How to Get 145 Leads from Just Three Referral Sources

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris 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. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey, listeners, what's up? It's Jeff Zimper and welcome back to another episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Hey, heads up. If you guys don't know it and you want to connect with me more, you want to get access to more of the type of content you've been listening to or watching on video and enjoying. Make sure you've joined our private Facebook group over on Facebook at the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast, private group. You can go to Facebook, search it in the top search bar, search for Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast and then the group will come up just for quest to join. And there'll be a couple of questions to ask you before you come in and love to have you as we do some additional training, some content and things like that in there just for you guys as Mortgage loan officers, we've got some downloads and all that just. So that's kind of a way to extend the relationship, go a little bit deeper. Secondly, if you at all are interested in teaching agent classes, you may or may not know that I've got a free download over on my website, the main website, the umbrella company for all that I do called Mortgage Marketing Institute dot com. What you'll see on there is the ultimate guide to teaching agent classes. It's free, download it. It's basically a mini course in how to succeed in teaching agent classes. If you've been following me for any time, you know, we've got tons of success stories and results. It's probably one of the top one or two ways for you to effectively and quickly get in front of real estate agents that convert to referrals. So go check that out, mortgagemarketinginstitute.com right there on the homepage, the ultimate guide to teaching agent classes, I think you'll like it. So that said, my special guest this week really honored to talk to industry veterans when I get the chance and I find that sometimes when you interview people, right, there's some kindred spirit kind of soul match happening. And so for me, this is just a really great refreshing conversation that felt like that sort of for me and I hope you guys enjoy listening to this. But my special guest is Greg Cowert and he is with NFM lending. He's been in the business 18 years and in 2019, he did 220 units for 58 million and it's been running pretty consistently at that for about eight years in a row. And so I love the depth and breadth, if you will, but mostly the depth of conversation that Greg brings to the conversation. We talk a lot about how less is actually more and that's so much of like our culture or less, like just grow loan volume, let's add more units and look, that might be relevant for where you are in your business, depending on how seasoned or new you are. But remember that sometimes less is more sometimes less referral partners is more sometimes less quote leads is more sometimes less staff is more less overhead is more really depends on what do you want? What are you going to get clear on in your business in your life? How do you want to design your business in your life? And I thought the conversation with Greg was very interesting because he has six core realtors that he works with and his business, the sources of business are broken up like a 30 30 30. So realtors past client database and then builders. And so he shares some pretty frank opinions about pursuing the builder market and to know that 30% of his business primarily comes from working with just six key referral partners. We talk about the kind of the customer pyramid and moving people up or down or off the pyramid and how his ability to you've heard maybe you've heard me say go deep versus wide has created a lot of freedom in his business less stress, we talk about his team setup and he's got a loan office or on his team who's now handling 50% of his business and just a great conversation around oh by the way Greg's also a veteran user of bomb bomb eight years he's been using bomb bomb. So whether you've used bomb bomb you've heard things you don't know I hear all kinds of things about it. I think the way Greg uses it is probably the most successful way to use it. And right now Greg's got 145 leads in the hopper from his three main referral sources. This isn't paid leads paid ads none of that kind of stuff. It's all from his fear of influence referrals past client database. So I think this is a great kind of crash course in designing a mortgage origination practice that supports you and doesn't destroy you. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and without further ado let's get into this week's show. Greg welcome to the show. Thank you so much Jeff happy to be here. Happy to have you. I know you're busy trying to enjoy we're recording this on a Friday and this time in the market though you know you and I talked about lifestyle how's that work and man it's pretty busy market right? Yeah I think the nature of the mortgage business is change is constant I think it's true in every business but in here we are and we've had interest rates dip here in the past seven to ten days and yeah it's busy. Yeah for sure so real quick give me the refresher where in the where in the country again are you? Yeah I'm talking to you at a Richmond Virginia right capital of Virginia about two hours south of DC and two hours away from Virginia Beach right in the middle of Virginia. Okay so