How to Reactivate Dormant Buyers and Eliminate Bad Debt for Past Clients

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, hey, listeners, what's up, Jeff Zimffer. Welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Thrilled that you're tuning in and listening. So here we are. It is February 9th. We are cranking through. We feel like this year is already off to a fast pace. I know I do. I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed, feeling that it's been more challenging to coordinate and schedule podcast guests. So by the way, always reaching out to the audience if you know of a good guest that we should feature. Let me know. I've got some pretty cool people coming your way. It just takes, you know, when you go higher, when you reach higher, it takes longer to get on people's calendars. And so some of those good interviews are coming your way very shortly. But today you get just me. But if you want to make a suggestion on who we should have on the podcast, hey, jump into the Facebook group, go to Facebook, you type in Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast and that's where you can make a suggestion. I love to see your input there. All right. So also you may have heard on the past couple of episodes, I've been testing out this new feature, which is called Ask Jeff Anything, which is you can leave a audio message for me a question to ask me anything. You can do that over at AskGEOFF, AskGefAnything.com, do it from a mobile device, just go ahead and go there. We'll link it up in the show notes also, and what you do is just tap it and leave me a question. I think it's about a, you get about two minutes to leave it. So don't get worried, right? Get right to the chase of what the question is you want to ask. And right now, what I want to do is I want to share a couple of the questions that have been presented to me, because remember, what I'm going to do is for every question I get, we're going to throw those into a contest and every month somebody's going to win a swag box, right? And I'm going to choose somebody who had the best question, the most thoughtful question, right? And right now, by the way, because it's a little slow going with you people leaving me questions, I'm just going to share a couple of questions. Here's the thing. See if you can do better than these questions, all right? So I'm going to start with Natalia Mann, Natalia left me a question, and Natalia is recently just opening her own mortgage brokerage shop, so kudos, congratulations to you. But Natalia asks me the classic timeless question for someone who's not tech savvy. What is the best CRM? You know, not the easiest question to answer without actually speaking to you and understanding a little bit more about where you're at in your business growth wise, who do you have on your team, your setup, your processes, and things like that, what your budget is. But you said the one thing, and that is not tech savvy. And so there is a short list of CRMs, but when somebody says not tech savvy, I immediately tend to remove certain, certain CRM solutions from that. And I'm always at the risk of getting somebody pushing back on me, getting hate mail, you know, whatever the case is saying, hey, well, I use this in such CRM, and I'm not tech, look, this is based on the context that I have, with the information that I have. So I'm going to give you two suggestions. Oh, by the way, she also said she implemented flowify already, which is awesome, smart move for you, flowify to really streamline the loan process there. And of course, that integrates to most if not all of the CRMs, and I did two episodes with flowify over the years now, this being our sixth year of the podcast, so thank you for being here. But here's my answer, two that I wrote down immediately based on not tech savvy, she's using the flowify, be in touch and whiteboard. And maybe if you're listening, that's one of your CRMs, great, if not, I'm sorry. That doesn't mean there aren't other CRMs that are good for non-tech savvy people. That means those are the two that are most top of mind, no pun intended, I know that's another CRM out there that if you want to get started quick and easy, and the process for you onboarding and ramping up in from what I understand in my experience is pretty quick and simple. So hopefully that answers your question. All right, so by the way, get your question submitted to me, ask Jeff, G-E-O-F-F, ask Jeff anything, there's a link in the show notes. If you're on your mobile, just tap the show notes, be taken right to the page, tap, leave me a message, and we'll go from there, and you just might get featured and add it into the monthly contest to get an awesome swag box, a private call with me, and all that good stuff. Okay, so what are we talking about in this episode? So I was thinking about what content do I bring to you today, and when it's just me, and how can I maybe do a little bit of a coaching session? So this is back to you in the private Facebook group over at Facebook, the mortgage marketing radio podcast group. So if you're looking for it, you look for mortgage marketing radio podcast on Facebook. I posted in there yesterday the recent survey by Fannie Mae, the title of which the thrill is gone. The share of Americans who say it's a good time to buy a home, hits it all time low. And I thought we would unpack this a little bit because, I mean, look at, first of all, it's smart if we look at things as how they are, not as how we wish they were, right? And