Stop "Following Up" With Leads and Do This Instead

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, Listers, what's up, Jeff? This is Imfer. Welcome to another episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Question for you. Are you willing to let go of the sale? Are you willing to remove the pressure from you, from your prospects? Are you willing to not be so much about telling people what you can do, what your products and services are, what your interest rate is? And are you willing to be open to selling the problem, focusing more on the problem than the solution? My special guest on this episode is going to help you realize that the sale is lost at hello, not at the end, and that unlocking the sales game starts with mindset. Yes, building trust, but as you'll hear from our special guest today, building trust in a unique, indifferent way, that increases your conversion, accelerates trust, and makes selling a whole lot more fun. Before we get into that, just a quick word of housekeeping. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can go to Facebook and type in Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast, join our private group there where we've got more content, live streaming, special guests, ask me anything, sessions and more. That's Facebook Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast group. And then secondly, if you are looking to increase your conversions, build trust, increase your support, realtor, referrals and relationships, perhaps we have a solution for you. Look, let's face it, rates are down, refies are down, and you want more purchase business. But the challenges, real estate agents are really busy, and there's a lot of other loan officers chasing them as well. So there's a lot of noise. Therefore, you need a way to rise above the noise, attract real estate agents, stop chasing real estate agents with something of actual meaningful value. You want to help them solve problems. That's what we're talking about on today's episode. We can help you help them solve problems. If that sounds like you and you want to learn more about how do you get more agent referrals at scales and less time without co-calling, without chasing, without pay to play, and that kind of thing, go to Mortgage Marketing.pro. We've got a plug and play turn key educational platform that puts you in charge, puts you in front of, as many agents as you want to be at scale, identify the right agents, drive conversations, build trust by leading with value first, help them solve the problems they have in their business by sharing with them classes that are going to help them grow their business in the areas of social digital marketing, database management, and more. Want to learn more, go to Mortgage Marketing.pro, check it all out. So this week, my special guest is Ari Galper. Ari Galper is the world's number one authority on trust based selling. He's the author of Unlock the Sales Game, and the soon to be released book, The One Called Sale. He's been featured in CEO magazine Forbes, CNN, Australian Financial Review, and I originally became aware of Ari 15 years ago when I saw him present on a few different stages in the marketing and sales space, particularly Dan Kennedy, for those of you who might know him. And Ari brings a very unique fresh perspective to selling. As you heard me talk about in the intro, listen, take notes, most importantly, check out the resources that are provided in the show notes here for this show, and for Ari himself, his website, his book, follow him on LinkedIn. There's a link in the show notes to his LinkedIn profile, because he has a show it's called Stump the Guru, where you can actually present your number one big sales question or challenge, see if you can stump Ari. And I think you're going to enjoy this kind of candid, conversational discussion with Ari and myself today on some important topics about how do we remove the pressure from sales, and how do we win the sale at the start of the conversation versus the end, some suggestions on what to not do and what to do to increase our conversion rates that he proposes if you're not converting 100% of your qualified prospects, then that could very well be on you. So I think you're going to enjoy this episode, I'd love to get your feedback on this. If you think it's worth it, please leave us a review. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Ari, welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here. Pleasure to have you, sir. As we were talking just before we hit record, I have known of you've seen you watched you present. I'm thinking how far back does that go? That's got to be 15 years ago, 10 years, yeah, when I saw you on the Dan Kennedy stages and what struck me about that was you are running, you basically, well, let's do this first. Who are you? What do you do? So my name is Ari Galper, I specialize in a unique niche called trust-based selling, how to help entrepreneurs and consultants and really top in sales professionals to be able to navigate the sales field without getting wounded by bullets coming your way. What I mean by that is chasing ghosts, falling over people, playing the numbers game, all that stuff, everybody hates, how to do it with trust and ironically let go of the sale and make more sales. Okay, so there's a few things in there chasing ghosts like that, a lot of people do that, letting go of the sale. Where do you tend to focus your superpowers, if you will, is it finding the right people to talk to or is it the process of actually converting the sale? Yeah, I know, it's