Critical Activities for Today's Mortgage Market

Hey, listeners, what's up, Jeff Zimper, host of this podcast episode of the Marketing Marketing Radio podcast and thanks again for tuning in, appreciate it. Whether you're a long time listener or first time here, really appreciate you making time out of your busy day to listen to what we're doing over here. And if you are so inclined, it would be great if you would take a moment and leave us a review wherever you're listening to this right now, whatever podcast platform, it's pretty easy to just find the link to leave us a review and I'd be grateful for that. Next is before we get into this week's special guest, I want to do bring another success story to you from the trenches of our mortgage professionals who are members of my Asian classes platform. You may recall that what we do is we help originators skip the steps of vendor solicitor and leapfrog to the position of partner and peer helping agents solve problems. See, one of the biggest problems that originators have when approaching real estate agents is their approach is immediately flawed from the beginning because they're leading with products and pricing because they're looking and sounding like every other originator in town. Therefore, resistance is high. And what our members at my Asian classes do is they lead with educational content teaching classes virtually or in person using the content and the system to complete done for you platform that we provide to help them get in front of agents at scale because today, as you'll hear in a moment from our special guest, it is all about conversations, right? And so the question is how many conversations can you have? Can you compress that time? Can you use leverage to get yourself in front of maximum agents in minimum time with something relevant, useful and impactful? Yes, you can. There I say that's by following our system and plan called my agent classes. Case in point, I have a recent success story here for you to share from one of our newer members, Dustin Ames, what's up, Dustin, shout out to you. Dustin hosted his very first class with us. It's called Master the Market, how to close 2023 strong and dominate in 2024. So he followed our system or plan, our process in his local market and he had 13 reservations and 12 who attended. And he goes on to say that everyone was engaged and enjoyed the information. He also talked about a first time seller seminar in that class, which is one of the ideas we share with real estate agents on how they can do sellers in, I'm sorry, seller seminars in their local market and we equipped them with some of the tools and resources to help with that. And so Dustin is now working on his follow up with a personal video to everyone who attended and he is thrilled with his first class getting in front of 13 real estate agents at once and facilitating conversations with them. So once again, ask yourself, what is your process for getting in front of agents as a source of conversations that lead to business because even in the current market, there are still deals happening every single day. In your backyard question is how many people know that you exist? How many of those opportunities are you getting in front of? And if you're looking for a better, more effective, systematized way, that's not co-calling chasing, paying for leads or selling your soul in identifying and attracting real estate agents. And we might have something for you and you can go book a call with me to learn more. You go to mortgagemarketing.pro, check it out. We'll see if we're fit for each other. I'll share with you some of the other success stories and use cases from originators across the country. You'll take a look at our platform at some of the content classes we share with people and we'll see if it's the right fit. Mortgagemarketing.pro. All right, this week bringing to you a very special guest that I'm thrilled and honored. It's been a long time coming. He has been a mentor of mine since I entered the industry in 2003 and just one of the most authentic and I think caring, if you will, sincere in his desire to want to help people in this industry do what they do better. And who am I talking about? I'm talking about Dale Vermillion. Dale has been in this mortgage industry for 40 years. He's the founder of Mortgage Champions, which is a coaching training organization for mortgage companies and individuals. And this conversation today, I think you should listen to more than once. I think you should grab a notepad and a pen, take notes because you're going to hear some incredibly impactful examples of dialogue and mindset and conversations that will help you survive and thrive, the current market, I say air quotes, but to do well in any market no matter the conditions. So Dale is a founder of mortgage champions. As I said, he's trained over a million business professionals, worked with over 700 companies. He's the Housing Wire Vanguard Award winner for 2023 mortgage, global 100 recipient, on and on and on. And I can't, you know, fanboy enough, I guess on this conversation that Dale and I had. So I hope you're as equally impacted by it as I am. And the links to all Dale's resources are in the show notes. It's Dale Vermillion dot com, D-A-L-E-V-E-R-M-I-L-L-I-O-N dot com. Go check him out there for more. He also has a podcast, which you can find there over on his website as well. Link to that will be in the show notes, of course, for you to just start listening to. Also, it's called batting 1000 with Dale Vermillion. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show Dale, welcome to the show. I'm glad to be here, Jeff. Thanks for having me. It's going to be a fun conversation. I definitely believe it is as well and also impactful for the listeners. And I told you before we hit record that this is a long time coming and it is. And I say that because, you know, having been an originator for a decade and I started in 2003, you know, you were one of those people that were consistently out there and providing content, direction, value, training and coaching, right? For those of us like myself kind of coming up in the industry and looking for some direction and guidance. So I just want to say thank you for helping me in some way back then. Well, it's super kind. Thank you. Appreciate that. That made my day. It's a great way to start this conversation. Fantastic. For those who may not be familiar with you, what do you want to tell them about who Dale Vermillion is? You know, probably the only thing they really want to know is, you know, I've been in the business 40 years. I started as an originator, worked up to running a national mortgage companies my last corporate job. One mortgage is my whole career. That was 12, first 12 years in the last 28th, I've trained a million, a million and a half loan officers and leaders around the country in the mortgage industry. So that's probably the main things that care about. Okay. That's a lot of people you've reached and you've been at it a long time and that's why I'm glad to have somebody of your, you know, lens, if you will, come into this conversation. So, you know, the lens of time in this industry and things you've seen have come and go and things that people said. We're going to happen, but didn't. So I'd be curious to kind of enter this conversation. Here we are November 7th, 2023. We've had a busy week with NAR lawsuit announcements. We've had obviously the spike in interest rates, you know, everything going on and housing that everybody listening knows. What are you coaching to or around considering all that right now? You know, it's so interesting because for a guy like me, it's been doing it for four decades. I've seen so many up and down markets, came in the industry when rates were in the 17s, were selling five points on deals and didn't think a thing about it because that's just what it was, you know. So for people who are in the industry today who generally have less than 10 years experience a lot of times and they haven't seen the kind of gyrations, it's a big deal. But you know, this year we've had a theme all year long. The theme has been back to the future and the reason we use that theme was it's going back to the basics and the fundamentals to succeed in the future. And what we're really helping our clients understand and the funny thing is, you know, our clients are doing way better than the industry as a whole is doing statistically. And the reason is we're just keep reminding loan engineers today that the key to your success is really simple. Don't focus on rate. There's nothing you can do to change it. The market is what the market is. We're going to buy and borrow no matter what. We have the highest demand we've ever had for purchases in US history. If you look at population numbers, Jeff, the population numbers of the last two generations, Gen Y and Gen Z 168 million people. You compare that to the generation before that and you're going to 134 million people. So we've got more demand than ever. We've got more equity to work with whenever we've got a tough economy on consumers, which means they need to save money more than ever. And here's the biggest thing. Consumer debt is the highest it's ever been in US history. So when you add all those things up, you know, everybody talks about inventory and affordability. And those things, you don't control inventory, but affordability. You can control. You can make it better. But the bottom line is we are still in a market where a lot of people want to buy. There's, it's a great time to buy for buyers because there's less competition so the better chance of getting a contract rates are going to go back down. They always do. So you've just got to quit listening to all the negative noise. Look at the market, understand we're here to help people in a big way and we can do that today. And the American dream is never going away. It's going to be here no matter what rates do and people will buy no matter what. Yep. Great advice. So we're talking about mindset there, right? We are. Yeah. You've obviously coasted a lot of people. As we mentioned, do you find, so I want to unpack, like if you could picture this visual, this brain of yours, right? And the doors are opening up on the brain and you know, Dale's all got all this, this experience and interaction and wisdom. So there's a lot of things flowing through my mind in terms of questions to ask you. But on the one hand, I think people know that, right? Because we've heard that for a while a long time. But then actually living in and applying it is a different thing. So let's take that a step further. How would you help people actually own that, right? And live it in the daily, weekly basis. Yeah. Great question. So first thing you have to remember is this, okay? It's never what happens to you in life. It's always what happens in you in life that makes all the difference. That's the first thing that everybody's understand. When we get up in the morning, we got to realize that we're in an industry that never goes away. Real estate has been the number one source for wealth, for Americans, for decades and decades and decades. So we're in an industry that's evergreen. There's always going to be people that are wanting to buy and borrow like I talked about a moment ago. And therefore we've got to get it each morning. We got to say, okay, I don't control the market. I'm not going to try to. The biggest mistake I think I see today is people are trying to control the things they have no control over and therefore frustrates them and creates fear