Secrets of Converting Online Leads to Closed Sales

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, what's up, everybody? Jeff Zimfer, you know who I am. I'm the host of this podcast episode and the whole dang show, mortgage marketing radio. Thanks for tuning in. If you don't know by now, what we do here is help loan officers get more agent referrals so they can become the go-to lender in their local market. How do we do that? Hey, we help you create a personal brand that attracts agents instead of chasing agents. We help you identify the producing agents in your local town and we help you implement a proven system for closing more loans without having to co-call agents pay for leads, chase, beg, borrow, steal. You build a stampede, a lot of agents who seek you out, brokers as well, teams, everything, helping you build the presence online and social media so that you become the go-to lender of choice in your local market. Hey, by the way, I got a quick success story. I wanted to share with you one of our members, our OG superstar members, Liz LaFour, what's up? If you're listening to this, shout out to you. Liz recently changed companies and it's interesting because she shared with us that she was told by her previous management that maybe she should focus on one thing or a different niche than teaching classes to agents. And today, almost two weeks after leaving her previous employer, she has 69 Realtors signed up for her Instagram class. So she's leading with education, she's helping Realtors solve problems, overcome challenges, delivering unique tangible value that gives Realtors advantage and thus differentiates her in her local market and attracts people to want to partner and work with her. That's how you differentiate. That's how you build a pre-eminent brand and reputation in your local market in addition to being a world-class loan officer, of course, which she is also. So if the name of the game is getting in front of agents, right, if that's going to be a source of business for you, right, and perhaps the primary source, then we know it's law of large numbers. And you can do that once you choose, go to broker-previews, open houses, you can do coal-calling if you want. Hey, everything works, it just doesn't work equally well, everywhere all the time for everyone. You got to figure out what's going to work for you. Is teaching agent classes right for everybody? Of course not. But for those that are open to it, for those that want to actually lead with education and have a business that delivers to you every single month agents opting in to want to come meet with you. I mean, imagine this. Would you rather have a meeting with 10 agents or in Liz's case, 69, right, or would you rather go once you choose, once you choose, to sift and sort and find the agents you need to find? But I prefer to use leverage activities when I can and scale to get where I need to go faster. Maybe that's you, I don't know. But if you want to learn more about what we're doing and check out some other success stories, go to mortgagemarketing.pro, read Liz's story there, read the other success stories. And if you feel compelled to learn more, well, tap that little orange button that says, what could call with me yet on my calendar? And we'll see if we're a fit for each other. OK, this week my special episode talking about sources of business. I'm bringing to you a superstar with American Pacific mortgage, Mr. Kyle Wright out of Chandler, era, Zona. Kyle is a top producing loan officer. You're going to hear about his numbers of production in just a few moments. But why we wanted to bring Kyle to this conversation is because, look, I'm a believe her in that one is the worst number to have in business, especially when it comes to sources of business. And while I have stated here before that the number one source of business for most loan officers is real estate agents for good reason. We won't go into that now, but I'm happy to hit that with anybody. But there are other sources of business, right? There are consumer direct. There are places where you can buy leads where it might make sense for you. And the conversation that I have with Kyle today breaks down how he's leveraging leads online leads. And yes, dare I say partnering with select real estate agent teams and actually co-investing in some of those lead sources together to be able to generate a large volume of leads on a monthly basis with a solid conversion rate. He's going to map out his entire process for lead opt-in, lead nurture and lead conversion. And you're going to hear it's people process technology. And so if you've ever wondered what a lead conversion strategy a successful one that actually delivers and has a positive ROI, this is the conversation for you to listen to and take notes. And so I encourage you to do so. And of course, if you like this episode, please do me a favor. Leave us a review wherever you're listening to this right now on your mobile phone. Take a second. Pull over. Put it in park and just let us know you like this episode. I appreciate it. All the love to you. Without further ado, let's get into this week's show Kyle welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It is a pleasure to have you, sir. Why don't we do this? Let's take care of housekeeping right out of the gate for the listeners. Who are you? How long in the biz, brief background or on that and then give us kind of either last years or yeah, why not do last years kind of numbers, if you will? Yeah. So, Kyle, right. I'm with the American Pacific mortgage. I've been licensed since 2015 and with the American Pacific since 2016. Last year did 336 units for 138 million in the Arizona market. Yes. And what's the balance of purchase versus re-five for you, typically? Last year was 90% purchase. Oh, how about the year before that, the reverse, 90% was 75% purchase in 2021. Wow. You didn't take your eye off the ball. Nope. Yeah. So, 2018, 2019, in 2020, I had a 90% purchase business and then 2022, it was 75% and then I'm back to 90%. And primary source of that purchase business? Real true referrals. Real true referrals. All right. We're going to talk about that for sure because I see you're pretty vested in one particular brokerage. It appears to be very, very vested. Yes. Right. Okay. So, by the way, congrats on that