definitely the specialty is sales conversion using trust. Once you have them in a conversation, in fact, I'm working on a new book this year called The One Call Sale Coming Out, which is where you can press a sales cycle to one single conversation. So it's really about deep trust in a short amount of time. Yeah, I saw that and so that was going to be a talking point for me because aren't there a few things that need to happen before a one call close actually occurs? What do you mean? All leading up to, like you say, it's all about building trust, right? But if you're saying the one call sale, right, one call close, I have one call and I convert the sale. Is that the premise? Yeah, when I say one call sale, it's more of a concept. I'm not saying everyone gets a time contract on the spot, but I will suggest that if you do it right, you'll have a next step that leads to a sale as opposed to them dropping off and saying things you like, let me think about it. Sounds great. Some are a proposal. And then you follow up with them and you're chasing the black hole and you're stuck. You're like, how do I get here? It's a great call. So what we've all had that, right? We feel the virtual paths on the back and nothing ever happens. They go radio silent on you. All right. So how do you mitigate, minimize, prevent that from happening? Well, it's a mindset shift because the way I teach it is you have to, first of all, let go of your own objective to make that sale, which is really hard for people who have been conditioned their whole lives to pursue the end goal. But once you make that shift and you shift in what I call a doctor patient mode, you're the doctor, they're the patient, you're diagnosed in their problem without assuming a prescription. Then you're in a different state of mind and they can feel that you care about them because you're really understanding them better than understanding themselves. So this is really about being present. It's about engaging people in a way that is totally void of any sales behaviors. Now, that's going to be tough for people who've grown up in the sales world who still do things like following up, checking in, touching base, how's it going? We'll talk about that detoxing a little bit. Detoxing. Well, you said something first of all, it's a mindset shift and I think that's oftentimes the keys to going to that next level, getting a quantum leap. What is some of the baggage if you want to go deeper on sales, commission, breadth, that type of stuff? Well, there's three myths that people still hold onto that we're still living many of us in the past. One is the idea that sales is a numbers game and we grew up thinking that the more contacts we make, the more leads we have, the more sales we get, well, we discover it's not about how many contacts you make anymore. It's about how good you are at trust building, not how good you are, how many contacts you have, bit of a different shift there. The other myth is the idea, the sales loss at the end of the process, you know, we had a deal pending and all look good, just fell out and at the end, you're like, what happened? It was perfect. Well, we discovered the sales loss at the beginning now, not the end, and I'll prove it to you right now in a fun way. If someone calls your office tomorrow morning, you pick up the phone and you hear hi. My name is, I'm with, we are a, what goes through my mind about three seconds. What have they done to sell me? It's over and hello. Yeah. So I'm not suggesting your folks are all doing up on calls, but I will suggest that you're losing their sales not at the end, they're losing at the beginning. And the last one is the idea of a rejection. The rejection is part of the game. You got to be tough. You got to be thick skin. If you can't take a know, you're a whimp, get back out there. You know, it's fun. I came from the old sales manager who got beat up a lot and said, hey, if you can't do that, you can't handle it. Well, we discovered also that we'll talk about this, that rejection is triggered by certain things you say and do unconsciously that causes them to push back on you. Well, that's a hot button right there because the most of my listeners, they're mortgage professionals and they're often calling on, cold calling, oftentimes, real estate agents to try and get those relationships and referrals. And there's definitely, it comes with it, a certain amount of like you're wearing this coat of fear and rejection and they're going to say no because they get all these same calls. Yep. What are some tips? How do they show up differently? Well, they're caring what I call sales or armor on. They care armor on, protect themselves from the bullets coming their way. And the way you shift your approach, first of all, there's different levels here. One is the mindset. One is your language as well. What you say and how you say it's not descriptive, but it's the approach. So for instance, in our approach, we don't say hi. My name is I'm a mortgage broker, I'm with we, you know, we don't start the sales way. We start with hi Jeff, my name's Ari and I'm hoping you can help me out for a moment. That's different. First of all, are you intentionally doing the tone as well? Oh, yeah. Yeah, delivery half of this because if you say hi, my name is Ari. How's it going now? Hoping to help me out. Right over. So you have to breathe, you have to slow down, you have to be not a speed train, you have to allow space to exist. So they enter it. If you move too quick too fast, it's over, the regard goes up. So when you say I'm hoping you can help me out for