Ep #88: How to Break Into the Financial Planner Market and Diversify Your Business

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, Jeff Zimper, welcome once again to this week's episode of mortgage marketing radio. Hope you are doing well, hope you are preparing for Q4 closing out 2018 strong. If there's any one single message, I'm going to give a shout out to Bill Hart, my mentor from afar, my brother from another mother, one of the most esteemed coaches out there in the world today. Bill posted a video recently that talked about attacking the market, attacking the market. And I couldn't agree more in the top producers that I talked to, the loan officers that I'm working with on a daily basis. That's the one thing that the one key to success. It's that magic silver bullet, it's the fundamentals, it's the blocking and tackling and it's doubling down on the outbound activities, I'm stepping that game up because the tide is washing out. And as you've heard me say before, a rising tide races all boats. Well, in this market that we've entered into and the coming market, the tide is going out. And the question is, is what's going to be left behind? Will you be washed up on the shore or will you be one that survives and thrives? It is a land grab right now moving forward in its current market, meaning those who freeze, those who get stuck and wonder what's my next move are going to be left behind. They're going to lose important momentum. Don't be that person, be the person who sees the opportunity now, like Warren Buffett I said before, when there's blood in the streets, that's the time to invest. Well, there may not be blood in the streets yet, but there definitely is a shift and a pivot. Realtors are going to be looking for that professional mortgage relationship that adds value, that they can can on, that delivers value for them and their clients. And now's the time to double down on your outbound activities to get those relationships, not only with real estate agents, but other referral partners, such as financial advisors, which brings us to my special guest here today, Mr. Craig Strant CEO of Apex Home Loans out of Rockville, Maryland. We dive deep into how Craig has largely built his business as one of his biggest pillars is financial advisors, Realtors is another one, but we're going to unpack this conversation about a couple of different things. One is how do you demonstrate your visible value and how are you engaging with buyers during the first conversation and consultation so that you are demonstrating yourself as somebody much more valuable than just rate and quote, how do you do that? What are the questions you ask? How do you use that 1003 to open up a conversation? How do you take somebody right off, right, to take it out of that silo as my Fred N. Conorkey talks about, take it out of the silo of price and talk about advice, right? How do you leverage your past database, which Craig talks about? But most of the time on this particular conversation, we're talking about financial advisors. It had to find them, how to approach them, how to be more successful in presenting yourself to financial advisors, what to say, right, because that's the biggest reason why most loan officers you listening don't pursue financial advisors. Oh, I want to do it, I want to do it, but I don't know what to say, both on the phone and in the meeting. Well, Craig's going to help you with that as well. And Craig's just a rock star, man, he is among the top 1% of mortgage bankers nationwide. He has received a 40 under 40 award. His company has been recognized throughout greater Maryland area as one of the best companies to work for. Craig's consistently in the top 100 mortgage originators and companies in the country. So the guys just rock star and over 20 years of experience. So this is a deep dive, right, crash course in how to be a truly highly successful productive efficient mortgage loan officer. So I hope you enjoy that. And if you haven't yet checked out our latest announcement at mortgagemarketing.pro. If you're looking for more training, if you're looking for that, you know, finally the single place where you can learn how to better partner with real estate agents, get some scripting, become a modern mortgage originator, and have a better, more professional presence online. Go check out mortgagemarketingpro.com. And with that said, let's get into my conversation with Craig Strent, my special guest for this week's episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Hey, Craig, welcome to the show. Thank you. Hey, man, glad you could be here at Know Your Extremely Busy, running a company and right probably dealing with the daily market issues and changes and fluctuations we've got in this mortgage market right now. So I did a formal intro for the listeners, but I always like to get, you know, your personal take on the Craig Strent story, right? How and why did you get in the mortgage business, why do you love this business? Well, I got in the mortgage business in 1994 when I graduated from college and that was not a good year for the job market in general. And I had teen other people being successful and I knew from school in the mortgage business and felt that it touched on a lot of different skill sets. I had learned up to that point and I thought I would give it a try. I got started doing sub-prime consumer direct way back when that was a good thing and worked out well. And it was a great way to learn because I learned on telemarketing leads, which required a tremendous amount of persistence and follow-up back then. It wasn't a whole lot of technology, so I also learned to do all my calculations back then by hand and meet with people in person. So learning in that environment in that market has served me well and was a good way to get into the mortgage business. Over the years, people who I've met who have been successful in the mortgage business not always, but a lot of times are people that have entered the mortgage business in difficult markets rather than those that entered in really strong markets. What advice would you give to those that are entering the market right now? There's a fair amount of people I talk