Ep #80: How to Automate Your Mortgage Business to Close Loans Faster, Deliver a World Class Borrower Experience and Impress Referral Partners

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 listeners, welcome to another episode of mortgage marketing radio. I'm just getting back from the 4th of July holiday. Hope yours was a good one. I went completely off the grid. Did you ever do that? Go off the grid? Literally, I didn't have a choice because I was in South Fork Colorado, about 6-hour drive south of Colorado along the Rio Grande at about 8500 feet elevation if I wanted Wi-Fi. I couldn't get it. Literally I had to walk about a quarter mile up into a specific location at the campground where there was Wi-Fi. And everybody was gathered around in the front lobby of this campground called Fun Valley Colorado. And let me tell you, it lives up to its name, the family I rented, an RV, a 30 foot RV. We piled in there, the four of us. We drove six hours. We loaded that sucker up with food and rations and all the supplies you would want for a week of camping. Thank goodness we had some plumbing and electricity, but we did some amazing things. We were done in a trip like that with the family. I mean, I've got two boys, 16 and 14. And you know, they are obviously clearly connected in a digital world. You're so used to being on their devices, let me tell you, not once, in six days that I hear on board. And that was paradise to not have to hear that. To know that you could send them off with their fellow camper friends and cousins and relatives and grab their bikes and just go riding, take off, grab their fishing poles, catch rainbow, trout, bait hooks, learn how to fix fishing line, play whiffleball, go hiking, go to the square dance in town there at the campground. My oldest son, Zach, 16, you know what he did? He actually sang karaoke and the song he chose was a surprise to me. He chose Brandy, you're a fine girl. What a good wife you would be. All right. So yeah, we had a good time. I hope you're having a good time, whether it be recently back from vacation, a pending vacation, or you're having a good time in your business. You know, one way to have a good time in this business is to set up the proper systems and processes to free you up to do what you do best, which I'm assuming is to talk to people, potential borrowers, referral partners, clients, past clients, right? Are you caught up too busy working in your business to work on your business? Well, my special guest today, Dave Sims, a flow of I is an industry leading mortgage automation and point of sale solution. You want to fully automate your mortgage business? Check out this episode. Check out flow of fly. You want to create a smooth and simple borrower experience, right? Prospects leads some minimize headaches to reduce the communication back and forth. And did you get this? Did you get that? And no, that fell through the cracks, right? Maybe you've heard of flow of I there around. They've been around for a long time. They're a leader in the industry. I mean, flow of I get everything you want, right? From a point of sale, mobile friendly portal to provide a web based access for your borrowers to interact with their loan from application to clear to close, right? A really simple, easy to use interface documentation, e signatures, integration with your LOS, all in one single, easy to use system that fits in the palm of your hand. That's right, your mobile phone. We're also talking about good communication on this episode, right? That's one of the hallmarks of creating a world class customer experiences, good communication influencing the borrow experience and your referral partners to keep them sending business your way. Well, flow of I packed with easily customizable and automated communication milestone solutions, right? For your borrowers, your referral partners, and anybody else involved in the transaction, a really cool smooth polished digital 1003 to increase submission rates and conversion rates, right? Totally secure. And of course, integrations up the wazoo, like I said, all this mobile friendly, even have a free trial for you guys to check out. So if you're interested in automating, streamlining, putting processes in your business to help you close loans faster, make borrowers happier and press referral partners, check out flow of I's. Matter of fact, we have a special link to flow of I'm going to put it in the show notes. But for those listeners that want to check out more, it is flowify.com forward slash mortgage marketing radio, and you're going to get a 25% discount off the first four months of a flowify subscription. If you choose, it's right for you. That's it. Check them out. Learn more over there. The link will be in the show notes. So I'm excited to bring my special guest, Dave Simms, to you, great conversation, great guy. And without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Dave, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me. You bet. Dave here from flowify, and we were talking before we hit record that, you know, the audience is listening to this right now. The loan officers, it's a mix of people that are experienced 10, 20 years in the business. And we got some new folks and all that. So we want to address the value, proper flow of I to make sure we kind of address the range