How to Become a More Confident Loan Officer

Hey, what's up, Jeff? Zinfra, welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Coming at you again, just you and me. And this is a continuation of a previous episode released about a week ago that was also just a solo episode. And I'm going to be sharing with you a couple of key takeaways, thought, constructs and frameworks to evaluate where you're at in the business and perhaps this will help you with the direction of where you might need to focus on pivot and make some adjustments. But before I get into that, of course, I've got a win of the week that I wanted to share with you that just came over the wire a couple of days ago and this is coming from one of our members at my Asian classes. This comes from Norbert, Gabbledon, Norbert with GFS home loans. So Norbert's been a part of our platform, my gym classes, where we help originators move from solicitor and vendor to partner and peer, leading with content and education so that we don't chase, don't call, don't have to co-pay for leads. We actually build a platform that helps us rise above the noise to create engagement, awareness, that leads to conversations and contracts. And Norbert had this great story I wanted to share with you guys because here's his biggest takeaways. He says thus far being in the platform and he says less than four months. First of all, he's gained a lot of insights and benefits listening to the Friday mastermind and coaching call that we do. It's a key part of our platform where we get together with originators from around the country and work on best practices and mindset and we bring a special guest in once a month and that in and of itself is a phenomenal kind of personal development platform if you will. But in addition to that, of course, Norbert put into action some of the systems and process we have in place for helping you capture more agent referrals. Here's what he said. I've gained a lot of benefits listening to the conversations. It motivated me to do what I know how to do. See, that's the key there, guys. Sometimes it's not necessarily we need to be told something new or it doesn't have to be earth shattering, right? Sometimes we just need to be reminded what to do and maybe sometimes kick in the ass a little bit of what you know you should be doing, right? You could be doing, but maybe you're not, which leads me into today's episode in just a moment. But before I get there, back to Norbert's story, he says in turn, by the way, again, in less than four months, I have written over 32 prequalifications, converting 19 into closed loans and the rest are now under home new home construction or shopping. My question for you is what marketing system process product are you engaged in activity that in less than four months time can generate for you 32 prequals into 19 closed loans? And maybe you've got something that's doing that for you. I don't know, but if not, maybe you might want to be open to learning more about what we do in the My Agent Classes platform. To learn more, I want you to go to getmoreagentreferrals.com. There's a link in the show notes to this as well, coming up on Tuesday, June 11th. So if you're listening to this before then, you've got time to still go register, learn more about a very new platform. I'm launching. That's exactly the types of activities that we had Norbert doing. It is the Agent Referral Accelerator. June 11th, getmoreagentreferrals.com Okay, so let's pick up this week's episode. Next week, we were talking about how to 10X your business. We're going to carry on that conversation with a couple of questions to get started. And the first question I have for you is, are you a good originator? When I've asked this question before in our private coaching calls, generally I get the positive response that yes, of course you believe you're a good originator, right? And you should have a certain level of confidence. Now, I don't know where you're at in regards to confidence, experience level and so forth, but confidence is a result of doing things. Confidence is a result of getting results. So you might have a very different level of confidence, but I would tell you that you get more confident by doing the thing more often, right? So I don't know if that's you need to have more conversations. I don't know if that's you need to have more face-to-face meetings. We need to do more pre-approvals, need to get more closings, whatever it is, but you got to do the thing, right? And I want to share with you one exercise you can do right now to build your confidence. So I want you to go back to the transactions you've closed in the last three to six months, depending on how many of those are. And I want you to call five pass realtors per day. That could be on the buy side and the listing side, I would encourage you to do both. So if you call five realtors a day, that's 25 in a week. And I want you to ask them a question, right? So you get through the small talk, reconnect, hey, we did that transaction on 123 Main Street or, hey, Sally, it's been a long time since we talked or it's been a moment, hey, just wanted to connect with you. Hey, Sally, here's why I'm calling is in the market that we're in right now, I'm really looking to make sure that I fill any holes in my bucket. I'm looking to level up my business, my skill set, and I'm looking to identify any opportunities I have to get better. So I wanted to ask you, if you go back to that transaction that we did together, that most recent one, or if you have a history of transactions, you can ask it from that context. But I want you to ask them something like this, hey, Sally, so in one word, how would you describe the experience of working with me and my team? Like, how would you describe that? And assuming they have something positive to say, first of all, doesn't that make you feel good, especially look at the markets a little tough, it's a little challenging, we can get a little down on ourselves. This would be a nice little pickup for you, right? And so it would be cool to get that feedback, but also I want you to be, I want you to not just use this as a gimmick or technique, I want you to sincerely be curious because the best script is the truth, and if you're truthfully