to that have come in in the last one to three years. They haven't seen the market shifts and the changes in what it takes to succeed. Any suggestions or coaching you might be doing for those people? Certainly taking a long view. I think there's still tremendous opportunity in the mortgage business. I'm really proud to have been it for so long. I think that there's great opportunities for young people in the business and it's not really looked at by the current generation very significantly and the income potential, the freedom, the opportunity to build your own business and manage your own time are wonderful. So I would advise you and doing the business now to take a long view to make investments in themselves at least somewhere between 10 and 20% a year back into their own marketing and technology to take an ownership standpoint, not to count on their company to do everything for them, but instead to make investments now in the right database, presentation software, mobile tools, all the things they need to create sort of an independent entity amongst themselves so they could be successful for the long term. Is there anything looking back that you would do differently or wish you had done differently in preparing, you know, you've used the word long view a couple of times. But if you could go back to, you know, coach yourself 20 years ago, whatever, is there any advice you would give yourself? Yeah, while I really believe in database and client retention, I would have done it even earlier and even deeper than I already did and I already do it pretty deep to begin with, but I would have gone even deeper with it. I would have spent even more time nurturing existing relationships rather than being out trying to build new ones. So I would have changed the proportion of time management a little bit if I could go back and do that again. So by nurturing existing relationships, you mean referral partners? I mean referral partners and past customers, there's, you know, it's certainly appreciated there's so much gold in the database and the relationships, but there is. And it's also true going back many years people in the industry have always told us that there's multiple opportunities in every single loan. And I think we miss that on those opportunities. Most people do not see that there's four or five opportunities in every single loan application. And for me personally, I would have done a better job focusing on all of those opportunities within the application rather than rushing to find the new buyer. All right, so that's an interesting topic. Yeah, and I've definitely heard that before. How do you extract more than one opportunity out of a loan app? Well, certainly, I think it's important to plant the seed early on these days with a potential client setting out expectations as to what you are going to do and the experience you plant to deliver. And slowly sort of, you know, plant the idea that if they're happy, you would be very appreciative at the end of the process of a review of them passing your name along to friends and family and others. So certainly making sure that you get within the network, it has to do, you know, in terms of somebody's particular activator, right? So many refinancing, and you know, other people refinancing, so many buying homes, and you know, other people that are buying homes, so making sure that you are aware of that, and that the client is aware that you're looking for those introduction. If you don't tell them, particularly if they're first-timers, they just may not know. So I'm not talking about asking for a four or five times note at the process. I don't believe in that, but I am letting them know in a subtle and gentle way, particularly at times in which they express gratitude to me and taking advantage of the law of reciprocity, then letting them know, hey, by the way, I am really appreciative of anybody else you know. And the way I say it is, who do you know now? Rather than saying, hey, please keep me in mind, I'll say, hey, who do you know now? It's also buying a home we're looking to buy. So certainly that opportunity for more business there. I also set up the next transaction with the client at the time of closing, so I will set an auto lock target, meaning a specific targeted rate in which a no-cost we finance makes sense, and then I will track that for them for the life of the loan. So I'm setting up the next transactions for them as well. In terms of business within the individual loan application, I am asking questions with regard to their happiness level or existence working with a CPA and a financial planner. I'm making those introductions if they don't have them already and if they do have them and they're happy. I'm asking for those introductions. I'm also looking at where they work. In some cases, if it's a local company where I know decision is made here, I'm considering sending information on what we call our workplace rewards program, and trying to get it some information in front of the HR folks over there as well. So multiple opportunities within every single loan. There's really more than that if you dig even deeper. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of stuff in there. Two things I want to unpack a little bit there. I'm curious about when you come to that section about the CPA. Tell me, do you have a current CPA? Are you happy or not? I'd be curious. I don't know if you measure this, but how often that leads to an opportunity one way or the other, whether it's you're introducing them to a CPA because they're open to it or you're going to get introduced to theirs. How often would you say that happens? Yeah, what I'm typically doing is if I have the tax returns, I'm taking the CPA's info right off of there. If I don't, I'm asking for it at some point in the process. I'm asking if it's okay to provide the closing disclosure to their CPA. The answer is yes, then post-closing, I'm sending a letter to the CPA indicating I've just handled the transaction. They'll need the CD for tax prep next year, and here's a copy, and here's my info, and then I'm doing a follow-up call based on that. Unlike some other people out there that suggest going to the CPA at the