The Importance of Your Online Reputation

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. Well hello boys and girls, welcome back to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. How have you been? How have you been? How's the market in your area? Let me guess, lack of inventory. Multiple offers beating over ask, competing to get your buyer offer accepted. Yeah, I think that's the state of the market in most of the areas of the country right now. So with that, right, how are you adjusting and pivoting? Because what I'm hearing is a lot of loan officers have buyers lined up but can't find the right property or can't get the property accepted, let's say. And then of course, we've got the issue of sellers being reluctant to sell because they're not confident about them finding the next ideal home they want. Let's just face it, it's tough, it's tough, right? With that said, what I'm seeing, you know, the more air quotes successful loan officers do is, you know, that old quote from Wayne Gretzky, which is, you go where the puck is going, not where the puck is, I'm reading reports that are talking about this low inventory issue is going to be an ongoing challenge for the coming next three to five years. So hang on for that because we've got the high demand of millennials, the largest segment of buyers, right, ever to enter the housing industry. We've got, of course, the low inventory, we've got low rates. We've got, you know, this whole situation post COVID, people working remotely, you know, this whole mix here, what am I, what am I getting at? I'm getting at, if you're going to plan on where the puck is going, not where it currently is, most of the loan officers I talk to agree when I ask them, do you need to diversify your roster of agents? Yes. You need to add more quality agents on your bus, yes. And are you satisfied or happy, right? With the means by which you've been going about doing that, some yes, some no. And more importantly, with the lack of time that we have, how do we accelerate the process of attracting, engaging, having conversations with agents and then converting some of those to actual referral partners? How do you do that at scale, right? How do you accelerate that? And most of the traditional methods, I'll be it, right, everything works to some degree, the degree to which it works varies based on the person and their location and dynamics of the market, etc. But here's what I found that always works. And that is attracting people to you because of a proposition that is universally attractive for most or many. And what I mean by that is, so if you're going where the puck is going, what that means is, if there's less inventory to go around and you want to sustain your level of income, you're going to need more sources of purchase business. And if we're talking about real estate agents, you're going to need more agents as sources of business, or what I call oil wells, and oil well, once you find an oil well, right, and in the oil's tab, typically the oil continues to produce, and it's the front end of finding the oil well, right, and getting the oil well to produce, I'll be at a relationship, that's what produces. The process is front loaded in terms of the heavy lifting and the effort finding, you know, all that kind of stuff digging, right, all, etc. And nowadays you need more oil wells because oil scares, what scares, transactions because of the low inventory, okay. And so even the top agents were seeing their businesses down because of the reduction in inventory. So what does that mean? Let's roll back to, hey, you need more, if you're going to focus on agents as a primary source, a pillar in business, you need more agents on your bus. How are you getting agents added to your bus? So you're co-calling, are you, you know, doing broker-preview, you know, a lot of areas are still kind of social distancing. So events haven't really come back in a big way yet. Well, heck, if you've been listening to me long enough, and the value proposition that I talk about that works most consistently is leading with education. And in today's world, and in the future world, the combination of online via Zoom or other platforms and in-person educational classes, topics, conversations that help agents solve problems. So what am I saying? I'm saying is if you want to add agents to your bus, if you want to diversify the relationships you have, if you want to increase the level of relationship you have with real estate agents, the quantity of agents and the quantity of referrals in a more systematic way, have you ever considered leading from the front by teaching agent classes? If you have done it in the past, here's what I probably know is that when I see alone officers who have taught agent classes in the past, they've gotten mixed results. It's either because they did it once or twice, kind of give it the half effort or they didn't promote it properly or it was a boring mortgage 101 class or an FHA class versus the topics that agents most want to hear about. And in today's market, what's working right now are topics that are dealing with how to get your buyer off or accepted and how to find more sellers in a low inventory market. Those are actually two classes that we have available right now that my members are teaching over Zoom and now some are starting to go back to in person. And they're attracting agents to these classes. And the amount of agents they attract varies from small classes, 10, 12, 15 agents or so, to other folks who get a little bit more aggressive with it and will have 80 agents on their virtual class. And from that, they'll follow a proven system and process to be able to convert those attendees to conversations, then convert them to referral partners. I mean, the list of how many people host a class and within 48 hours after that class gets referrals, I'd love you to see what that list is and who it is. I mean, you know, the names come to mind, Kerry Cobb, Janelle Davis, Chris Cogill. You've seen them. The garrisons out of Michigan, Ryan Miracle, you know, the list goes on and on and on. So it's not a question. It's Liz LaFore, Liz Rees just looking at my list of folks here. High Savage. So it's not a debate as to whether or not this works. I guess the debate is to whether you want to do it or not quite frankly. And if you do great, here's what you can do. Go check out mortgagemarketing.pro, watch the brief video of that I put up there. And if it's for you, come on in, join us, right? And if it's not, that's cool to keep enjoying this podcast and keep listening. And I appreciate you being here. So let's talk about my special guest this week. I'm really thrilled to bring this organization back for a second time. And what we're talking about here is it's actually a nice follow up to the podcast we just released last week with Sue Woodard, which was a case study in the customer journey experience, which if you haven't heard that, go back and listen to it where Sue and her team over a total expert, what they did was they pretended to be clients. It's a matter of fact, one of them were actually a client shopping for a home loan. And they audited the process of the customer experience of getting a home loan. Fantastic learnings from that. This conversation is more about how do you show up, right? Like what is your online reputation look like? If you're to Google you, which people are doing, what do they find? How are you doing with online reviews? What is your process for getting online reviews? What are the elements that go into a great customer experience? How are you collecting those online reviews at what stage in the process? Is it after the fact? Is it 30 days after or are you doing something right throughout the process to check in and make sure that people are thrilled with