last time we talked I wrote down a couple of just like you know high points bullet points and things like that things that stood out to me that that's you know kind of unique to you for our conversation and for the listeners one thing that jumps out let's just get right after this right now it's bomb bomb you're a bomb bomb user for eight years yeah did you get an award from from them about like the longest user or yeah yeah I would we were at like a Keller Williams convention I think they were there at the convention and I said well can mortgage people use this and it was it was one of those if you catch it early enough it's cheap and they have since taken over but yeah it's a great vehicle I still Jeff probably don't use it to talk to macro enough people I mostly use it like after you and I finished this conversation I might record a video and send it to you just saying thank you so I'm almost using it like thank you cards or to explain a more complex process to a customer where it just doesn't work through email yeah are you using that to go over like explain mortgage scenarios closing costs anything like that yeah that's an example yeah it also could be some complex guideline they run into regarding you know perhaps we talk about the fact that the VA just changed its funding fee and I might record a video that then sits in our outlook that I then am ready to go whenever that question comes rather than composing along email I can just send the client a general a general explanation of what's happened and how do you find the open and watch rates with the bomb bomb video emails you know I'm it's good and bad I don't I have no idea I'm not someone who's sending them out to a hundred and therefore I'm curious to see how many I've looked I think it's probably pretty close to 100% because I'm only sending them out in a targeted way I see that in bomb bomb but I've never looked at it no I bring that up it's interesting because you know I've talked to a number of people over the years about bomb bomb and I hear different things and it's and whenever I hear people say that you know they're not getting the open rates or the watch rates it's more often than not that I find people are trying to use it as a broadcast tool instead of a one-to-one communication that's right that's right and again I think I'm driving a Ferrari in first year and not turning the wheel with bomb bomb I'm not using it to what it can do but you know for the subscription price it's pretty reasonable even the way I'm using it yeah and I think the real takeaway at least for the context of what we're talking about here is that that facilitates you to build some more deeper connection and trust with people because of the video it's like you're almost there with them yeah I'll give you an example I recently have had two people who said to me hey I'm trying to get Jeff to call you but he won't and I have said well what's his email address I'll send them a video so I would just like we're doing right now say hey Jeff I'm Greg and you know love to meet with you there's no charge for doing this and here's where we be sitting I find it really it's just such a more personal video so wonderful as you know from your show what a great mechanism and that clients a lot more likely to come hang out with me and talk about buying a house okay so give me a sense of we just talked right before we hit record for 2019 220 units 58 million right by the way congratulations yeah how does how does that I'm getting this is where we go naturally curious and organic in our conversation how does that rank for you like compared to 2018 for example is that like a a ban or year for you or is that you're pretty consistent at that level yeah you know when we talk last time we talked about the beauty of this profession is that you set your own goals you set you create your own income and not all jobs allow that I have flatlined at 200 units and 60 million I think I have done it since 2012 2013 so in some ways you could say well wow that really is terrible it sounds like you're just stuck and I think there's some truth there but in the another thing is I'm just really what I'm doing is pretty consistent and it's real simple so yeah thanks I I think where I'm headed here at year 18 of doing this it's how can I do 200 units a year with less drama with fewer hours and I this is I've made some big changes in my mortgage branch here in the past year and this is what I'm excited about for 2020 is I'm almost whatever I've done in the past I'm I'm not going to do that anymore I'm going to try some new things what do you mean many examples um well I have struggled with I have struggled with control I think that that's really common our names on the boilerplate here you know it's Greg power and therefore the client must have me and no one can do it as well as me I've been coached heavily that if someone does something 80% as well as you you should let them do it that's a great easy to understand phrase but I think my implementation was poor so I have a great team member I wouldn't be here without her name Jesse and just starting in 2020 she's taking half of our client appointments um and it sounds crazy but when you know we had 15 clients come in last week and these loan appointments take at least an hour that's a lot of time that I would have been sitting in front of a customer now she's taking half of those so that's just one example of me trying to not be afraid and move forward and make some progress here yeah so let me let me ask you a couple questions about Jesse then um she's licensed yeah