point of sale and getting their buy-in. I don't do that, just for a little bit of a concern over, could they potentially sell away from me at that point? So I don't do it then, but I do do it in a little hospital, isn't it? Not particularly. If you call up and you say our mutual client, Bob and Jane Jones are in the process of refinancing, and they suggested that I provide you with this detailed analysis of the numbers, including the tax benefit I wanted to show this to you ahead of time, generally it's okay, but the CPAs are sort of a finicky group, they're very technical and they're not salesy, so it's better to just, I find, to follow up with the closing disclosure and pepper them with numbers and analyses. They don't really want to be sold too. Then take me through the end of that. It's a transaction's closed, do you send them the disclosures? You're following up, what does that sound like? Yeah, I mean, sometimes they'll give you a meeting, sometimes they won't, but hey, it's Craig's rent today, text home loans, just wanted to let you know. So I want to make sure you receive the letter I sent over for Bob and Jane Jones. I included a copy of their closing disclosure and I recently handled their transaction. Did you receive that? Yes, I think I saw that. Okay, well, I just want to let you know, you know, they were able to save 300 hours a month or purchase a new home, where a local experienced mortgage lender here in Rockville, Maryland, and I welcome the opportunity to chat with you a little bit more about how we might coordinate on some clients in the future. I'm regularly asked as well on my end for CPA recommendations when I ask my clients if they have them and they don't always do. So I'd like to get together and maybe learn a little more about what a good referral for you is and keep it to right. It's a very basic, very basic networking script. And what's the take rate on that in terms of that offer? I'd say every now and then. I wouldn't say constant. You do find yourself leaving voicemails. You do get a call back every now and then. I take you don't get that many one-on-one meetings, but what you do get is you sort of get permission to continue to stay in touch with them, connect with them on LinkedIn. And if you're doing a lot of good social media and posting and you have a good monthly newsletter, other items you're mailing, what will happen inevitably over time is that GPA will call you with a referral. That's what my experience has been. So you don't necessarily want to run out to lunch together, but they will use you as a resource down the road if you stay in touch well. Interesting. So are you then like, friending them on Facebook once you do have that conversation? I don't friend them on Facebook unless I know them and I've met them personally, but I do connect with them on LinkedIn and they'll see the right-door social media updates and so on. Yeah, that's probably a good point with the CPA LinkedIn. Yeah, and if I can't get to a CPA to meet with them that I really want to meet with, I do start inviting them to cool events and a good sort of off successful story have as I do also believe in sort of targeted ways of staying in touch and showing them that I'm aware of what's going on. So I'll go online and read about their hobbies or interest and then I'll send them an article or a book related to something they're interested in, try to get the conversation going. I recently had a CPA where I tried multiple times to get lunch with. I couldn't, I started, it was really insufficient. I sent them a book called The Greatest Fishing Stories Ever Told and he immediately called me back and did this book is amazing. So I appreciate you thinking of me clearly, you know, consider it and it makes sense that maybe we should talk about some clients. So, you know, no rest for violations. You can't send a gift for somebody sending you referral, but you can sort of look at somebody's interest and sent them an interest through them ahead of time, get the conversation going. Absolutely. That's that personal touch and you know, demonstrates that you've, you know, like you said, you're considerate. You've spent some time and thinking about how to make an impact with that person. That's great. Any particular reason why you pursued that CPA that much? Did you know he was a like- Yeah, he was, he was recommended via financial advice that he already worked with who said that he was very good and he sends a lot of his clients to him and I was looking for a new CPA in a particular part of town where client had said to me a few times we need a new CPA and I didn't have a good contact. So what would you say roughly percentage of business you get from CPAs to for your total overall volume? It's small. I mean, financial advisors are much, much, much larger group, much, much larger segments for me. I would take EPAs as a minor pillar. I would call it 5%. Okay. Great. So then nice transition. Let's talk about how you get financial advisor business. That's like, you know, the holy grail people want to know, how do I get in front of those people? Yeah. Financial advisor has been my number one source of business for a very long time as well as the repeat referral business that comes with it. I just decided a long time ago, this goes back to almost 2000 that I read an article in mortgage originator magazine way back when by a great guy named Bill Early who's still in the mortgage business down in Carolina now and Bill in one page in that old magazine outlines why it made sense for mortgage people and financial advisors to work together. And I decided to pursue that niche at that time. And it worked out really well. And to this day, it still makes up a huge piece of my business. I think that people miss out on the mortgage piece of financial advisory. They don't understand that the mortgage is the number one liability typically. And that financial advisors, particularly, you know, those who say they're holistic and they manage everything, well, they really don't. They're really only managing the asset side of the balance sheet. And financial advisors, they partner with CPAs and they partner with a state planning attorney, but they haven't