Ep. 128 - The Truth About How to Build Your Mortgage Business

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with 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 Coghill is a must-read. This 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. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. And brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey there, it's Jeff Zimper. Welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast. Thank you for tuning in. So glad, as always, that you're here, whether you're a long time listener or first time visitor, I appreciate you 100%. I do this for you. What I'm trying to bring you is truth in Mortgage Marketing. You may know that from my tagline. If you've listened to that intro long enough, enough times, hopefully that's sinking in by now. And so today's episode is no different, truth in Mortgage Marketing. Well, it is a little bit different in that over the past, right? What I'm trying to do is throw in some different content for you guys. Yes, I'll continue to bring you expert interviews with thought leaders and top producers and people that can radically impact your thinking, your strategy, your process and systems for growing your business or personal development and always going to try and focus on tactical things that help move the needle for you. With that in mind, truth in marketing, tactical systems that move the needle for you, today, the podcast is me. I went live on Facebook the other day and kind of testing out a new format or a new show, if you will, truth talk Tuesdays is what it's called right now is what I'm trying to bring to you is truth because let's face it, there's a lot of hype out there, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of distractions, vying for your attention. And one of the things that I've benefited from and hopefully you as well, enlisting to this podcast and interviewing so many different top producers, 120 plus people, is that you start to see consistent themes and patterns for what's really working in the market today. And so I wanted to bring to you the replay of the truth talk Tuesday that I went live on Facebook with so that you can get my take on what's really working in today's market and talking through some of the different options you have for building your business. So I go through that, some of the various ways to grow your business. But I come back to the one thing that's front and center for me, which is of all the top producers I've interviewed right over the years, always consistently a part, a significant part of their business is productive referral relationships with real estate agents in their local market always consistently. And I wanted to impact that a little bit and I wanted to talk about systems and kind of, you know, deal with the narrative that some people in this industry have in that, you know, agents suck or they're difficult to work with or, you know, I'm tired of agents or whatever. And I wanted to propose to you some ideas, some different ways of thinking and then present to you a system, a possible solution for you with some actual tangible loan officers getting real results, getting real fast results, whether they're new in the business or well experienced. I just wanted to bring this to you as another way to hopefully add value to you as a listener. So as always, welcome to get your feedback, jump into the community over on Facebook. We've got our podcast community page over there at Morgan's Marketing Radio. You can find us on Facebook. It's a private group. Just hit me up there, ask for admission into the group and we'll let's carry the conversation forward there. But without further ado, let's get into this special episode called Truth Talk Tuesday or is it Tuesday, Truth Talk? Yeah. Tuesday, Truth Talk. All right, appreciate you and let's get into this week's show. Yo, yo, yo, yo, what is up, people? What is up, Jeff Zimper here, Morgan's Marketing Radio. We are going live Tuesday, Truth Talk. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? My comments are loud and clear. Check, check. Tuesday, Truth Talk. Are you ready? You can't handle the truth. Turn up the volume. Turn up the volume. Listen in. Tune in right now. This is for you. What is up, people? Tuesday, Truth Talk. Coming at you. Let's get started. All right, so time for some Truth Talk. If you're here, leave a comment. Give me a shout out. Let me know whether you're watching Record or Replay. Let me know you've tuned in. If it's Replay, Hashtag, Replay, you got a comment question. Let's talk it up. Let's get to start here. Truth Talk. All right, listen, there's lots of ways to build your mortgage business, right? Let's face it. And let me go quickly, give you a go through some of the most common ways, okay? So lots of ways to build your mortgage business. I'm going to come at you with you. I've been thinking about this for some time, and I want to start talking about Truth, Truth and Mortgage Marketing. That's what my tagline is for the podcast at Mortgage Marketing Radio. I'm bringing the Truth to you this Tuesday here, so let's rock and roll. Let's get started, okay? Lots of ways to build your mortgage business, right? You can work your past client database. You can buy leads, run ads, produce content on social media, get in with a builder, work divorce attorneys, financial planners. We all know that as an option. And of course, you can work with your local real estate agents. That's always an option as well. So the question is, do they all work? Yeah, they all work at varying levels of speed and success, right? Here's the thing. Here's the truth. Most people pitching, running online ads as the Holy Grail, they're trying to sell you the easy button, okay? If you're going to buy leads, here's what you need to know up front. Know that the conversion rate is anywhere from a half a percent to 3 percent max. Most online leads aren't ready to buy for, right, on average, six months. So you better have your lead response systems on point. Does this make sense? Furthermore, you need certain things in place to succeed with online leads. You need the right mindset, right? You need to have a lead