a moment, human nature is a dive in and say, how can I help you? Well, the first thing that hits me about that is you're immediately interrupting my pattern or frame by which I'm expecting you to come at me with. So the creates that space of listening now. Right, because everyone else does the opposite. Yeah. And I'll warn everybody now, all my ideas are very contrary and so hang on, hang on, you seat there. But you have to break the pattern by not coming across like that stereotypical sales person. Right. Right. Interesting. Interesting. What do you then say though about the whole matching and mirroring thing? I say ignore it. Don't do it. Ever do that because now you're forcing yourself to adapt to them. Don't change who you are. Don't be someone you're not because it changes your authenticity. Stay who you are. We've been taught this whole mirroring thing. They're in this quadrant, they're that kind of person you have to adapt to them. That's too much work and energy. Just stay centered, stay relaxed, focus on them and they'll adapt to you. How do we deal with the nerves? What do you mean? Nerves of being rejected. Well, that's part of the mindset shift when you realize that the rejection comes from you. It just doesn't happen when you show up. Your approach triggers it. When you say hi, my name is on with that's triggering resistance. Your goal is to remove resistance before it occurs. This is your responsibility to learn how to stop the rejection. Not just deal with it. How much then are we talking about, okay, so there's a lot of my old sales training DNA coming in my head here like whoever asks the questions controls the conversation. What do you say to that? That's probably true. Okay. All right. That's probably true. Ask good questions. Yeah. So I'm trying to make sure I present the questions in the context of your special skill set because what's coming up for me again is this trust thing. We all know it's a big, and we have much less trust today than we did 10 years ago. That's for sure. We have much more resistance. We have much more. If I see a call coming in and I don't recognize, you don't answer. But you're dealing with the point of when you're actually finally getting able to speak to somebody, what do you say? How do you say it and things like that? So what about scripting? What do you mean about scripting? You believe in scripting? Having a script or talk track is useful. Well, I believe in having a language that connects with people. I don't think you have to have a talk track that is exactly every single time the same way. There are certain phrases you have to have for sure, like I'm hoping it can help me out for a moment. Are these like any type of phrases or what? They're just normal talking to people. It's not like contrived and set up to say it. It's like just be yourself. People are seeking human connection, even your customer, your market, and the problem is they're so wound up and teed up to protect themselves from those calls that they can't be themselves even if they wanted to. So your job is to bring that wall down and connect at a deep level. How do you do that? How do you let go of all that conditioning of get yourself ready for the fight and get on that call and make that call and push your way through and just come down a couple notches and learn how to connect with people at their level? All right. All right. So I'm trying to put myself in that situation. I'm thinking through it of, you know, but it's difficult, right? I mean, do you have to exercise because I'm thinking to myself, well, it's an interruption. A, B, they don't know me. This is all this is all mindset stuff. I know this is all my own BS probably piling in my head, but I'm also trying to think through the list. Let's do an example. Let's do an example. You can kind of see the difference between A and B, right? So let's say I have a first call with somebody over the phone and the first conversation calls going well, good chemistry, could be good fit. You're excited about it and the call kind of comes to an end normally in sales. We say stuff like, Hey, how about we go to next step? How about we meet up? How about we sign? How about we do demo? We were designed to move things to a next step. We sense an opportunity, but what happens if you attempt to move somebody forward and then it ready yet early in the process, what do you break right there with them? Yeah, trust. It's resistance. Exactly. So same scenario, our mindset, our language and our approach, calls going well, good chemistry, first call, looks really good. You're excited. Call comes to a close. Ryan saying, Hey, how about we move forward? Well, what we say instead is this. We say, where do you think we should go from here? Well, I love that you're just like being slowly intentional like that. Where do you think we should? And of course, what you're saying is, say it the way you would say it. Take the pressure off your mouth. New Yorkers aren't going to go where would you, you know what I mean? New Yorkers are going to go. So where should we go next? What do you think? Right? Be yourself was what you started with. Yeah, don't change who you are, but be aware of yourself. Be aware of how you're coming across the people and tone it down a level. So you understand how you're being reacted to and your perception. I've got a lot of New Yorkers who made us a little bit of adjustment on their speed and a little more come about things when they talk to people now because they realize whether they come across of other people gives the wrong impression of who they really