thought to partner with mortgage people. And it just makes natural sense to look at the largest liability if you're doing financial planning for someone. So I sort of go with them with that approach that I can handle that aspect of their practice and that we should partner up. And I sort of give them case studies and other materials as to demonstrate how they can properly use the mortgage to create and preserve assets for their clients. All right. How do you do that? I'm curious. How do I create and preserve assets? Yeah. Well, if it's a refinance environment, it's very simple. Obviously, if their clients are saving up money and freeing up cash flow, that cash flow can then automatically be redirected to take advantage of the employer's sponsored retirement plan that they're not maxing out to take advantage of life or disability insurance. They don't have yet to start a 5.29 that they may not have done to save up for the next down payment to pay up high interest debt, all that stuff. So that's natural on a refinance. On a home purchase, a little different, particularly for move up buyers, it's particularly effective. Most mortgage people listening to this call will probably agree that when you talk to the average move up buyer and you say, how much you're going to put down on the next house, they generally say, I'm just going to roll my proceeds over. So I show them specific strategies for not doing that, for rolling over a portion of the proceeds and investing the difference. We get into detail about the actual after-tax cost of a mortgage versus the long-term ROI on investing in a well-diversified portfolio elsewhere. So I show them sort of that, you know, that partial arbitrage they could take advantage of. I talk to their clients and provide third-party validation on why a 30-year fixed and investing the difference typically makes a whole lot more sense than taking a lower rate, associated with 15 years. I illustrate why paying extra money to your mortgage principle is generally not a good idea and why you're better off keeping that money separated with your advisor or investing it into your plan with the advisor. I show them ways to free up cash flow that they buy, you know, if they want to buy permanent insurance versus term life, I show them different ways and to free up that cash flow to do that and the impact's over the long term. So all types of things that are related to how can the mortgage be used to help accelerate the attainment of financial planning goals. And I'm not talking about stupid stuff like, hey, let's refinance and pull cash out of your house and invest it all in the market and use a nag I'm loan. I'm not talking about that kind of stuff. I'm talking about suitable and prudent things that meet that meet TFP types of standards. How do you illustrate that to people represent that in a way they understand are using, you know, software tool or something to, you know, I use presentation software that allows me to take into account all those other things tax benefits are a why I'm separating money from the house and so on. So when you say presentation software, what do you mean? I use mortgage coach for that, which I think most of the people on the call will probably have heard of. I should hope at least and I've been in that for a very long time. That's what I thought. Yeah, when I get Dave a shout out Dave's average mortgage coach. For those who don't know what it is, we'll put only in the show notes, but Dave's been on the podcast before. All right, so that's interesting. I want to clarify something here that conversation around, you know, being a financial advisor for somebody purchasing a home. If I'm understanding this correctly, you clarified that that's typically a move up buyer who's rolling proceeds from the sale of a house and, you know, may have way more than 20% or whatever that they need. Is that correct? Number one, not always. I mean, sometimes it's a first time buyer and sometimes it's just helping a first time buyer understand because a lot of times first time buyers do have money invested and are often in a position where they're going to sell something and pay a capital gain to get to a certain point and they may often do that to get to a really brief, they should put 20% down. So maybe 20% down makes sense, but maybe they've done really well and they want to stay invested and they don't have, for example, enough cash in liquid reserves and living expenses and buying a new place in furniture is expensive. So I may show them an option where, you know, they take advantage of single premium MI or some other type of mechanism that allows them to stay more diversified within their total financial plan, inclusive of the mortgage and the home equity. So it works really well on move up buyers that have proceeds, but it certainly worked well for first time buyers as well. On financial advisors, you don't always get, you know, the real first time home buyer would very minimal down because those people often don't have advisors. The way that you get those referrals from advisors is often from the parents. So very often in this market as well as we know people are buying later and often putting more down. Financial advisors are managing the parent's money and the parents are helping the kids with a gift for down payment. And as a result of it, they'll often say, hey, call this mortgage person. Interesting. I'm curious like in the first time home buyer situation because that's the bulk of a lot of buyers right now. Is there ever a time when you determine that type of a conversation isn't right for that particular client? Well, you know, first time home buyers, they know how to ask two questions. What's the rate and what are the closing calls? And so, you know, and that's not their fault. That's what they're programmed to ask. So I don't fault them for that, but oftentimes they're not looking at other considerations. For example, I recently had a couple two government workers down here in DC. They both worked for the government. They had strong salaries. They were in their early 30s. And they wanted to put 50% down and take a 15 year from straight mortgage. And it just didn't make sense. They weren't