Jesse's license definitely started with me probably at age 21 and she's 29 now so um what was she doing before yeah it's a funny story my boss she had waited on my boss for a long time at a restaurant and they said come on in and interview with us and here she is I kind of uh wow it's all that she had a spark one of my other great 10 members kind of pulled her in and she's kind of grown up in the business so it's it's so fun to watch her grow and help her make a great income and watch her skills improve uh probably this is that's probably my favorite part of this job is watching my staff grow um I'm somebody who is always hired young people always I just generally don't hire experienced employees well so what is her role titled and I don't know if she's junior or support specialist or what do you how do you identify her yeah so we're running for the first time ever a two loan officer team so she would be a loan officer on the coward mortgage team and um is no is not inferior to me uh maybe a little bit more internal loan officer than me because I tend to be in charge of the relationships but she we're encouraged and her to go ahead and continue to reach and make relationships as well so this is uh she's a commission employee uh so she would be paid a percentage of the bips available so I would decrease my bips and she would take a percentage so it's a pretty traditional setup yeah and so right now she's handling about 50% then of your business that's correct that's a change and uh it is weird to think that there's clients in fact just recently I walked into a loan appointment and I I just wanted to say hi because my name's on the door and they not only did not know who I was they didn't want me in the room and uh even though all of the materials say the coward mortgage team just sees their person and I find that so true that whether you work at well or you work at Joe mortgage they just want to know who their mortgage person is yeah who their loan officer is and uh I think sometimes first of all I think that's good news for someone who works at well because they probably don't care that they're well at least I find that and that's also good news if you're no named mortgage company they just want their person yeah people want a guide for sure um but was there any kind of um scripting articulation or like you know introduce a process for introducing Jesse uh on your team and what I just give you some context is you know I've heard in the past where loan officers are trying to build teams and um you know they have somebody like Jesse whatever now start to interface with agents for example and some agents get their mortgage ruffled so did you have to address that at all um because she's been with me for eight years they already knew her but I will say we have not done a great job of rolling out hey now that's not quite true I don't have a lot of account and I have met with a lot of them and said hey I am trying to change this year and just to heads up some of your customers will be meeting with Jesse I'm 47 Jesse's 29 I'm male she's female I've found that actually it's a benefit because I will actually have agents say I think this person is a better match for Jesse they should go to Jesse um and so you know let's say that they had a client that someone with my personality wasn't a good fit for I think having a second loan officer rather than sending it to a young female somewhere else they're able to still keep it within our team and Jesse can help the customer so far it has been a great decision that's awesome good for you man and then of course kind of the idea behind that is this frees you up right give you some breathing room and I mean what do you do with the extra time are you yeah well I mean talk about that that was the idea Jeff that was the idea I think I just for the listeners we had chatted before we talked and we normally helped about 75 customers will call us a month and that's not internet leads that's not yellow that's true organic you know Jeff gave me your name I'd like to talk to you about a mortgage and we're up to I think we just hit 145 this month so we uh it's it's been warm enrichment and so we didn't get the winter law we always get a bump right at the beginning of the year with New Year's resolutions and then with the drop in interest rates um it it has not worked out that way where we're all holding on by the seat just trying to return phone calls so I will let you know what it looks like in a normal month but so far yeah I'm really glad she's here otherwise I don't know how we'd be doing it okay cool well good good for you demand to have the courage uh to do that um let's talk about the referral partner situation for a moment because I don't see it written down but something tells me tell me how many uh re-realtors you have as far as referral partners goes yeah I was a um core uh loan officer for about five to six years so I really love that training program it's made me who I am um they have a great graph called the account pyramid where basically you start people at a very young relationship and you move them and I'm or graduated uh um relationship over time and therefore you get more referrals from those accounts sadly my pyramid is just up at the top I uh I think I probably have six big referral partners that are re-letters uh maybe four bit refer sometimes and then just from doing this in this town for 18 years I have a lot of people that just occasionally will send me somebody and then I now have two builders I work with as well so that's it okay of the 145 organic referral partner driven