are. Right. Right. So it's an awareness level of your own triggers that cause other people to resist you. And that's a whole level of, whoa, I don't realize I was doing this. What if their response to your question of where do you think we should go next isn't what you wanted? Well, I'll tell you what usually happens is this. When you say to somebody, where do you think we should go from here? Like that tone, they're usually in a state of shock because they can't believe someone to actually ask them what they want to do. It's unheard of. They're not used to this. It's like it's so foreign to them because we're so used to being pulled down the next step. And then they got to go, well, I've got one more question or what about this or how about we move forward on their own? They come out and start moving things forward and you're like, whoa, what just happened? They're the ones moving the ball forward that me trying to do it. How does that work? It's like the magic moment when you start letting go and you give them a space. Yeah. And you mentioned this earlier, being willing to let go of the sale. So if say if their response is, you know what, I need to think about it or it's, you know, not yes, you need to be okay with that. Well, yeah. And I've got answers for that too, by the way. So when they say, I want to think about it, the first thing you're going to say is this, you're going to say, that's not a problem. Take the pressure off, maybe. Always take the pressure out. If you can't see it and you can't feel it, you're part of the problem. It's your responsibility to be aware of the wall going up. Your job is to bring the wall down all the time by diffusing, diffusing, diffusing. So when I said, that's not a problem. He's going, huh? He's not going to fight me on this. This is, this is strange. Right. I like this guy. He's not. See, you've got to change the perception of you by your approach. You can't just show up and do your thing unless you want to play the numbers again and get killed, chasing these people and being feeling dehumanized. I mean, it's really a horrible process. So unless you're aware of how you're coming across, you'll be playing the numbers again forever. All right. Let's carry that out one step further. That's not a problem. That's not a problem. I'm happy for you to think about whatever you like, no problem at all. Is there anything at all that I'm missing on my end that you may need or you didn't feel comfortable with the long way? Wow. Wow. That's good. See, that's, that's an example of dialogging. See, because with objections, we're conditioned by the old sales gurus to fight or fight, either overcome it or bail back. That's what we've talked to do. In our world, we don't fight or fight. We don't overcome objection. We defuse it and re-engage again to preserve the relationship, you see? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, what I love about that is you're going to get information that's helpful to, because they're not ready to move to that next step, whatever it is. But by doing that, they'll, the assumption is they'll tell you. Yeah, your goal is to get to the truth of what's on their mind and not the sale. There is no sale until you get the truth of the people and they feel they can tell you what everything. Otherwise, you're just, you're in what I call hope in mode where you kind of hope it's going to work out. If you just keep going and just keep going, just keep going. Mm-hmm. I've written down something in preparing for this that you talk about as well, which is sales is lost at hello. And we're a little bit kind of dancing around this. I think we're a little bit beyond hello, which is great. I think we've covered a lot of ground so far. But how can, what do you mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that when you begin the conversation with someone, how you start the conversation will determine how well it goes at the end. So I'll give you an example. So my one call sale book that I'm working on, I talked about this whole Dr. Patient Framework model where when you have a first call with somebody, assuming it's scheduled and you show up, normally what people do in selling is they attempt to build a relationship with someone. We're taught to do things like, hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you. Were you from New York? Really? What do you see? We're used to, to like, chunking it up with people because we think if they socially like us, well, then we have a better chance of making that sale. Well I discovered that relationship building and trust building are mutually exclusive. When I tell my clients is this, I say stop building relations with people, pre sale. Do it post sale, not pre sale. Many you start chiming it up and mixing the social norms and business norms that elongates everything. It blends it all out and no longer do you have a process you can move them forward with like you would like, let's say you would go see a doctor, all right? They don't say, they don't try to become your friend because they know if they start doing that, that eliminates their authority for you to comply with their requests. So they say to you, what has it hurt? And you say my shoulder. And he says, let me take a look. Right there. Oh man. I think we get an x-ray right away so we can figure out what the problem is and we can then figure out what the prescription is going to be and you're like, okay, doctor, you go to the x-ray, he throws it on the screen, he says, you have a black spot right there. That's the problem. What's going on is this and this and this