, folks, as we come out of COVID more, the in person classes are coming back, right? And it's not that it's not one or the other. It's both. It's a hybrid. There will be people who attend the classes, there will be people who attend the Zooms. We can even get into, right, multi-streaming from your live in person class. But back to Sue. Sue's an amazing woman, right? She brings 30 years of financial services and mortgage industry experience. She is a strategic visionary. She's an incredible leader for many of us in this industry and I've just been a big fan of her for years. She is, she recently did something that I find incredibly interesting. She is the chief customer officer for total expert and they recently inducted a kind of a consumer experience study, case study, if you will, where she, her, her and her team at total expert basically took on the role of being a consumer and went through the process of purchasing house and completing the paperwork when I say purchasing house, what I mean is this is going through the initial paperwork process, right, of contacting a lender and experiencing what their customer journey is like. So and they did it with three different age groups, three different organizations, financial institutions and this discussion we have here on the podcast is us is talking about what they learned, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly and and also what does the consumer really want from the customer journey and how can you take the ideas from this episode, this podcast today and you know, fly it to your customer journey because look, if you don't architect, if you don't design your customer experience, if you're leaving it to, you know, default or you know, it'll take care of itself, trust me. What you think is happening in your customer journey, probably isn't, you haven't checked in and audit it in some time. So I encourage you to check out this episode and make sure you follow Sue, we'll put a link to her, you know, profile on LinkedIn, we'll put a link to total expert in there, total expert students and amazing things in this industry as well. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Sue Woodard, welcome to the show. Hey, I'm so glad to be here, Jeff. Good to connect again as we were talking previously on a, on a, on a conversation. Man, go back like 10, 15 years or so. Be going way way back back to the day for sure. Yeah, and obviously I've been following you for obviously since then, but hey, listen, I didn't know this, but just in prepping for this 2018 woman of influence by housing wire, right? Yes. Yes. Yes indeed. Yes indeed. Thank you. It was a great honor. And interestingly, 2018 is actually when I joined total expert as well. And this was the very first podcast I did after coming on board of total expert with Mania. That's crazy. That's right. Look at this. It all comes full circle. That does exactly. Circle of life. Yeah. So obviously with your experience of total expert, you get to see a nice cross section of companies and processes and things like that. And I wanted to have you on because you recently did this thing called the experience experiment. Is that right? Yes, it is. Yeah. What is that all about? What did you do? It was pretty cool. You know, I mean, it was what we wanted to do was really, you know, find out what is the experience like for someone who is going out and inquiring about a mortgage and, you know, kind of, and especially if it was with an institution that they already had a relationship with, right? Mm-hmm. To see if they could tie the pieces together. A lot of different elements to it, but what we did is we actually got four employees inside of total expert. We got a Z, a boomer, a millennial, and an ex, and gave each of them a set of assignments and they reached out to three different lenders and, you know, kind of went through this experience with them and a bit of an experiment to see what the, what it would be like. What was the customer journey like? How did they feel? Did they feel like it was tailored to them? Did they all get the exact same experience, regardless, if they were Z or boomer, regardless of their interactions with this institution prior to that point, and it was a really interesting body of work that we took away from this because I think by and large, the takeaways were not shocking, and I'll never tell you the names of the institutions that we did this with. But the, the, the takeaways really were that there are a lot of gaps in that customer journey and in that customer experience. For somebody coming in new and inquiring and actually actively reaching out and saying, hey, I'm looking for information to see what happens next or maybe more importantly, Jeff, what didn't happen next was remarkable. And so it was a very interesting experiment. That's that's pretty neat how you did that with different age groups, you know, and so forth, just to see if there was an adjustment base. What are some of the key findings from that? Let's just start there. Like what stands out as like bright lights, like, oh my gosh, this is happening or not happening. Yeah. A couple of things. I mean, one of the first ones was that even if it was an institution that someone had had a prior relationship with, there didn't seem to be any recollection that this is someone you should know that this is somebody who's already seen your system somewhere. Those dots did not get connected, which right away starts to make somebody feel aggravated in a little bit of a lack of trust of saying like, really, I've given you a bunch of information before, but you suddenly don't know who I am, okay? So that was a big one. The length of time that it took for the initial follow up was stunning to me because it's one of like kind of the basics of marketing, as you know, is generally the person that's going to respond fastest has a like 70 times higher rate of actually being the one who gets that, get that transaction and sometimes just the length of time that it took to have somebody get back to them. And I will tell you that we actually did this at the end of 2019. This was not during 2020 when it was like, oh my gosh, you know, volume chaos, you know, COVID, it was actually before that. And so again, thinking about why is that? Why would it be such a slow response? And I would say beyond that, just as kind of the conversations progressed, there was actually one of the individuals who literally was looking for a mortgage. But somebody, they weren't just shopping, they actually were shopping for real. And they, you know, somebody could have gotten a transaction out of it. And just the gaps in, you know, the communications with them was again, rather stunning to me. And finally, I would say the content that was coming out to these folks who had inquired not very educational, not