leads coming into your pipeline can you give us kind of an assessment of like where they come from based on that pyramid like how many from that top six etc yeah you know through that training program I learned to know my metrics I know that very well it's 30% builder it's going to be about 30 to 35% realtor and then the remainders are going to be a mix of past clients past client referrals or what I call kind of business fear this could be fear of influence this could be uh divorce attorneys or networking groups um that sort of thing so it's it's very close to a 30 30 30 if you will model Jeff that I'm running with builder third realtor third and then um past client fear of influence and business of relationships that sounds like a nice diversification right no risk exposure to not too many eggs in one basket that's it that's the exact idea the the challenge can be if you choose to enter the builder space which is I mean I would if anyone is listening wants to talk about why not to go into builder space I would love them to call me I'll tell you many reasons but it can take you over and I've seen a lot of lenders be overreliant on builder business because it's the loud chicken the nest it's screaming the loudest and you keep feeding it to the detriment of the other items that if that's a real risk a real risk in our business yeah and so my style is I don't want to just leave that there I want to like unpack that just a little bit um yeah I talked to a little officer just the other day if she's in Orange County California and she has experience in the builder sector she did it for quite a long time but then got out and now coming back in and that's like her number one focus so for those that are listening and thinking like the the builders are yet because they're tired of realtors and all that stuff right what advice would you have for anybody like eyeballing the builders thinking like man if I could just get that to that's the sweet spot fishing the barrel right yeah great question well first of all know that I run the company I work with I love my company it's NFM lending and they run more of what we call like a P&L branch model so I have control over profitability I really care about pricing and how we price and the profitability of our loans so I probably feel it more than a company where you're just a loan officer the truth is the builders want a piece of your pie and we're having to surrender money to builders to help towards closing costs so the client will even call us now if you could find a builder that would pay for all of the closing costs incentives and not ask you to contribute then this whole piece of what I'm going to say wouldn't matter but it's a low revenue now the loan officer of me loves it because I get a commission on it which is consistent per you know dot frank but from a company standpoint when you're giving away money to these builders consistently you do need to know this is a low revenue um relationship so that's one warning I think the other problem I have is the sense of competition uh the site reps tend to think that they own you and tend to think that they can do or say whatever they want to say to you because if you don't answer I have two other people that will and I've always called the relationship very much like an abusive alcoholic relationship where I'm never quick enough I'm never low enough I'm never good enough I often have found that sometimes I'll even just get blamed for stuff that I didn't really it fell apart but it wasn't because of the mortgage so you got to have tough skin if you're going to work with builder and I've been doing builder now for probably ten of my eighteen well probably more than that and our saying is water off the ducts back you just can't let your feelings get hurt because it is a um it's a real punch counter punch world working with builders if you had to choose between giving one business source out builder or realtor great which one what it would be builder builder and and my team is saying to me and I don't know this you got to remember the loan officer needs to remember that behind them there's so many people who touch the file but these files I'm being told are taking two x sometimes three the amount of time of a traditional purchase while one because they happen over six to nine months two because you have to double process them you have to double underwrite them and candidly you have to double originate them and I'm being told that even though builders are 30% of what we do that my team believes it's taking 60% of our time so when you combine that with the low revenue generated by having to contribute to the closing cost I just really question that I think my model works which is that 30 30 30 keys it's spread yeah um so I can still because look the other thing that happens Jeff is a lot of those clients may be introduced to you but not buy with that builder yeah that happens all the time or decide they want resale so the builder knows that too and they know and that's why they want you to pitch in that these are introductions you wouldn't get and so at the end of the day I'm I'm glad to have builder I plan on keeping it but these loan officers we all need to be real careful because that can take over your business and look one one owner of a company changes his mind and you're you're gone yeah I just see some parallels right to the agent relationships uh but um okay that's good to give us on the builder stuff um okay so let me ask you let's go back to the leads the referrals and all the cost of 145 in your pipe right generated from from past