and he's like, you're like, wow, finally, someone has to understand what my problem is, then you write your prescription right and you walk out the door before you go to your car, you go to the front desk and you pay. You didn't pay him to solve your problem. You paid him to diagnose your problem. Okay. Now the way he did that, bedside manner, but diagnosing the problem is trust building. Not the whole fake relationship thing because in many cases, they don't want to become your friend. They know it's fake anyways, they just want their problem solved. But what do we do? Hey, how's it going? They're like, oh god, rolling their eyes on the back of their head, going, okay, I'm going to go for the whole cycle of this guy right now. Yeah. I think that's a good example and I do like some elements of that. If I play the other side of that coin a little bit in that and I know you recognize this, but this is just talk this out is the doctor already has a certain amount of trust because of the name because it says doctor because there's a degree on his wall and without doing any research or any like online looking up or more often than not as you know, people walk in. They're like, just assumed trust and so they've got that going for them in our world. Let's just take mortgage and real estate, right? We don't have that. As a matter of fact, we have distrust, right? And so what I was thinking about when you're describing about, you know, separating the relationship building from the trust building in today's world of social selling, air quotes, how would you see that different? Because what I see working is people able to build relationship over social that does lead to trust. So what are your comments around that? Well, I think the relationship will come if you base it on a problem you're helping your real estate agent solve. Great. So it's just relationship only. Good luck with that one. But if you are able to articulate what their issue is, as you can help them solve, better than someone else, and you start there, then you back and everything else fine. But if you're just like, hey, can we have a cup of coffee, we'd love to get to know you better. Hey, you know what I do? I then you're going to just go to the cycle with them and I'll meet with you and you'll chase them up. But hey, you have a deal for me and like, man, this is tough. Mm-hmm. True. Agreed. Yep. I'm 100% on board with that. I agree. Because it's oftentimes what I say to people is when it comes to content on social media, who do you serve and what problems do you solve? And I think that's the content answer is show up and solve problems. That's how you do it. Yeah. Right. I tell my clients all the time, fall out of love with your solution and fall in love with your client's problems. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Most people don't highlight that. What they do is they highlight what we do. Let me tell you what I got. I can do deals. I got more. I got. Hey, I. Welcome to 1980s selling. Look what I got. Look what I got. I got better right there. You can get the other guy over here. See, we're so conditioned to rely on our solution as the way to make the sale that will be commoditized yourself in world, we're living the world of commodization. Everyone offers the same thing as you, you know, you're different. So how do you differentiate? Your sales approach, not your offering. You have to treat them in an approach in a different way so they go, man, tell me about him. This feels right. They're buying you an emotion first. And if you don't connect that level, you're losing so much opportunity. Yeah. So how do you think sales has changed and how would you, how do you advise people to show up considering social today? Well, I think that the market has changed. Prosper customers have changed in terms of what they're looking for. They're shopping around. They're looking for people they think they are until you get to my world. When we flip, when we flip everything upside down, but the point is they're, he's seeking missile trying to find people they can trust. They're yearning for that and it's so hard for them to find it because everyone's conditioned to sell the traditional away sales processes and all these things. And so what hasn't changed is the sales approaches. I'll give you an example. I'll give you a fun example. I'm going to ask all your listeners right now and viewers to remove one key phrase from the vocabulary as of today and never, ever use it again. And for those of you in sales for a long time, this might hurt just a bit. I'm going to ask you all to never again use the phrase, follow up forever as of today. All right. And I bet if I asked your audience, how many of you use the word follow up the last few weeks? I'll probably get lots of hands going. Yeah, I always call it follow up. I'm emailing follow what's the only industry in the world that uses the word follow up? Sales sales. Sales. Hi, I'm Connor follow up. And they're like immediately connecting the stereotype. There's a few more classic with number of the other ones. I'm calling you to to to touch base. Right. Just checking in. Check in. How's the deal going? Are you going to move forward in that mortgage rate? Come on. We're so conditioned to use this old language that associates with that stereotype. That's what we're kind of caught up on this game. So instead, our approach, here's what you say instead. I'm just giving you a call to see if you have any feedback on our previous conversation. And if feedback on the email I sent you, and if feedback on proposal I sent you, see