asking any, you know, questions, I mean, it was just again kind of the content seems to be off, let alone, that it wasn't necessarily, you know, forget about being tailored for the age group that it was, it didn't even feel like it was engaging educational content to try to learn a little bit more. But where are you at in your life? Why is this important? Is this your first time or 10th time? So a lot of really interesting takeaways that probably everybody listening could go, hmm, you know, could that have been us, you know? Exactly. Hey, yeah. And that's why I wanted to have this conversation in part is, is, you know, the takeaway is number one, you know, to audit your own customer experience. Like you had suggested on our, our earlier call is, um, do you have, you don't have somebody audit, right? Your process, like a friend or relative or whatever, it's just like sit in and pretend you're a customer and unbeknownst to your team and see what the, you know, the experiences like. Yep. Yep. Yep. And I'll tell you, Jeff, that sometimes people complicate that, that process of auditing the experience, you can audit your own experience and your own journey. We actually did this at Total Expert where we said, what is it like for our customers? You know, once they're coming on board, why, you know, what does it feel like after that? We mapped it out for each of the personas that we worked with and literally we used a huge wall and a bunch of post-it notes. And that's how we mapped out our customer journey and identified a lot of gaps. It doesn't have to be complex. Yeah. For sure. And I think that's why I love talking about this is, you know, I use the word architect, you know, architect your customer experience because as you've already illustrated and you know, so well, is you have to actually map it out. You actually actually have to give it some thought and process. And visually, I think that makes sense. Like you described to map that out on a visual thing, whether it's a whiteboard or sticky notes, whatever it is. But yeah, when a call comes in, when a lead comes in, what happens from that point on, right? The other thing I would say is that you touched on this just a second ago, is whether it's a friend or family member, what have you? What about even just grabbing two of your leads that are coming in and saying, hey, you know what, I would really like to use you as, you know, a sounding board for me, you know, because I'm hoping we get the chance to work together through this whole process and take it all the way through. But I would love to get your unvarnished feedback on, you know, where did you feel like there should have been a communication that there wasn't one? Where did you feel like the content that we were providing you wasn't quite on point? Where did you feel like we kind of disappeared and you didn't know why? And I think, man, you can just grab a couple actual customers, it wouldn't be a secret shop. But it would be, you know, and you don't even necessarily have to tell the whole rest of your team. But grab somebody and say, hey, let me learn from you. Yeah, it's probably best that you don't tell your team, you know, it's like when the big boss comes down, you know what I mean? And kind of visits the, you don't know who it is, you know, the whole undercover billionaire that whole thing. Undercover boss, yeah. Undercover boss. Yeah, that's what it is. You know, it's funny. Earlier this morning, this is so timely as I did this post on LinkedIn that says a premium price requires a premium story and sales process. And you know, people are always like, you know, LLs are like, oh my God, you know, I get so price sensitive and, and, and, you know, the opening question is, what about, what's your rates and all this kind of stuff? And I know you, you know, you and I and, you know, being in the mortgage-coach community with, you know, shout out to Dave Savage and all those people, you know, using education as a process. I think the word that came up when I heard you describe what you experienced during your experience experiment is lack of humanness, lack of human touch, like my friend Mark Schaefer, his book, Marketing Rebellion, his tagline is the most human company we'll win. Even with technology and automation, that's what's missing from that is the human element. No, that's right. It's, you know, I will tell you, we say a lot of times of total expert that the companies and the brands that are going to win are the ones that can successfully combine technology and that human, human interaction, the real human interaction to build those experiences that, that really promote that, that trust in relationship that is spot on. So do you think there's enough people thinking about this consciously right now or just, hey, we're just so damn busy, we're trying to survive? I think, exactly. You know, it was, it was interesting, one of the things, it was a study that came up from Stratmore recently and it was showing the NPS or the Net Promotors for people during 2020 that had gone through a purchase versus a refinance and how satisfied they were. Very interesting that the people that were purchased or excuse me refinance had a much higher NPS than the purchase transactions, right? So that tells you that, you know, the purchase where there's emotions are a little higher, a life event is happening, not just a financial one, that they weren't getting enough, okay? So I thought that was a very interesting take away. The refinance, again, tends to, you know, can make a massive difference in the life-changing for someone. We just have this cool story, one of our customers, and this is one of thousands, you know, somebody were saving $600 a month, life-changing, was able to make, you know, do totally different things in their life because of this. And it tends to be generally less emotional. It's a financial transaction versus a home purchase typically means, you know, something in your life is happening. There's a life experience. Somebody's getting married. Somebody's getting divorced. Somebody died. Somebody was born and like, there's something going on, right? And we're not paying enough attention to it. So I do think as we head into, you know, the year ahead, 2021, I'm sure we've all seen the numbers from the Mortgage Bankers Association, but really saying volume overall is going to drop. But purchase volume is going to come up and we have to reevaluate that because right now, customers are telling us they didn't get, they didn't get enough love from us last year. And they were going through that purchase transaction. Hmm. What do you think people are looking for most then? Let's take purchases. What are they looking for most in that transaction? You know, I think there's a couple of different things. And again, it's a little, and some, you