and anxiety and all these other things. And so I'm just saying, here's the deal. If there's less inventory, how do I fix that? Here's the answer. Widen your net. Get a bigger network. You know, the one thing that we've known about real estate all 40 years I've been in it is that there's a front sheet and a back sheet when it comes to real estate sales. The front sheet is the MLS listing. The back sheet is all of those transactions that happen behind the scenes between realtors that never make it to the front sheet because they happen to know the homes that are for sale. And that's where the money's at. Great loan officers understand that and what they're doing is they're always making sure that they're expanding out their database and their network in a marketplace like the compensate for the shortage in inventory and the shortage of customers. Second thing, call everybody you know. This is the time you get up and you know, here's the mistake, here's the number one mistake we make Jeff. What do most loan officers do when they get up in the morning? They look at the headlines mistake number one, they go to their emails mistake number two. There ain't nothing good in there. You don't want to go there. What they need to do is get up in the morning, read something positive for 15 minutes. Practice and role play for 15 minutes on their pitch for today and just start dialing the phone, prospect for partners, call your past customers, call your cancellations and turn down, mine your database, create some positive activity because if you create conversations, you're going to get positive results and that's going to change your attitude. Instead, what they do is they sit around and they wait for it to rain. Well, it ain't raining right now. That was 21 and 20, 23, it's not raining customers. When rates go up, customer activity goes down. That's the one quick pro code to be sure of. So you've got to create the activity, not wait for the activity. Yeah, that's great advice. I wrote down conversations equals contracts, don't know who said that, but I swiped it. So love that. Here's a question for you, I jotted this down in listening to you for a moment. I'd be curious to get your take on sources of like ranking sources of business and how do you coach around those or evaluate the criteria of those? Well, referral partnerships are always number one. It's the number one best way to get business and I don't just mean professional referrals. I mean customer referrals too. Every day I talk to them and they say, look, if today you'll just get up, lock out two hours, first thing in the morning, I said, this is a 9-1-1 market, what does that mean? It doesn't mean that the world's coming to an end, it means you sell from 9 to 11 every morning. That's what it means. When you get up, you hit the phones at 9, you hit them until 11 and here's what you do. When you call your customers, what you're doing is you're not calling to sell them anything. You're calling to check in with them and say, look, I know the economy is tough right now. I'm sure you're feeling the effects of it like I am. Is there anything I can do to help you? Because the fact of the matter is many of my customers have more debt today than ever and more equity and forget about the rates. I'm saving them thousands and thousands of dollars during the course of the month. I love to do that for you. Now, they're going to say one of two things. Yes or no? And all you have to do is say, I'd like to do a free analysis for you just to see if there's something I can do. All they can say is yes or no. If they say yes, you got to app in a conversation. If they say no, the next question is, okay, no problem, let me ask you a final question. Who do you know that's looking to buy a home today or who do you know that might be looking to lower their payments or maybe utilize their equity in today's market? They're going to know somebody, everybody does. So you turn every call into either repeat business or referral business with your customers. And then prospecting, we just need to get out in the community and be with the realtors out there and all the other sources. That's the other mistake we make. We're all targeting realtors. Okay, realtors are a great source, obviously. Financial planners, though, are phenomenal. Wealth managers are phenomenal, CPAs are phenomenal. Invest agents, phenomenal. Anybody in the financial services sector can be a resource for you for business. So don't just go after the realtors that are available as Chase and go after the ones nobody's chasing and you're going to get divorce attorneys. Oh my gosh, so much business right there that we could be getting. We just got to go after. I'm glad you said that because I often thought if I was to get back into originated, I would definitely focus on a niche, you know, certain type of buyer or like divorce, for example, that's something that's present in all markets. And, you know, I want to be perceived as a subject matter expert, not a commodity, like everybody. Exactly. Exactly. Do you have, so that's interesting. You don't know how you're on the same page there, so speaking of podcasts, you have a podcast. Is it called batting 1000? That is correct. Yeah, batting 1000 will put a link to it in the show notes. Appreciate it. Obviously people are listening to this podcast, and so I think I've interviewed roughly 200 of Americans top producers, and when I ask them what their number one source of business is, eight out of 10 times, they say referral partners, right? You know, now let's, if you wouldn't mind, let me, let me play this NAR card, an AR card, like the recent lawsuit, if you don't mind, can I play that for a second, please. Because obviously you're seeing a lot of the dialogue go on about the future of real state agents, et