The Most Important Skill for the Current Market

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Coghill 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. A lot of the new people can't figure this out fast enough. How do I start to pivot because I don't have the relationship muscle. I haven't started targeting agents. I haven't started targeting business owners. Every deal Jeff has up to 10 different referral mechanisms in it. We got a seller. We got a bank. We got a credit union. We got a financial planner. We got all these people that know people and the best thing for LO's to do today is to understand that everybody you do alone for could introduce you to 10 more people. And if you follow that math for 30 to 90 days, you'll have all the business you need in this challenging economy. Hey, Listers, what's up? This is Jeff Zimfer, host of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Thanks for tuning into this very special episode with one of my long time mentors and coaches who helped me early in my career back in 2003 go from zero, struggling zero, couldn't fight my way out of a wet paper bag. And finally, I got a hold of Todd Duncan's information about high trust selling and sales mastery. And I learned the skills that helped me develop the confidence and the confidence to be able to actually perform as a mortgage professional. And he, because of his information, because of what I learned from Todd, he helped me go from zero to $50 million within less than three years back in 2003. And so that's why I'm thrilled to bring Todd on as a special guest. And I want you to take note that in today's world, if everybody talking about marketing automation and consumer direct and social and all that place has its own, you know, right full place in your overall marketing stack, one of the things that, you know, Todd obviously believes as you'll hear in a moment is the importance of partnerships. And we talk about a variety of different partnerships, non-traditional partnerships like financial advisors, wealth planners, right, doctors, influential people in your database. But also, right, we talk about real estate agents and folks that now is the time to dig into your key realtor partners and relationships. And if you're newer and you don't have those yet built, the question you may be asking is, how do I get in front of real estate agents and ask and add value? Well, you may have heard me talk about here before our turn key plug and play platform, which is my agent classes, literally a library of over 10 completely done for you, high value, high impact, easy to teach and share agent classes that you can deliver via Zoom or in person. We're talking about topics from social media to business planning, that database marketing to video marketing, you name it, these are hot topics agents want to learn about. And we equip you with the PowerPoint, the speaker notes, the email marketing, the text marketing, you know, souped nuts, everything's done for you. The complete event management registration system is completely done for you as well. So if you're looking for the cast a wide net, if you're looking to grow your agent engagement and build a pre-eminent business, become more aware in your local market as a mortgage professional amongst real estate agents, which as you'll hear Todd say, should be one of the primary pillars of your business, go check out mortgage marketing dot pro and see if that's for you, because you'll be getting the same kind of results that we are seeing from our members who are getting over 40% of their purchase business through teaching agent classes, mortgage marketing dot pro, go check it out. Okay, so without further ado, let's bring on my special guest, Mr. Todd Duncan. And if for some reason you're not familiar with Todd, well, this year is the 30th anniversary of his pre-eminent event called sales mastery, which is happening in Palm Desert, California, October 11 through the 14th, you'll hear more about that and a special discount code, which the link is into the show notes to the sales mastery event. And the discount code is SM pod. You type in that discount code at checkout to get 500 bucks off. And but first I want you to just sit back and listen to Todd because he's a wealth of knowledge, wisdom and education about how to be a relational versus transactional mortgage professional one who survives and thrives in any markets. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show Todd Duncan, welcome back to the show. So long and coming, Jeff, but here we are. No. I think we were just talking. It was 2017. The world's changed just a tad. Yeah. A few things have happened since the last stop. Just a few, just a few. But now always good to be with you. You're a top top pro and it's always fun to riff with you and it's good to hang out. We're going to riff and, you know, I'll fanboy again for a second. I know I told you the story long time ago, but when I first started originating was 2003 and I remember my manager at Countrywide handing me your stack of DVDs, you know, and all that stuff at the time. And I was like struggling. How do I get realtor or relay, you know, all that jazz and I'm crap. There's got to be a better. And then all of a sudden I like