maxing out their TSP's, their government retirement accounts. They hadn't started saving for college, but they were so debt of verse that this is the way they wanted to go. So it allowed me to start a conversation that moved them to, hey, what about these other things? Hey, if you still want to pay off your mortgage in 15 years, you could. But what if we did it in such a way where at year 15, you could pay it up in a lump sum and still have money left over and still have a better tax advantage between now and then. So not everybody says yes to that, but it's a completely different conversation that you're having. And it definitely separates you from from other people out there. I think the key thing I'm hearing here is a couple of things, you know, you're presenting them options. Number one, and you're having your conversation that's larger than rate and fees. And you're kind of controlling that. You're not letting the client. It's been a fact, let's be curious, you know, when somebody comes out swinging, right? Hey, what's your rate? How do you pivot? How do you adjust with that? I just used the same script I've used for years and I learned this many years ago and just modified it from a gentleman that a lot of listeners probably heard of and his name is Dale Vermillion, he's a great coach. And, you know, I would say, I would say Jeff, I appreciate you asking me that question. What I'd like to do is build you out a detailed spreadsheet of rates, loan options, payments, and closing costs broken down to the dollar for you to view. I'd like to send that to you in writing so that you can see it all broken down for you. Is that okay? And then the kind of the prospect will of course say absolutely I'd love to have that and I'd say great. In order to do that accurately and to make sure all the information I present to you, I can actually deliver on. Is it okay with you if we take a few minutes just right now, just for me to get the information I need to build that out for you. Of course it is. Great. We go ahead and do that and I say okay. Can I send that to you around 230 today? Can we jump on the phone? You know, pick a time, we jump on the phone. So I'll pick a time for us to jump on the phone. I'll send the spreadsheet to them about 10 minutes before because I don't want to get too confused looking it on their own. I send it over back to Dave and the shout out. I use mortgage coach and the edge for that. So I'll do an edge live call with them for that. We'll jump on the phone. This is assuming we don't get together in person. I'll take over their screen and I'll walk them through each option in detail. I often follow up with a video after the call as well to summarize the discussion for the person we just spoke to and or for any other decision makers or people that are going to be sharing the options with we're not on the phone. Wow, that's cool. How much do you try and meet people in person? I live in the DC area so it is it is hard with with you know we're a multi-state area with lots of commute times and traffic so it's not easy to do that. I offer it to most clients, most clients do not take me up on it. I do use video quite a bit. All right so what I'm hearing there is you're using video because you understand the importance of building that trust in connection, can't do it in persons of videos the next best thing. Yes but to be super clear to the people on the phone, particularly the newer folks in the business, I'm 20 plus years now. I really feel strongly and I coach my loan office on this. I do feel very strong about trying to meet people in person and I believe that my personal you know rate of conversion would likely be better if I was able to do more in-person meetings. It hasn't been as possible for me because as one of the owners of the company, I'm also holding a bunch of director. So I would highly advise those people on the call particularly new newer L.O.s to meet with people in person whenever they can even if that means going to them. Now in terms of meetings where you go to them, I would really just say on a side note I would try to avoid going to the house because there's always distractions when you go to someone's home and maybe going to their office conference room or to a Starbucks something like that but trying to avoid the house had become. Yeah I can relate. I've done that a few times in the past man. There's babies, there's dogs, there's whatever, right? That's really cool man. So you've really thought out this process for engaging. I was curious though real quick back to the financial side of things. You've done a lot of self-education then on helping you become more of yourself a financial advisor, right? Yeah so if you ask L.O. officers and I've coach L.O. officers you know around the country over the years about how to go after financial advisors in a deeper manner and you know when you talk to L.O. officers almost every single L.O. officer to a person that you talked to said yes I really want to pursue that market and when you ask them well why haven't you up to now you know they also I'm sick of realtors I want to go after advisors I always hear about that why haven't you done they generally say that they don't know where to start and B they don't know what to say to the advisor is B and then C if they got the meeting they don't know this yet but if they got the meeting they wouldn't know what to do at the meeting so for all of these reasons they don't pursue advisors most law officers got into the business and their sales manager said here go go get realtors that's where the business is and you should go after realtors that is a huge portion of where the business is but I believe in having multiple pillars of business some major some minor and so I think it makes sense to diversify just like in financial planning diversify your book of business and the sources in which where it comes from so that you're not sitting with all your eggs in one basket that's all so that's why I believe the advisor market is really great and as if people have heard me speak before on advisors they'll know that you know I also like to point out that there's a couple major major pluses with advisors and they