volume. That's awesome. Units. Let's dive into that then, seeing as that is the primary source of your business is the realtor side of things. And I'm going to, if you don't mind, I'll start with that. Do a little research prepping for this. So I'm in MMI and I see you have a pretty dominant relationship with my home group, a real estate brokerage. Right? Yeah. Yeah. With one of their branches and I share an office with them. It was years in the making, but yeah, we have an office together. Are you considered the in-house lender? Yes. Okay. And for that group, we actually sought out a building together as one team that got their own little branch and then I have my branch. So we actually got our branches in the same building. So there isn't like just random my home group agents in this area. It's just one team's group that's in this building with me, but they have their own branch. So are you, the primary deals coming out of my home is from a team versus the brokerage? Yeah. So I actually have a pretty dominant relationship with two my home group teams and both of those teams are here in my office with me. All right. You said that was years in the making and I think people are always curious about how did that happen? What's kind of the origin story there? So back when I was trying to get real estate agents, I had reached out to a couple different guys that like I had known that were in the industry and I just kept hounding them and hounding them. And this one guy, he just was like, listen, I've got a relationship because I'm on this team and I have to use their lender. And I'm like, well, I'm here in case something doesn't happen. A couple of months went by and I kept texting him and just saying, hey, what's up? He ends up leaving that team that he's on and goes and creates his own team with another guy from the team that he left with. We sat, they called me and they're like, hey, we're interviewing lenders, we want to sit down with you. I sat down with them. I chatted with them and they're like, hey, we want you to be our guy. And I'm like, look, I like you guys a lot. But one thing you have to understand is like, I don't like sharing. So if I'm the guy, like I'm the guy, like this isn't multiple people, this isn't like I'm your guy. And but I will give you 100% of me and I will make this work for you. So we shook hands and that was 2016 and I was going to really start to take off for us. The two team members, the two real estate agents, the one that actually had brought me in ended up not doing real estate anymore, but his partner is who I still do business with today. Interesting. And you are still the go to lender for that team? The go to lender, they have 60 agents now on that team. And so they've grown from one singular agent to 60 agents in about six years. So that was you basically marketing yourself, putting yourself out there wanting to develop realtor relationships, you know, you got the whole Heisman side arm thing. Hey man, we're good, not interested. You persisted. Then something shifted, which opened up a door, something changed for them. You went back in there and got invited back. I'm going to assume your persistence ultimately paid off, right? Well yeah, it was definitely, you know, there was about three different agents that was trying to pursue at that same time. And all three of them actually gave me an opportunity at the same time to be their lender, but all three of them wanted me to spend money with them. And you know, agents, they love when you spend money with them. So I had to make a choice, which one of these guys was I going to spend money with because at the time, this is 2016, like this is June of 2016, I had made like $25,000 at year so far. I didn't have two nickels rubbed together and these guys are wanting me to spend 500 to a thousand bucks a month with them and I'm like, how do I tell you I'm broke, but not tell you I'm broke? So, you know, I actually took out, I could see the writing on the wall that like this was an awesome opportunity, whether I picked one, two or three option for spending money. So I actually took out a title loan against my truck that was paid for by my in-laws, took out my title loan, so I could pay my bills so that I could put the marketing budget on my credit card. And you know, because you can't pay your mortgage with your credit card, so. We might have made that money stretch a little longer if we could, but you can't. And so, you know, I took out that title loan and I was able to get three months worth the marketing paid for with Tyler and Tyler was ultimately the one I chose of the guys that like were wanting me to spend money with them. I just felt like I felt like he would be true or to our handshake agreement than some of the other guys were. Not that they weren't true, just I just felt like he had a little bit more drive and so we shook hands and we started spending money and we freaking close 30 transactions right after we started spending money. So we had like one or two months of no nothing coming in, but then August through December we closed like 32 transactions together. Are you still co-investing in leads? Yeah, yeah. I'm heavily invested in online leads with myself personally, Facebook with myself personally and then with realtor online purchase leads as well. With Tyler or other people at my home? With Tyler, with one, two, three, four other groups as well now. This is an interesting conversation, right? Because I know you know this well. There's a lot of people who poop who crap on the idea of like paying for leads and you know, that's like usually the first complaint a lot of allos that need your, you know, real tor just wanted you to pay for crap. Yeah. What's your response to that? Well, so when we were sitting there, me and Tyler was 2016. We were chatting. The meeting was only supposed to be like 30 minutes. We were in there for two hours and it just kept flowing. The juices were good and it was really funny because I said, dude, I don't have any business. I've closed like four deals and he's like, he's like, I don't have any business and I've closed like four deals and you know, we were just kind of joking around about it, but we had a very similar experience. We're like, none of our friends and family really wanted to give us a shot. Like, I had friends and family that are real estate agents, wouldn't even give me a shot. He had friends and family that were buying houses that weren't even giving him a shot. And so we sat down and we're like, what are we going to do? And he's like, you know what? Let's spend some money and I said, let's do it because I don't have any clients and you don't have any clients. And everyone's like, oh, work your sphere. Well, how do you get a big sphere? We can pay for a big sphere. So now, I have more leads than I can even fathom in my CRM that I have of all the leads I've purchased over the last six years. And unless someone is in the same category as I am, you know, spending as much money as I do on marketing, I would beg that my database of phone numbers, emails, socials and things like that is bigger than LOS that have been in the business for 20 plus years that aren't doing this type of marketing where they're buying online leads. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to get to the point where I have so many clients, I can just flip off spending money and buying them and just work my entire database and I'll have 200,000 leads, emails, phone numbers that I can just turn it off and just work inside of my own, you know, platform that I have built with all these leads that I bought because I didn't have any clients. So I was like, we're just going to buy them. Yeah. So you had to get clients somewhere and that's definitely one path to getting there. That, of course, isn't sure you've evolved over time since doing that requires certain systems to be in place to make that effect. How do you manage that now, they're all in a CRM, you got a bunch of, you know, systems and funnels set up? Yeah. So actually something new that we started, which is actually really cool, but we do have systems and funnels all set up. But actually sitting in front of me, I just made this, this is the version 3.0, there's nothing better than a good organized notepad. And so what I do is I have a CRM that organizes my leads and has drip campaigns and reminders and different things like that. But what I do is every lead I get, I put down in a column and I continue to write it down all the way down. Yep. And then I have a pre-qualified column all the way down. So this is usually like weekly, usually weekly. And then what I'll do is I'll work through the leads and once I've reached out to him, you know, a set number of times we have a set number, then it'll go to a call blast on a Saturday. So then we have callers that are calling on Saturday. So basically, you know, we've told the real estate agents, hey, I have three days to get a hold of your lead and take an application. If they don't answer for me, it's going to a virtual assistant who's going to be calling behind me for 10 plus days. If that lead has not answered after 13 days of constant reach out on the day 14th, I'm calling you and letting you know. This isn't a lead that wants to talk right now. Let us know when it comes back. But you know, at the same time in our lead system that we have, it's then doing a follow-up with that lead every month and then every two months and then, you know, so forth. And then after a year, it's bringing it back to the attention of the real estate agent saying, hey, you know, Shana, who I tried to call a year ago, still have not been able to get a hold of her, have you gotten any contact with her? And you know, it's just bringing it back to their recollection, you know, as far as that CRM goes. But I do use this on, this is my weekly organizer. And then I have my longer organizer in my CRM. I just rotate the list all the way over. All right. Some questions in there. Thanks for walking me through that, by the way. Everybody wants to know, you know, it's up to you. You're not required to answer anything here, but people are, I'm sure, curious, what CRM are you seeing? So one that I just switched to is June go. And the reason we did is it incorporates with and compass. There are several other ones that do like, I've got a buddy who's like, he's in lead generation way more than I am in the aspect of he doesn't have realtor referrals. He does only online lead generation for himself and then pans him off their agents. But his referral business back is smaller than mine, but he actually does significantly more than I do in general online. And he uses big purple dot, that's the one that he uses. And then total expert is actually working on becoming as good as these two other ones. It's, you know, it, yeah, it's like that. But the thing is, this tolexer actually has all of the tools to do it. They just don't turn it on. And it's what just turn it on. Let me, let me use it. The virtual assistants use Velocipy. Yes. Wasn't that pretty something else I can't remember? It, I mean, it's Salesforce, which is funny because June go is Salesforce and Velocipy is Salesforce. Right. Right. But they're geared different. Velocipy is very heavy on lead generation, but once it's passed a lead generation and it moved on to like a transactional, it's kind of not as great. Whereas June go is fairly decently generation up front. And then it is better on the transactional side. What are these lead sources that you're investing in? So I invest in realtor.com, realt.com, zelo.com, Facebook, Instagram, Google paper clicks. We use a CRM system called Chime for the real estate agents that buys Facebook and Google paper click leads. So it's very interesting when I think about you are deeply embedded, integrated with that realtor's business in the lead, spend, share, process, I mean, the success of those leads would you say is dependent upon both of you. Yeah, absolutely. So when we work these leads, we try to express to both teams that, I mean, we're all commission employees, right? So if we don't close deals, we don't get paid. And so we try to express like we're spending money on these leads. And you know, when we run the numbers, sometimes it costs us $800 to $1,000 every closed transaction. But if I told you that you could make $3,000 if you gave me $800 bucks or even $1,000, how many times you're going to give me $1,000 bucks? Right. Yeah, all day. I mean, it becomes a numbers day or a numbers game. And I would pay that $1,000 every single day, every time you just, you tell me how many. I mean, there was a month where they wouldn't let us spend more money. We wanted to spend more money and they wouldn't let us spend more money. What about, let's play Devils Advocate here. What about the lead quality, those online leads suck, air quotes, right? Yeah. So there is this quote from one of the agents I work on and he said the leads don't suck you suck. And that sounds really abrasive when you like just think of it just like that. But his point is you can always find an excuse somewhere as to why it doesn't work for you. But then you always hear about some other guy that's making it work, right? And yeah, lead suck, they do, you know, straight out of Glen Gary Glen Ross, man. Yeah. I mean, the leads suck and suck. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so like one of our realtors, he does trainings on it and he's like, you have to realize that if, you know, because there's guys on the team, on the real estate team, on the lending team, and there's guys that crush it with the same leads that some other person will get the same leads and they'll be like, man, I just can't get people to answer their phone or, you know, I can't get anyone to purchase. But then there's the same guy and the same team with the same leads who is closing five or six a month. So at the end of the day, yeah, the leads are terrible. Sometimes I get FICO scores in the 450. So what I did is, you know, I adapted a soft credit check rather than a hard inquiry because they're $6 for that instead of $50 for a credit report. And I just do soft polls, boom. And so now I get, you know, because before when you're working on leads, you get like one day, I'll get like 15 applications and five of those are going to have FICO's in the low 500s. Mm-hmm. Well, that's $250, I just spent on credit reports for those that were terrible. Right. Well, now that I do the soft poll, it's 35 bucks, you know, but if that's every single day, you know, I started saying myself $200 a day on leads that I was spending. So you just got to find ways of, you know, filtering through them, but you're going to get bad leads. I mean, every person I talk to is not qualified. I got people right now. I've got several people on credit repair plans that are trying to work on their credit. But I would say that a third of the leads that I get are terrible. They won't qualify for years. You know, I give them a game plan. I know I'll never talk to them again, just kind of of that. But I will say that for every lead that is sent over from the real estate team or a lead that I call, we are closing between 25 and 30% of those. Really? 25% conversion ratio on the leads. Mm-hmm. So this is on applications taken. So when they send them over, right? So we have about a 50% contact rate on leads that are sent. And then we have a, like, so last year, I had a 28% close rate on applications taken, which actually was down considerably from the years prior, is typically I run it about a 33 to 35% close rate on applications taken to purchase contracts and close funded deals. So last year was tough, man. With the rates going up and all that, it really hurt the conversion because there was so many people that got priced out that did take applications for that, like, then couldn't buy because by the time they got someone except their offer, rates had gone up so much that they couldn't qualify for the home anymore. So last year, we still maintain about a 28%. It was like 27.8% on our conversion from applications taken to actually close deals. And we have a 50% contact rate. Is the process the same for those leads from different sources, meaning are they all entering some top of funnel somewhere, or is it different based on lead source? Yes. With the realtors, so just focusing on realtor leads that come on over, I have multiple teams. They all like to run just a smidge bit different. But essentially, the realtors are getting their inflow of leads and then they're calling. And then when they get a hold of them, they're passing it to the lending team for us to contact them. So our initial funnel is the agents getting contacted with it first and then filtering out who's ready to talk to and who's not ready to talk to to us. And then from there, that's not the paid leads, right? Those are the more S.O.I. leads and all that to the realtor's get. Those are Sphere leads, those are paid leads, those are all of them. So the realtor hopefully has a contact first. Yeah, so what we do is they have, we have a realtor that spends the money and then we share in it and it's realtor leads and then we have lender leads which they inquired for a mortgage. So we're talking about just the realtor, they inquired about a house, those leads. Those leads the top of the funnel is the real estate agents. When it comes to the, like where they want to do a mortgage inquiry, that one right there is our own CRM system that is just instant contact. We have to call within five minutes and we're trying to get those ones on the phone. So that funnel is then coming into the CRM automatically getting dripped on, automatically coming to someone on the lending team for them to call out for that phone number. So the ones that want to get a pre-equal, pre-approval is the goal then to get them on the phone before an online app? Yeah, my biggest piece is in why I think that we have such a big conversion ratio on these and an application rate is the clients that actually do the app with us on the phone. You're more likely to get it. I mean, the goal when you're doing leads online, the goal is the social. They say that 72% of your, 72% of your leads that you talk to, once you have a social are not going to leave you. So 72% of clients work with the very first loan officer or real estate agent that they talk to. So if I get that social, I got a 72% chance that I'm dealing with them. That's pretty good. But just to make sure I understand, you're having in a large percentage of the cases a live conversation with them. Yeah, my goal with my team is not to push the online app. We live in a digital age, I totally get it. With spear deals, I totally push online app. But if I'm dealing with an online lead that came in through online sources, you have to understand what's happening is that lead clicked on a house. And even if I'm paying for exclusive leads, right, they clicked on that house, then that one went to a different house, went