cetera, and everybody, you know, some people are, you know, questioning agents as a source, and, you know, what's going to happen about, you know, the thing? What's, what's your, you know, read or take on this for an originator listening? Well, look, if anybody thinks that this is the thing that's going to cause a challenge for realtors to be the source they've been in the past, they haven't been paying attention to the marketplace for 10 years. This is just the icing on the cake from my perspective. I've been saying this for a decade. You've got to start really diversifying your sources because realtors are under attack and they've been under attack. If it's not by this thing with NAR happening, or if it's not by lawsuits, if it's not by controlling commissions and reducing them like we've had happened in the mortgage industry, then it's going to be those companies that come into play that are doing 1% and a half a percent and $500 flat fee things online because we're working, we're moving more and more and more into an online world. We've been doing that for a decade. So a lot of customers think about how many purchases happened today and have happened in the last five years where people buy and never even go walk through the property. They literally do it online. There's no reason to pay a six or seven percent commission to do that. Consumers are going to figure that out and companies have already figured that out and tried to attack it. Now, by the way, I want to be clear here, I love the realtors and I'm going to continue to work with them as long as I'm in the business because they'll always be viable. They bring a great service to the industry. There's no question about that. So I don't want any of this to come across against disparaging. It's just the fact of the matter. They have competition just like we have competition in the mortgage market with fintech companies who want to eliminate originators, do it all through technology and get the lowest margins they can to try to win on price. It's the same play only in the real estate side of the business. So if all you're putting is your eggs in one basket, we all know that old saying and what that turns out, doesn't turn out well. That dog don't hunt as the old saying goes over time. So we've got to expand and diversify. Real estate professionals should be your primary source. Builders should absolutely be a key place today because new home construction is rocking again. And that's where a lot of the inventory is coming from. So you've got to have connections through realtors or through builders to get to them. But outside of that, go to the places like I said a minute ago that everybody else isn't going to. That's where you can really diversify and build a stronger base of business. So I think the real estate industry is going to be very different three years from now than it is today or has been for the last 40 years of end of the business. Interesting. And to put a cherry on top of that, it goes back to kind of what we opened up with, which is mindset, which is controlling the controllables. Like you can't control what's going to happen with that whole thing. There's a lot of noise. I mean, there's going to be appeals. Who knows when this actually is going to actually have any meaningful change. So focus on the daily activities, right? The daily method of operation, which is conversations. Now along those lines, so we've got obviously your bullish on realtors, referral partners, and those different subsets that you mentioned. Now let's, let me get your take on, quote unquote, consumer direct, right? And you want to unpack, what's your definition of consumer direct? So consumer direct is just what it says it is. It's where we are creating opportunities directly to the consumer, be it through organic website leads, buying leads from companies like lending, trading companies like that, whatever resource you want to use, it's creating a direct initiative to consumers. Now I'm going to tell you something that's going to blow your mind, Jeff, which is really interesting. So we're working, I've trained over 700 companies in my career. We work in any given year with between 25 and 30 companies. I think we have 27 clients we're working with right now out of those 27 clients, two of those clients who are my clients that are doing the very best are actually beating their 2021 numbers, they're having their best year in history in 2023. Now here's the thing that will block your mind about it. Both of them are consumer direct shops and both of them do straight refi in what's considered to be a quote unquote non-refi market. That's because they understand the niche approach to refi today. It's about getting rid of debt. That's what it's about. It's not about cash out. It's not about obviously refinances because you're not going to be able to write into anybody nowadays. It's all about leveraging debt into opportunities to help people to eliminate their debt, lower their payments, and get out of that debt quicker, which is a huge thing to help consumers with today. You can do that regardless of rates. If rate mattered with that, I would not be sitting here today because I started at 17 and a half. All we did was cash out, debt elimination repies. For the 12 years I managed, I managed over 10,000 loan officers in that period of time and we crushed the numbers. I'd loan off to you in 30 loans a month that 17 and a half percent rates believe they're not. We never built it on rate. You seem probably seeing my t-shirt rate is overrated. That's true. It really is. Everybody talks about it, but that's not what matters to a consumer. It's what they ask you because they don't know what else to ask you. What matters is, what's my cash flow in a tough economy like 2023? Do I have any money