know, some institutions do certain parts of it better than others, right? But I think all of us, everybody, you know, always up our game in terms of what our, what our journey is. But I think, you know, when you think about the purchase, you know, the purchase transaction and knowing that something emotional is going on, first of all, I would just encourage people to remember that something really emotional is probably going on. We are in a business of stories, right? I mean, everything you purchase, let's say as well, like with the, with the low inventory and the multiple bids and all that, like talk about even more emotions, right? That's right. That's right. The entry to the wind, I lose, I'm devastated, oh my God, right? So all of that just to get an offer accepted. And then beyond that, you know, layer in the uncertainty that everybody is feeling just about the world and life right now. People are uncertain in the best of situations about, you know, we forget, I think sometimes the mortgage industry that most of America has a lot of concerns about their jobs, unless you're in the mortgage industry or work presume, you know, there's, there's maybe some concerns, right? So there's people that are one degree away from the folks we're talking to. There are a lot of pain, you know, their friends and family members. So there's uncertainty. There's a massive lack of just trust. And I think a lot of, I don't know, just maybe combativeness is the best way to say it in the country right now, right? It's where we're very divided. So there's this whole other layer of emotions going on where people are, they're tired, they're sick of being locked up there. You know, I mean, so there's all that going on. So, you know, what I would say, Jeff, is that there's a big part of it that really is what you said earlier. It's finding the right ways. Using technology to automate all the things you can, but to make the time and to create those opportunities for the human being to show up and reach out with that hand for somebody who actually is really looking for that human voice in the midst of their, their transaction. Hmm. Yeah, I love what you said in terms of taking a couple of clients or leads in and doing the audit process with them. You know, I think about like there's so many issues in play here that the emotional, the things, people have thin skin based on, you know, all these stuff that's going on in the world right now. What about, what about the process with referral partners? That might be a little bit of a pivot from our conversation, but I know you have a lot of experience. Yeah. So should we also architect a process there? Totally. It should be, in my opinion, if you're mapping this out on your wall, whether you're using the post at notes, or if you want to be a little bit more techy, whatever, map it out for all the people that you're working with, not just the consumers, but absolutely your referral partners. I would even say your internal team is another group of people that, you know, we're working with our operations team differently. I mean, you know, originators think they, they have it tough, my goodness. I mean, the operations kind of the house. Right. And we've later been in situations before where you can swing by their office and buy them lunch, you know, on a Friday, and show your appreciation, well, how are you showing your appreciation now? What does it look like to be part of your operations staff? And I would map out that journey as well, or that experience, right? But to get back to your question in terms of referral partners, I think the same thing. I bet if we took an NPS of all of our real estate agent partners out there, I don't know if it would be that awesome. You know, again, some companies and some individuals, you know, certainly always do better than others. But you can't help it when you're standing in the money machine of refinances. You can't help that some of those other things are going to slip. But now is the time to really set aside time and even just carve out a chunk in your day. I'm always such a big fan of time blocking, but time block out some time to make those outreaches to the existing partners that you work with. Because if you're not somebody else's, there's someone off the corner that's coming at them. But I think it's remembering, you know, thinking about what tools do you have in your arsenal to be able to really help support and build their business? And also how can you reach out to them on a personal and a human level? Because again, sometimes we, I think a lot of us, I always had very close, you know, personal, professional relationships with the real estate agents I worked with. But just also remembering their human, their living in this world too. It is not just, you know, everybody's in a weird state and being really sensitive to what they might be going through and asking open-ended questions and finding out where they're at. And it's not about saying, oh, we got the best rates and products and, you know, whatever. It's like, you know, where are you at and how can I meet you where you're at and actually help you with what you might need? Yeah, I try and, you know, it's difficult because it's easy for us, me, I guess, to sit here and pontificate. And then on coaching calls with L.O.'s and stuff like that and talk about, you know, architecting and designing your process and it's kind of like, you know, doing it while the plane's flying and you're also serving drinks and you're also, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, doing, like, all this stuff at once and now it's like, and I have to also like architect this incredible customer experience process, I mean, it sounds, I guess the, the motion that comes up comes up for me as like, I talk about it a lot, but I don't see a lot of people do it. Yeah. Well, what I would say is I break it almost into three parts and in some cases you do just have to block out time for this, but I would say it is, you know, first of all, you have to define it like we're talking about what is, what do you want that journey and experience to look like, whether you are a consumer coming to work with me, you are a referral partner and find and whether you're a prospective consumer that I'd like to come work with me, whether you are a prospective real estate agent, whether you're one of my operations staff. I mean, it doesn't take quite honestly that much time. You start putting it up and it maps itself up pretty quickly, but you have to define what is the ideal experience that you'd like to have happen, right? Then you have to operationalize it, you know, you just have to decide, okay, you know, which pieces am I going to do first and how do I operationalize it? You know, when I, yeah, yes, exactly right. And you know, when I was originating, you