to a different house and they clicked on that house. Well, there's another lender and another real estate agent that just got clicked on for that lead as their exclusive lead. Well, it's not really exclusive. That leads not exclusive to that website because now they clicked on a different house and it has to be contacted again. Now there's multiple people reaching out. So for us, if you have them on the phone, get the application because if you don't, there's some other dude that has all the time in the world behind him that's calling and power dialing that client and saying, I need your social because I got to get this done for you. And if you're not doing the same thing, the chances of that lead actually doing your online app, it's not good. Yeah. So yeah, it's like, take them off the street as we used to say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why tell them? I'm like, hey, I'm just letting you know, it really sucks how they do this. But they gave me your information to contact you. And then they're going to sell that information 10 times. So I'm just trying to make sure I get you taken care of so that when you get those calls, you're like, hey, guys, I'm good. I don't need anybody's help. Like I already got this taken care of. You know, I've set them, I've prepped them for that because that is a huge piece of like the next step is they're going to get calls after because they clicked on websites. And these places, they're in the business of selling online leads. You think that they're really going to only sell me one lead for a hundred bucks? No, they're going to sell it to me for a hundred bucks, wait a few days and then sell it for 25 dollars to someone else. So I got to be mega on top of making sure I get that social. You referenced your team. So you're running a branch. Is that what you mean when you reference your team? So at the branch level, we have eight loan officers here, but I have three loan officers that work on my team. So that way, someone's available at all times for an agent, a prequel, or something. Okay. All right. And that's they're involved in some of that lead distribution. Absolutely. So when the leads come through, the agents will be like, Hey, I need this to be called. And I'll be like, Hey, Skyler's available right this minute. Skyler's going to hop on that call with Amanda at four o'clock today. So it's kind of distributing the load. So that way we can all have lives. I mean, we have kids and we want to go fishing on Saturdays and stuff like that. So it helps distribute the loads. We have four callers me included. So I have three callers plus me. And we distribute the leads periodically so that we even have the load for us all. How long has it taken you to build out that whole process as you've just kind of highlighted? Six years. Six years. And it's still changing every day. We just implemented a brand new process like last week. So what about, what do you, I want to set that question aside, I'm looking at the MMI and I'm seeing the quantity of agents from the my home group real estate brokerage and the quantity of loans and just add a quick glance. It looks like collectively, at least for this term, which looks like 14 months, roughly 100 plus loans that you've gotten from my home collectively. Yeah, it should be at least that. Yeah, I'm curious though, I've got to assume that you're not doing that lead system like you just laid out with all those agents. What do you mean by all of them, like all the ones on the team or like all my other teams I work with every single agent that you get deals from at my home. You're not doing a lead share swap, co-pay thing with all of them. That's just for your Tyler and your big team, right? Yeah, so those agents that you're looking at are on those teams that I pay with. Yeah, and then I have several agents that I don't pay at all for. So I have probably 10 to 15 agents that are singular solo agents or they run teams that I don't pay for at all. We're trying to think of the audience. We've got people at various stages listening to this and I'm sure some people are listening and they're like, man, that sounds really either they're thinking that sounds awesome. Like I would love to do that, but it also is pretty complex what you have set up. Like not, we can do what you just described. Yeah, the thing is is with, you know, being in American Pacific, there are some cool tools and things I have access to. You know, we have AP Connect, which is a virtual calling that goes behind us. So that definitely helps with, you know, making sure we keep up on things. Because I mean, let's be honest, if we all were amazing at follow-up, you know we'd all be retired by now. Like every single every every good loan officer would be retired if he was amazing at follow-up. Yeah. Right? So I've taken that out of the equation. What's something that we're really good at, right? Really good at oh, I got a brand new lead. I'm excited about this lead and I'm going to I'm going to work on it for a few days and then if it doesn't come to fruition, what happens? You get discouraged and then you move past it. So AP Connect helps bridge that gap between follow-up and excitement. So I allow my guys the three days to work on their excited lead. And after those three days, it goes to a follow-up team that like let's literally their job is just follow-up. So yeah, this is complex, but AP Connect is part of, you know, APM and APM has provided that. But you can set up something like this on a very smaller scale. I mean, a lot of mortgage companies have a CRM. It's not super robust, but Jungeau was only like a thousand bucks for the year. Right. Per user. So you can set yourself up. There's even other ones out there. Like there's this one called lead mailbox. And it's actually super archaic. My old manager uses it. It doesn't have graphs and, you know, visuals. But it's it's very like you import data. You click a button and it does what you asked it to do. And they will build it for you. And you pay like five cents in email or like three cents a text message kind of thing. And so it's actually a really cool, like you can find a cool system for very cheap. The other thing is is when you go spend money with some of these real estate agents, it comes with a lender portal access to their CRM. Right. And you can