devoured all your content. So you sir, and I'm sure you've heard this many times, but you are one of the key parts to, you know, me going from zero to 50 million within three years. So good night. That's, that's an endorsement cut. That's a take on the website. Yeah, that was a box. It was called the mortgage mastery system. And I think the pitch was buy this box for a thousand dollars and make a million. I think that was the pitch and people would take it and then people would come back like the next year and they'd say, hey, I bought your box last year and I go, well, how's that working out for you? And then we had people that actually said, I haven't opened it yet. I'm going to seriously. You so you just wasted a year and didn't make a million dollars. That's too bad. You know what? So there's a lot of truth. And then that's actually a good point to probably enter is to truth be told that the box she had had the wrapping still on it, the cellophane. And I was the guy in the office who's like, you know, I'm going to freaking take this and listen to it, you know what I mean? So so let's, let's pause on that for a moment for anybody who's not heard of Todd Duncan. What's the quick story about Todd? Who are you? What do you do? Hey, I got a, I got a degree in business at marketing and finance and graduate and the Dean's List, which is pure like random luck, but I liked business. And so my literally coach, when I was eight or nine happened to also in a real estate company. And so when I graduated, we were talking in his backyard. I think it was a fourth of July party. And he said, so what are you going to do? And I said, I'm not sure. And he says, have you thought about mortgages? And I said, I haven't. And he goes, well, why don't you interview with the mortgage company that are real estate company owns? And let's see if you like that. And I said, okay. So I went and interviewed and then got called back. And then I interviewed with the next guy up and got called back. And then I interviewed with the president. They said, you're going to be a great L.O. And we want to offer you a job. So I got 26 real estate offices. I got two weeks of training. I got a 60 day, $1,500 a month draw. And that was pretty much it. And I was the, I was the lender that would start in San Clemente, California and work my way all the way up to Annihame, California, and call on 26. Tarbell real estate offices. And I don't know. I was three or four weeks into it. Nobody was giving me business. Nobody, you know, we were actually called mission impossible mortgage, mission hills mortgage, but mission impossible mortgage because we could never get a deal done. And so I went to the beach one day and I was all frustrated. And I remember the friend of mine, his dad owned a real estate company and I said, can I combine just watch what happens? I'm kind of in it right now and I can't see it and he said, sure. So I went to his office and I stayed there from about one o'clock to four o'clock and I hung out in the lobby and I watched title reps and loan officers come through the front door. And by four o'clock, I counted 21 loan officers and title reps that had come through the front door and they were doing the same thing I was doing in my, my milk crowd, right? And this guy comes through right after four o'clock, he's got this beautiful suit on. He's got a leather folio. He goes up to the receptionist and says who he is. And he says, I have an appointment with Paula Richardson. I didn't know Paula was number one in the country for remax, but I knew this guy, John had an appointment and they disappeared for like 45 minutes. And I'm thinking, I'm scratching my head like I called on five offices in 45 minutes, right? And so he comes out, they shake hands and he looks at her and says, I look forward to a long and mutually profitable relationship. And I'm going, wow, that's it right there. That is it right there. Right? That's what I didn't do in 26 offices. I had no idea who anybody was, first of all. And so here we are today in 2022. And I go all the way back to 1981, which is the 40 year economy that everybody's talking about today that it has them in this bad sense, 40 years. And my grandmother taught me how to have a positive attitude. And so I see this guy, John, and then I figure out, you know, everybody's bitching about the recession. And my grandmother would tell me, be positive, be positive. And so I do two things. I call John and I set up an appointment with him. And like any person that has been mentored, will do is they will offer to mentor. So he mentored me and he made me make a decision when I was 23. He said, you have two choices right now. One is you choose transactions, the others you choose relationships. And I looked at him and I said, what's the difference? And he said, if you choose transactions, you can make a living. If you choose relationships, you will make a fortune. So I'm thinking, okay, a relationship. So he did that with Paula. So I start doing that. And then everybody's thinking the sky's falling. So I call my mom and dad's friend who owned a print store in Tustin, California. And I say, I need a button made up and I need the button to state my positivity. And she's going like, what are you talking