in the bay for reserve to protect my family if something goes wrong? What's sitting in my 401k and my 529 plan for my kids and my savings in check and account? That's what matters. Those are all the things that consumers care about. What loan officers care about sometimes is, well, what's our rates? Forget that. Just go show your borrower how you can change your life and you win. I work with consumer direct companies forever and this is still a very powerful market for consumer direct companies that understand how to have what you talked about earlier. Great conversations. That's the key. It's interesting. The word conversation has the word conversion bedded right in it. The only two letters you add is A and T. And what does that stand for? Allow time. If you'll allow enough time to converse with your borrowers on a level that helps them understand you and you understand them, you'll find out 30 things they need you to do for them today that would change their life that you can do at 8% rates. But if you only try to sell them a loan, shoot them off a link, which is what everybody's doing today. Never have a great conversation with them and think you're going to win and ain't going to happen. You've got to wow them in today's market. That's really great advice there. Everybody listening should rewind and listen to that a second time. So I'm going to get a little bit more tactical on that idea if you don't mind. Not at all. What I wrote down was intentional under the umbrella of conversations. Yep. And what I'm visualizing in my, I visualize this loan officer in their office and they're like you said earlier, they're standing in the desk and what do I do today? What do I say? And I think what you recognize, obviously, and I want to really illustrate for the people listening is to your point about just sending a link or whatever. This comes back to customer experience. What is your engagement process like when you are calling people? Are you intentional? And I think this would you agree? It takes some thinking, some structure, maybe some laying out a basic talk crack. Absolutely. And that's what we've taught at Morgan's Champions for decades. That's why we've been so successful in training loan officers to hit big numbers in these kind of marketplaces. Look, it's really about being conversational with your borrowers. It's about being a human being. That's what it's really about at the end of the day. I've said this my whole career. What are the three things that 95% of loan officers talk about to their borrow in the first five minutes? Here's what they are. Price? Product? Process. As we talk about, okay? And then what do most loan officers do in the first three minutes of the conversation? They qualify the borrower. The borrower is on the phone. They're giving us an opportunity because they're saying to us, they're raising their hands saying, look, I'm thinking about buying and maybe looking for some cash for improvements because just wondering what your rates are. Okay? A loan officer hears that and goes, oh, they're asking me the right, no, they're not. They're asking you for $50,000. They're asking you for $400,000. That's what they're doing. The first thing you don't say to them is, well, let me ask you a question. Do you happen to know your FICO score? I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. Or, well, how much are you putting down? And can you tell me, are you gainfully employed and can you verify your income? No, be a human being. Just talk to them. Wow. All right. Well, let's begin by talking a little bit more about what you're looking to do. Tell me about that new home you're looking to buy. Tell me about that $50,000 and what you want to do with it. And start to engage them in a conversation and before you know it, 20 minutes has passed, they love you and they're not even thinking about the rate, let alone asking you about it because you're already talking about how you can solve their problem. That's what they want you to do. So we really, if we're going to be tactical, what we need to do is we need to quit thinking about mortgage terms and mortgage conversations. We got to quit qualifying the borrower up front and thinking, wow, I don't want to waste my time. Well, let me ask you a question in this market, isn't that the thing you've got the most of? It's not reading customers today. So if I get somebody who's interested, I am not in a hurry. I have no rush whatsoever. I am really going to settle in, get to know them. And here's the key. I'm going to give your listeners a great strategy. Open up the conversation by talking about the economy. Everybody's freaked out about it. We are. They are. And everybody, when the economy goes bad like this, what's the first thing that every husband, wife, parent, human being in this country who owns a home is looking to do. They're looking to improve their financial situation. They're looking to build stability, security, and savings. Those are the three things they want. Don't talk. Price, product, and process. Talk security, stability, and savings. That's what you talk about. So if I get on the phone with you, I say, Jeff, let me tell you what I'm calling. This is one of the toughest markets we've seen since 2008. This economy is brutal. And I'm sure you're you and your family are feeling the effects of that. Let me ask you a question. If I could literally show you a way today, like I'm doing with a lot of other customers to say thousands and thousands of dollars in this marketplace, set up your family and protect them with reserves and help you increase your cash flow considerably. Would you like to hear about it? Doesn't cost anything to find out if I can do it or not. That's all you have to say. And you should practice that day after day after day after day. Be