build one of them inside of it and it comes for free. When you sign up on Boomtown or Chime or Bribity. And these are some of the three biggest ones with real estate agents. You get a lender portal access for free and you can set up all of these drip campaigns in there. So it's really, yeah, it is a little robust and it is a little complicated. But start somewhere. You don't need to have 100 different, you know, pipelines and viewpoints. Start with your initial follow up for 10 days of pain. You should be contacting that lead 10 days of pain. Once you have 10 days of pain, put it on a monthly reminder to have an automated text message go out. And then have an automated text message every other month to go to you to manually reach out to that client and the agent. That's the first three things you should set up. And if you have that set up, you can land any real estate agent. The other stuff comes with bigger teams and bigger volume that you have to adjust in a search for. But having just those three little, those three little campaigns set up will impress 90% of the agents that you work with. So what you're pitched then to those agencies is, hey, I'm going to be your lead nurture conversion partner for you. Yeah, absolutely. And this is dealing with the people listening as well, who might think that, well, don't the railroads already have that? Some do. Some do, but many don't. Yeah, so there's this, so I'll give you an example. So at the branch level, I have opportunity to work with eight other loan officers that are trying to build similar businesses to the one that I have currently built. So I'm trying to help mentor them, you know, be there. So I made the pledge that if they land a real estate team that was willing to meet with them, I will go to the meeting and help sell them on why our system rocks. So one of the agents took me up on it and met with a team, a team lead. So not the team owner, but a team lead that has three sub teams under the big team. That big team is a really well known team here in Arizona. And they have three preferred lenders. So just like we were saying, they have lenders. They've got it taken care of. We sat down and I shared with them what our follow-up looks like with our AP Kinect and what our system looks like. Very, very few lenders are doing that. Most lenders are riding it down on a piece of paper like this, working it for three days and then saying they couldn't get a hold of it and moving on. They're not calling every single day for 10 days. And neither am I. We used to, just with the number of leads we get, we can't do that anymore and properly do that. So now it's, you get three days with it and then we move it on to a virtual assistant that is calling for 10 days straight to try and get a hold of that client. And what's, do you have any numbers or percentages on that, the VA calling to try and get a hold of the client? Yeah, so the VA that we, so this is all newer, right? So this is a newer process that we've incorporated. The VA's are bringing back about 20% of what we are not getting hold of. Are these stateside VA's? Are they in other locations? In California. California, okay. Yeah, so AP, APM has AP Kinect, which is a little company within that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they run it. It costs me 250 bucks a month and then I have to pay a basis point split when they send it back to me, but if you think about that, okay, so even if I had to pay 30 basis points to them or 40 basis points to them, which I don't, but let's say I did, this 30 basis points on whatever your comp plan is that you weren't going to get, because let's be honest, you are not calling that lead in two weeks from now. Yeah, you're not getting that deal, yeah. So I'm having to pay, you know, a few basis points to get that deal back. Okay, again, again, with this $1,000 number, if I had to pay $1,000 for a lead, I'd make $3,000, how many times can I pay you $1,000, right? And you can start small. I mean, even right now, with marketing, I've spent $500 in four months on Facebook marketing and I have three contracts, $500 in four months, we turn it on in December, and I have three contracts from it. What's the ad running? Down payment assistance. You're going to get a lot of low FICO score and a lot of people that barely qualify, but the leads are dollars instead of hundreds of dollars, and once you land one, you know, the other thing is this, I'm spending money to get clients, right? And then I can work my sphere. But if every client were to send me two referrals that I didn't pay for, my $1,000 per close client just went to $350 per close client. So again, with the paid leads for these down payment assistance people, you know, we're working on putting our best foot forward. Yes, they may or may not qualify, but they also have people that are trying to purchase two. So it's not always just like what that immediate lead looks like. What can come from that lead? So I always look at if I buy one lead, and I do my job right, and I follow up right, I should be able to turn that one lead into three leads, and two should be free. No, I mean, you're thinking like a business person, right? It's most people look at how much things cost versus what they are worth, what the value is, or the return. Like in ad terms, you know, this probably return on ad spend, right? So most people saw how much this ad's going to cost me. Well, that's not the real metric to look at. It's going to, you got to look at what's the net out of that. So like you said, if you're going to make less still, are you profitable, right? Above that, I mean, you're thinking I was going to ask you this. Hearing you articulate the systems in process, and the framework through which you're looking at this, you sound like a business owner, right? Somebody whose job it is is to have a profitable business. And the number one thing to focus on is on deal flow, right? Client generation, client acquisition, things like that. Have you always thought like that as a loan officer? Or was there some point in shift where you're like, you know what? I got to get out of carrying a bag and actually run a business. So the very beginning, you know, I come from an entrepreneur or family. My dad started multiple businesses. You know, my aunt was CEO of a mortgage company at some