about? I said, here's what I want the button to say. I have my button. I said, I want the button to say rumor has it. We're in a recession. I'm not participating. And I wore this on my JC Penny suit. I only had one suit. So I couldn't call on the same office every other day. I'd have to. And people go, what are you talking about? And I go, you know what? You can either have a positive attitude. It doesn't matter. People are still going to buy homes right now. And then they're going to refine. Then they're going to buy another home and they're going to refine. Then they're going to buy another home and rates can't go any higher, I don't think. And Jeff, those two things set me up for success. And we funded almost 6,000 loans in 12 years. And I think at the peak, I had 13 realtors. But my number one realtor gave me $67 million in loan volume over four years. And the average sales price was $103,000. That's crazy. And so, you know, 12 years in, it's like, what do I want to do next? And I loved mortgage. So I said, why don't I start a company? And I had done this with our new recruits at the mortgage company. And I had started with my title partner, training loan, training realtors. And I said, why don't I just do this? Why don't I just, my dad became a, decided to become a doctor when he was 30. I'm, I'm 34. I could decide to be a business owner. And so I started our company and here we are 30 years later. And we got 5 million clients and the books are in 52 languages and I wake up every day. And like, who's next? Who do I get to see today who need the impact? That's a me. It's up to happen. Great story. What a journey. Yeah. I'm, thank you, by the way, for walking us through that because I'm kind of curious about origin story. What do you think though today has any of that changed? I fundamentally know, okay? And, and the thing that has changed is, and we, we kind of predicted this. This is scary prediction because I, I kind of came at it, but I didn't, I believed it, but I didn't know when. So in 1994, it sales mastery. I said this to the audience. I said, he who owns the lead controls the destiny of the loan and all the affiliated services. I said that in 1994. The difference today is realtors are at a different part of the buying cycle. They still control showings digital or otherwise. And they still control listings digital or otherwise. There are some of the low cost providers that are out there as well. And they're trying to do joint ventures, which has always been what people try to do, right? But at the end of the day, the, the loan officer has to understand that if you don't build a high trust referral model, your conversion rate will be low. Your labor will be high and your ROI per hour will be less than you could actually make. So yes, relationships today haven't changed. What has changed is first, who is the referral partner? And it can be a realtor just as easily as it can be an insurance professional or a financial wealth manager or I got one guy that works with 2,200 accountants in a semi-national CPA firm, right? And their company's license in 50 states. And so what I want to say to everybody is if you have a high trust model, which is people trust you first, and they buy from you second and prices not the driving force, then you have a referability model that has high conversion, what does high conversion mean? People that come in from a realtor or builder might have a 20, 15, 20, 25% conversion if you're really, really good. The question we force people to ask is what about the other seven? Why aren't you talking to them? Part of that is the relationship model is not fully integrated. And part of it is they don't have enough advice to really create a value prop where somebody might be pre-approved with somebody else or they might know a lender and all of a sudden they talk to this loan officer that might be high trust trained and they go, wow, I had no idea. And so what we're trying to help people to figure out today is a refi is only possible if a purchase has been made. And so last year and a half have been refi is from heaven. We still have a 2.1, 2.3 trillion dollar market this year. That is bigger than the last big market five years ago. And it just takes the refi is out. A lot of the new people can't figure this out fast enough. How do I start to pivot because I don't have the relationship muscle. I haven't started targeting agents. I haven't started targeting business owners. You know, every deal Jeff has up to 10 different referral mechanisms in it. We got a seller. We got a bank. We got a credit union. We got a financial planner. We got all these people that know people and the best thing for L.O.s to do today is to understand that everybody you do alone for could introduce you to 10 more people. And if you follow that math for 30 to 90 days, you'll have all the business you need in this challenging economy. So yeah, relationships still matter more than anything. And the beautiful thing about repeat business Jeff is it's cheaper. You know, if I come back to you and use you a second time and if I refer you to people that know, love and trust me, your conversion level is going to go sky high. And our elite members are converting it about 75% conversation to Trid