clients fear of influence realtors all that uh let's take realtors for a second because right I do these various informal polls and I ask the audience and you know whoever else say hey you know what's your one focus for this year and I will tell you that over 80% of the responses come back like I want to get better worth agents I want deeper relationships so you know what I'm saying what did you say oh no no I said yeah I was talking to one of my co-workers and he's like I'm gonna talk to 60 realtors this month I said that sounds terrible you know I can't believe you want to do that yeah yeah okay so go on what's the further advice why is that what would you how would you advise him and how you got a team member sneaking in right behind us hi guy or whoever that was okay let's have a meeting one of the things one of the things we talked about um these these two ladies have picked up the phone with these 145 leads that have come and this is Brianna on your left and Mary Margaret on the right uh these I'm proud to tell you where you had it they're going to yoga I'm jealous now what what time to come in the office this morning they were here before seven so but one of the things we're doing this year is really trying to have accountability within our team to use the mortgage lifestyle to our advantage which is we're not in a formal corporate setting you know you can wear yoga clothes and if you want to come in at six and kick out at four then that's fine with me as long as customers are happy and we close on time so uh hmm have a great day I'm gonna turn off my phone I can do that and make sure you look at your email catalog I will I will see you later bye guy that's awesome okay okay thank you well so um yeah no I um you know I would rather go deep with big realtor partners I have a team I've six so I'm the six or six of us two fronts you just met them yep two front loan partners there's two loan officers we talked about me and Jesse and then I have two full time processors we have gone old school processing and Jeff what that means is when I give you that loan I don't want it back you know unless it's on fire this is your relationship you update the realtors you you talk to the clients and but I'm designed to do 20 loans a month so that has they can handle it's 10 loans per so uh so versus a processor who does 25 30 a month but has to depend upon the originator to do this do that we've got I just feel like it's not efficient we've gone to a old old style processing this year but yeah I have fewer realtor accounts their teams I think teams appreciate teams some of my good individual realtors don't like my team because they don't get me right a team appreciates that each person does a little piece of it so I would if I was a single loan officer I would go with things after single realtors and if you're a loan officer who's a team of three I would go after a realtor who's a team of three I'm a loan officer who's a team of six I tend to look for bigger realtor teams and really pour in they actually don't have a choice they're gonna work with me it's just win um because I'm just gonna keep talking to them and keep calling them and keep sending them a video and but I you know you don't need many I think you need five good realtor teams in your role and uh so so of the five agents let's just call these elephants or whales whatever um I'm trying to get a sense of like their volume are they with the mix of listings versus buy sides do you tend to work more with the buyer's agents are you and I'm gonna throw a lot at you and are you entering the discussion if you're marketing or prospecting to a team are you starting with the listing agent because they tend to be the the chief you know yeah I think yes everything you just said uh my relationships usually with the chief who usually does the listing um I am making sure that all six of us meet with all six of them I think that's a key tip they're like hey yeah hey Greg come come meet with our team I'm gonna roll in with all six of us um we just had an issue where one of our realtor partners struggled with addendums and my processor came in and said hey I've designed an email to show them how to do addendums and I was like no you're not sending that you're going over tomorrow morning with coffee and you're gonna sit down you know because my team's great and the more I can leverage how great they are by getting them in front of the realtor partners they're not even they don't really care about me they care about Brianna and Mary Margaret so um so yeah so I generally will go after the listing agent keep that relationship but when we're picking up the phone you're right it's the buyer's agent who are calling me they're often more of a beginner okay so so a common um issue I hear from my listeners and I know you've dealt with us in your career is the when you are pursuing these teams or listing agents per se or you're trying to cross sell listing agents that's the usual knee jerk reaction is hey I'm just a listing agent right so any advice for how you market to a listing agent be it be be it on the other end of a transaction because you know they I mean their sellers need to buy right or you know how any general advice in terms of is it a different approach to listing agents um well I think you know if you're unhappy with your realtor number the first thing that loan officers miss is they think that all realtors are the same and they're not the 80-20 rule applies so you know whether it I can't remember which one we're using the name of it but you've got to research these people ahead