response flow and policy in place. So know that going in with leads, right? You can produce online content like videos, right? And should you produce online content 100 percent, build your personal brand to attract organic leads on social media? Absolutely. You should be doing your own content, doing videos, producing content, right? Most of the big builder accounts, the corporate ones, right, they already got their corporate go-to lender. What's up, Mike Barrios, okay? Divorce attorneys, financial planners, those can be good sources of business too. You already know that. You already know that. Why aren't you pursuing it? Part of the challenge with divorce attorneys and financial planners is they can be hard to break into if you don't have the right approach and you aren't prepared to demonstrate tangible value as a fiscally literate mortgage advisor, which brings us to, once again, full circle, building referral partners' ships with local real estate agents. Now look, I get it, right? It's easy to make real estate agents the enemy. Why? Well, let's just face it, there's about a million or so agents in the country and you could probably toss out well over 50 percent of them, right? So that shrinks the pull down, but here's the truth, right? This is Tuesday truth talk, right? Here's the truth. I've interviewed over 120 of the country's top mortgage originators and every single one of them without fail has agent referrals as a significant portion of their business plan. And a significant portion of the closed loan volumes that they close year after year after year comes from the referral relationships they've built with real estate agents. So while selling the easy button of online leads is sexy and attractive, what's still working today for top producing originators is productive partnerships with real estate agents. Shocking? I don't think so. News to you? I don't think so. Check this out. The National Association of Realtors reports that in 2018, the number of existing home sales that were sold was around five million. Let me say that again, the number of homes sold in 2018, existing homes, not including new construction, right? Five million homes in the country. A lot of homes. They also report that 87% of buyers purchased their home through a real estate agent, a share that has steadily increased from 69% in 2001. What does this mean? You know, I need to grab a megaphone and say, what does this mean? What does this mean? Check, check, check. Can you hear me? What does this mean? It means that real estate agents were involved in about 4.3 million transactions in the country. Folks, that's a lot of business flowing through one single source. I call that an oil well. What do you call that? The question I have for you, Mike Barrios, and anybody else watching is how much of that oil well are you getting from agents in your local market? I get it. Maybe you're busy right now, right? Rates are down, activities up, refires are hot, and all that kind of thing, as I get it. Maybe you're even getting more purchased business from them before. A lot of loan officers, I talk to you, say, yeah, I'm busy. I'm getting deals sent my way. Here's the thing you need to ask yourself. You've got to look around the corner 90 days from now, six months from now. Are you succeeding because of the market, or are you succeeding because of your marketing? Right? Because when the tide goes out on this market lift, and it will, where will you be? Now, let me share with you a problem taken from multiple polls that I've given to loan originators over the years. So every year, a couple of times a year, I take a poll. When I have people coming into my podcast community here, right? I take a poll, hey, what's your number one focus? What do you want to focus on this year, right now? All the time, 80% of the time, the most common answer I get back from loan officers is they want more success with real estate agents. You want to work with better agents, have better partnerships, get more quality leads, more consistently, and you want to close more purchase loans. I get it. It's a great goal to have. What about you, Mike? Is that your goal? Right? Loan Officers approach agents with the wrong mindset and weak offer being seen as the same as every other L.O. in town. And I'm here to tell you folks, same is lame in any business. Say with me, same is lame. We need to do this again. Same is lame, okay? What's the impact to you not fixing that broken approach, that same is lame approach? Here's what I've seen happen to loan officers over the course of time. We fall into a false narrative that getting agent referrals doesn't work. Or you chase the easy button like we talked about of online leads. Like, hey, sounds great, you know, I'll just like put up some ads, I'll run some, you know, get some leads, I'll generate a ton of leads, no agent, tell you, sign me up. Sounds like a no brainer, right? So what happens? Number one, does that even occur? It's never as easy as it sounds, right? Secondly, what happens is whether it's you kind of chasing the easy button of online leads or getting two bog down with your refi business, here's what happens. You take your focus away from agents where the majority of transactions is actually happening right now. Remember, 4.3 million homes flowing through real estate agents in 2018. A lot of volume handled by real estate agents. So online leads, I talked to a lot of people, hey, I want to try online leads, right? Look, here's the thing. I want to save you a lot of time and frustration. If you don't have the systems, the patience, or the cash to play the online lead game, you're not ready for that, okay? I've seen it happen. Oh, I want to try online leads, and soon enough, you're on the income roller coaster ride with empty purchase pipeline, empty wallet, and you're back where you started. Am I saying you shouldn't do online leads? No. What I'm saying is, is that too many loan officers are falling into the false narrative that working with real estate agents sucks, it's hard, it's unproductive, there's not enough good agents, and I'm telling you, it's all a story. It's all a story. I'm going to get into how to fix that, okay? But