point. And everyone I've talked to, I've made sure that a lot of my mentors and coaches are all business people. And so when I come to them, they don't care what the clients are saying to me. They go, what are your numbers? What is this? And so I've had to learn to be very, when I go to people for advice or whatever, they want to know the numbers. They're business people, right? I mean, one of my mentors, he owns, he has ownership in 36 different companies and sits on the board for 12 of those companies. They don't go in and go, oh, what's your client saying to you on the phone? And oh, man, I'm sorry that they don't qualify. He wants to know, how much you're spending, what's the return? What is being created from this? What is your percent conversion in, you know, so far? And, you know, that's just kind of where it came from is, and we start, I spent money just, willing, nilly, just because I can eat it, leads. Sure. But then it came into, okay, we're spending money here, but let's rotate that money over here because, you know, with these leads, even though we're calling double the amount of leads and getting crappier leads, it's a third the cost and our return is five to one. So, let's just buy more of these leads. We have to deal with a lot more crappier leads. How do we filter through those? Oh, we'll get a VA that calls them and filters them free, and then we just deal with those, you know, periodically, so we're not being bogged down. So it's all, you know, return on investment. How many times can I give you a dollar and get back two dollars, right? Because even if it's, you know, I'm not making five dollars on my dollar, I'm making two dollars. Again, how many times can I give you a dollar and you give me back two? Yeah, right. Yeah, but see, that's part of the problem. People want the five back or whatever, and they think, ah, that's too expensive, you know. Wrong thinking. Yeah, I've focused on if it's over two dollars, I'm in. Yeah, yeah. If I give you a dollar and I'm getting back two, then it's worth it because you have to think about when you're running your return, it is only running that return on that investment. But what else are you getting from that, right? Again, if I buy one lead, I should be able to get two leads at some point in the future, whether it's today, tomorrow, in three years from now, I should be able to get, if I do my job right, I should be able to get two free leads. So that pay you a dollar, I get two, just turned into paid you a dollar, got six. Right. And it's lifetime value of the customer as well. Yeah, I now have that phone number. I mean, I'm going to call Bob in four years from now. I'd be like, Bob, dude, how's it going? You still loving your house? Like, you know, right now, you're in that three to five year range where people go, man, I really like my house and my stay here forever, or you're in that phase where you're like, dude, I got to get out of here. And so you fall up with these people and now Bob wants to buy again, but I don't have to pay for Bob. Right. And then Bob's sister wants to qualify. And, you know, it's just a snowball effect in the compounding, right, when you do that. And if you do your job right, which like we talked about, every Lone Officer did their job right, there was a good Lone Officer and they followed up just like a 100% follow-up follow-through. We'd all be retired. Like, we wouldn't need to be working 20 years in the market in shape. We were all super amazing in follow-up. Yeah, that's true. I think I was trying to look up this quote by Dan Kennedy. I don't know if you know that name. Long time, actually lives in Arizona. Yeah, this phrase, I forget it exactly, but most people are focused on making a sale, right, to get it just to make a sale versus you should be focusing on making a sale. They get a customer, right? And so it's a little bit of a different mindset as you want to acquire a customer and obviously capture that future business. The referrals and everything else that you're referring to there. The lifetime value is there. All right. I'm keeping an eye on the clock. This has been an awesome crash course in lead, like generation marketing, thing, psychology around that. Where, then, I kind of ask you, it's interesting. Your number one source of business is realtors, yet the way you're structuring that is, you've got this incredible value added relationship with these realtors. Everybody says, add more value. How do I become more valuable? Will you clearly, I think, just outline how to be really valuable to real estate agents become this lead partner thing? And of course, just not to overlook. I'm sure you have a great customer experience and process that you've got dialed in. You're not saying that's not important either, correct? No, actually, I really don't like when people don't have a good experience. I mean, my goal is to create an awesome experience with clients, friends, families. We have multiple loan officer assistants to help with that experience. You're going to get people that are grumpy. It just is part of the game. But the goal for me is that 99% of everyone has a great experience. When they work with our team and wants to come back. Again, you're going to get people that are going to be grumpy. You know, if you go through my Zillow reviews, I don't collect as many as I used to, but I have this one guy that, in the review, he put closed on time, cheaper closing costs, cheaper rate than anticipated. But he gave me two stars. And the reason he gave me two stars is because I called him and he called me and said, hey, I really want to close this month. I said, well, we're not scheduled to close until the next month. But if you want to close this month, get me this, this, and this by tonight. And I'll make sure it gets into underwriting and I will get you close this month. He goes, well, why do I need to get it in tonight? You know, we still got two weeks left for the end of the month. I said, well, my wife is about to have a baby. So if you want me to make sure that this gets done this month and close early for you, then I need you to turn this stuff tonight. And I will make sure it personally gets the underwriter and gets done before my wife goes into labor. So that way, there's no chance you don't make it this month. So on the review, he put, if he had known