of time don't just call on somebody because they're on the other side look them up I mean how many transactions have they done where they buy where they sell do they have a team stalk them on the internet but really and what we're doing is I'm asking those two women you just met and the processors we get together once a month who did we work with this month that we liked mm-hmm because you get a feel for these agents they're either bossy some of them really know their stuff and so we'll get together and say all right we did 20 fields boy these two we really like let's let's let's research them and this is where I'm going that it's much more contrived that we're gonna go after them right so I'm doing the gifts I'm doing the would love to get an appointment but also you know I think what we miss is the human condition that we're all habitual creatures and so I think if you as the loan officer like myself will just call and not call an ask for business but just call hey Jeff it's Greg hey you know I'm interested in working with you I just call and do you have any mortgage questions I can help you with right now cool awesome and you know what I find so often they'll say no and then I'm like getting ready to hang up and like wait wait there's the one thing going on and one deal what do you think about this and now we're in conversation cool I may call from time to time see you later chick and so I don't even like ask them to dance with me I just do you service that's right that's right do you service yeah um and I may have Mary Margaret go deliver them um Chinese lunch for no reason one day I mean you just assume that we're gonna work together it's just win well I have people let's not forget there's a certain amount of courting that has to happen no doubt you know and people tend to like overlook that or forget it or or in today's world of like short attention span and everything's rushed you know they skip that that's that's right and here's what the truth is we're all horrible at follow through so the more you can qualify the realtor partner ahead of time and only have fewer you're targeting the higher the chance to follow through because we're all so short attention span that we think that I can make a call it's gonna turn into referrals no these are these are three six months look if Jeff if you go after someone it's great as you are in six months they will be referring you it's a given yeah so now it's just who you're gonna go after now that feels a lot better god day yeah more like your instant role yeah to have certainty yeah and that's a that's a mindset why by the way that you have not everybody is there yet although they could be however that's the right mindset to have do you utilize like bomb bomb or anything like that during a transaction if you or afterwards for that listing agent let's say or any agent that you want to market too this is something we're trying to do right now the 145 leads have us a little sideways here's how I tell my team just to give you a nugget I here's my two cents any phone call with an inquiry is a is a failure and that's a little strong failure but basically it means that I haven't told you the answer Jeff and it means that you don't know what's next and so what we're trying to do is we've learned how to incorporate bomb bomb into outlook this year and we're trying to have you know here comes your appraisal and now you've got to sign an appraisal form for any lender and send it back well we're trying to do me and Jesse will sit on camera and just do a very light video hey you've just received your appraisal you're getting this video that means that everything's okay but you pay 500 bucks for it let me give you 45 seconds on what's in an appraisal you know okay we're done call with any questions and graduation your appraisals in so we're trying to I'm just starting to realize my emails aren't getting read honestly mm-hmm I feel like I've told someone something they're saying they didn't find it out and there's a disconnect there and the disconnect is I'm using a tool that's not working people aren't reading email or there's the yeah do they understand contextuality over over just a text message yeah over an email yeah yeah right that's really cool man I like that are you um actively pursuing any new agents at this time are you just sitting tight on the ones you have um you know I think for my beginning loan officers and I mentioned to you that I have made changes I used to have a branch so I used to have four or five loan officers who worked here not for me and my team just within my branch I've since decided I didn't want to do that anymore and starting about four or five months ago I'm just focusing on myself and that was a very hard decision that came a lot of um in in respect and in anyway um that's the question again I got lost are you are there any are you are you pursuing any agents right now actively marketing I am now seeing the always be selling kind of always be courting that I'm not doing it enough and I do have a couple of agent teams that have been huge contributors in the past who are falling off and when I call them and I'm like hey are there other boyfriends or girlfriends they're like no uh we're sending everything we got and I'm like oh and I'm like I guess you're just doing a lot more listings so what I am realizing is as I've gotten older in this business my agents are becoming more listing agents um I need to be I do yes we have committed to restoring the account pyramid a bit more and to start moving some folks up and so what we're talking about today I'm excited