of people we got on the audience here. So in summary, what does flowify do? So the real short summary is flowify streamlines, the bar experience from the moment they first contact the loan officer, from the point of getting a pre-qualification, filling up that online loan application all the way through to clear the closed, including document, collection, management, updating realtors and referral partners, keeping them in the loop, that kind of thing. Okay. And you assume that integrate to various LOSs out there? We do. We do. We integrate with encompass and buy it and a couple other LOS integrations coming up along the lane. We also integrate with other systems. And some folks use us without an LOS integration hooked up. Okay. So today is world, right, of becoming modern mortgage originator, being digitally friendly, all that kind of stuff. Why is it important that somebody use a tool like flowify? I think that there's a lot of good answers to that question. And I'll touch on all of them. The one that we all hear, we hear the M word, right? Millennial. As though folks like my age don't know how to use a computer, right? So I think more and more, everyone likes self-serve as much as they can up until the point they get uncomfortable. Like, you're going to borrow two, three, four hundred thousand dollars. Most people want to talk to an expert, hence the term mortgage advisor, for example, become more popular. So I think it's kind of a mix. You definitely want to provide those digital tools to make it a comfortable experience. But then that's where the experienced L.O. She knows how to advise, she knows she's talking about, she knows about the loan programs, need to talk to someone and get that experience combined with all the technology. So you obviously have quite a lot of people on your platform, you've got a lot of mega-producer top producers. What do you see as a best practice for how somebody integrates, you know, the automation and technology into the overall sales process? I think the best practices that I've seen, so I'm not an L.O. But I've seen some really, you know, I play one on TV, I play one on TV. So some of the folks that I think do the best job, they don't staff up their team. Their team doesn't, like one fellow I'm thinking of, he does over a hundred million a year, in a small market, like 400 transactions a year, which to me is insane. And it's him, plus like a staff of four, in addition to him. So how on earth does five people do 400 transactions and over a hundred million a year? And what I've seen him do is he just has this process, this machine, and that doesn't mean that it's a, it's a hands-off I'm not going to talk to you. No, he's constantly talking to his realtor partners, but that's part of his process. And then when a borrower comes in, I think his preferred process would be, you know, send them to his online loan application, you know. But if that borrower wants to come in or talk on the phone and he takes it over the phone, like, so be it, but he's still going to be directing and kind of gently coaxing that borrower to the most efficient process that he does, because how else is he supposed to do 400 transactions a year? Yeah, right. I mean, especially if he's not outsourcing that to a team of like juniors, and he's still the rainmaker, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's one of the key takeaways that I'm hearing from this is that, you know, it allows you to scale, but still have that personal touch. Yeah, I think that's important. I mean, like, we're all hearing things like margin compression and reef eyes are gone. We're hearing all of that. So you have to, like, I saw a video today of Steve Kiles today, he's in L.O. out of Texas and he posted on LinkedIn. And it's his personal touch that's so important, but I mean, it's like, good luck without having all that. If you don't have the automation around you, you just not going to get done. You know, you don't have the time to hand, do so many things by hand these days. Well, obviously you raised a good point. You used the term millennial, but let's face it, everybody wants a better experience today. You know, somebody has said to me the other day, you think about the companies that people like to talk about rocket mortgage a lot. And it's interesting. This person said to me, it's not so much rocket mortgage. That's the benchmark. It's Amazon. It's Google. It's all these other companies that are setting the new standard of expectations for customer experience. Those are the real benchmark companies. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, like, going all the way back to whenever travel agents faded away. Yeah. Because when you can get on your phone and your desktop computer and do your own booking, it's just so much easier. And if you were going to spend like a couple hundred thousand on travel, yeah, you might check with somebody. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I agree that Google and Amazon is a new standard. What I'm trying to think is somebody is looking at evaluating a technology, right? So we want to, we want to, why would we get flowify? Because we want to automate the process. We want, well, I don't say completely, you go add some technology leveraging points in there that free us up to do more of what we do best, which is hopefully create a connection with clients and referral partners, let the milestone moving the chains down the field, let that be handled by technology, for example, right? Right. Exactly. Like, for instance, I'm on your website and I'm looking at some of the things, some of the features, if you will, and benefits of your app is milestone updates. Yeah. You know, here's the thing. Are there people listening out there right now who are still manually, like with a phone call, updating people, hey, just want to let you know, prequel, got your pre, I mean, is that still happening? Probably. Yeah. I think so. 2018, people come on. I remember when we first got started, this is 2018. So this goes back to 2013 when, like, the assistant, the office assistant, which he would spend all of Friday afternoon, sending out the weekly updates by hand, man, there was a copy and paste job, but still. And like, these days, like, your realtor's want to get a text, really, because that's what they want. Yeah. So just give it to him. And don't hire like an army, a small army of people to do it, just use software where you click and out goes the text and maybe even type a little something that says like, you know, prezel came back, value was met, you know, maybe you just type just a little something like on a text message, it takes like five seconds to type in five words, and people love it. Got it. Got it. And of course, you have the ability, I think people get this by listening by now is that not only are the milestones and updates available for your clients, but they're available for your referral partners as well. Right. Yeah. And actually, here's the funny thing, not the funny thing, the unique thing I think is our loan officers, they're kind of sort of working for the real others and the referral partners, right? Of course, they want to give the milestone text updates to borrowers, but they really want to give them to the realtor's, because they're the ones providing that repeat business. Exactly. You got to look good. You got to keep people informed. All that. And that drives a nice, modern experience. So I'm on your website and I see something here about your web apps. What customization is available to kind of create a personalized experience for the LL? Yeah. I think there's a lot of things that can be done. So there's some basic, basic things like your logo, your colors on the loan application. You can decide which questions on the 10 or three that are going to appear and not appear. Like if you don't want to ask about liabilities or if you don't want to trigger respa and you don't want to ask for a subject property address, you can eliminate all that kind of stuff. You can like photographs in the name of your team and contact information. And then for those folks who have a developer access to a developer, then they can go crazy. I mean, like some folks have done some like really, truly wild stuff in terms of customization. They make flowfi totally not look like flowfi at all because they had a web developer, a web designer come in and do some customization. So there's just a whole bunch of things that I notice one thing on here that seems to be unique or stands out for me based on some of these other types of applications out there. Is the interview style questionnaire that walks borrowers through their loan applications step by step leveraging visual cues and graphics? Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. So that is sort of what the modern style of the 1003, what the 1003 ought to be like. So everyone thinks rocket mortgage first, right? So they think, you know, don't ask the borrower a question unless it's relevant. So, you know, if you're not married, don't ask about your spouse. And that's a stupid, stupid example, but you get the point. Don't ask the questions that are irrelevant. First ask like, do you own other kinds of real estate? If so, okay. Tell me about those. It's a real estate. Do you have dependence? Oh, you do. Okay. Tell me what their ages are. It seems much more conversational than the, you know, completely void of personality, like 1003 online app that people saw back in the websites of like five years ago, right? Yeah. I mean, besides being mobile optimized for the phone, it's like it's this beautiful experience that you expect when you deal with, like you said, like Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, etc. Yeah. Modern mortgage. I keep going, that's just this buzzword. Okay. So then the 1003, how would loan officers integrate that? Can they put it? Is it like embedded on their website? Is it a link? What's that like? And we know it's a mobile world. So yeah, so it's a mobile world for sure. So everything's mobile optimized looks good on your phone, Android, iOS, either way. So there's a few different ways. So every loan officer on the platform gets their own special web address. So for you, it'd be like Jeff dot flowfi.com and everyone has their own unique one. It's like shows your picture information about you. It's a way to kick off a loan application. So that's one way. And then of course, everything is mobile responsive looks good on the phone or the desktop. And then so that's easy. And so a lot of people do that. The folks who go a little bit farther, they can take our loan application and put it on their own website. That