know, I mean, I was a single mom and, you know, running my business and doing these things, you know, I mean, it's like in lots of people listening, you're probably in that same situation and I'm very aware that everybody listening to this, you know, if you're in the mortgage industry, you're buried, you're exhausted, you're dealing with all of the same things I'm talking about. You're sick of being, you know, probably inside and all of the, you know, drama going on in the world, right? So you've got that human element with it for yourself and your family as well. But you can operationalize it and sometimes you just have to chunk it down, you know, the third piece is really just to take the action, prioritize it and take those small actions. It does not, it does not have to be overwhelming. You see the gaps pretty quickly and easily when you start to map it out or if you do that exercise, or maybe you have a not so secret shopper going through your experience, finding up where you can level up the game and then just literally saying, you know, what can I use? And I'm obviously a huge advocate of utilizing technology everywhere that you can. Back when I was originating, the only thing that was available was apps, I like, I know, I know I'm dating myself horribly, but that's what was available. So that's what I used and listen, listen, we're cut from the cloth there. If you survived it before Facebook and texting and all that kind of stuff, right? I know. I know exactly. Like, remember the bag falls or like we first got our first back machine. And now when somebody's like, let me fact, she's something you're like, what? So yes, exactly, it's a new world, but that's my point is that it's not about you have to do all these things, you know, on your own and it's all like you have to manually do all these things. There's amazing technology out there for yourself and your partners to be able to automate all of these things to elevate you. So it's your highest and best use of your time is if you do something in fact repeatedly, if you do something more than three times, you know, it's probably something that can be automated. I would just guess it's only an app for it, right? Automate all you can to free up your time to make those really important human connections. Yeah, I agree with you. And at the same time, I want to put a little caveat in there and some people have heard me tell this story before of my personal mortgage experience when I moved here to Vegas about three years ago, it's just the awareness of don't expect technology to replace everything, like don't expect technology to replace the A, the human connection and then B, where people rely too heavily, they want to automate everything, you know what I mean? And they want to just remove themselves completely from the process. I mean, my quick story for those who haven't heard it before is like, when I came here, we were looking about, it was a classic situation and we're like, oh, we're looking at houses. We're out on a Saturday. We find the house we love. You know, wife wants to make an offer, boom, on the spot. I'm like, well, wait a minute, I'm not pre-approved or anything, you know? And I'm like, well, dammit, I've got to get a pre-approval today. It's Saturday. So I, you know, interviewing the realtor in a club course, I know a bunch of lenders, but you know, I was like, all right, let's play the game. Who do you know? Because I didn't really know anybody locally. Who do you know for a lender? There's a game of three names. I don't have to tell you that the experience for me was, was dismal. I just give you the one highlight from it of the one place that I did complete a complete application, meaning assets, connected bank accounts and everything. It looked like two hours, you know, one of those mobile apps. Here's the thing. I mean, I filled out that thing on Saturday, made it clear that we need a pre-approval to make an offer. Monday comes. First of all, I didn't hear it from anybody on Saturday. Oh my gosh. See? Right. I don't have it, but I have this and nothing. Who's day comes? I get a call from the assistant who I don't even know who she is in her name, right? And an email. And then I get this automated video email that says, welcome to the so and so team. The next step in your loan process is, and I'm like, loan process, what are you talking about? I haven't even spoken to anybody yet. So for all you peeps wanting to automate everything, heads up, I'm not a believer in automating everything. No, and I absolutely am in alignment with you. I believe that there's been talk, you and I both been around the block here in the mortgage industry, but since I've been in, I've been in 30 years now. And I remember early on, people are like, oh, you know, technology is going to take over the loan officer and we're like, come on. And I still believe to this day, and I'm telling you this from, you know, I work in a technology company. So there's no bigger fan than me. But I'm here to tell you that technology is not here to replace the loan officer. I do, however, believe that the loan officers leveraging technology to free up their time to do exactly what you just described to pick up that phone and be there for you at the human time when you needed it to be automated, all the other stuff so that can happen. Those loan officers will replace the ones who aren't using any technology at all. I do believe that. No, 100%. Yeah, and that goes back to kind of like, I'm curious if there was other, or other findings or awareness you have about different age groups, Gen X, Z Y, whatever, you know what I mean, in terms of preference, because I was just pulling up some, just to confirm on the internet here is, and you know this, but of the biggest frustrations people have in buying a house, one of those is understanding the process. Yep. Yep. You know, so any findings that differ across age groups or totally? Yes. So I would tell you a couple of different things. What you just said was exactly spot on education is key. It is absolutely critical, and even if it is somebody who's been through the process a few times, particularly if they're purchasing, they want to know what's going on. How does it work? But, you know, so there is a level of just, as I said, there's a level of education that I feel like sometimes, again, when you're in this industry, you almost forget, I think sometimes, because like, well, everybody must know this. It's DTI. Doesn't everybody know that? Exactly. Exactly. So there's a lot of things that even think about the terms we throw around, like, you know, home and money and approval. These are massively emotionally loaded words for most human beings, and we're just like, you know, throwing them around like whatever. And we forget sometimes what it's like on the other side of