the experience? So you guys have heard the term the experience economy. Everything is experience, everything is experience. That's what's going to create loyalty. That's what's going to minimize and reduce price sensitivity. That's what's going to help create referrals and build a more sustainable business for you over time is the customer experience. So this is a continuation of that discussion. Brittany Hodak from experience.com and Kristen Messerley also from experience.com bring their wisdom to the conversation here today and unpack this for us. So if you want to learn more about experience.com in the past, by the way, they were formerly known as social survey. And now what's cool is they are both an enterprise platform, but we'll be having an individual loan officer option available too. If you're looking to step up your online presence, your online reputation, reviews, reviews and management, you know, monitoring that the whole soup to nuts thing, you can go to experience.com. Check that out. They've got a free download, which is the ROI of CX, and I encourage you to definitely check these guys out. They're the best in the business when it comes to online reputation. So without further ado, let's go to see yeah, James Brown felt pretty strong there. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show Brittany and Kristen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for sitting here. You bet glad to have you both. Let's do this because people are usually listening. We don't identify a connect a voice with, you know, a name. So Kristen, why don't we go first? Who are you? Brief background. And then we'll go over to you, Brittany. All right. I'm Kristen Messerley, and I am ahead of the mortgage division here at experience.com, formerly known as social survey, my background, I started a company called Cultural Outreach, which I just recently sold to Namba and have worked with mortgage companies and lenders for the last eight years in reaching next gen consumers. Awesome. Thank you. Brittany, you're up. Hey, I'm Brittany Hodeck. I'm the chief experience officer of experience.com. I joined the company at the beginning of the year. Prior to that, I was speaking and writing on the subject of super fandom, and that follows a company that I launched and ran for eight years called the super fan company that was all about connecting people to the things that they love. All right. Very cool. Thank you for that. So we're here today, friends of social survey. I've been friends of social survey for many years, and knew me a favor. When you get a chance, pull Craig aside and ask him, hey, tell me you're like, where, when you met Jeff originally, because literally, it goes back well over 10 years ago, that I met Scott and Craig and San Diego, I believe they were presenting to a small office of real state agents, and actually, they were looking at bringing me on board at that time, which was a long time ago, but I was watching what they were doing way, way, way back then. So I've been following the journey ever since then, and really amazing to see the success they've had. And they complement to you guys and to them for having their awareness to bring to powerhouse women on like yourself to take it to the next level, which brings us to maybe the first point, which is the name change, formerly social survey, now experience.com, any, either of you want to comment on what's behind that, why the name change? Sure, you know, it was really just a natural evolution in the company. So when the company launched formally in 2015, they were so focused on the social and the survey aspects of the business, right? So collecting and amplifying the voice of customer, and then sharing that across social channels and other places online to where it could have the most impact. And over the past six years, there's been so much product like growth, much of which originated from people in the mortgage industry saying, I love this, but can you also do this? And this is fantastic, but it would really be helpful if you could do this. And so the product grew and grew and grew to the platform that it is today that has so many different modules and so many different ways to really collect, analyze, and act on the data in real time from all of your customers. And so as we continued to grow beyond the legacy product, it became obvious that we needed a new name. Scott had been eyeing experience.com for years. It was a domain that he'd always hoped that one day he would have because it just felt like the right home for the experience management platform that we've been building. So we were very fortunate to be able to acquire that domain at the end of last year and have that as in the home of the all new experience management platform that is just launched at experience.com. Oh, that sounds like you really practiced that and had that ready to go. No comment. Very thorough, very thorough, love it. And obviously the name, of course, better aligns with what I think what you guys are trying to do overall and for me, anyways, when I think about what you just said, it kind of levels up the conversation and let's maybe unpack this a little bit because it's one thing or one feeling to say, you know, online reviews, right? Boring, you know, I mean, heard about it a long time, online reviews, but what you're really now is you're leveling up the conversation and perhaps the awareness of like, look, we're talking about the customer experience, right? So do you guys want to any talking points around that that you want to dive into? Yes. First of all, sorry, I'm going to go first and then I know Brittany has lots to say on this. But first of all, I mean, reviews are not boring. I know that we've been talking about it for a long time, but people are still not quite getting it. I mean, I am going through the home buying process right now and I still, when I got a referral for a lender, I immediately Google that name and every consumer does that. And so that is the core of our product and that's something very, very important. But I am definitely thrilled with the idea that we're able to not just amplify the voice of the customer for the employers reviews for the company's reviews, but we're also able to analyze that data in order to provide drive real decisions around their customer experience. And we're collecting that voice at different touch points like after, you know, we can do a mid-process survey. What I'm really excited about is a survey after a like a canceled loan or something like that. I mean, I decided not to go with a lender because of a certain lack of technology they had and I was thinking, you know, if they had surveyed me, maybe they would have prioritized or learned from their customers that aren't choosing them as a lender, prioritized having a POS or increasing their technology adoption. And, you know, so that kind of data can go a really long way to growing your business and being able to be competitive long-term. All right. So we make me curious, who was that lender? They didn't have the little. Oh my God. But I will say, I mean, just in the role that I'm in and being curious, I did research a lot of lenders before deciding on the one that I chose. So I like all the technology. Well, I agree. And we're going to talk about that too. As a matter of fact, I have a personal story too, which some people listening may have heard it before. I moved to Vegas here, roughly three years ago from Southern California. And of course, I'm in the business, right? And I made the mistake. I didn't like, you know how you, I don't know if you guys have ever done this to anybody listening. It's like, you know, you, well, what I did is I made the mistake of telling my wife that we should buy a home, right? Because we were living here, everybody year and a