let's face it, we are in a market of hyper low inventory, high demand, still very low interest rates, although most people under 40 wouldn't know that. And what do we do? We've got all this pent up demand, brown prices are skyrocketing, double digit growth year after year after year. So we're running into this, you know, an affordability issue for sure, right? And so I talked about this in the podcast group on Facebook, and we had a nice dialogue in there. By the way, I want to give a shout out to Tim Fox for engaging. Let's keep the conversation going over there in the Facebook group. But look, the Fannie Mae Home Purchase Sentiment Index, that's actually a thing. The HPSI decreased 2.4 points in January. It's lowest level since May of 2020 as affordability constraints continue to weigh on the housing market. Four of the index's six components decreased. So four of six areas of sentiment, right, have decreased month over month. And in January, a survey record low of 25% of respondents reported that it's a good time to buy home. So what that's saying is 25% of people surveyed said it's a good time to buy a home. This is 69% of consumers reported that it's a good time to sell. So you know, how do we address this, right? And especially when we talk about the younger buyers, millennials, right, younger buyers are growing increasingly pessimistic about home buying conditions. Look at this further stat here of respondents aged 18 to 34, and I know let's just wipe out the 18 year olds. Anyway, the point is this 15% of them think it's a good time to buy 83% believe it's a bad time to buy. It's a matter of fact, this is broken down here. If I get further, if I click on this, I know you guys can't see this, but hey, in the green section here, we're trying to think, what are we seeing here? If I can see the green, it's pretty high. It's pretty high for people age 35 to 44. What percentage of people think it's a good time to buy? Hmm, wow. Roughly the same. Let's just call it 15 to 20% or less. So small segment of the market. All right. So all this wonderful buildup. What am I talking about? I'm talking about how do you respond? How do you pivot? How do you show up? Are you going to keep talking about interest rates are low? Or are you going to shift the conversation to understanding how buying a home is part of your total wealth building strategy, part of your tax advantageous strategy? And I know some of you listening right now already do this, whether it's using tools like MBS Highway or mortgage coach, but I think more than ever as it's gotten more challenging to motivate convinced people, especially with all the media out there, how do you get people to be confident and active in purchasing a home, especially if you've got, now how many of you listening right now have got buyers that are tired, buyer fatigue, people who've tried to submit offers, multiple offers, and they didn't get accepted, right? I think all of you do. Once again, the question is, how do you respond? How do you show up? I think of, you know, people like Denise Donahue, the mortgage nerd. I think of people like JB, loans by JB Justin Brown on Instagram, who are once again, you've heard me say it, leading with education. I think of Menwin, who's doing some great videos on Instagram as well, leading with education, demonstrating, not telling by the way, not saying, you know, hey, home buying, you know, people who want a home have far greater wealth than people who rent. Okay, it's, you know, it's one thing to tell it's another thing to show. And by show, I mean charts, graphs, figures, numbers, statistics, visually, not the spoken word, right? Because if you heard the last episode we had with Debra Bird, right, I remember her saying that talk is cheap, show me. If you truly believe that buying a home is a great financial investment for the right person at the right time, then demonstrate that. And if you're wondering like, what do I, how do I, what do I say on social media? What do I post? Maybe you've asked yourselves that question before. This is your opportunity to show up differently. If you're investing in the tools like an MBS highway or mortgage coach, they've got the tools in there for you to use as a matter of fact, on our private call, our weekly mortgage marketing pro members call, we walked through one of our members, Carrie Cobb, what's up, shout out, we walked through. This scenario, and I know other of our members use these tools as well to help people understand in a visual way, which creates better understanding and clarity around a complex topic of, right, sometimes buying a home and helps them better understand why this makes sense financially to buy home. And when the larger percentage of people are saying, it's not a good time, well, why? Why is it not a good time? Is that because prices are high? Okay. Well, let's then now look at the forecast for your area, and by the way, there's a variety of ways to do that. MBS highway, of course, provides a means to do that through their tool, which allows you to do look at future appreciation rates and things like that and build those into a cost of waiting and analysis, a rent versus zone analysis. So if you're not using tools like that, if you're just simply talking, well, that's one part of it. And I don't know how skilled you are at talking, at, you know, convincing people based on your words alone that now's still a good time to buy. But if you can actually show people a compelling future of the cost of waiting, of the bid-over