feedback's not going forward, feedback's going backwards away from the sale. When you remove resistance away from the process, that engages people. When you try and move them to a next step, their guard goes up and then other being played. Hmm. Yeah, I'm taking that on emotionally, just like processing it. It takes a while because we're so conditioned to move things forward. We think if we don't go to the next step, it's over. But what I realize is you have to engage that empty space and understand what's in the middle of that. There's an invisible river of pressure that flows underneath every sales chat you have with someone. And unless you can see it and know how to remove it, you'll always be what I call at the service level with people. You'll never go below the expert with you and tell you the truth. They'll always play the game with you. Give it just enough what you want to hear. And then you'll qualify them. Then you move them forward because you're trained that way. See our folks are trained not to move people forward. And it would sound totally nuts because you're like, what do you mean? The sales right there, what do you mean not moving forward? We discovered when you don't attempt to move people forward with pressure on them suddenly and you open up the conversation about their issues and truth, they on their own say, how do we move forward? You have to let go of that tight control where you think you might lose it. If you don't slow things down, that's our biggest fear. We're like, if I slow things down, I'm already I might lose a sale. I'm like, I got to keep things going. The momentum, the energy, I got to be enthusiastic. We're still carrying that, ran from the 80s and it's killing us. How do you know then if you've done enough to let go? Well, you say things like this. Where do you think we should go from here? Once again, back to that and if something's missing with that, they'll say it, they'll say, well, I was curious, what about that? Or how does that work? Or see, when you said to somebody, where do you think we should go from here? That gives them permission to be vulnerable to tell you the truth. See, we don't give them any space, we don't allow them to tell the truth because they know it's a game. They're just giving us just enough to chew on and then we just take it and run. We qualify them and we're off to the next step. But there's no trust being created at all. We miss the whole bottom layer, especially now with the way the world's changed. If you're still doing that old model, you're losing so much opportunity on the table. You've left there because no one ever taught you how to build trusted people and let go of your framework. It's a radical shift, I know. Yeah, no, I like it. It's refreshing. It's different. It's treating other people as an equal as you're not solely. If you really just, if you can have that mindset, I'm just trying to, I'm here to help. I'm here to serve, which I know a lot of say, they're not a prospect, they're a human being. Yeah. And my black belt students, the one that looked me for a long time, they're more advanced. See, their mindset now is we're probably not a fit at hello. So imagine how detached they are from the end goal when their brain goes, we're probably not a fit, but let's have a chat anyways and see where I. They're so present with people, they're just right there. They have neck and no assumptions, no next steps, they're, they're diagnosed in the problem. They're helping the person understand that they understand them better than themselves. And they're asking this question. They say, is this a priority for you to address and solve once and for all? Or are you happy to live with it and not before I'm okay either way? Like they're saying, I'm not here for the sale at all. It's your responsibility to decide if you want to solve the problem or not. It's all about the problem, not the prescription. See, in sales, it's about the prescription. Let me show you what I got. See, doctors will go to jail if they did that. They can't write a prescription first before a diagnosis. They go to, it's not practice, but what do we do? The minute we qualify someone and there's an opportunity, our instinct goes, let me show them what I got. Because I can help these people. I can, I can help them if you can just see what I have. That's our voice back here going next step, next step, next step. And that's where you lose it all right there. How would you deal with objections? For instance, let me set this up is obviously in the mortgage space, let's say, oftentimes, if there isn't any type of connection prior, let's say, it's a referral. All right, so you're the mortgage broker, I'm the client. I got referred by Sally at remax and hey, call Ari, he's my loan officer. Okay, cool. Hey, Ari, what's up? Sally said, hey, what's your rate? You know, and they come at you with their agenda right away, like, how do you respond to that? My favorite. It's my favorite. So, so we're used to that because we know they come with their own plan. They think they're shopping mall, they think they're shopping around. Right. Now, but I don't realize when they enter our world, which is people who trained up by us, they're entering our clinic, our doctor's office, not, not the shopping mall. They open the wrong door by accident. Is this a wrong door, like in Casino or which door is this? It says shopping mall, but they open that doctor door and they end up in our clinic. Right. They're sitting on the table there and I got a white jacket on, they just don't realize that. Then they're like, so that's