to actually go make some new relationships and what is your approach when you say go make new relationships there's like you know 50 different ways we could do this I'm just curious while we're on this thread what does that mean to you when you say go make new relationships how would that look like if I've shadowed you for a day what would that look like um well one it would look like like Friday today we did our realtor update calls so it would look like when I call the selling side I'm much more likely to um be open to relationship and really listening to Jeff and maybe asking that extra question to see if if this is one relationship so I am using the transaction to date around and then I think just the awareness that in this year we'd like to add two additional realtor teams to our our trusted group um I just was at lunch with one of the realtor teams head we went to a tie restaurant and there was a guy that I thought I wanted to court and he on his own brought him up and I learned that this is a internet guy and I've decided I don't do internet realtor I've done it I've tried it I don't do it anymore if you want someone to be your filter and call your leads and give you out of 112 that work I'm not that's not a job I'm interested in anyway I didn't know that that was the way you ran his business and now I doubt I'll be pursuing that realtor so um I think it's one awareness and then two doing the research I know the realtor's in town yeah so I will once these leads die down I'll spend some time kind of seeing it who's who's uh who's out there and who's sending what to what sure do you happen to like with your core group your top six realtors or five or six um do you intentionally you know plan on business planning meetings with them either as a group or individually quarterly something like I do I do I would take quarterly I would encourage one officers to do that not through a desk I mean I just had a good realtor partner John sitting here and um it was a funny meeting because I he he went through his 2020 business plan with me and it took like an hour and I gave a feedback it was great and I was all ready to give him mine and he like shook my hand and kissed me and walked up the door and it's like oh this one's it bad this is yeah yeah so but no I you know if it's I we'd encourage one officers to say hey let's go take a walk uh-huh let's go to parking walk let's go bike together um play tennis squash racquetball whatever the thing is yeah yeah I think that the more we can let them see us outside of this stuff yeah you know I think that's really been a breakthrough for me to make deeper relationships there's not a realtor I work with that I haven't been in their home really yeah even the ones on the lower end of the uh pyramid no no oh the top pyramid my upper pyramid yeah and for the first time this year talk about breakthroughs I have this whole thing where I keep my personal life separate from business but I actually did my first ever big party at my house and uh had all my realtors come over and that was something was really scary for me um and and it went it went all right it went well so uh we're gonna try it again next year well no you you raised such a great point there though I love how you articulated that we need to let the realtor see us outside of the business environment by the way golf is a great way to accomplish that no doubt you cannot find anyone to play I do play and I'll buy the um you know the tournaments yeah I can't find anyone to go golf really oh wow you're in return yeah I I but uh now we've got all these top golfs and these that's the easier way to do it top golf yeah it is it is that's an hour versus like five hours you know it is it is with a plate of appetizers and a glass wine yeah that's awesome well I'm glad we hung out there for a while because you know there's so much um attention around uh technology and online and internet leads and I do think it has its place but my advice to and you know you're well seasoned um my advice to loan officers is you know don't get lured in by that I tend to fall back on the stats so let me just throw this at you right you know this as well as I do so uh in the US there's roughly five million transactions a year according to the NAR home purchases well according to the NAR uh realtors are involved with 80 plus percent of those so that's a pretty huge number and yes we we want to when possible get to the customer first however I like to get in front of the flow of a wave you know what I mean and how much of that wave can I take off can I grab for me as that wave is passing by and somebody who's just sharing this with me the other day tell me if you agree with this is the referrals all the mixed emotions that come with referrals and realtors and all that kind of stuff it is still your highest profit um lowest effort air quotes I'm not saying it's easy you don't have to work for it I'm saying it's a different sale than an internet lead all that um and it's your highest ROI and probably best future referral source um the referrals versus cold business agree and my favorite like on my team we're all about past client referral we're all about past clients coming back but I got to remember every one of those probably came from a realtor in the first place yeah so to your point realtors are also giving you the gift of future business aside from just that transaction they're giving yet that's where this is at and could you be a mortgage person and not work with real estate agents most definitely um I would ask why and if you say I don't like realtors I