Triggered Lone into processing and 97% close. And I got one guy last month. I see she just told me, I can't believe this. I funded $17 million last month. I go, no way you're in a crappy economy. She goes, there's no crappy economy. It's all in your head. And this is this is the L.O. It's not like a branch. There's no other L.O.s. It is her and her team of eight people. And they funded $17 million when the sky is falling. She had a button made up, hers is blue. Is that right? So yeah, yeah, she's got me a picture of the word buttons as they go out and about. That's not cool. I like blue ones out there. We got red ones out there. I like green because green is go. Yeah, it's just for me. Green go green is doe. That's why I got a green phone too. Green, green, green. That's why I got green chairs green color of money as well. Yeah, there's a lot of questions I could ask you. So I've got to be very intentional with the direction of this conversation. Then what matters most? What are the skills? Do you think that matters most in the current market? I mean, you're kind of alluding to trust and things like that. But what else would you say to that? So I would trust is the outcome. Okay. So trust you can't have trust by looking at some of the first time and saying, you can trust me. That edges on like stereotypical slime, right? You can really trust me. No, I got I got to trust you because of who you are and what you do. And not you looking into the face and say, trust me. So in trust right now, there's four things happening in the market in order. Number one is humanity. Okay, I've got to have a human interaction today more than ever to create the kind of empathy that attracts people into relationship. So we always start with connection and we just trademarked ABC, which in the Glengarry Glen Ross days stood for always be closing. For us, it means always be connecting, right? So we have to have that human piece. And when we look at a download that's available to all your listeners called talk less so more, we actually teach one question. It's got 10 words that allows you to connect in a human way that we can come back to and I'll tell you a quick story if we have time. The second thing is you have to be transparent. And transparency is you are a truth teller, right? So truth and trust are synonymous, but truth leads to trust. Okay, just as distruth or lies lead to distrust. So if I have connection in the humanity area, then I have transparency in the advice area and then the two next things have to do with performance. I have to have the capability to deliver the promise, right? And so the promises we're going to help you buy a home, we're going to close this loan. And here's the cost and here's the timeframe and whatever my service promises, I have to have the capability to deliver that. Then in the relationship model, I have to be able to have the reliability to be capable every time. And so as soon as I have the reliability factor that is backed by uncapable, our team is capable. We trust your team because you're capable. Then you're bankable and when you're bankable, the referrals go through the roof and it's so much easier to connect. Like if you if you talked to my producer and you called Lance, you said, Hey, Lance, it's Jeff, I know you were looking for a home loan. This guy Todd, I've used him on three deals. He's the best in the business. Totally cares about your long and short-term goals. You need to talk to him. That call is so simple, right, Lance to make, right? And I don't have to recreate necessarily the same depth of humanity because you're already telling him I'm the deal, right? And that's what we need to do today. And then the other thing is whether it's 20 and 20, 30 and 30, 40 and 40, start setting some appointments. You don't have to do them all perfectly. But right now, get back to business, you know, get, get an appointment set of day, you know, with a realtor look at every loan you're doing right now and find out who's in that loan that I could call because the only question that has to be answered today is who do I know who knows who I need to know, particularly for the newbies that are in the business because they've never seen this before. They've never seen rates go up three, three and a half points in, you know, like four months. Yeah, I know a lot of people are scared. Close for humanity and then transparency capability and reliability. I love that. That's, that's really awesome. So let me pivot a little bit and ask you this because you're on social media and you see different things that show up on social and we've got some newer people in the business and we've got like these tools and like, you know, people can quote grow their business on social media and there's this debate around going consumer direct versus referral based. And I'm sure you've heard it for years about, you know, say whatever you want about agents, you know what I mean, in terms of a source or a pillar of business. But I'm hearing from you is it's just one of the pillars, but you don't agree or feel that people should disregard or overlook agents as a pillar as a source. 