curious, you don't need to fake it or come up with some fancy introduction to this, it's like, hey, I'm just calling because I really want to understand how I get better. And I wanted to ask you a question and please be fully transparent with me, like, oh, this is, you know, if you don't tell me straight up, how you truly feel, there's no way I can get better. So Sally, in a word, how would you describe the experience of working with me and my team? And then listen, and listen for what's good, maybe you might need to press for what the idea is, can I get better, if there was one thing you would change, what would that be? And I want you to start off, start to deal, you know, peel back the layers of the onion and find out the opportunity of where you can get a sharp in the acts a little bit. So you can see, here's the funny thing, right, at a conversation with Mike Seminari, who runs the consumer experience division over at Stratmore, and we had a conversation about reviews and getting online reviews. And everybody thinks that online reviews is the holy grail of look at this, this means I'm doing a great job. And here's what Stratmore knows from the data. When online review does not mean they enjoyed your process, leaving you four or five stars does not mean they enjoyed your process. They may feel pressure to do it, they may like you as a person, right? But that doesn't mean your process kicks ass. And so the only way to discover how to get your process better is to actually ask the people on the other end of it, sincerely, truthfully, and be ready for the truth and ask for the truth genuinely. And then take what you've learned, evaluate, don't take, don't personalize it, right? Look at, look at it through the lens of improvement. And by the way, what kind of impression do you think this makes on your referral partners, right, these 25 realtors you're going to call? What kind of impression does that make to them when you're calling it? And sincerely, I underline, sincerely asking for true feedback. That really stands out. That really, you know, they say, wow, what a real professional, wow, right? Jeff must really care about his client experience. I've never had another loan officer ask me that, or if they did, it's rare. And it's been quite a long time. Now, if you feel you had a great experience working with the agent that you called, by the way, a way to multiply this activity for you, is once you've gotten that feedback from the agent, good, bad, or indifferent, I want you to feedback to them, briefly, because they might ask you, they might say, hey, you know what, this is kind of a cool little exercise. I wanted to ask you the same question. How would you describe what it was like working with the ABC Realty team? And then you can tell them, right, in an elegantly honest way. Now, you don't have to throw anybody under the bus if it was bad or if the person's, you know, a nightmare or a drama queen, however, if overall you've enjoyed working with the agent, you feel that they care about their clients and they took care of their clients and it was overall a positive experience. If you've not done this yet, you could leave them a Google review. Speaking to those words, descriptors, emotions that you felt about working with the ABC team, right? Hey, working with Sally Aremax is such a great experience. She cares about her clients. The process was smooth. Her team was intentative, right? She really goes the extra mile for her clients, you know, something simple, just like that. And then you can take a one extra step and you can grab a screenshot of that review. You just left them. You can do it with your phone, screenshot text. You can grab a, you know, clip it with your computer and send it over email, but you can just send that little screenshot to them and just say, hey, Sally, you just want to let you know. Really enjoy the conversation. I took a moment just to leave you a review and wanted to just, you know, draw your attention to that. Here's what it is. Without expectation of, oh, let's, you know, let's give or take, give me one. I'll give you one unless that's the level of your relationship. Some of those are like that. They're close enough. They're like best friends because if I called my best friend today and I said, hey, you know, Robert, would you leave me a review online about my business? He'd probably do it, right? And I would do the same back to him, right? Because we're long time friends. And if that's appropriate, do that in a lot of cases that won't be appropriate, the more appropriate response or approach would be what I just laid out for you, which is ask the question in one word, how would you describe the experience of working with me and my team? Please be honest. Please be candid in your feedback. I'm a grown grown up. I can handle it. This helps me get better. Great. Hey, Sally, by the way, I just want to let you know this was my experience. Really enjoyed this, this, this. Cool. And tell him you're going to go leave a review, just go do it. Then send that screenshot or that email as a follow up. And again, the key point here, the key takeaway is sincerity. This is it in gimmick, if it's a gimmick, it'll come through as a gimmick. Got to be sincere. All right, so that's this week's quick tip of the week. And once again, as a reminder, if you're looking to double your realtor referrals in 90 days or less, if you're looking to stop chasing, co-calling, begging, you want to move from being seen as a solicitor and vendor and you want to become a partner and a peer, you want to attract agents, you want to get the kind of results you heard just like at the beginning of today's episode. Then go check out getmoreagentreferrals.com June 11th, a brand new opportunity I'm releasing for just a small group of loan officers to work directly with me to double their referrals in 90 days or less. You can go there and see some of the success stories, getmoreagentreferrals.com. And this is, if it's after June 11th, you're listening to this, still go to that website because you'll get notified of the next opportunity we have to work together. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Appreciate you tuning in. I'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.