are that they don't work on weekends they don't give out multiple names and people pay for their financial advisors advice so they tend to follow it. All right I'm gonna hold you to it give me the you don't have to rip you know open the whole box here but coach me real quick what should I say when calling on a financial level how do I prepare to make that call man. Well if you're calling a financial advisor for the first time first I would start with how I got to them but if I just getting to them cold is that what you're asking me somebody gets in my neighborhood? Well I guess yeah there's one of two ways right either you're introduced on behalf of your clients you just take a loan app for or there's cold so I'm sure it's two different approaches. Yeah I mean if it's cold I would say I would teach you know my name is Craig I'm a local mortgage lender and I have a unique niche in which I support financial advisors by managing the liability side of the balance sheet. One of the ways I do that is to structure the mortgage to help accelerate the financial planning goals and this helps to create and preserve assets that you manage for your clients. I'd love to take a few minutes with you to show you a little bit more how I do that how I think it could benefit your practice and increase your business and how we might work together and usually that's enough. Really and that works. Yeah I mean if you want to if you want to dangle referrals you can I don't love doing that you could take me on lines and this is true for me by the way at the end of I you know I would say I didn't done this many mortgages in last year the end of every process I asked my client if they have a financial advisor many of them say they don't I explain that this is a great time since we just did the mortgage for you to have a complimentary planning consultation with a local financial advisor I know a few good ones which you like me to introduce you and I'm always looking for new advisors to introduce my clients too can we get together and you're sort of talking about interviewing them can we get together so I can understand more about what you're doing whether or not we work together and if you're a good fit for my client and now you're sort of calling to interview them for your client. Yeah I like that and to get together is it's not coffee launched per se it's just meat at their office. I prefer to meet at the office of the financial advisor or at my office if we meet at their office I'm going to see their operation I'm going to look around their office I'm going to see their hobbies and interests start some conversation maybe think about ways we can connect later with an article or something of interest that I can send them and I'm also going to get an opportunity if I do a great job they're probably going to introduce me to other advisors that are in the office if not I like them to come to my office so I can give them a tour of my office and show them how I'm set up meet my team and sort of blow them away with the culture and the customer service that we have here in the office so I like one of those two things over meaning for lunch or coffee or whatever everything doesn't have to be a meal you can have a business meeting with advisors it's different it's not like realtors where a lot of them not all of them but a lot of them looking for a free lunch it's not like that they can buy their own lunch they they're happy to do a professional meeting in and out. Yeah and what happens after that meeting let's say it goes well you know some good report and stuff what do you do I'm assuming you do something you can different like the book you know what I mean yeah well I think the most effective thing you could do after any meeting whether it's a networking group a realtor meeting a financialite any meeting the most effective thing you could do is immediately try to provide some value remember that you know in networking a giver get so super important to meet a rack my brain after the meeting it's a who can I introduce this person to number one if I can't think of anyone who can I that's not a client who can I connect them to that's potentially a good referral partner for that if not what can I do for them personally what did I hear them say maybe they're having a problem with their their home and their landscaping and their problem who knows what what can I do to help this person what book can I send them so I'll often listen to what challenges they'll have in their business and then I'll send them a specific book with a handwritten note what are their hobbies again this guy about this guy loves fishing I send them the fishing book maybe it's something else and I'll send them you know to sleep a golf balls whatever so I'll always do something immediately to create an impact after the meeting then I will follow up in regular intervals with little blogs or articles I write or pieces of interest related to mortgages and financial planning touch base with them regularly and then try to get together I might invite them to hear a local speaker or to a networking event or something like that as well so I can continue to build the work keep point there man add value right consistently immediately afterwards I mean they're they're now's the time for you to to really shine right they're expecting to see something they're like what's next all right this guy came in right had a good good talk and good you know let's see if he actually delivers the other thing I do is I'll send him a sample of what I'm going to do with their clients they can experience it so I'll send him a sample of a mortgage coach video with a case study that I put together and say hey here's an example of if you gave me a client with we talked about hey 30 versus 15 there's my 30 versus 15 case studies the next time a client asks you about it you could show them this video I'm curious you know do you ever get into those discussions with financial advisors about you know the strategy of having a 30 year fix versus a 15 and do you do kind of butt heads ever on that we constantly have this discussion yeah we don't butt heads because agenda you know a cardinal rule if you're going to go into this niche is