100% and here's why there's two reasons. Number one is if you really understand going for the best and I know that that might create for some people watching this, well, I'm not. I've only been in the business two years. I don't know that I can do that. Sure you can. You can, if you're brand new, you can target the lower end of the top 40%, which I guarantee you do not have the kind of relationship that you create with high trust. Okay. So target that. And if you're more experienced, go for the top 10 to 20. The deal today, though, is you have to create an economic solution for that group. And so what that means is I'm not coming in this to be a vendor lender. I'm coming in this to be a lending partner. And if I'm going to be a partner, I need to help you grow your business. So we don't think that consumer direct is the right language because that's a rocket language or a loan depot language, even though loan depot has a retail presence as well, we're not, we're not going consumer direct with TV advertising and this, that and the other thing, right? We're talking, we're talking about consumer centric marketing. What consumer centric marketing means is be really aware that every loan you're involved in is a gateway to at least eight to 10 other potential business partnerships. And what ends up happening is like, for example, if you're, if you're in our lead group, we have 33 people in our lead group that last year earned $91 million. These guys are top of the heap. And one of the guys is now at 75% of monthly volume is coming in from non real to business partners, insurance, financial planning, physicians, CPAs. And all he did, Jeff, was if I do a loan for a doctor, I better get into that doctor's circle. If I do alone for, you know, a partner at a CPA firm, I better get into that CPA firm. We have one guy in Lexington, Kentucky that is in Hyundai and he did a loan for one of the plant managers who happen to know the HR director and there's 1452 people in one plant and almost 2000 and another plant. So close to 4,000 employees, he's doing the loans for all of them. Now, guess who's benefiting? If we're talking about recreating an economy for agents, the agent that referred to him to the plant manager who did the loan is getting all the referrals coming out of that, the guy in Texas, who last year did 227 million dollars with his branch, referred $2.7 million in realtor commissions. And so what we have to do today is we have to be able to understand what co-marketing really looks like. There's this really simple conversation that's called the loss leads conversation. So I sit down with a realtor and I say, hey, you know, I'll get some rapport. I'll be referred by my title wrap. I'll talk a little bit about high trust and I'll say, hey, just out of curiosity, how many transactions have you closed your today? And let's say they say 30, whatever the number is, it doesn't matter. The next question is how many people did you have to talk to to close 30 transactions your today? And let's just say they say 300, right? So then I do the math real quick and I go, so that means that 270 people that you have talked with have not yet bought from you. Would you agree with that? And they would say yes. What percentage of that to 70 do you think you might be able to get back if you had a more tightly knitted follow up system? Usually they pick 10 to 15%. So for arguments, say, let's pick 10%. That's 27 deals. And then I can either make the assumption based on the average sales price in a market and what a buy side would earn or I can ask how much do you make per transaction? Let's just say we know it's about 10 grand. So what you're telling me right now is if you and I could partner together, we could go get 27 more people from the 270 that haven't bought from you yet. You could make an extra $270,000 this year, which is actually $540,000 because this is only six months in. Would you like to discuss strategy about that? And then what we end up doing is we have these questions that loan officers should ask their agents every single week that generate the referral business. Like who have you talked in the last seven days? You're not sure they're going to buy your list with you or both. I'm going to reach out on your behalf and try to bring them back or who are you showing property to this week that I haven't had a consultation with to determine their buying capacity that I could talk with and make sure that you show them the right property for the right reason. And right there, if we have 10 agents, Jeff, given us two buyers a week each, that's 20 conversations a week, that's 80 conversations a month. If you're converting 25%, that's 20 deals a month. If 90% are closing, that's 18 closings a month. Yeah, I love that strategy. And they matter. The agent matter still today, even though they're one step down the process than they used to be two and a half, three years ago. Sure, sure. Well, my answer to that is, and you know this well is, is, is, you know, what is there? Five million homes resale is not new construction. Five million homes sold every year, 89% of people still use an agent for that. So that's a hell of a lot of deals. Yeah, no, and it doesn't matter how much technology comes along. You guys, high trust first supported by high touch. Second married up with high tech third. If you lead with tech, you're in trouble today. It doesn't mean the tech's bad. It just means you can't lead with tech because tech doesn't give you the humanity quotient, which is more important to conversion than anything. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that in the context of the example you just laid out with the conversation to the agents, which, which I love. It's beautiful, it's strategic, it's value add, it's different. It does take a certain skill set. I mean, people could learn it. They could come to your classes and events and learn how to talk the, you know, the talk cracks and everything. But what should, where, how would you advise L. L. L. L. L. L. L. Because not every realtor would be right for that conversation. So is there a criteria or a framework, you know what I mean? Like, you know, we, we told people long time ago and it's still still relevant today. There's four types of prospects, right? There's, there's high profit, high maintenance. There's low profit, high maintenance. High maintenance is the emphasis there. And no matter how much business they do, they're going to wreck your life. All right. And so then we go to high profit low maintenance. They already have a relationship with the lender and then low profit low maintenance, which could be somebody on the retirement end or it could be somebody on the front end or it could be somebody that's just comfortable doing, you know, 10 to 15 or 20 deals a year. So if you're brand new, you can always get to those low profit, low maintenance people. You just have to be able to tie it into a longer term strategy. I ended up targeting the, the rookie of the year at McMillan real estate in San Diego. And his name was Diego Gill. And within seven years, he was in Diamond Club. He was one of the top four realtors in McMillan. And if I had not invested the time with him as a brand new realtor when I was a fairly new loan officer, I would not have been able to, you know, to build that relationship with him to the point where, you know, I think we did close to 300 deals in seven years together. So you have to do it. And then you have to realize today that most people out there trying to build a relationship, don't understand how to ask questions with the intent to listen so that you can solve, not sell. And what the business has to be today is you have to be a solution strategist. You've got to be a solutioner for your borrowers. You got to create, listen to this. You're not a loan officer, you create home loan solutions or add custom. You create custom home loan solutions. You're not a listing agent working with sellers and trying to get listing contracts. You are actually creating a strategic sales process for the seller. Yeah, that's what you do. I create custom strategic selling processes for my sellers. I mean, all that does is put you in this advice matrix, which is beautiful because most people don't, now you've got to get some skill behind that, right? But most of the people today don't have this positioning taken care of where people just think they're another loan officer or they're just another realtor. You got to diss that. You don't want to be a loan officer because most of them have a bad rap. You want to be a mortgage strategist. You want to be a home loaned advisor. You want to, I mean, those are the things that matter most. So slow down the conversation, ask fewer questions that are really good. Don't spend as much time talking really, really, really listen. And then when you can present one or two ideas that are, are response to what you've heard, then you're a hero. And then all you have to do is just keep doing that every month in prison. It just, and today is perfect because there's a lot of officers quitting. There's a lot of officers that don't know how to make it and they're going to be gone in 90 days. I, I, I hate to say that, but it happens every single time. When you watch a $1.4 trillion market evaporate, people are going to be collateral damage, right? Especially if they don't have the skill sets as we, right, and the desire. Yeah, before we leave this conversation, you kind of touched briefly on automation. Then I wrote down some notes from a video I was watching of you. As I think that's relevant to the context of that high trust sales process with real estate agents and other people as well. But let's just keep on that thread of like, if you're, if you're presenting that case to an agent of like, Hey, I can help you. Let's take all those leads, not converted, you know what I mean, all that kind of jazz. The default for a lot of L.O.s is to automate that is to let's put them into this tool. And let's blast them a bunch of emails. What do you say to that? I would say you did, you did, you did that as fast as humanly possible. And here's the, here's the data behind it. 85% of consumer marketers that have and use auto marketing, which is what you're talking about. Believe that their messages resonate with the customer. 