I would say there's probably 5,000 of them in your town keep keep looking there's some real winners out there um but there are a lot of pretenders no doubt um okay we'll just leave it at that I was just gonna go time to get up that thread all right I'm looking back on my notes here see if there's any last points I want to make before I set you free because you got 145 leads to follow up on yeah yeah yeah where where are you at now let's just close it out this this at this point you're at how many years in the business 18 18 years how much longer do you want to be in the business yeah that's a really good question um you know I go through love and hate with this business I think a lot of loan officers could relate to that yeah as I'm in year 18 I I really love it um I love it for what it's able to help the people who help me do in terms of their income and their quality of life also remember Jeff we help people through a really stressful transaction that they're only gonna do four times in their life I mean I come from a counseling background they used to be a school teacher I've got a master's degree in counseling and this is my helping profession I mean this is how I see it this is how I love on people and um and I get paid really well to do it and I get to run my own business so yes it's a hard business but if you're in it I just think you got to be so grateful now be careful it will eat you up and you know I you and I have talked to touch about this year I've got to find a way to do things different and work fewer hours more is not better I if these loan officers are looking at me and saying oh he does 200 by the way there's a guy who does 600 but 200 is no better than 100 it's all the lifestyle and I think loan officers especially in the early years think that it's all gonna be so much better when they have more more units you know I would tell them not at all in fact it gets worse sometimes if you have more units pick your lifestyle and then reverse engineer how many relationships and how many transactions it takes to live that lifestyle but be careful about thinking that more is going to be more because I'm actually this year I think I'm learning that more is less and and and it less is more and I actually want less this year I want less relationships I want less employees I would say maybe you want less loans the problem with 145 leads I really want 50 yeah I want 50 leads and 100% conversion right what about 20 leads and 200% conversion I mean that's really mastery so yeah just you know I but I I want to stay in it because I think it keeps teaching me so much you know but to answer your question if I got another 10 years in me I'd be surprised this is a high burnout field but I am open to if I can learn to adjust my expectations a bit more to be much less unit driven or income driven and much more quality driven like that's one of the things I've loved about talking with you is you really take the time to connect you're a gifted listener and if I'm getting so busy that I'm not doing that I'm too busy and honestly looking back over the past couple years I've been too busy so let's slow it down in this weird world in some ways the less you do the more you'll gain so I love it that's kind of where I am yeah I love that that's great advice man thank you so much you answered that perfectly yeah thank you for the opportunity to answer you're such a good listener oh thank you this for me it's a labor of love to do this you know and I mean it's kind of a passion play it's not like I'm getting you know paid to conduct these interviews but it's it's the pass through pay it forward thing that happens you know in the industry that's the reward so it's been great meeting with you and I when I go on my walks or bike rides I love to listen to these kind of podcasts and I'm sure there's so many people that really you're changing lives by just letting us talk to each other in this weird third party way of talking through you to each other so yeah thank you for all you're doing man yeah hopefully we'll meet up in an event in the near future here um let's do this I'm gonna let you go because I know you're busy but if anybody does want to reach out to you what would be the best place to do that website email what do you suggest yeah that's great my name's Greg and my last name is coward with a T so COW like a cow and then arc class just on my website looked me up my cell phones right there you can text me or call me I'd be happy to answer any questions anybody had that is a funny thing about this business is whether it's core or you here today we're all on such an island but yet I do find the loan officer community is really good about unless it's in your backyard right because then we get a little weird it out you know it's what if a if a woman in Des Moines Iowa wants my help uh why not so uh yeah please if I can pay it for it I'd be happy too awesome we'll appreciate you and listeners if you like this interview you know what you do hop on wherever you're listening to this leave us a review please it lets us know that we're making an impact and so appreciate everybody tuning in and uh we'll see you on the next one bye for now thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio one more truth in mortgage marketing get more free training and resources at 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 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 attracting convert agents into referral partners plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content 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