the metaphor. But we have languaging to turn things back to our plan, which is to help them see what really is best for them because we know the customer themselves doesn't know what they ask you. They may know what they want, but they don't know what they ask you need. We know that as a fact. Yeah. Well, they're also trained what, like, especially in the mortgage, they're trained to just ask what's the interest rate. So they don't even know why, necessarily, they're exactly what I should ask. I'm a robot. So let's take your scenario. Someone says, what's the rate? Yeah. I got her name from John. Great. How much you charge? What's the rate? Right. Right. So what I'd say is this in our approach, we say, I'll be happy to walk you through all the different rates, depending on each situation in your scenario that you have. But would it be, would you be open to us, take a step back for a moment and you're walking me through a situation. Tell me what you have in mind. What you're looking at, what property you're trying to get, what you're at, financial wise. I understand if you're working for yourself. Let me have an understanding your situation better, then I can come back to the better plan. I'll be there with you. Would you be okay with that? Yeah. Now you're like, they're like, oh, that was a dumb question I should have been smarter about. See, now you're making them realize that was, their assumption was wrong. That makes no sense. I can't give you a number until I understand your context first. Yeah. I think what's important to highlight here is there's more than one way to say that yours is the more elegant versus what you just said there is. You know, I can't give, let's just say my response was, look, I can't give you a number until I know about your situation. That response is two totally different feelings. Yeah. So I'd say, like you said, a little smoother. I'd say I'd be happy walking through all the options that we have available depending on your situation. Yeah. Now they're like, oh, that makes sense. Would you be open to us taking a step back for a moment, walk me through a situation, give me the big picture where you're at. So we can go from there, would that be okay with you? See, I've always thought of sales and especially the most, some of the most successful sales people, you know, wordsmiths, like language is important, right? Structures, syntax, tone, and I think, you know, too much viewpoint about like the hunt is we just want to hunt and kill like we, we bypass the art and the elegance, if you will, of communicating with another human being and we just want to freaking close the sale. You just summarized the problem of millions of people right now, we're out there trying to sell. Hmm. All right. So how training ourselves to slow down, is that easy? No, because we're so conditioned to be wired up and teed up to get ready for the fight. See, we go into our jobs with the sales armor on, we're, we're getting ready for the battle. See, we leave home with our kids in our, in our, who we, we're relaxed. Let me go to work. We're like, all right, where's the phone number? Where's the phone? I'm getting ready because I know it's coming as, that's gone, man. That's what, that's the state of the state of what's going on. So you have to reset your thinking and shift your approach and enter the conversation in a way where you don't create any bullets coming your way. You're the one creating it, they don't just exist out there, you're the problem. I'm telling my clients, you've got to make the change and start again and learn how to sell with trucks. The world has changed, if you don't catch up now, you're going to be in a lot of pain soon. Hmm. Yeah, well, at a minimum, don't you want to increase your conversion rates, get better referrals? Half the irony of it all, the irony of it all is when you can use this approach, you double your conversion rates, your sales, I tell my clients, my bar for you is this. You should be getting a hundred percent conversion of everyone who's qualified, it comes in your funnel. If you're not doing that, you're the problem because what, think about it, they got a problem, you got a solution, right? Straight line of sight. What's in the middle of that? You, messing it all up with the report and how's it going and follow up and sure report, like your approach is so archaic, all they want, all they want someone making tries, Jesus, exactly, right? And we're so busy trying to just move the thing forward, close the deal instead of just connect with another human being and solve problems. You, that was beautiful what you just said. That's exactly what I'm talking about here. We just got to let go of the game, unlock it as I call it and just learn how to connect with people. Man, we lost that art, you know, we've got to work and now we're all teed up, we're on LinkedIn, selling to people like, we don't know how to communicate anymore and this is a lost art and I'm bringing it back a bit different 20 years, it's the same thing but I've refined it now to, to the nth degree. But once you own this and you get this, you never go back again. You know, it's, it's funny, you mentioned LinkedIn because that brought up a bunch of, I'm sure you get spammed on LinkedIn and all kinds of like, I'm just thinking of the thread in my emails of like podcast guests, who would, this would be a grape and it's all about them. There's not a single question. Right. We've got a single invitation to, to a dialogue. It's all just, let me push all this crap over in your lap and then two days later, hey, you didn't