prepared with that. And when you get on the phone, be confident. And they're going to have a conversation with you. I love that. And if we play that out just a couple of more sentences, not at all. So they say, yes, you know, they're having some issues with security, stability and savings. Take me, take me through that. Like what's that? What's the next step? Yeah. Talk to us. Yeah. You ask a question. Instead of acting like you're on a phone for a sales call, imagine you're in a social function meeting this person for the first time. What would you say to them? Tell me more about that. Let me understand that. What? What are you? Yeah, what is struggling with? Tell me what's happening in your life and be curious, be compassionate, be interested, listen to them. Don't look at your dang screen, turn away from your screen. Don't say, oh, let me send you a link so you can fill out an application. I want to get it. I'll call you back and I'll let you know what we can do because then what's happening is you're sending a link, they're filling it out. The funny thing about the links, now look, I'm not anti-links or anti-technology at all. I'm pro of that. I've been a partner with ICE technology for years, great technologies. Here's the deal though. When you send the links, stay on the phone with the borrower while they fill it out. Have the conversation while they're doing that work. If you just send the link, there's three big drop-off points on that link where they walk away. First one is birthday, second one is social security number, third one is income. Those three things we see drop-offs all the time and we never get the link, but even if we do, let's say that they fill out the link. Now you call them back, what does that conversation look like? It's a sales presentation where you're going straight to price product and process again. I got your link and went ahead and got you a pre-approved, let me tell you about the deal. Here we go. We're right into rate. Vars says that's too high. We go, oh, well, and we don't know what to do with it because we created our own problem. That simple. All right. Well, obviously, at some point, you've got to collect the information, right? Their current debt structure, what that looks like, all that jazz. That's to your point about you're walking them through that live on the phone simultaneously. That's correct. I'm starting with that conversation. I'm shooting them a link because a link, the beauty of an online application is it creates uniformity in your applications, which is better for your ops team, but here's the other piece of that. It's easier to get their documentation and get their commitment. You want to make sure that you're using those links, but here's the deal. I'm just walking you through a conversation as you're filling out about the new home you're buying, the down payment you're putting down, why you're moving there, making sure that's the right down payment for you, try to really walk through and work through with you. What's the best scenario for you, okay, without ever talking rates, ever talking fees. Not by the way, I guarantee you there's people watching this and they're like, oh, they're going to ask you the right. You're right. And you know what you say when they ask you, here's all you got to say, it's a great question. You know what? I have no idea what your rate is yet because I don't know anything about you yet. We just started this conversation. I need to understand your situation, your qualifications and your goals. As soon as I know those, I'm going to get straight, but let me say this to you, my rates are awesome. You don't need to worry about that. I'm as competitive as anybody out there. And look, if you don't love the deal when we're done, you're always welcome to talk to somebody else. They're going to go, okay, and that's the end of the conversation. And now you spend an hour building this incredible relationship. And here's the beauty. This is why time's so powerful, Jeff, if I spend an hour with them, they don't want to do it again. They're not going to talk to anybody else because they've given me the hour that they want. Which is, I love that. Thank you. By the way, for going deeper on that, I think that's incredibly instructive for people listening and get some context around what does that sound like, the conversation. And you mentioned something there about the time you spend on the phone with them. That's a very interesting thing because I always found it surprising. And I've asked a fair number of people this question, like, what is the average time they spend taking a loan app, so to speak? I'm reluctant to call out that based on what we just went through, but you know, basically kind of your intake. That's the more experienced process because I would, I've talked to people where they're like 15 minutes, you know, that's normal. I'm like, how the hell do you build a relationship like that in 15 minutes? You don't. You don't. Even in a good market where it's just like, yes, it's just, yes is all day, you know? You don't. You can't even take a complete application in 15 minutes and do it the right way and really understand that bar or at the level that you should. You sure can't build a relationship in that. I mean, you know, you remember your years ago in the head, that thing called speed dating? Yeah. It didn't work too well. Not a lot of people got married and the ones who didn't last very long because you can't in 15 minutes establish, oh, yeah, we're the right couple for life. It just doesn't work that way. Like, you got to slow down and take your time and let me, let me say this because this is one of the things I've taught forever and it's such an important principle. This is why time is so valuable and why you want to take your time, all