ask based on future appreciation using actual real data, well, then that becomes much more convincing, right? And where does that strategy, mortgage strategy, mortgage planning, using buying a home as part of your wealth building, are you including that in your conversations right now? And coming out of the huge refi boom that we had, you probably haven't been, or maybe you haven't exercised those muscles in a while, and your muscles might be a little weak. And so it's going to get harder, right? People are going to get fatigued, get tired. How many of you listening right now have buyers who took a time out in the last six months or a year? Took a time out, said, you know what, I just need a break, too competitive, I don't even know if it's a good time to buy. And if you've got those prospects leads, people you know at some level that you've had a conversation with the past, in the past you did a pre-qual, a pre-approval, and they were just like, you know what, I need a time out. What would happen if you actually reached back out to those people and decided to do a cost of waiting analysis? You could do it over a video email, you could do it by calling them, or probably the two that I would look to doing first, texting, eh, easy to blow that off. Like World, send them a video, hey what's up Jeff, this is Frank from ABC Morgan, I know we talked, you know, six months ago and you were looking to buy a house but got a little tired, got a couple of offers shot down, totally get it, and you know, it's part of my commitment though to stay in touch with all, you know, my sphere of influence, right, past clients, people I've spoken with who, you know, to gauge their interest in possibly looking at the market again. And what I'd like to do is, by the way, here's what you can do. I just had this idea pop in my head. What if you sent an unsolicited cost of waiting analysis or rent versus buy analysis to all the people you've spoken to in the past that had the ability to purchase a house and did have the desire but got tired, got fatigued, had multiple offers turned down and they just said, you know what, I need a time out. What if you sent a video to them doing a screen share, showing them a cost of waiting analysis or rent versus own analysis. And even with the situation of the market, you know, being a low inventory high demand and this home buyer sentiment study from Fannie Mae that's showing that, right, that the disparity of people feeling like now's a good time to buy, right, it's at a record low. It's been since 2020. So you're dealing with the psychological factors of they are buyer fatigue, they're wondering if they even should buy. And what's going to convince them to move forward? What's going to get them off the fence? You, you being a mortgage professional, being a mortgage advisor, articulating to them that yes, you, it might be difficult, yes, you might be fatigued. Maybe there's a growing sentiment that it's not a good time to buy but what I've done is I put together this scenario for you that shows you the cost of waiting or the cost of rent versus own knowing that rents are going up, going to continue to go up, etc, etc. And you just decided to do one of those a day. Do one cost of waiting or rent versus own screen record with you sending it to one person a day who you've worked with in the past. Their offers didn't get accepted, they got buyer fatigue and you send one a day. I know this works. I've talked to other people that it works for and I know it works on the real estate side as well to give you that comparison. I know of an agent and I've now been coaching other agents on this unsolicited CMA. Yours is an unsolicited cost of waiting rent versus own. They didn't ask for it, you're not calling up and asking them for permission, you're sending it in an email with a video, right, like a bomb, bomb type video, doing a screen record showing them the cost of waiting analysis, using a tool like MBS highway or mortgage coach, ideally or whatever tool it is you use, but you've got to give them the visual aspect of that, the numbers and carry that out over a 10, 5, 10, 20 year window because it's only that that's going to, I think, help them, you know, people buy emotionally and they back it up with logic. And if you can demonstrate to them, this is what the cost of waiting is, yes, even in the market that's low inventory, that's a tough market, yes, even when the buyer sentiment is, it's, quote, not a good time to buy. And if you do that one a day, five a week for a month, 20 in a month and you get two who get reactivated, get back out there in the market, is that worth it? And not just the now business, but what about the six months from now, a year from now, what about when inventory hopefully does open up a little bit, right? So that's tip number one for today. Oh, by the way, before I get, before I forget that, why does it make sense to do this and provide the financial information, right, the compelling reasons of the cost of waiting and looking at how buying a home fits into your overall wealth building proposition? Well, if we're talking about first time home buyers, let's say, right? First of all, we know that the appetite for millennials, first time home buyers, that bracket in millennials are getting older, right? They're like 40 now, some of them, 90% of them said they want to buy a home. And a large percentage of them understand that it's a good investment for their overall financial future. I'm looking at a study right here from