that table. And I think it's so fascinating you were talking about your own experience, right? And I will tell you, I actually closed yesterday on a mortgage. And it was a beautiful combination and orchestration between human, human at the time I needed a human and digital and giving me the education and constant information of I knew exactly what was going on at all times. And I won't name them. It was one of our customers at Total Expert, but I won't say the other, the other couple hundred would be mad at me. But, what they're leveraging your technology, right? Totally. Yeah. It was a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful experience. But I do think part of it is, as you just said, it is education and not losing sight of the fact that it's better to overeducate and to undereducate and just, you know, realizing that most people, just because they are a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, you know, whatever they are, amazing thing in their life, it doesn't mean that they know anything about, you know, their finances might be a wreck and tack lots of them actually are. We've all seen. Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. So I do think that education is a really, really key part of it. And so that's part of, I think, looking at your experience is taking a step back, looking at all of your content and saying, is this, is this educational, you know, and is it helping? Yeah. So speaking of technology, here's what I've seen some L.O.s do is on the educational piece. Like you said earlier, like if you're repeating the same thing three times or if you're getting the same questions over and over again, I've seen L.O.'s set up an FAQ page on their website, which is this perhaps a series of short videos. It's you or somebody else, they could even be animated videos on just right. Here's the process of buying a home. It's a journey, you know, the whole infographic thing, all that kind of stuff to whatever degree, this is where I think you could leverage technology is you're doing a relationship building the human connection piece, you're educating your obviously establishing is why I should choose you and build trust with you. But then when it comes to like, you know, well, what about, what is that scroll and what about, uh, impounds and this and, you know what I mean, all that stuff, I think, could be automated. You know, Ben? Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, the other thing that you asked is if it was different kind of by generation. So interestingly, I think there was a feeling for a long time in the industry that the, you know, the millennials and now the C's don't want to talk to people, right? They want to make a hands-off. Right. And it's not true. It's not true. Interestingly, the millennials and I don't know all the studies are in on Z's yet, but they tend to, you know, absolutely want to talk to a human being, you know, partly because many of them, you know, the younger millennials and the Z's haven't done this before, right? They haven't done it before and they definitely want to talk to a human being and they want to get that information. It's a generation of people that interestingly have, unlike probably my generation X and the boomers, we tend to maybe sometimes not go to our parents or what have you and say we can figure, you know, the stuff out. The millennials are closer to their parents, right? Some of them are still living in their basement and so they tend to be more likely to reach up for counsel, reach up for guidance, reach up for advice. And so it was interesting. It's been interesting to watch that data over time saying that the human interaction is still critically important. However, where it is different and this won't be a surprise to anybody is the, you know, the channel via what you're communicating and being sensitive to how does someone want to communicate with you? Do they want to communicate via, you know, do they want to be a text? Do they want to be an email? Do they want to be a, you know, do they want to get phone calls? Do they, and there's, there's only so many, I think, permutations you can have. But this is why I think like really investing in a technology, for example, that allows you to be intelligent with your, you know, how you create your journey and have somebody that they're like, you know, text is best to switch them to a text-based journey. And if they say, hey, email is really right on so that we're, you know, I'm able to forward this easily to so it's great. Then you can shift to that, you know, the, the channel is important and the channel does tend to be a little bit different by, by demographic, probably in unsurprising ways. Everything is text, you know, when on, on definitely the, you know, the millennial and Z side, whereas, you know, XM boomers tend to want, you know, the emails and, you know, interspersed with those phone calls. And so it's just being, but being aware of the, the channels that you're communicating to and being able to keep those channels tied together, I think is, it's another important element to consider. Oh, 100%. You know what's interesting to me as I, as I interview a bunch of LOs, it's always interesting to me how diverse it is in terms of how people build their business. Like, like one woman on clubhouse the other day, this is one woman on clubhouse and she's been in the business 15 years and she says, I have never met a client face to face ever in 15 years. I was like, wow. And then the other end of this background, people who build these practices, where you come in and you sit down and you've got your name placard and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And we love to do the face to face. And there's people who still, who still ask to meet face to face. And now we've got COVID that we're dealing with that and you couldn't meet face to face. And it's like, it's like, how's this all going to spill out? You know, what, I think that's the point, I guess, that I would want to reiterate for people listening is ask, like, how do you prefer, however, like, if that, if that doesn't fit your model, let's say you're that woman who's like, I never meet people face to face. Like, how do you, how do you work through that? You know? Yeah. No. And I, you're so smart. Ask. You know, I just was talking to somebody recently where we were talking about data and just how important data is and the ability to get at data, you know, so that you don't have, you're not asking people the same questions that you should know, if they've been your customer before. So we're talking about data and, you know, going down this conversation about all of the, you know, artificial intelligence and all of the things that you can learn over data and all these things. But there is a huge benefit in simply asking