that's the problem, right? Taking your eye off the ball of where the bulk of the business is flowing right now. It's like that bear, right? Have you ever seen a picture of that grizzly bear that stands in front of the stream and all the salmon are coming down the stream, and what does the bear need to do? We just need to put himself in front of that stream, that flow of salmon, and he reaches out and he grabs some salmon, right? It's that easy. That's what's happening in the space of real estate agents because of the volume of business that's flowing through them, okay? So what's the cause though, right? When you take your focus, when you don't have systems, when you don't have the appropriate system, look, I don't care if it's leads, I don't care if it's real estate agent referral partnerships, here's the thing, whether it's online leads or it's agent referrals, the answer to your biggest challenge with building consistency in your business is systems. There's a gentleman named Edwards Deming, he's considered the founding father of total quality management, right? The TQM movement, right? He's quoted as saying that 94% of business problems are systems driven and only 6% are people driven. So if you've struggled in achieving real success with pursuing agents and getting consistent referrals, here's the thing, perhaps it's your system that's the issue, not you and not real estate agents. I know this for a fact, you know this because the systems, most loan officers use like coal-calling, co-paying for leads and chasing agents, right? Those are inefficient, they're exhausting and there's the same lame tactics used by many others. Do you agree Mike? So what's the solution? So the most effective way to improve your success with agents is to improve the system. In a sense, a system that's engineered for maximum results in minimum time and removes the ineffective, same as lame activities like coal-calling, co-paying for leads, chasing and wasting time with low producing real estate agents. See, I've been in this business since 2003, right? I originated 120 plus loans per year. I want to tell you the truth. The truth is, the best system I've ever seen for more success with agents is teaching agent classes, when done correctly, okay? That is the system that is the solution to the ever recurring challenge of building a purchase-driven, referral-based business with real estate agents as your first pillar of business. Is it the only pillar of business for you? No, there are other pillars, but that is the first pillar and should be the first pillar until you are ready to move and start to implement other sources of business that are unrelated to your past clients, sphere of influence and real estate agents. There's a time and a place to pursue buying leads, running ads. If you don't have the appropriate systems yet in place for your business, there's no time that's right for that, okay? So here's why teaching agent classes works so well to your benefit when it's done correctly. Number one, you can be very targeted in who you invite, targeting only agents who meet your specific criteria. This can be based on production, experience, location, etc. Okay? That's number one. Number two, why the system works so well as you reverse the prospecting process. No more chasing agents. You're now attracting agents because they're choosing to come to your class. No more co-calling. No more same as lame. Number three, you put the law of large numbers to work in your favor. Instead of meeting agents individually, you're meeting with small groups of agents scaling your reach and compressing time. More agents in less time. Number four, you increase your impact. You build trust and you boost your likability a lot more quickly by delivering business growth ideas, adding value to real estate agents through classes. Because you'll never replace the power of face to face to build relationships. Number five, you create what's called reciprocation. If you're familiar with a book called Influence by Dr. Robert Cheldini in it, he talks about this concept, this psychological fact known as reciprocation. Reciprocation is somebody feeling inclined, compelled to actually return a favor or something of value in exchange for the value they received. So when you teach agents how to fish, you educate them on how to grow their business through the various tools we've all got coming at as social media, online marketing, et cetera, business building, goal setting, whatever the case is, right? When you're helping agents to understand how to navigate today's modern marketing world, you induce reciprocation, which causes agents to feel compelled to send you business because you've added more value than anyone else. Look, the hallmark of a good system is what? This predictability of results. I've been teaching agent classes myself since 2030 and I still do them every month to this day. Over the last 10 years, I've helped hundreds of loan officers quickly grow their agent referrals using classes and a proven system for getting butts in seats and loans in your pipeline. If you want to grow your purchase business, the quickest way to get there with the least cost to you is to tap into the oil well of buyers that are already flowing to agents right now in your market. Remember the NAR stats, 5 million existing home sales in 2018, 87% of buyers use an agent. That's over 4 million buyer transactions. I ask you again, how many of those are you getting? The solution to get your share of those buyers from agents is to tap into a repeatable proven system that puts you in front of the right agents with the right value proposition that grows your referrals every single month. Now you're probably by now asking yourself, what are you talking about Jeff? How do you have any proof that this system exists and it works? Look it. I don't know if you're watching me live or on the replay, listening to my voice, watching me on wherever you're watching this video. If you've been following me for any length of time, you know that I'm a big believer in blending the online and with offline and getting in front of agents by teaching agent classes. I can tell you that I have a growing