7% of the customers receiving that marketing think that it resonates. So we have a massive gap. And when you are marketing to somebody with an auto marketing solution that doesn't have anything that is really custom about it, you run the risk of actually creating distrust. You actually run the risk of creating digital noise, which people pretty much ditch when it gets too much. If you're going to, if you're going to really look in the modern day world of clients for life, what you're going to do is you're going to ditch email and you're just going to start using video right from your phone. I have 52 CEOs that I video on this phone, at least once a month sending them an idea on leadership. And I just do it at my home. I do 60 second video and I send them out this way. When I leave a speaking engagement, my SOP is in the car on the way to the plane. I am leaving a video message sending it to the person that hired me. I have 5,622 birthdays in this phone for people that matter to me. And I get alerts every day. Some days it's 10, some days it's 20, some days it's two. And I record a video message every single day wherever I am in the world to whomever it is in the world that's having a birthday. That's the kind of stuff you need to do. Like when we have clients that have babies, we don't send them some like branded Todd Duncan onesie. We go to Tiffany and we buy a $150 piggy bank that is going to be with that child for at least the next 18 years. And so now every single time the mom and dad look at the piggy bank and they watch their child putting nickels and pennies in the piggy bank. They think, Todd and Deb sent us this. It's such a beautiful gift and it lasts forever. So we got to get rid of I even know somebody right now that has four touch points approval. Let's see your approval appraisal in docs out funded. They don't automate any of that personal phone calls at each one of those stages, but they use slide dial. So they don't have to get into a long conversation. They can record a 60 second update and they can actually one time it. So Denise Donahue has a one time video that she did in our elite group and it's not customized to any listing agent. But every time there's a new deal, that video goes out letting the agent know Denise and her team blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's not even personalized. But the she says, the listing agent's calling to go, what a great video. I can't wait to work with you. So it's like, I don't even have to do the video every time. I just have to send the one I did out. So I would tell people and here's the other thing, Jeff, just real briefly, I think people hide behind auto marketing. They don't they don't trust their skills yet. And that's a dangerous thing to do. I'd rather spend the time getting my skills. I got to go from competence to confidence to consistency. Those are the three layers of how do I get really good? And the faster I get out of incompetent into competent in out of lack of confidence into confidence, the more consistent I'll be and that that can happen to anybody. You will play some of these scripts for 10 hours. You'll have them for the rest of your life, you know? So it's just I stay I love technology. I hate it when it's not personal. And I hate when the tools are not personal. Oh, you're right on the right on the money. People is a clutch for too many people. And we've got away from skill development because the market has allowed us to be lazy 100 percent. But once again, you know, you've been around a long time. You've seen these market cycles come and go and the people who survive and thrive. Are the ones who build their skill sets. People you believe when you contact them old school, old school, like thank you, cards. Thank you, videos, like, yeah, it's just like let's go back to what made relationship work. Because the technology is is definitely definitely too noisy. Yeah, no, that's so true. One of my favorite authors who I've had on the show as well, Mark Schaefer. Yeah, it's, yeah, his tagline in his book, what the most human company wins? Exactly. All you have to do. Listen to this. I wish I had the book, is that book? What? I don't mind. Hey, go, go, go. I think it's pay what book is that? Oh, yeah. There's a page in their Jeff that talks. It has four stats on why auto marketing is failing. It is book marketing rebellion. Yeah, it's great book. He's a good guy. Yeah, he's a good guy. This has been awesome. It's been kind of a mini seminar. But now with the, with the final tips that we have, hopefully we tease people enough to realize that they need to develop what you just talked about, which is the competence, the confidence and the consistency, as well as the other skills you talked about. Let's talk about sales mastery, right? It's 30 years, man. I don't know how you do it. 30 years, still young, high energy and all that kind of just so tell people who, and we're going to share a link in the show notes. And everything, but what can they expect when they decide to attend sales master because I know they will. Yeah, so if we say very high level three things, we're going to talk to you about how to dollarize your hourly income through efficiencies and sales efficiencies and conversion efficiencies and the goal. The goal is to show you how to make an extra $800 an hour, okay? And we've got people on stage are going to show you how they did it under our leadership. They're going to show you some sales mastery graduates from just four years ago that are already at $100 million a year, mostly