half renting. And I'm like, you know what? We should really buy a home. Like, with the way everything's going and the, you know, sports team in Vegas is really growing and all this kind of stuff anyway. So boom, that was it. We're out looking at homes like crazy. And on this one Saturday, we find this house and we're like, that's it. It's the one Saturday. And I'm like, well, we don't have a pre-approval, man. I can't submit an offer. So I go crazy, right? Get online and I get referred to a few lenders from agents and stuff like that. And I had a, yeah, the experience for me was filled out of this online app, literally everything. Assets, connected bank accounts, souped nuts, it was on a Saturday. And I made it very clear. I need a pre-approval. I'm submitting an offer today. Monday comes nothing, right? Tuesday comes. I get a call from an assistant. I don't even know who this person is, never heard the name. And of course, I don't take the call because I'm angry and pissed off at this point. And then Wednesday comes and I get the wonderful automated video email that says, welcome to such and such company. The next step in your own process is, and I'm like, fail. So I know what you're talking about. There's a lot of those out there, right? Yeah. And you know, we live in an instant, everything world, right? As consumers, we're not just comparing experiences to be other experiences we've had in that arena. People aren't just comparing you to their best lending experience. We live in a world where we know from the second that we order the pizza on our app, who's touching it? Where it's at? If it's in the box yet, when it's going to get to our house, we can look at a package and see it all across the world on its way to our house in real time. And because customers know that type of technology exists, we've come to expect it, right? We want to be able to curate the experience we've had. We don't want to be treated like everyone else that the company is interfacing with. We want to be treated like individuals whose preferences are respected, whose wishes are act upon. And that's, you know, I will echo what Kristen said. Reviews are not boring. Reviews are absolutely critical to designing your CX in real time to make sure that you're future-proofing your business. I am very much of the school of thought that experience is everything, right? People used to say, are you a product business? Or are you a service business? I remember a decade or so ago when I was filing for my first trademarks, that's the first question, right, is are you a product business or are you a service business? And even a decade ago, I thought, what an old-school way of thinking. I can't believe the USPTO is still asking the question this way because everyone should be a product and a service business. The service is what makes your product and your product is the service, right? If you're an experienced economy, the experience that you provide is the way you future-proof your business against competitors, both now and later. Yeah, and by the way, just to clarify, I didn't mean to imply like the whole surveys are boring thing. I think what I was trying to get at there was like, you know, how people tune something out after a while like talking about, because a good survey is just a result of a good customer experience. That's the end result we want. And what I'm thinking to my head is I really want to talk about what are the elements that go into a great CX, you know what I mean? And I know you guys have spent some good time and research and defining that out. So, well, let me answer you. The way that you do great CX is by doing it in a way that doesn't feel like CX, by being contextual, by being real time, by meeting the customer where they're at. So if you are still doing long-form surveys at the end of a loan process, that is not the way to do it, right? When you're asking people to recall something that happened to them, you're not affecting a moment. You're affecting a memory. Recall something. So are you talking about like, hey, how would you rate our service after it's completed? Is that what you mean? Yes, I'm talking about, hey, you closed a loan with us 30 days ago. Let me ask you 45 questions, starting with what the process was like, starting with how did you find us, right? Let me ask you how 45 or 60 days ago you heard about us for the first time. And then, you know, we view through four pages of questions to get 37 answers that that may or may not ever be looked at by anyone in the organization versus short, real-time questions delivered in a way that's contextually appropriate, whether that's their text message, whether that's in line in an app, whether that's a quick email, but information that we can gather in real time and route it to the people who need that information to make sure that they're making the right decisions on an ongoing basis to Kristen's point before. If somebody had done a mid-process survey with her, she would have said, hey, I need you to do this. And they could have adjusted in the moment to that customer. The problem with sort of legacy CX is we ask people a lot of questions so that we can make the next customer's experience better by collecting data over time. Real-time CX is using data to improve the experience for that customer who's answering the questions. All right, Devils, I have a kid hat back on. How does that happen though? That sounds like a lot like real-time, you know what I'm saying, CX. The average LLO is like, how the heck am I going to do that? I'm like busy putting out fires and dealing with 17 loans, you know? Automation, right? Automation is the answer. All right. All right. And so what you're saying is experience.com, your platform can do that. Yeah. The worst thing? Okay. Don't be shy here. It's not the shy show. Yes. That's the answer. So the way we look at CX is the biggest competitive advantage that you have or the humans in your business, right? The employees that are creating the experiences. So you need to offload as much as you can to the extent that something can be automated. It should be automated so that the humans in your business are spending their time doing the things that only humans can do, right? All right. A human should never have to think about sending a survey. That's something that should trigger automatically. A human should never have to think about going to a dashboard to look for the information at the right time. You don't deliver to them automatically. The only thing that humans should be thinking about is how to use the information they're getting to make the next best right decision for the customer on the other end of that transaction. And honestly, LOS are so busy right now. And closing times are so long. Like I'm in day 40 right now, you know, and just infuriated almost, but I know that this is where we're at. This is how it goes. If I got a survey right now that was just like, hey, wanted to check in with you, make sure everything's going okay. And I had my voice heard that makes me feel better as a consumer. It makes me feel like, okay, I know you're doing the best you can. You're checking in on your customer. That's amazing. I can have. And maybe they are going to pick up on something really important that they can improve on in the future. But instead, if they're going to survey me at the at closing, and then I give them a four or five star review, like what are they learning from that? You know, like, okay, great. Yeah, you got another one of those boring reviews on there. But are you learning anything about your customer experience and did you actually make your customer feel so good that I'm going to be an advocate for you and refer business to you in the future? And so you take that at scale, right? You take an L.O. who's dealing with not one file like Christians, but 20 or 30 or 50 simultaneously. It's a big lift to expect a person to remember to reach out to all of those people. This is if you can just write a role that says, never let more than this many of days go by without checking in, even if it's just a quick note to say, hey, I wanted to see how you're doing, right? It's it's a little things like that that you can automate to make sure that people feel validated. They feel seen. They feel heard. They know that you care about their experience. You're saying you automate those little check-ins through the through the process? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's some type of a digital check-in. Yep. Absolutely. So it's about designing the customer journey that makes the most sense for your own business. And everyone's customer journey looks different. I always make the joke, you know, the meme of modern art and it says modern art is the intersection of I could have done that and yeah, but you didn't. You guys have that meme. Oh, yeah. I don't think Christian did. Because she's really laughing. Yeah. So there's that meme, right? Because you see like a chair inside of a red tape square and you're like, I could have done that. Right. I like to say CX is the intersection of I could have done that and, okay, then why don't you? Right. It's so easy to say, yes, I could do that. But if CX was that easy, then every hotel would be the Ritz Carlton and every fast food place would be Chick-fil-A and every airline would be Southwest. You have to make the conscious decision to say we are going to be customer led. We are going to ensure that every employee knows that our number one objective is that our customers have an amazing experience. And then you have to be intentional with the design to make sure that everything your business does is aligned with those goals of CX. Okay. So in your, one of the downloads you have from your website at experience.com, you have the RIFCX, which is a PDF basically, right? Our strategic customer experience programs can impact business outcomes. And you have this graphic in there that's under the headline of how to build an effective CX strategy. It's the great wow customer experiences, right? You know what I'm talking about? Have you guys read your document? I have. Yes. I don't have it up in front of me, but yes. I know. So this is what I do, though. I catch people after. No. I'm kidding, right? But I'm looking at some of the pieces that are puzzling here. And so part of what you're talking about, I always try and bring it down to the, you know, the base level, rather than 30,000 foot, what elements go into creating this wow, because here's the thing. We can talk, you know, at that high level of like, we need to automate this and we need to put this in this little check. And people can do that to varying degrees, I think, based on their team or based on, you know, resources they have. But also, I don't want to leave here without talking about things they can do today, regardless if they're using experience.com or not. What's some things can they do to have a better customer experience? So I'm going to go first and then I'm going to like Kristen Jumben, because I know she has a lot to add to this. But the thing that always blows me away when I talk to Allos is a lot of times I'll say, what do you want? And they say, well, I want to meet more realtors and I want to get more referrals. And I say, okay, great. Why should a realtor give the referrals to you instead of any of the other allos in your market? And they're stumped, right? Or they say, well, because I've been doing it for 20 years, well, guess what? You have a lot of other people and a lot of people in your market have been doing it for 30 years or 40 years. So try again. Well, because I'm going to work really hard. Gee, I wonder how many of your competitors are saying that they also work really hard. So I always say that the very first thing you have to do is start with your story. If you can't figure out why you're the absolute best choice for a potential customer to work with, how in the world are they ever going to figure it out, right? How are you ever going to be able to effectively communicate your uniqueness to the people out there who's a tension you're trying to get? If you don't know with certainty and clarity, what it is that you have to offer that's better than all of your competitors, you're going to be like throwing spaghetti in the wall, right? You're going to be trying to compete and win on a lot of different differentiations. And it's not going to be clear to people what it is that you're actually best at. And you're not going to be focusing on showcasing your best strength. So I always say, figure out your superpower, figure out your origin story. How did you get to where you're at and how are you uniquely positioned to help the right kind of customer for you? Once you get clarity on that, you can use that as the core of all of your marketing, right? All of your messages can point back to that. You're going to be talking about your uniqueness. You can find ways to emphasize that in everything you do, whether it's your emails, whether it's your social campaigns, everything you do is marketing. Everything you do is setting the tone and telling part of the story of who you are. So little things like the way you sign off on your emails or the way you acknowledge a closing, whether it's through a card or a little closing gift or whatever it is, all of those things are parts of the story. You've got to make sure that they're all aligned with that core origin story and that core superpower about what you do. And if you do that, you're going to become more memorable. You're going to become more effective and you're going to not just get more repeat business because people are going to remember you. They're going to know like and trust you, but they're going to think of you when the time is right to make a referral or a recommendation. So you've got to start with your story. If you haven't figured it out, if you don't know your secret sauce, it's unrealistic to expect that other people are going to be able to differentiate you or pick you out of a crowd. Okay. Love it. I'll come back to you in a minute, Kristen. Anything you want to add to that? Um, just that everything needs to come down to the customer being at the center of the transaction. You know, it is, it's not that the loan officer or anyone is is holding information even though you are, you're helping them make the biggest financial decision of their lives. It's their decision and you want to make sure that you are guiding them through this process. And so whatever you can do to help the consumer feel empowered through that, whether that's the, um, you know, the, the initial conversation that you're having with them, feeling out how much education they want and how, you know, and, and definitely when it comes down to sharing their loan options, like being very clear about here are your options and not just sending over, I cannot believe people still just send over, you know, loan estimate and expect the consumer to understand what in the heck is going on in there. You know, I mean, I, I'm a licensed loan officer on accident because I had to do it for a technology I was working on, but I, I should know better, but I still got my loan estimate and was just like, I'm so overwhelmed, you know, and, um, and so I think it's the loan officer's job and when they're going to provide the best customer experience, it's when the consumer feels like, okay, you've got my back, you're helping me make these smart decisions for myself. It's not, okay, I'm trusting you with everything, you know, I, I'm not just going to sign a bunch of documents and hope for the best on that. A lot of