never contradict the advisor's advice to the client if you disagree with what the advisor is telling the client call the advisor and explain your position and why and say have you considered this and provide data show an example of a specific case study even the client's case study if you have the information thing hey I know you're recommended this but if they do this it might actually look look how much better it can be and a lot of times the advisor be tremendously open to that and everything we thought about Craig that's great or they'll say you know what this client has a very depressionary mentality they're very diverse they're probably going to inherit money a couple years we're fully aware of why they shouldn't do the 15 year but they want it and that's what we're going to go okay great no problem so we don't butt heads to you to answer your questions but I may sometimes enlighten them on another way of structuring the mortgage sure again keep here keep your advisor cap on right you're not a salesperson you're an advisor so your job is to do your fiduciary responsibility to the client and then you know maintain that relationship with the advisor now the keep mind the mortgage person me does not have legally a fiduciary responsibility and I think it's important that you brought that word up because for the people listening they should understand that advisors do generally not all kinds but almost all advisors have fiduciary responsibilities to the client and I think that's an important word because I take that approach with the client and I think it's important when you're talking the advisor that while we are not fiduciaries we structure our practice if you're working with advisors to be that way and I think something that's really gotten me points with advisors over the years is that it's not it's not infrequent that advisor will send me something to analyze for a client and I say there's nothing to be done here there's no these guys are in great shape there's nothing to be done here and by the way I'm going to set a target for them anyway and let them know when it's time to refine it so I think that's super important advisors want to have the outlet of getting some person to third party validate their suggestion whether it's telling look if advisor says you shouldn't put 50% down you split 20% down and give me the rest to invest the homeowner sort of has their antenna up going oh he just wants to get his hands on my money so he can invest it but if that's coming from the mortgage person with detailed analyses on the mortgage options showing that it's better to separate the money that's huge for the advisor to have that third party validation so they want us in that transaction we make them look good on top of that we're not cross-selling away so if most advisors just say oh call your bank or call your current mortgage company well a lot of banks have loan officers on staff who are incentive to take a look at the full 1003 and try to grab the 401k or the retirement plan or whatever else and bring it in house so it's just another small benefit to the advisor that we're not doing that that's a great point great point indeed and I really thank you for by the way highlighting the the word fiduciary because I think that in this market where like you said earlier people are conditioned to ask for rate well you know I use this term visible value and you've got a a tool like mortgage coach that helps you illustrate right your visible value through providing data at the back up right you know the deal everybody listening people buy for emotional reasons they back it up with logic that helps just I think demonstrate clearly to an advisor and to your clients that you are taking a fiduciary responsibility because you're showing them options you're showing the impact of their choices based on their unique situation yes and most of all are not doing it look the truth is most mortgage people are just quoting rate and cost and they're not showing the long-term impact of the mortgage and or they're not taking the mortgage and putting in a scope of the total financial plan and looking at the impact on the other side of the balance and on the assets on the cash flow and everything else they're just quoting the rate in the term yeah and I've been talking about this for quite a while it really goes into kind of your from that first conversation from the first point of engagement with your clients of having that discussion which you shared so eloquently earlier and how you take the the conversation away from price to advice so for those listening go back right down the script adjust it make it yours and start uses them third party tools to you know position yourself as a valuable resource rather than just a rate and quote machine and don't don't get me wrong this is still an incredibly price sensitive environment and you can do all of these things and still lose the deal for an eight because there is that population of people right that it's just going to take your advice and go run and use it elsewhere so that's going to happen but as Steven Marshall would take it's really just about increasing your batting average and giving yourself all the tools you need to do that and this is just another one of those tools yeah so so what I'm hearing you say is just know that you're not about a thousand percent you're going to you know some of those people are going to go that other route okay well they're just not going to care about your advice because they're going to think they they know better or whatever and that's fine and they're going to just they're just lowest rate and that's that's okay that's okay it's about understanding who your target client is yes I know somebody in my life who when they acquire home and all that stuff they they they don't just jump right online and go for that lowest cost right lowest rate because they know they got the 800 FICO the 20 you know all that kind of they know they're vanilla straight up a paper so they're like I don't I don't care about your advice man I just want the lowest rate right and those are the kind of people that are often paying an extra two or three hundred dollars a month to their mortgage