my wife was pregnant, he would have gone with a different loan officer. Even though he put closed on time, actually closed early, cheaper rate and cheaper closing costs. Wow. So I share that experience. That's one experience. But like, you're going to get people that are just grumpy and they are. So you can't satisfy everyone, but focusing on having like a 90% or more satisfaction. I mean, that's great. You're going to get people that are grumpy. And another thing is, and this is something huge I train on a lot with real estate agents. Clients in a transaction are stressed. They, you are dealing with the biggest transaction of their life. And so when I talk to clients, I tell them, and I do this to real estate agents too, you are going to freak out in this transaction. And at some point, you're going to want to call me, cuss me out, say, I can't believe your underwriters are asking for all of these documents. And I make sure I have this conversation up front, right? So when they call, I'm going to be like, hey, you're cashing in one of your freak outs. And I tell clients, I say, I have emotionally prepared for you to freak out on me six to ten times during the transaction. If you get to 11, we might need to call a professional. But I've got you for six to ten of those freak outs. And they always laugh and they say, well, I'm not going to be that lady that freaks out. And then sure enough, you get under contract in five seconds after you get a copy of that contract. Jen is calling you saying, oh my gosh, I'm freaking out. I don't know if we can do this. And I'm like, Jen, are we cashing in one of those freak outs right now? And it just like brings it back down because they're like, oh my gosh, you said this was going to happen. And what it does is it makes it normalize them freaking out on you. Because I mean, as an originator, people freak out all the time. And they do. And you get your real estate agents that call you like, oh my gosh, Jen's freaking out. Like, I'm like, that's normal, man. Like, that's just part of the process. And so you just have to normalize that it's a freak out. And sometimes they're frustrating their mad. And you're the only person that they can come to. And I want to make sure I'm clear on this point. You want to be the only person that they're calling and freaking out on. Because if you're not, they're calling another lender or they're calling their mom. And they're saying, mom, this is what's going on. Well, you should have used my guy, not this guy, right? So you want to normalize the freak out and let them know you freak out on me. You call me and freak out on me. If you need a cuss and swear, you call me and you cuss and swear at me. As long as when we're done, you're still inviting me, family barbecue. And you got to normalize it. Because if you don't, they're calling someone else inventing about it. Yeah. And you're losing that deal, right? 100% man. I love that because you're kind of setting the stage for expectations, you're coaching your client, you're making it okay to call them. I could even see you sending a little booklet of like, you know, freak out tickets or whatever. Like you see those little booklets that people gift. You know what I mean? That would be so fun. Yeah, exactly. And you're like, okay, so tear one out of the book. That would be really fun. All right, man. This has been a great conversation. I know you're busy. So I'm going to give you your day back. But for those that want to follow you, connect online on social, where do you want to send them? Instagram, Facebook, what do you say? Instagram's great. MrLones.morgage is my handle. You can get me on, you know, social media on Facebook as well. But Instagram, I usually check it a little bit more. Yeah, you're stepping up some reels and all that over there. So we are trying. I made the commitment this year to go hard on social media. Yeah, same here, man. Go harder even then before. So, man, congratulations. I'm building such an amazing business and, you know, the growth that you've had. It's as you probably know from growing up around entrepreneurs and business owners and your own journey is a lot of that happens right here between the years, you know. Yeah, I did a podcast yesterday about mindset only, right? And it's totally true that like, you know, because he has, we went over like what hurdles have had across the way. And there's a hurdle every other day, right? You just have to learn to go over them. And, you know, we focus on the mindset that it takes to overcome a hurdle and keep moving forward rather than just keep, you know, in your stance. Because lots of people can go like, oh, I got to quit. You know, I can't do this. Like, I mean, 2016 for me, I was broke and I didn't have any money. And I could quit and done something else. And I didn't. I found a way to overcome the current hurdle. I didn't have any money. I borrowed against my truck and, you know, over came that hurdle. And then I continued to work my butt off to try and, you know, get it, make my dollars last because I had to pay the truck title off, you know. But it is, it is very much a mindset thing, you know, working and building a business up. And it's, it's not that hard. It's harder to overcome a hurdle than it is to build a successful business. Because the successful business comes from overcoming hurdles. You can overcome a hurdle. You can, you can build something great. Right on. Love that. All right, man, we're going to put links to your Instagram and the show notes and your website and all that for people who want to reach out to you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode. Leave us a review or share with somebody else. And I will see you on the next one by 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 if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market. Attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seats, partnering with affiliates real easy. But that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top L.O.'s authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time, for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere 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 mortgagemarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat. We'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagemarketing.pro.