does take some help from like a web designer or web developer, not a ton of help, but someone who's got some technical skills. And some folks take it all the way named that all of flowfi within their website. When you say embed all of flowfi, what does that mean? So that would mean something like let's say that, you know, Jeff mortgages.com, that's your website and have all this information on your website. But you say like, you know, click here to enter my client portal and begin working with it. So they click and they take into another page. And then that's where they'd see this customized version, your customized version of flowfi in there. Okay. And also tell me about the on demand free approval letters. I don't want to make any assumptions about what that means, but go ahead. Yeah. So what that's all about is the idea of being, it's Saturday night and you the L.O. Like you're out with your family or join time with your family. There's a couple different ways. I'll touch on the pre-approval. So we, I think I mentioned that. So the idea behind the on demand pre-approval letters is again, it's Sunday afternoon. The realtor is making an offer on a house and they want that pre-approval letter. And they want that letter to say they're buying the house, I don't know, for $300,000. And they want the pre-approval letter to say the bar was been pre-approved up to $300,000. And now we all know that the bar were maybe pre-approved to like $350,000. But we don't want to say that on the pre-approval letter. So we want, it's a way to give the realtor like a self service opportunity on Sunday afternoon to create a customized pre-approval letter, but within the limits that the L.O. is set. So the L.O. can say the bar were is approved up to, let's just say, $325. But the house they're putting an offer in, it's only $300. So they'll say, okay, for this pre-approval letter that I'm about to generate, I'm just going to set the maximum pre-approved amount to $300. And click a button and the realtor gets a PDF that they can put in with the offer. And it doesn't have to involve the L.O. on Sunday afternoon. Now the L.O. was involved earlier on when they were setting up all the limits and parameters around this pre-approval. Because complying to people get a minor heart attack when they hear like, right, realtor can generate their own pre-approval letter. And that's not the case. It's like the L.O. puts all the boundaries around it first. No, it's interesting. I'm hearing that as pop up as more of a preference out there. And it's funny, right? There's two different schools of thought. I know some of the L.O.s they want to be like in a mentally involved every time there's a change in the scenario. And on the one hand, I guess I get that. But I think, you know, I don't know. I think, you know, like in this business that we're all in is what the L.O.s do. They have to be flexible, right? But if there is a realtor who's like, you know what, I'm busy. I've got stuff to do. I don't have time to tax you and wait for you to get to your computer. Yeah. I want to know. So you're great. You're giving great service to the realtors who want that. And the ones who don't, well, of course, you're just going to, you are going to respond to that text message and not necessarily guide them the path down the self service path. But for the ones who are like a little bit more open to it, yeah, everybody's happier. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm thinking about that actually as we talk about that. And, you know, I think everybody's going to make decide what's right for you. But, you know, because I think people in the past have talked about, well, you know, am I further mitigating my role to technology, right? In this space, but I think me personally, my response to that is like you just said is no, I'm actually providing a higher level of service for those realtors, right? And we have that high expectation of turn time and, you know, other 25 grand on the offer. Come on. Yeah. I think that's it. Now you're still going to meet with your realtor partners like every month or however the frequency that you meet with them, you're still going to do that to build on that relationship. But if it's Friday night, Saturday night and they want it now and they're open to that, why not give them to them? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think that's kind of a selling point is that, you know, you get to great service with me and all that kind of stuff, but at the same time, look, I provide a little bit of a leeway knowing that real time offers in today's market moves fast. And if you want your buyer offered to be all the wind, then you need that pre approval letter based on that X amount of my God, if I drag that out for two hours, that could be a deal killer. Right. Right. So for the for the realtors are open to it that serves that meets that need need for speed. Yeah. Very interesting. Look at your integrations. Are there any integrations you see that tend to be more popular with your app? There's definitely the LOS integrations and so our enterprise customers are big retail customers. They use those, of course, and then our smaller customers are individual owner brokers. They don't so much use the LOS integrations. Their DocuSign is probably one of the most popular ones because you can do all the disclosure e-signing, but you allow the bar where to stay within that familiar bar or portal environment. Because everyone kind of hates it as it just as a human being. They hate it when they get kicked to two, three, four different websites. It's a lot easier when you stay in one place. So that does make the DocuSign one pretty pretty popular, one of the most popular. Yeah, definitely. I mean, come on e-signatures today. Right, right. And Dropbox is a popular one too. As your file, as your documents come in from borrowers, they get automatically synced out to your Dropbox. And a lot of people like that too. Oh, they're nice. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, very cool. Or obviously with integrations into the LOS, probably in there as well. Yeah, same thing, just different avenue. And there's options. When we're going to the LOS, I know that some LOS say like, hey, my borrowers uploaded their 2006 tax return. I do not want that going to the LOS. So there's a way to review it first before it automatically gets pushed. So you get to get on your mobile phone and review it and then you decide what gets pushed or not. Yeah, exactly. Very cool, very user friendly. What would you say in terms of those listening and considering this as a solution for them? What's kind of a, there's always kind of a ramp up period, right? And how do you guys help with that? What should they expect for timeline? Yeah, so when they first contact us, you know, we give them a demo and answer their questions. And then once they actually come on board, we have another team that trains them, get some kind of kick started and going. And of course, we'll take care of them for the, you know, forever as well. Nice. Now telephone, telephone, email, screen share. What, yeah. So what's the usual process for somebody who wants to invest to get more about Flowify? So that's pretty easy. First, they just go to Flowify.com. And then there's various buttons there. They can call in, they can ask for a demo, they can reach out a lot of different ways. So what we're saying is for those that are listening and want to learn more about Flowify, or I'd be coming up a modern originator, maybe getting a nice cool user friendly online app, getting some milestone automation setup so you can be freed up to do more originating. Go to Flowify.com. There is some options on there for communicating with you guys. Trial, phone number, email, as a contact button, like you said, fill out a web form. Something tells me, and then what happens? It goes to your team and they'll schedule an appointment. Yeah, they reach out really fast. They just figure out a good time for the L.O. and then off they go. What's next for Flowify? What's kind of on your roadmap for additional development? Yeah, it's interesting. There's a lot going on in the industry. When Flowify started five years ago, that was then, and it's a whole new ball game today. So there's a lot more integrations, a lot more automations coming. Starting with the 10.03, there's a lot more we can do in the 10.03 to make things easier. So when the L.O. walks in on Monday morning, and they took an app over the weekend, and they have a file that may be not complete, but it's really far along down the path. So a lot in the 10.03 space, a lot in the space to take care of processors, because we love processors. And they're kind of the unsung heroes, right? And they do so much work, and then nobody hears about them too much. So we do a lot of different things to help them. And of late, there's been a lot of emergence of the individual broker. So the seems like the market share for mortgage brokers is growing. It's coming back. It really is. Yeah. It's changing. It's a real force. And so we're taking, we're doing some things for them as well. Oh, that's awesome. Very cool. Well, we're going to put links in the show notes to the website. And I know you've got some other resources on the website there. Looks like you got maybe a couple of interviews with some top producers that use your platform. So make sure we incorporate those. If you want to learn more about Flowify, hey, reach out Flowify.com. And learn more because, look, I'm a big believer in you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. And we have a lot of other top producers using it to streamline their business and provide that five-star client experience. And Flowify should be on your short list of, I think, platforms to choose from that. Thanks so much for your time, Jeff. Appreciate it. Oh, it is my pleasure. And everybody listening, if you like today's episode, please let us know. Reach out to David and his team over there, Flowify. We're awesome people. They care. And they're doing good things for loan officers. And if you like today's episode, please let us know. We're up to you. And we will see you on the next one. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in Mortgage Marketing. Get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before. And you 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. 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, attract and 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 8 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 mortgagemarketing.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 mortgagemarketing.pro.