at even though they have a three and a half percent rate without realizing that they could pay their mortgage off even sooner if they separated that money from now hmm interesting all right very good conversation on financial advisors curious um is there any kind of source you you know online or otherwise that you might have used in the past to locate financial advisors if you're going to maybe do some outbound calling um you know the the way to gather advisors I mean the best way of course to gather financial advisor names is to ask your existing referral network um and keep your existing clients your friends your family all those types of things who they use are they happy and then ask for introductions that's the best way to go um beyond that you can obviously Google financial advisor in your area you're going to get a massive number there you can also look at associations where they join the FBA which is the financial planning association very common yeah have you ever attended any of those meetings by the way you know I've looked at the FBA many times and I haven't attended them just because I I'm spending a lot of time nurturing the existing advisors I have and I'm at the point where I'm actually diversifying as well trying to do better into other areas just because I feel good about my advisor niche so I'm trying to make sure that I don't put all my eggs in that basket right right exactly yeah you've got those other baskets you've got a nurture as well right yep that's right uh but for those listening uh and I've done a little bit of that in the past as well uh you know Google the various financial planning associations like you said there's the FBA there's the NAPFA and a lot of these organizations um they have meetings local chapters in your town your city and oftentimes they're open to having guest speakers who want to come in and present on a relevant topic so that's another way for you to get exposed to them and network um all right very cool we are um just about out of time but I want to wrap up with um you know you've got a lot of uh you've got a breadth a wide breadth of experience and advice uh and as you said you're right you've got too many loan officers throughout the year so I want to close out by you know getting some wisdom here from Mr. Craig Strand uh what do you've got a roomful of loan officers let's say right um various levels of experience but yeah you know let's just say um well let me just put it this way how are you preparing for the shift that's happened happening in the market what are you doing differently if anything or just doing more of what you're already doing um I think in this environment there's a lot of blocking and tackling that has to go on I think you have to and you have to cast a really wide net there's two books on my desk right now uh both of them are a little dated but they're really relevant but I pull them off my bookshelf one is Spencer Johnson's who moved my cheese which a lot of people have heard of and the other one is by gentleman named Marshall Goldsmith also a well-known book which is what got you here won't get you there so I think that the landscape in the mortgage business has shifted tremendously a lot of digital people starting online like they're wanting uh you know everything at their fingertips and only getting ready to call more of these people right at the point of sale when they want that final piece of advice so I think we have to look at what got us here and how are we going to shift now and find the new cheese because I think there is a lot of new cheese out there but it's not in the same place the old cheese was and there's more you know we've seen a significant drop up over the last couple of years in origination volume but we have not seen that big of a drop off and people exiting the business just yet so you've gotten more people going after you've got the same number of people going after less business which drives you into a price sensitive transaction and you've got multiple going online for price only so I do think there's going to be a lot of consolidation among loan officers in the business and those that survive are going to be the ones that create significant value at the point of sale so if you're not doing that and you're just you know not going on wheel to doors and drop off rate sheets and quote rate in terms all day long that's probably going to wane on your business over time if you don't have some kind of niche that helps separate you out from the pack whether it's product niche whether it's a customer service niche whether it's a referral source niche such as advisors or the voice lawyers there's got to be something that makes you different to help you capture business long term. Very good very good stuff thank you for for sharing those those two books I definitely know who moved my cheese and I wrote down the what got you here what was that title again what got you here what got you here won't get you there right I'm going to put links to both of those in the show notes for those listening if you want to grab those books you are definitely a student who's always sharpening the axe man even after 20 years so thanks a lot for sharing your wisdom here if anybody wants to reach out to you directly connect where should they find you they could just email me it's my first name Craig and my company is apex home loan so Craig at apexhomeloans.com awesome man I appreciate you being here my pleasure thanks for having me you bet and listeners once again I appreciate you being here if you enjoyed this episode please let us know leave us a little love on wherever you're listening iTunes Stitcher Radio Google Play we appreciate you sharing this podcast with others and we will see you on the next one 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 I just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchase 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 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 elbows 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 to 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 mortgage marketing dot 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 mortgage marketing dot pro