people are doing that and that's not a good customer experience. I think it's, you know, but like to make that really practical, it's sending over short videos to talk through what they're, what they're seeing in their loan estimate. It's using tools like mortgage coach or MBS highway or whatever to show those kinds of loan options. It's, it's sending over a video when you're sending over all those disclosures and saying, here's what you're signing and here's a, you know, a quick run through on that, but it's making it accessible and easy for the customer to then also understand that you have their back through this and, and you're going to empower them through this process. Yeah. Yeah. That's, now we're in the line of what I, what I kind of meant with the whole like surveys common. It's like, that's just the end result, but really where those surveys are created or the, the origin of those surveys are everything you're talking about here. This create wow process, which has multiple pieces to the puzzle. So to go back, what you said, Brittany is a story, an origin story, that's pretty cool. So as simple as, because that, do you think people struggle with that? Like coming up with a story like, what makes me different as a loan officer, you know? I know people struggle with that and, and, and, and, and, no people struggle with that because I talk a lot about it. I, I talk a lot about creating super fans, which to boil it down to simplest terms are, our customers who create more customers for you, right? People who are out there advocating on your behalf and the way you create super fans is by connecting your story to your customer story. And the way you get to your customer story is by asking questions. It's by being genuinely curious, it's by taking the time to acknowledge the fact that to Kristen's point, this is an incredibly overwhelming process. These are people who, who may have all of the feelings that people have around financial stuff in general, right? So the confusion or, or, you know, maybe the shame, right, of, of things in their past, they're feeling very vulnerable by sharing all of this information, perhaps overwhelm, perhaps confused, and they don't know what they don't know. So a lot of times people lead with that authority. They want to come across as the expert, but they forget about the inverse of that, which is the empathy, which is taking the time to meet the customer where they're at and let them know that it's okay if they don't, it not only is it okay if they have questions, it's okay if they don't even know what questions they should have. Yeah. We're going to bring them where they're at and saying, let's do this together. To Kristen's point, if you can be a guide, if you can be the person who says, I got you. I know this is hard, luckily for you, I've done it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, and I know it might feel overwhelming right now, but I promise you, I'm right here with you and we're going to do this together and it's going to be awesome. You're going to be so glad we get to the other side. And to the extent that you can infuse your personality or your story into the way that you're doing all of that to make it feel less overwhelming and more fun, you're going to win, right? Like if you can make the loan process fun and enjoyable by making people enjoy that experience of working with you, think about how that sets you up for repeat business and referrals in the future. Yeah. And I can't tell you how many people I have interviewed or talked to that are, would be home buyers or soon to be home buyers and they say that they didn't want to talk to a loan officer yet because they felt nervous that they were going to get laughed away or that they hadn't saved enough or they didn't know, you know, they didn't know enough. And so people go online, they do their search and they get really overwhelmed and then they say, well, I don't know, I'm not ready to go to a loan officer and get sold to or get laughed away. And so I think it's really important to build your brand and build a story around this idea that you are going to provide a home ownership plan to everyone and you're there to help guide them through that because there's so many people that would be able to buy right now if they understood that and or would refer you to someone that can buy right now. And creating that content is so important because not only are you positioning yourself as an expert, but you're transforming from a commodity provider to a category of one because by the time somebody picks up the phone to call you or sends you an email, they don't want to work with a loan officer, they want to work with you because you're the one and they know, like, and trust, you're the one who's met them where they're at and ask the questions. And every single person listening right now is an expert, whether you know it or not, like Kristen said, she's a certified, she's, she's, she's an expert at this, right? And she's the one to understand how to how to read this. So make a list of the questions that people ask you all the time or the questions that you wish they would ask or the questions that you wish people knew the answers to before they went to look at homes, right? Make a list of those questions, record a series of short videos for your answering one question per video. In all of a sudden, you've got weeks and weeks and weeks worth of content, original pillar content that's going to position you as the expert. And then from now on, when people ask you those same questions, instead of taking the time to answer them, you can say, oh, you know what, here's the answer. And by the way, since you ask that question, there's a good chance you might be curious about some of these other things. Here's an entire playlist I put together for first time home buyers or here's an entire playlist that I put together for people looking to refi or here's an entire playlist I put together around VA loans and what those mean and why it might be a good choice for you. You already know the answers to those questions. So to answer them through your own lens into, you know, a playlist that you have to share again and again and again is going to pay dividends for you. Reach on, girl, reach on, where is my, that's the applause button, by the way. I love what you're saying. I'm right down all these notes and I have been preaching that same thing, FAQs for so long. I wish more people would do it. So I'm hearing a couple of points I want to highlight from this because you're coming at them fast and furious and people are like, hold over, take notes on this thing or listen to it again. Don't write while you're diving. Yeah, exactly. So I think one of the first places for people to implement what you're talking about story, origin story, what's different about us is to slow down when that call comes in. And I know they're going to come at you with a question of what's your rate, you know what I mean or whatever it is. And you said it a couple of times here, questions, right? We all know the old cliche that whoever asks the questions is in control of the conversation. That's where you need to pause, pivot, and like a phrase such as, you know, hey, what's your interest rate? Well, that's a great question. Would you mind if I take a moment first and explain to you a little bit about what makes us different as a lender, right? Does that make sense there? That kind of transitional phrase? Have they're not? Absolutely. Okay. Okay. I just want for the listeners, I'd like to break it down, you know, keep it real simple of like, so how do you implement this? You implement it with your scripting with the first words that come out of your mouth and stop just because somebody asks you, what's your rate? Doesn't mean you need to answer it