ThousandWat Consulting. What is the primary reason you want to own a home? Financial reasons, buying a home is a good investment and builds wealth, 47%, emotional lifestyle reasons, pride of ownership, a place for me and my family to call home, 50%. So give them the piece that you can, which is the financial reasons, buying a home is a good investment. Those are the logical reasons, the emotional reasons they have already, which I just stated. As I said, one a day, by the way, this survey, when do you want to buy a home? One to three years, 46%, ASAP, 30%. Go back to the people that you did a pre-approval pre-qualify for six months, 12 months ago and do that. Okay. And then, secondly, don't forget, how do we keep our volume up? I talked about this, by the way, I had the great privilege of speaking with one of my dear friends and top producers in the business, Michelle Otto, Michelle out of Colorado, $100 million producer. If you're listening, she's been on the podcast before. She's also a member in our private coaching group, mortgagemarketing.pro. If you want to check that out, you can go watch our brief video, mortgagemarketing.pro. Anyway, Michelle and I were talking and we were talking about the conversation of how do we, you want to make the same money you made last year, right? We had the ReFi boom, you made a good chunk of money, a lot of money, but obviously, ReFi's are tapering off. Well, she brought to the conversation the opposite side of the equation, which is, yes, as a whole, maybe, ReFi's are down, but look, if you want to keep your volume up in terms of your production, your units, don't make the mistake of saying no to ReFi's based on rate. I know you guys have heard this before. If you're follower of Barry Habey, but all like, I am, you understand this strategy, but sometimes you need a reminder, and that is this, debt consolidation. One of the things that you should be doing is reaching that out to your past client database, right, who closed a loan of ReFi 12 months or more ago, let's say, right? Some of them, six months, it might make sense based on appreciation rates and things like that, just as a check-in. But if you're not doing the annual financial planning reviews, stop, hang up, and go make five calls right now and do it. Because that strategy has been around for 30 years, right? And that's the way you continue to keep your volume at the same levels you've done during the ReFi boom, is you go find the people who need debt consolidation or who need access to cash, because we have had record appreciations, people have record equity, but a lot of people racked up some serious debt, too, whether that's bad debt, credit cards, cars, and things like that, paying for college, et cetera. And you as the mortgage advisor, right, let's have the conversation about restructuring bad debt for good debt. So look, it's on you to get proactive and become more valuable to your clients. Again, a video. Hey, what's up? This is Jeff from ABC Mortgage, hey, it's been 12 months, 24, 36 months, since we last checked in on your mortgage, hope things are well. Part of my job as a mortgage advisor is to make sure that you're leveraging your biggest debt you probably have, which is your house, that you've got the right mortgage for your situation. And look, sometimes people need to restructure bad debt for good debt. I'd love to do a free analysis for you to look at, can we get you in a better position, financially, lower your overall cost and expenses, and put you in a better situation in terms of your long-term financial plan. Something like that, just completely off the top of my head, right? Again, could you do one a day? Could you do two a week? Could you look at your client database and find those clients, those 10, 20, 30 clients who you had great rapport with, whom you might guess, probably have some credit card debt still? Because clearly people aren't going to re-fi for rate anymore, right? They're going to re-fi because they need access to cash. For various reasons, college, expenses, family-related medical issues, and so forth. Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's freeing up, maybe it's paying off that car loan, maybe it's paying down those student loans, credit card debts, et cetera, but they've got this tremendous asset called equity, where they can reposition that and put themselves in a better situation financially. Are you making those calls as well? That's what I'd like to know. Let's keep this conversation going in the Facebook group, jump over to Facebook, type in mortgage marketing radio, and don't forget, you can ask me anything, and then go to ask Jeff anything, G-E-O-F-F, and let's have a conversation. I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thanks for tuning in, and by the way, if you do want to check out our mortgage marketing pro membership, go to mortgagemarketing.pro, check out the short video, and I'll see you on the other side. Thanks for listening. Bye for now. 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 of that. You're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchased business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchased business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you, agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus, done for you proven marketing materials and plug-and-play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts, and seats, partnering with affiliates, real easy. 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