respond, you know, it's like, well, because you're an initial message sucked and had nothing to do with me. So that's a great example of taking the old approach and shoving it down to new medium. Right. Right. Which by the way we wrap up, there's one point I'm looking at your book here with how to use email sales calls without falling into the spam trap. Tell me about that. Well, the, the, the language that we talk about over the phone can also be adapted to emails as well and written communication even on LinkedIn. The words that you're using that, the subject lines, how you write things to people, you be surprised right now. If I asked your audience to show me their emails, I'd probably see in there, hi, I'm writing it to follow up, give me a call like it's all still translated to different mediums. So there's different language you could use in your email written communication, even on LinkedIn that connects you to people without you starting with talking about yourself. Right. Right. Interesting. Okay. Cool, man. This has been awesome. And what I love about this is, now, talk about that. It's about you knowing and advance what the core issues are that you solve for your market and entering the conversation around their problems. Yes. There's, there's so much in here though, like we've talked about so far, like letting go of the sale, being okay, like not getting the sale, just showing up and being you. You know, I think, do you agree that sales is art and science? I don't know if it's science or say, but it's just being authentic and being about them. I've got this for, look, I, my son, Toby, I wrote a book about him called Lessons from Toby. He was born with, he has Down syndrome. When he was born, we were told this, we're sure we wouldn't know what's meant to our lives. We realized what he'd give to on our hands. If you know someone that has Down syndrome, you know how they are, they're beautiful people, they're full of love, they're transparent, they have no hidden agenda, man, they're just who they are. And I said to myself, man, if we could just help people be like that, he's the role model. Why can't, why do we have these layers on top of us every single day at work and trying to get things happening? We're fighting the path of most resistance. And I'm thinking to myself, I got to help people be like Toby. Like that's what I teach people to do is know how to connect at a deep level fast with people. So they stop playing the game with you, you can get the truth. And that's when all the magic happens. And you think almost anybody can do that? If they're open minded, they want to fall on their sword and say, yeah, I guess our lover again, learn from scratch, yes. But if you're going to fight this thing, go, hey, man, I've been this for 30 years, I don't know what I'm doing already. What's this going to help? Then you're not going to, you're stuck. Yeah. For sure. Well, I think at a minimum, people need to start connecting with you and following you. So why don't we tell them what resources you've got? You've got a book. It's available on Amazon, it's available on your website. What is your website address? Unlock the game.com. I've got my book there, Unlock the Sales Game. I got a free master class there. You can see this being taught live. And of course, you can opt in for that. If you're brave enough, you can step up for a consultation with myself or my team. And see what it's like not to be sold. It's a fun experience. Just experience that in itself, and then we can talk to you about your situation. Or I do a show once a month on LinkedIn called Stump the Guru. Oh, really? Yeah. You can take questions. Jump on live and throw me your toughest bullets. Your biggest challenge is you can't solve on your own. And let's see if it answers for you if you live. Wow. That's cool. Well, all right. Well, make sure we put links to all this in the show notes, your website, your LinkedIn. I definitely encourage anybody listening to engage. Like I said, at the start of this, I have originally saw you 15 plus years ago on the Dan Kennedy stages and was very impressed by that. And you know, just your longevity should speak right to a lot of people in terms of your ability to help people succeed with sales. So I appreciate you getting up and early, what most people don't know is you're in Australia. And like 6am time for you, man. So thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. You bet. Hey, thanks for tuning into this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And remember, if you like this episode, please leave us a review that helps us reach more people and bring more good value and content to you, our listeners. And then don't forget, if you are a loan officer who wants more agent referrals in less time, be sure to check out the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership at mortgagemarketing.pro and learn more about our turnkey system of agent classes that puts you front and center of your local real estate agents, attracting agents instead of chasing them and getting agent referrals like clockwork every single month, just like Kerry Cobb, who her first year in the business with closing over 75 loans achieved 40% of those 75 loans exclusively from agent classes. And if you want to learn how she did it, now you can do it too. Once again, go to Mortgage Marketing.pro and I'll see you over there. 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 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 mortgagedmarketing.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 mortgagedmarketing.pro.