exactly in that moment or exactly as you think they want to hear it. The other point I love that you guys have made is what we don't because we live in this so often every single day, we don't, I don't think, stop to consider the emotions that they're coming to the conversation with, you know, like you said, Kristen, about the fear of not knowing or not being able to qualify or not having enough, you know, people, one of their worst fears is to look, you know, to be embarrassed, to look bad, right? And they don't want to do that. Obviously in this case, either. So I love the fact that you both articulated, let's talk about what I wrote down was the elephant in the room. And that will vary based on who you're dealing with and some, some people will have elephants on the roof. But in general, you've got to, you've got to get to what are they already coming to the conversation with? Like, is this your first time buying a house, right? All of a sudden, if they say, yeah, she's like, wow, you know, I mean, all of a sudden getting to your store, I can totally relate, I remember my, or whatever, all of a sudden you have a connecting kind of conversation where you can go, am I, am I on the right track there? Yeah. And I think, you know, to Brittany's point about empathy and, and individualization, like personalization, that's so, so important to all of this because, you know, just, just understanding, like you're saying, taking a step back and saying, like, okay, this person might be pretty anxious about this right now, even though I do this all day every day, this is their first time, or, or time, it's still stressful when, um, and finances may be something, finances are emotional for people. I actually teach a, or speak on a topic often on understanding your money story, where it's like, you know, recognizing that money has a really stressful connotation for a lot of people. And if you think about your earliest story around money, like how your parents handled money or whatever, that usually is driving your behavior towards money for the rest of your life. And so, you know, thinking about that connotation and then recognizing that's in your customers and having empathy for, let's really lay this out. And it's funny because when, when I found the loan officer, loan officer at my dreams, um, he was like, rate was not in my mind. And yet, rate was only what I thought about before that, you know, I mean, it's just like a, um, he, I knew that he was going to help me make the best decision. And I think, to your point about just really taking a step back, recognizing this person's individual situation and saying, let's, and being super, super transparent and clear, like then the customer doesn't have to worry. And I, I'm just not going to shop rate whenever I have that kind of experience. So what, what, what did that lender say or do or what was the experience that made you completely move away from what's your rate to feeling completely trustworthy? Well, everyone knows I'm a huge fan of mortgage coach. You had mortgage coach and that was really helpful. But also, um, you know, it's just this, I felt like, did he know who you were about or he or she know who you were? Uh, yes, that, okay, well, yeah, probably Google. Do you really want to mean like, yeah, but it's funny because, um, unfortunately, this is maybe going off topic, but unfortunately, I fell in love with a property that does not, um, it has very, very strict financing rules. And so I can't, I have to get a very specific product. There's only two lenders in all of LA that will do this. And they don't care at all who I am, like they, and, and that, you know, their customer experience is kind of the worst. And so that's not after who I just completely fell in love with, um, but he, he didn't care. He, I mean, regardless, he was like, okay, well, let me, let me show you options for those two lenders and he gave me a total cost analysis for those. And it says, you know, let me, um, he just helped walk me through that. What? Yes. Yeah. Perfect. And so I immediately text a big thread of all my friends saying, Hey, as soon as you guys need a loan officer, let me know I've got the perfect person for you. And that's the kind of behavior that everyone, regardless, you know, if, if they get treated that way, even if they don't go with you as their lender, they're going to send everyone they know and care about to you. Right. Right. 100%. Yeah. If you just show up to serve, right? Yep. And keep them to win on that. Um, all right. Um, I'm keeping eye on the clock here as well. And I, I pulled up an article because of Kristen that you had written of the many, um, but let's face it, one of the largest segments of home buyers are millennials. And your headline caught my attention here, the millennials don't trust lenders or the housing market. So, and this was, uh, this was actually going back about a year ago, but the housing market, like it's changed a bit since then. It's just more less inventory, still super busy. But, but what are your comments around that, uh, and what advice could you give because we're serving millennials, obviously, in a big way? Yeah. Honestly, I don't remember exactly what I put in that article, but I know what I believe. So I'm going to go based off that, um, but I will say, well, you want to go to go even millennials, right? Yeah. There you go. So do you trust lenders? Do you, do you trust some lenders? How do you feel about the housing market? I grew up in the industry. It's very, very different situation. That's right. Yeah, so I forgot. Yeah, but I will say, I mean, millennials entered adulthood during or right after the financial crisis. And also I surveyed thousands of millennial home buyers and then, you know, I did a next-gen home buyer report last year and this has been the focus of my career. And yeah, people don't trust, not just lenders. They don't trust salespeople in general. They don't trust the housing market. There's so much fear around that purchase. But, you know, you think about there's just fear generally around this purchase, regardless of all of those other additional factors, the biggest financial decision you're making of your life. And a lot of people feel very alone in that. I mean, buying a home is very different now than it was when their parents bought a home for the first time. And the world is very different today. So I think, you know, when I might have talked about in that article, and if not, it's still interesting and relevant. It's taking an approach to this. It's a totally empathetic approach. This that Brittany was talking about where I kind of outlined what I used in my social work practice that was like tenants of trauma informed care. So people that are in extremely anxious situations and have a lot of anxiety around something, you approach that in a very empathetic way and be conscious of, like, you know, how can I be the most transparent and collaborative and provide a sense of safety? And, you know, these tenants are really crucial in a high stress situation like in social work, but it also fits exactly in line with the kind of customer experience it's going to attract and retain millennials. I've got the article here. So just to one of the things you point out, I think it's relevant is your reference to study by even financial that 92% of millennials banks could not be trusted. And over half said, they don't have anyone to turn to for financial advice. And so when I hear that, I think, I think content, I think content, right? Like the videos you talked about before, Brittany, it's like, what do you think millennials were to respond favorably to? We talked about those FAQ videos or just, you know, the educational content should be put, be putting out videos that are financially educational. Yeah, absolutely. We