people a question. I think sometimes we've gotten so far down this road of saying, how do we forecast and predict out of, you know, all these things? How can we know these things about people? And it's like, hey, you could just ask those people, where are you at right now? You know, which most describes you? Are you, you know, thinking about, you know, a second home, are you thinking about starting a family? Are you thinking about, you know, opening your own business, like, ask those questions? We don't have, because we don't ask. So it's a simple but brilliant. And speaking of asking, this reminds me of, like, in working with referral partners, you know, I've been doing a lot of coaching on, like, um, all those two, all listing agents. You know, uh, when you have the buyer, even buyer offer, let alone buyer contract. Um, and it's interesting how many people still don't do that, uh, and again, I'm a believer in automation and let's, you know, automated updates and status updates and stuff like that. Yeah. But I think let's, let's pivot and based on also on the relationship, like, with that listing agent situation, look, that's a future referral opportunity there. Okay. There's a lot of different peripherals from that. But, you know, I'll often ask law officers, hey, do you do status updates, right? And I'd say seven out of 10 times, they're like, oh, yeah, you know, those automated things go out. You know what I mean? And I'm like, no, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Yeah. The old school traditional right, Tuesday, what's up? This is Sue. Just want to give you an update on the Smith, right? All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I remember, so something I read and won a time Duncan's books, um, you know, years and years ago. But I remember he was talking about, about this topic, you know, asking, you know, kind of asking. And it was about, you know, typically people do a post-closing survey. How did we do? Where could we have done better? And I remember talking to the point of saying, why are we waiting until it's over? And we can't change course to ask how people are doing. And he was talking about the brilliance of having a midstream survey of asking the middle, you know, whether it is certain, you know, automated where people may be more honest than they might be to, but ask the question, how's it going with the realtor? How's it going with us? You know, what do you need from us? Where are we missing? And you have the chance to course correct, rather than somebody leaving salty at the end, and it's too late to fix anything. Yeah. And my point about the listening agent thing was, um, elbows should be asking the listening agent, which your preferred method of getting updates, because maybe they don't want the call, right? And maybe they're not ever going to answer their phone. Maybe they're just happy with text or maybe I'm cool with the email that's fun. But this goes through our point earlier about ask, right? People have different ways they like to, you know, experience something. So I don't think we can do, you know, um, the same recipe for everybody. And you learn a lot because it may be that kind of to your point earlier, if you, if you're a, a loan officer that you never get together with people, it's not like you're going to say, well, let me ask. And then they say, well, I want to get together with you and go, oh, my chain, my whole business. But it might just inform you of, you know, what, I've got to be a machine and it's got to look, you know, kind of like this, but I need to know, does this work for this person because I may not be able to, you know, if you're not utilizing a technology that allows you to kind of have a more custom experience with channel, you might just, it might just tell you, this may not be a good, you know, good fit. And, you know, if you're at a point in your business where you say, I do not meet people face to face, you know, forgetting about, you know, COVID, but it's just not a part of your, your deal. Then it kind of informs saying, we're probably not a good fit for each other. And I can probably refer you to one of my colleagues who loves to sit down with people and meet face to face because that's their business model. There's no one absolute right way to do it because part of it is, yes, it's about productivity, it's about efficiency, it's about creating a great experience, but it's just like I can have a great experience at Chipotle if that's what I'm looking for, but I can also have a great experience at, you know, ocean air, you know, or somewhere where it's like, you know, it depends on kind of what you're looking for for that, what suits your needs. And it's not one size fits all. And that's okay. Yeah, and I think if you're going to be virtual, so to speak. And of course, right through COVID, we've had changes in expectations, meaning, well, okay, maybe people don't need to meet face to face as much anymore, right? Maybe now we're doing our buyer consults over Zoom and stuff like that. And that's cool, but I think let's not forget what we're saying here. What we started about talking about was the experience, right? What's the customer experience and architecting that? Because if you are exclusively only virtual, then I personally think you've got to add some moments of surprise or delight in there, right? Especially if we're talking about like getting approvals on a home purchase, you know, you've seen this as well, where people, you know, do these little congratulations on approval. They'll send whatever. So I'm kind of gift or balloons or whatever the heck it is. Yeah. I mean, just to create that special, because listen, we're talking about building a career. We're talking about building future and referral and repeat business and stuff like that. And if an average, I don't think, here's what I always say, I think it's easy to win today. Be honest with you. Now, what do I mean by that? Do I mean that there's no competition or no? I just mean that most people are still just doing the basics that all if all you do is 10 or 20% more, you're going to stand out. Yeah. Yeah. And I do think you can automate the wow, I would say. Just like you just said, maybe there's some cool, special thing that you, you know, that you want to send out that's going to be a real wow. You craft out your journey and you say, that's part of it. Make that part of your process. No make it a one off, you know, thing, they'll make that like operationalize it. Make it part of your process where that you know every single time, it just, that was a huge thing for me when I was originating is I wanted to know every single time I wasn't leaving anything to fate. And so when I found those gaps, like you said, somebody keeps asking the same question, all my customers asked this question, hey, you