right? I'm pretty confident that anybody who's watching this today, who's an originator, if I said, okay, if I could guarantee you, you could close 15 to 17 loans, guaranteeing minimum every single month in any market, would you be interested? They'd all say yes. Okay? And if you're doing 15, I'm going to get you to 30. They'd all say yes. Now here's the key. What does it take to close 15 loans a month? Here's all it takes. One sale a day. One sale a day. If you get one borrower a day to take an application, give your documentation and commit to the deal. You're putting 21 deals a month in your pipeline. National average is 70 to 75% of those fund, that's 15 to 17 loans, close a month. So when Loanhouse, you're telling me I'm spending 15 minutes, I go, what's your hurry? Well, I got to get to the next one. So you're rushing to fail so you can rush to fail on the next one instead of settling in. But I don't want to waste time. Look, spend five or 10 minutes conversing with the borrower and then qualify them at the end of that 10 minutes. If they don't qualify, the worst that happens is you have a relationship where you can now educate them on how to qualify, follow up and get that deal three months from now. Mm hmm. About that. But if you go three minutes, qualify them and they don't qualify, you got nothing. You got no relationship. You got nothing. And you wasted your time. And if they did qualify, spend an hour with them. That's what you do. Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me of a phrase, you know, take, take them off the street, right? You probably heard that one in sales, which is the cheer point about if they spend 30 minutes or an hour with you, they're not going to want to do that again. So all the trigger leads and all that will be kind of ignored, especially if you've done a great job, of course, building rapport, but more importantly, when I wrote down earlier when you asked, you know, you go, Hey, they're asking you the raid and this and that and the other thing. What I wrote down is what people are really seeking is advice, right? Or set otherwise, especially in this market, is in times of chaos, people seek context to be able to make sense of all of what's going on. That's a great statement. Yeah. Thank you. So I think it comes back to what you do so well in training and coaching and providing people, you know, everything you just kind of laid out here, just a small example of that, which we've heard about for years, but not everybody, you know, the seeds fall on different type of ground, right? So not everybody adheres to that per se, which is, how would you say, I was going to say, this isn't and I'm pausing because it's really not the way I want to articulate it, but this is, yes, a sales business, but it is more of nowadays, an advisor role, right? You're right. Like you think about financial advisor, right? They have all this esteem and prestige because of that title and all the, they've got, but what do you say? Is this a sales business first or what is it first? No, I don't think it is. I think the people that I work with all the time, Jeff, that are top producers, they're the most unassuming, easygoing, kind, compassionate, good listening type of people you'll ever meet. They're not the typical run of the mill sales people that you think of that are triple a personality, beaten the, you know, beaten the deal down until they get the bar to, you know, squeeze them in a submission, that doesn't work anymore. That was gone decades ago. You know, I recently had Cara Whitman, who I had the privilege of train, gosh, 11 years ago, and she started in the business for a consumer direct company in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was on batting 1,000. I normally have executives and kind of big hitters in the industry in there, but I wanted to have an origin there. And I knew her personally. She's in the, the Scotland's guide, top 15 or top 25 for top 40 for the last seven straight years. She, the 600, 700 loans at a month by herself, some, or a year, I mean, by herself. It was crazy. And she was a perfect example, what I'm talking about. If you watch that interview, she is just delightful, dynamic, easy going. Yeah, she's motivated, but she's not selling anybody. What she said time and again and time and again and time and again was, I'm a 100% relationship person. That's what I am. That's what I do. I get on the phone and I build incredible relationships and people want to buy for me. That's all there is to the game. She said, you taught me that 11 years ago, and I've never strayed from it. I've always followed that rhythm and it works. And here's somebody, you know, when you're doing 50 to 60 loans a month, obviously, it's working. Now form is working. Even in last year in 2022, I think she still did 500 loans in the year, something like that. So markets don't affect people like that because they're focused on relationship. They're not focused on transactions transactional salespeople only do well in a 2020, 2021 market. When it's a high volume market and you want to get as many transactions in as you can in this market, where you're in a conversion market, not a volume market. It's all about relationship, relationship with your referral partners, relationship with your customers and relationship with your colleagues, treating your colleagues with respect. So if you're an originator, your processors want to process your loan for you. Your underwriters want to find a way to make the deal work for you because they respect you, they love you, they care about you, and they want to see you succeed. Hmm. Good advice again, curious. Then it's, it's a, you know, especially now it is a conversion, if I was correct, that's what you said is conversion kind of engagement today. How does