said, and I think people will respond. And I think, you know, I, I bought my first home four and a half years ago and I sound so silly saying now, but I never even thought about getting a mortgage. It was just like, oh, there's banks that give you money, right? You're like, you're like, let's just get a home. Like not even like, how do we do that? Let's just go. Yeah, exactly. Literally never thought about it. And I, my husband and I lived in New York City and I was, I was in town visiting Nashville, which is where we knew we wanted to be. And on a whim, I was like, I'm going to just go look at houses and, you know, I found a real turn online and saw a house and said, all right, this is the one I want. And she said, okay, are you pre-qualified? And I was like, pre-qualified for what? What does that mean? And she was like, are you pre-qualified? And I was like, I mean, you took a meeting with me, right? Like you're showing me homes. I'm like, do you call me, I'm like, it's me. Like I do literally nothing about it. And I think that's so many people, right? As we don't know what we don't know. And, you know, you watch HDTV at all, what do you see? You see people going and picking out their dream home and then they magically move in, right? There's not an entire series of TV shows that talk about the mortgage process. What do we know about buying a home? Oh, that it's fun, right? You get, you're going to, you're going to maybe flip a home or you're going to find your dream home or, you know, maybe you're going to, you're going to upgrade your own. Like there are all of these things that you never even think to Google because you don't know what you don't know. So when you're creating content, when you're meeting people where they're at, where you're saying, hey, you haven't thought about this before, but here's something that you're going to need to know about. And, you know, I own my own business at the time. So the fact that it was so much harder for me to get everything together for that loan than I thought, it was, I had a terrible experience. I had a horrible experience with my lender because they told me it was going to be so easy. And I was like, this isn't easy. I had to get you like five years of taxes for my business. This was not easy. I had to pay like $1,000 just for my accountant to go find all this stuff. This was not easy. You never told me I was going to have to do this. So a better set up or response for that would have would have been. Okay. So you're, you're self-employed. I don't want to scare you off, but just want to properly prepare you for the work we've got to do. Absolutely. And even things, you know, to a Kristen's point of serving people at multiple touch points. So again, I had, I had no, no expectations of what it was going to be like because I'd never really thought about it. And to the extent that, you know, my everything was close, everything was great. Like we closed, we moved in. I got a letter in the mail saying, you know, thank you so much. We're happy to be your lender set up your portal to pay your first payment online. And I was like, okay, great. I know I don't have to, I know I'm not going to have to, you know, make a payment for a month or so, but I'm going to go ahead and get everything set up. Make sure that I get, you know, paperless billing, all of that. So I get everything set up three weeks later. I get a letter in the mail that's like, your loan has been sold. This is the new company that you'll be making your payment to. And I was like, all right, I guess they sold my loan. Maybe that's something that happens. I don't know. No one had explained it to me, right? The lender didn't say, oh, by the way, here's what's going to happen next. So I create another login and I get ready to make my first payment, right? I think I'm all set up three days before my very first alone payment was going to be you again, I get a letter in the mail that's like, your loan was bought by another bank. And so at this point, I call my lender and I'm like, three different companies now, like, how many times this is going to happen? And he's like, oh, no, it's fine. It should be good. They're probably not going to sell it again. And I was like, oh, you knew this was going to happen? Oh, yeah, this is how it works. Well, how is I supposed to know that? So now I'm, I'm upset because I'm now for the third time creating a username and password and figuring out the system where I'm going to be going to make my mortgage payment. So even things like that, right? That and he was like, oh, I'm sorry. I never thought about the fact that I should tell you that. And I was like, oh, okay. And my mind, what that tells me as a customer is to him, this relationship is over, right? The fact that he wasn't thinking about my experience post him getting that commission means that I guess, I guess we don't have a relationship even anymore, right? So I would never use, I would never use that lender again, even though I get that, you know, automated postcards in the mail once a year with my birthday or on my birthday and an email every now and then because it was very clear to me. It was very apparent that he was not thinking about nor we see that concerned about my experience beyond where it no longer directly impacted him on that deal. Yeah. And real quick, I think there's a lot of assumptions that are made accidentally, completely accidentally that about people's not only their mortgage literacy, but financial literacy. And I think no matter what, I mean, I've done, I did a training at Harvard Business School one time where no one knew you could put less than 20% down on a home. And so there's just some basics that to your point about the video content, if you had, if you're sharing that kind of stuff on social media, it also helps people understand that you're someone that they can go to for financial advice or for anything about home buying and then you can drift that out along the way as well. But that's something that I called a outreach that was, we create content for the 20% literacy and mortgage related. And we heard so many stories of people saying like, this is just how this is really, really important to their customers to recognize like, and the loan officers often don't realize that they're missing that information and sharing that because it's second nature to them at this point. I have to tell you, so having been an originator, I can't speak for everybody, but there's basically, it's like, that's potentially risky to bring that up. That's to let you know, hey, by the way, when this trans just want to give you a sense. Now, I think there's ways you can, again, it all comes back to scripting and how you set it up. But I know that's a convert, that's like the third rail. People want to stay away from that, right? Because they're like, oh my God, if I bring up that as soon as this loan closes, the likelihood is your loan's going to be sold immediately. It creates these emotions and energy is like, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, what you're going to sell my loan off? Because I know what you're talking about. Other people and regular people who don't do this, regular people, they're like, why that doesn't make any sense? And of course, we're in the industry. It's like, yes, it does. Let me explain to you why they do it blah, blah, blah. But I can just tell you, for me personally, and probably some others, we were afraid to bring it up for fear of blowback, you know? But let me ask you this. Would you rather preface that and have the conversation or just completely ignore it and know that you're probably not going to get business from that consumer again in the future, right? I mean, I always take a short-sighted approach to thinking about each deal in a silo rather than