know what? There's a communication that needs to be popped in there, right? But you craft this experience, automate those walls in there, surprising the light. And then utilize the efficiency that that gains you for those times that you really need that human interaction with the real estate agents as well as with those, those customers. Yeah. For instance, I know a loan officer who has send out cards integrated into her CRM and upon approval or whatever it is, right? It'll fire off in the system to send out a card, right? And it's a handwritten card, right? Kind of cool. Automated, there's technology. Other quick ideas in terms of like finding those moments where you can create impact or finding where it's broken, like you're doing the architect your process. One loan officer had a great idea what she does is she gives her team, she gives her team a nice little journal, right? And all that kind of stuff and talks about it's, you know, really cool and people really want to start using it. It could be a Google Docs. It could be a Trello. But any time in your process throughout the week, if you, if you, your team comes across something that's broken or has friction or could be better, write it down, right? And then we're on our weekly meeting, we're going to pick one of those ideas and say, do we want to change this? Yep. Absolutely. Find where those rubs are and don't just go like, ah, God, that's aggravating for the thousand time. Let's actually go in and fix that. And again, you said it earlier and it's so true that I think when volume is so high, it just feels a little bit like, oh, you know, I don't have time for this and I've got enough business anyways. But most people listening have probably been in the business a little bit, right? There's probably some, you know, I know there's some newer folks coming in, but we have been here before and we have come out of this before and we have wished that we'd done different things during the time that we had to actually really make sure that our foundations were strong. Even though we're swimming in business, there's probably something kind of nagging at you right now that you know, would say, I know I need to fix this because in a year I'm going to be wishing I would have done this, do it, like do it, like I sometimes I'll tell people like, you know, what if you were, you know, what if you got the flu and you're sick for a day? You would be out of pocket, right? So pretend that you're sick for a day and take a day and just like make it a sick day but make it a day that you're actually working on your business, not just doing your business, right? Car of all that time because it just pays such huge dividends into the future of your business and your success. Well, I mean, look, one way to win is your reputation, you know, like what's your reputation with your customers, with your referral partners and all that when people, word of mouth is still a real thing, right? It's just on social now. So if people can talk about what is your competitive advantage? Let's face it, Sue, we've heard this for a thousand years. It's not interest rate, okay? You're not going to win on rate really, okay? I know you might have a slightly better, but that's not going to be enough and you know this as well as anybody, but this is really for those listening. So if you're not going to win on rate and you're not going to win on cost and fees and all that kind of stuff, what are you going to win on? All right? You're shining personality, right? You're, you know what I mean? No, you're going to win on how you make somebody feel during the process. Yep. That's right. And you know, you and I've talked about this. We forget, I think sometimes in all businesses do, that there's really only one hero in a story and the hero is not us. It's our customer, right? The customer is the hero and whether it's, you know, making them feel that way or even raising up some of those stories, I think that's the best and most compelling marketing that I ever see is when you're hearing a story and you can see yourself in that story and say, oh, that person had a problem, I got that problem. That person, you know, did this and now here's their end result. Those are compelling things as human beings were hardwired like this. We love stories. This is how, you know, history was, you know, kind of transferred from individual to individual over, you know, thousands of years is by stories, right? And so think about that. Your customer is the hero of the story, not you. And how can you not only make them feel like a hero but raise up those hero stories, you know, to, to help another person see them as wanting to be the next person in your story. Yeah. Well, I mean, speaking of story, that's why I kind of referenced that quote posted Instagram a few moments ago, premium price requires a premium story and sales process. I think most L.O.s miss an opportunity to tell a story when that call comes in and to tell you what's your rate, you know, I'm trying to get people to say, listen, rates important, but, you know, would it be okay if we take a moment to tell you why we're different? You know what I mean? Yeah. There's the story. You know, whether it's leading with education, whether it's, there's something there you can do to differentiate. Yep. Well, and one of the, the responses I would have to that when I was an originator is I would just say, man, I would be super irresponsible if I just quoted you a rate. You know, there's so many things that I don't even know yet, you know, and for me to not be completely irresponsible, you know, I need to know like, you know, how long are you planning on staying in this house? You know, what's your goal? You know, why are you making this move now? You know, how, you know, and you start asking all of those questions, those consultative questions. But you also kind of position as, and not necessarily professional or responsible, the next person who's like, you know, two and a half and just as a rate, right? You know, because it is irresponsible and unprofessional to just fly out a rate, you know, without knowing anything else about that person. Well, and that is part of the process, part of your customer experience is from the first words that come out of your mouth, you know what I mean? That's right. If you're just going to like fall down and what's your, well, rates today are, there's no process there. So without like, it's the old thing within the absence of value, right, meaning a premium process. The story, price is the only comparable. That's right. So if you're not taking charge of the conversation, like you said, and let me just take a pause, I'd be, you know, remiss, I'd be unprofessional if I just quoted your rate, you know, obviously what we do differently here at ABC mortgages, right? We invest in