base of loan officers that are succeeding and doing well with this. Let me just share with you a few quick success stories. Shawnee Morris, who's only been in the mortgage business about a year, right? She is a member of our mortgage marketing pro membership. Every month she teaches at least one agent class. It's been a fact earlier this, I think last month she taught four, whatever the case is, the bottom line is this is her and I had a conversation yesterday. She is our featured member of the month because she's killing it with agent classes. As a matter of fact, I just got a message from her today that she got her fifth lead just from one class and in 90 days she added $1 million in funded loans from agent referrals that came from her classes that she taught. That's on top of other activities that she was always already doing. In 90 days, how would you like to close an additional million dollars in loans just by teaching some agent classes? Here's another example. A brand new member of ours, Lenea Clayton, she just joined, hasn't even taught a class yet and she was at the Women's Councils of Realtors and she was sharing a list of classes that are provided to her as a mortgage marketing pro member through our teaching agent classes modules and the person from the Women's Council of Realtors was so impressed with the list of classes. She asked if she would teach those classes every single month at the WCR meetings. Folks, an immediate invite to come on in and be the featured teacher at the monthly WCR meetings without even having taught a class yet, that's powerful. Same thing happened for her at a Keller Williams office of 70 real estate agents. They asked her to come in and be the featured class trainer presenter with this content every single month. The beauty of it, as she says, is, it's already done for her. All she needs to do is grab the class, download the PowerPoints, watch a few videos that handouts and she's good to go. But it doesn't stop there. I can go on and on with success stories of people following the system. Andy Passmore, 30 agent meetings, 12 buyer referrals and a million bucks in close loans. Ben Barrett, 40 agents attended his first class, got a loan application on the spot. Two of the local real estate agents that attended Ben's class called him shortly after the presentation to ask that he present that same class for their entire office. That's called leverage. That's called speed. And as I said earlier, in my years of this, in being in this industry, 15 plus years, I've yet to see a system that more quickly gets you in front of the flow of transactions that are already going through real estate agents in your local market. If there was a more efficient, more quick system to do that would get you there, I would be talking about it. I would be doing it. I would be coaching my loan officers to do it. Is that all you do in your business as an originator to grow your business? No. But if you're looking for a better, more efficient way, a system that's proven, that's not based on hearsay or guesswork, but that's based on you just tapping into the system and applying the right actions, follow the program and get the results. Why do you think programs like Weight Watchers and other things work so well? You follow the program, stick to the plan, you get results. Do you have to do your work? Absolutely. Right? There's no free lunch. So what are you waiting for? What you do today will show up in your business 90 days from now. What's your system for building your purchase business? What's your system for making sure that you don't live and die by the refi? What's your system for building your base of partners who keep you afloat when the tide goes out on this market lift? How do you consistently and repeatedly add value to your local real estate agent so you attract agents to you, you attract business to you, and you literally build yourself this machine that delivers referrals to you every single week, week in, week out on a silver platter. What is your system for doing that? I don't know if this is right for you, it's not right for everybody. As I said, you do actually have to do the work. So that said, if you want to learn more, next step will be to go over to watch a brief video at www.bridgemarketing.pro. I put up a brief video there explaining to you this whole system, this whole process. It's right for you or not. We're not looking for everybody, we're looking for doers, we're not looking for talkers, okay? We're not looking for excuse makers. The people I share with you here today, their success stories, they are doers, okay? So if you want to learn more, go check it out at mortgagedmarketing.pro and I'd love to see you there. If you've got any questions, reach out to me on the Facebook here and message me and I happen to have a chat with you set up a call, okay? So that's it. Truth talk Tuesday. More coming at you, we're going to try and do more of these truth talks every Tuesday. It's not going to, you know, this isn't going to be the topic or the talk every single Tuesday, but I just wanted to come out, coming out swinging today is what I'm doing, okay? I appreciate you tuning in. If you like what I've had to say, as I said, reach out, connect with me, message me here on Facebook or go over to mortgagedmarketing.pro and watch the video and I appreciate you. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing, get more free training and resources at Mortgage MarketingInstitute.com. 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. 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. Done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attracting convert agents into referral partners. Plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seeds, partnering with affiliates real easy, but that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top L.O.'s authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time, for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months, and we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagedmarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat, we'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagedmarketing.pro.