how do I create a customer for life? I think at the matter of when to broach that topic. You know what I mean? So yeah, in my example, it would have been fine for them to bring it up post-closing, right? Or add closing, like, hey, maybe don't, maybe don't take the time to, you know, set up, set up credentials on our website and, oh, if you get a letter in the mail on a couple of weeks, this is what it means and this is why it happened. Because you may or may not know that you don't know for sure if they're going to sell it off or if you do, you don't know how soon, you know, all that stuff. But, you know, I do, I do agree. If you're at a company, because I know when listening right now, you know if your company keeps their portfolio or not, most don't. And so, yeah, that'd be an interesting point of differentiation to disclose that. Yeah, that's a complicated thing for the customer too. So I do think it's going to wait until closing or right after closing to go through that, but take the time to go through that. But then you can take the time to, and the customer can actually process that information. But if you're trying to understand that and go through the, you know, their loan options, like, it's too much. Out of the front, no. Well, and if you're creating content, you can think about your content in three buckets before, during and after. So what do you wish somebody knew before they ever spoke with you? What do they need to know during the process of getting a loan or whatever the product is that you're working on? And then after the fact, what are some common questions that many consumers might have based on the experience? You can create those as three different playlists. And as part of your post-closing process, say, Hey, wanted to send over this quick playlist of eight videos that I made with eight common questions that come up sometime, take a look when you get a chance. And if you want to talk about any of these more in depth, give me a call, always happy to reconnect. And then you've covered your basis, right? You've sent a playlist that most people probably aren't going to look at. And then if they have questions after the fact, they can come back and say, Oh, well, actually, they did send me an email with videos covering these things. Yeah, at least you covered your bases there. Yeah, just the fact that they didn't watch it, that's not your problem. But I did make that available. What happens after you close? Yeah, I like that. Very cool. All right. Last couple of minutes we have left. What changes are there to, in a post-COVID world, right? With the customer experience and building trust and millennials don't trust banks and lenders. What changes have you seen happened? Do you think we'll remain or any coaching you can give us for those that are listening? I'm, how do we do that? Like consumer expectations changed around that. You know what I mean? What would you guys say on that? I would say that consumer expectation, like customers aren't going back. I would say the post-COVID world is the world today. And when it comes to home buying experience. And so other than not having to schedule your open houses maybe or something like that. But more and more people are choosing to work remotely, permanently, and are able to do that. More and more people are very comfortable and expect to do everything through their mobile devices or online. So that's going to continue to accelerate digital mortgage generally. Has was accelerating very, very quickly. Technology is accelerating quickly alongside the pandemic. And not, and then because of the pandemic, it just, it just perpetuate or increase that significantly. So I don't think, I think it's really important that we don't expect things to go back to a certain way in any regard. It's going to continue to be very much video consultations and digital loan apps, digital tools. And doing what you can to have those personalized customer experience touch points through digital mechanisms and digital tools. Yeah, I agree with all of that. I mean, Jeff, you shared the story pretty pandemic of how upset you were that you got put into a workflow with no customization so that you got your first welcome message several days later. That is going to be the norm, right? It is no longer a nice to have to have the automation and the personalizations. It is the cost of entry. People aren't just comparing you to other lenders. People are comparing you to the best service experiences they've had anywhere online. And it is the normal. So do not, do not allow yourself to fall behind on technology and think, oh, I'll catch up later. But I will say your competitive edge is still you as a human. You know, so use all of those things to connect and do automate and all of that. But but you as a human it is you're the competitive edge. So I think as much as we're going to continue to see technology increase and become like technology becomes fintech and all that kind of stuff. But you're going to be competitive if you can provide the best customer experience through relationships. The best quote I know on that and I'm stealing this from Sue Woodard, a total expert. She said, technology is not going to replace people in this industry in our lifetime. But the people who embrace technology will replace the people who do not. Yeah, I love that. I just talked to Sue like two weeks ago. And my favorite quote on that is from my friend Mark Schaeffer who wrote the marketing rebellion, which is the most human company we'll win. And let's not let's not put automation in the place to your point, Kristen of human connection because in my case, what failed was that the incorrect use of automation because it was used in a in a sequence that was out of order and created a huge disconnect. And that's where I see too many people defaulting. You know, like how many times have you heard L.O.'s like, can we just automate that? Can we just automate that? You know, wait a minute, wait a minute. You can't automate relationships. You know what I mean? And that's what I think people are unfortunately trying to do. So let's be aware of that. In a lot of instances that automation is worse than no automation at all. 100% 100% yep, yep, absolutely because you can't recover from that. You're like, sorry, man, no way. All right, you guys, this was an awesome interview. Let's make sure we can tell people how they can learn more about formerly social survey, who we've had on the show before. Now experience.com with a wonderful addition of you two lovely ladies. If they want to learn more, if you want to learn more about the customer experience, whether you're the individual loan officer, you're an executive, you're VP or something, you're like, hey, I need to level up my consumer experience. We want to send them to experience.com, right? Yes. Experience.com. Yeah. Okay, all right. Follow us on LinkedIn. Yep. Okay. Now what's cool about that is you've got resources, you know what I mean, articles and stuff. You've got this CX report that I talked about. So if you want to dig deeper on this, you go there and you download that report, the ROI of CX, check out the create wow puzzle of customer experiences. Some good data on there about how this is impacting positive business outcome. So thank you so much. Both of you for being here. I appreciate it very much. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks for like, hope to see you again soon. For sure, for sure. And listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode. Hey, leave us a review. It helps us reach more people. Appreciate you tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. 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 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. 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