that play into then to your, your example earlier of these, you know, consumer direct companies that are probably generating a large amount of inbounding, quarries, leads or whatnot? Isn't that a bit of a, you know, juxtaposition though to that game, which tends to be a volume game of leads and running an apps and all that. Yeah, that's the funny thing about it, Jeff. And that's where, as a consultant, I've been very different from the rest of the industry. When I work with consumer direct companies, I teach them the same thing, I teach the retail distributed companies. It's still about relationship. So if you're trying to build this business to be nothing but a volume play, good luck with that. When rates are good, you'll do fine. When rates go bad, you're going to go south very quickly. I've seen it every single time. And the fact of the matter is I can build just as much relationship on a telephone conversation 10 states away as a local lender who's sitting across the table from somebody. In fact, today we can do that by doing a zoom meeting like this with a customer. So we get face to face connection with them and actually build a personal relationship with them. It's all about thinking out of the box, not thinking like most consumer direct people do that. It's a volume play man. You just dial in for dollars, you know, more calls, more money, nope, not the way it works. Better calls, more money. That's the way it works. And that's how you fix that juxtaposition in the consumer direct world. All right. So here's just a self-serving curiosity question. You know, I'm thinking of like the large call center companies. And do you think that they are training their people to play that game? Generally no. That's why I've been business for 27 years. And it worked for 700 companies, you know, generally they're not and they need to change that. I mean, if you heard the calls, I listen to calls of my clients all the time. I make them record their people. We do some secret shopping to listen to their people. The calls are horrid sometimes. And once we train them and we get people doing it differently and we get the good calls and we play those and those always end up in a sale. The lenders are like, wow, you're right. I mean, we had no idea. I had a great example of a really good friend of mine who was a CEO just about a month ago. We listened to his top number one producer. I listened to his call and said, it was one of the worst calls that I've ever heard. He's like, that's my top guy. Well, listen, and I played and he goes, you're right. He said, what the guy's been doing is he's just making so many calls, but actually he's costing me more money than anybody else because he's burning my leads and he's cherry picking through him instead of actually doing what he should do, which is slow down, convert him. So more people close more loans. Interesting. Wow. That's very unfortunate for him, but you're correcting it. So that's what matters. Wow, man. I got a page of notes here. So this has been a fantastic clinic in how to have better connection and conversion in any market for that matter, right, no matter what's going on. So I just want to say thank you, man. You really, you poured it out today. Well, it's my pleasure. I mean, look, I've been in this business for a long time and I have one interest, help people in our industry to be great at what they do. That's what we do at more champions. That's our calling. And then when we make the money, give it away. We love to give to charities. We love to help people in need. And you know what? In this industry, we can do, we can help our customers every day in an incredible way. And then we can take some of our profits and we can turn it back and make a better society. So I think you're going with those two mindsets. It's hard to lose. Yeah, by the way, before I let you go, I do want to acknowledge you, you know, Kudos shout out to you for being the recipient of the 2023 Housing Wire Vanguard award. Thank you. Appreciate that. It means a lot to me. Yeah. I mean, that's again why I said this is kind of, you know, serendipity, if you're well, that this is coming around full circle because you've been putting it out for a long time in a good way, right? In the markets industry. So the great, the gray hair shows it proves it out. Right. So for those who do want to connect with you, what would be the primary place you want to send them? Website or wherever you want to go? Yeah, just go to daelvermillion.com, mortgagechampions.com, either one, connect with my team. You can email me direct if you want to, daelvermillion.com. I return my email. So we'd be glad to get back to you. But probably the best thing to do is just reach out to our team and chat with them and we'd be glad to help you in any way we can. Yeah. And clearly, if you're listening to this right now, you are hopefully as impacted as I am in terms of some assistance that bail and esteem might be able to provide you with your individual producer or a company executive branch manager or something listening to that. So that's the Dael's website and his podcast will be in the show now. So make sure to check that out. Dale, once again, appreciate it, sir. Well, Jeff, I can't thank you enough and let me say this, I do a lot of these podcasts. You are incredible at what you do. Great job. This was a great interview. A lot of fun. I appreciate you asking such great questions and hope this was super helpful for everybody out there. Really appreciate spending the time with you. Definitely was. So listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, hey, leave us a review or share it with somebody. And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey, guys, what's up? Real quick. 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