knowing about our clients and blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, you guys need to do something there. That's what I'm saying. What do you see? All right. We only got a couple of minutes left. What do you see? I was going to throw this question at you completely off topic. What do you see as the biggest threat to the loan officer population moving forward? These threats to the loan officer population. I don't know, I would say them, you know, ourselves, you know, I'll put myself in the population for minutes. I grew up as a loan officer. As I said earlier, it's not technology. I don't see technology replacing the loan officer, but the loan officers who choose not to embrace technology will be replaced by the ones who have. And so I do think that that's something that, and I don't say that because I'm standing in the walls of a technology company, but I just, I saw that even, you know, again, when I was originating, you have to find ways to be more efficient to providing a better experience because of the, you know, what you gain with technology, because what enables you to do then is to be there to get that real estate agent's relationship or to be there for that person who really needs to hear your human voice, not because you're busy doing stuff that technology could be doing, right? So I would just tend to say that I, you know, again, right now there is an opportunity as, and I know we're busy. I get it. But to carve out the time to really, you know, foundational, he set the stage for where you want your business and your practice to be in the future, not doing that will, you know, I think put your future at peril. And I know it doesn't feel like it right now because again, in the money machine and, you know, I get it, but it is a time that people have to make really, have the discipline to make really good foundational decisions about making sure their process is the best it can possibly be, and how are they going to level it up and what shifts do they need to make to adopt whether it is a new technology, whether it's working on new partnerships, whether it's, you know, bringing in new team members, whatever that looks like, when you feel like you don't have the time, you have to take the time. So I wouldn't, you know, I would just say the biggest threat against anybody, you know, on this call is themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I don't just agree with that because you're evolving, you're green and growing or ripe and rotting. And there's always external market forces and pressures on us to continue to evolve and be relevant. And one of those things is a process, which your sales process, you know, because we've been spoiled. Josh ain't redemption, right? Get busy living or get busy dying, right? That is like one of my favorite sayings and movies of all time. I'm so unbelievable. Unbelievable. Like when people ask you, what's your favorite movie? That's always on my top 10. Yeah. I think I washed that like easily 10 times. So many lessons about life in that movie. So if you haven't watched it, you're welcome. Absolutely. All right. So final closing parting words, Sue Woodard, total expert. What's going on at total expert? What's on the horizon for you guys? What's coming? You know, just we've got a lot of good, exciting things happening in a year ahead. I mean, I think one of our big initiatives this year is really surrounding our integration strategy and really just up leveling that, putting an awesome API in place so that every single lender out there, everybody's got their own kind of secret sauce, mix of things that go into their tech stack, but being a hub at the center of that and really tying together sales and marketing and compliance and having all of the integrations to all of the other, you know, that the LOS, the product and pricing, you know, all of the different partners out there that are an incredibly important part of that ecosystem in providing a great customer experience. You know, we just want to level that up so that everybody's got the ability to easily have their data flowing, you know, throughout and have no data silos, have their data flowing and keep it all in one hub. So, but we're excited. We've got just an amazing, amazing customer family. It's as I said earlier, we're not the heroes. Our customers are the heroes and it's exciting to see the differences that they're making in the lives of their customers, of their communities by being able to communicate just in a better and more efficient way. It's as I said, we hear a hero stories every single day and it's just exciting to be a part of it. Yeah. Well, I know you guys are leading the charge out there and there are a handful of LOS. I've spoken to that. I've listening to this podcast that I know used total experts. So, if anybody wants to reach out to you, just to connect, whatever, what do you say? How would they reach out to you? Yeah. Hit me on LinkedIn is probably the best way. My daughter tells me I'm really missing about by not being on TikTok and Instagram, everything else. But I got to try to limit my channels. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect. And yeah, if you're part of your customer family, but you need a little help, let us know. We've got an army of people here that are ready to help you. And if you're not part of the total expert family, we'd like to learn more. Nudge your sales and marketing leadership and ask them to reach out. And we'd be happy to get that conversation started. You bet. Awesome. We'll put links to your LinkedIn and the show notes as well. Connect directly to you over there. Sue, always good to catch up with you and I know you're busy, so thank you for making time. Oh, thank you. You're busy as well. We're all busy right now. But that's a high class problem, right? Absolutely. So remember, the takeaway folks is audit your customer experience. Take some time. Take a day off, right? And kind of map that out. Work with your team to do that. And just, you know, just ask yourself, like, how awesome of a customer experience could you create? I think of Ritz Carlton, you know, whenever I think of these parallels, it's like, we want a Ritz Carlton experience, I think. If you're looking for a premium price, it's got to be that premium process. So all right. Sue, good to catch up with you. Everybody listening. Thanks for tuning in. And you know what to do. If you like this episode or others, leave us a review. Appreciate you tuning in. And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey, guys, what's up? Real quick. You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before. And I just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans, you need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. 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