purchased. So we're going to do that. And we're going to show you exactly how to reduce your hours and increase your hourly rate. Second thing we're going to do is we're going to show you this transition that Jeff and I've been talking about how to get into the consumer centric model. We'll show you exactly what the templates look like, what the mortgage reviews look like, what you can do to actually get to a universe of buyers that will actually value and create value for your realtors and your builders. We've got we've got two gals coming in that are certified neurologists and work on the brain neurology of top performers and how to work out your brain every day so that you can be confident to go out and do what you want to do. We've got vertical panels on we've got like we got like David Osborne who is he owns the number one KW franchise in America and has a program called wealth can't wait. He's going to show you how to build residual income from your mortgage income. So that at some point in time you don't have to work anymore, which is a great thing to do. Right. We have a special promo code Jeff for the podcast listeners. It's called it's SM pod POD and all you guys have to do listen to this. You click on that. It takes you from 12th or 1295 a ticket down to 795 a ticket and you get to come for four days and be part of a 2000 person celebration for 30 years. And I just say Jeff, the only reason why it's still around 30 years later is because the audience needs it and they want it and they value it. Otherwise, it's pretty hard to keep a brand going for 30 years if you're in the seminar business. And we feel so grateful to the industry that has supported this for so long guys like you. And yeah, well, I'm thrilled to, like I said, you've been a part of my, you know, success in the journey. And I've interviewed now over 200 of America's top loan officers. And I would say by and large 80 to 90% of them all at one point have entered your ecosystem and got training and coaching. So that says a lot too. So let me say the other day that there's probably not a successful L.O. That doesn't have a little bit of Todd Duncan DNA sprinkled on them. And I counted out one of the great compliments, right? Oh, for sure. I set out, I set out to professionalize the industry. That's the only reason I started the company. How do we make mortgage a positive professional selling process? Here we are 30 years later all over the world. It's just great. I couldn't have dreamed something bigger than this. So it's beautiful. Once again, I think, you know, if this is, if you're considering this, keep in mind, you said something like at the beginning, if you are relational versus transactional, this is the exact program that you need to become into a sales mastery. It's very rare that I actually advocate at a high level like this for, like, you know, people. But, you know, seriously, this is, you know, it's like, it's life changing and you'll have direction forward in skill sets and competence and you'll get a right. The networking is insane too. So I'm off the grid. Yeah. So you're going to be around other, you know, mega producers and what you learn from them just by hanging out in the hallways as well worth it. So we're going to put links in the show notes, but it's Todd Duncan.com forward slash sales dash mastery. But I'll put a drank direct link in the show notes as well. Take advantage of that code, SM pod, you get 500 bucks off. Todd, oh, by the way, the dates, we got to say that it is October 11th through the 14th. And you know what's super exciting about this is we're taking it back to the hotel that the first one was held at in 1992. We've rented the entire hotel, all 800 rooms and the villas. And when I started this in 92, we had 292 people attend and now here we are in 2022, same hotel. And now we take the whole thing. It's beautiful. And because of you guys, so you're amazing. I so dig hanging out with you. We should do it more. Well, we're definitely going to do it when you come to Vegas. We'll do a local studio. We'll get together. Have some fun. So once again, October 11th through the 14 sales master, get your ticket, check the show notes for links. Appreciate it, man. You know what to do if you like this episode. Hey, go register for sales mastery. That's all I can tell you. We'll see you on the next one. Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that episode and special guest. Most importantly, always remember to never leave the scene of an idea without putting it into action. So whenever the one big idea, one takeaway is from this episode, please make sure you create a plan around that, write it down, put a reminder in your calendar for you, follow through and get some of the resources that were shared and just make sure to take action so you can build momentum on your ideas. And then of course, if you're interested in more agent referrals and less time with less struggle and building a platform that attracts agents to you and helps you find the best agents in your local area that are actually doing the business and generating referrals on demand, just like Liz Reyes LaFour has does is she recently hosted a class and had 39 agents registered for her class, 15 agents attended immediately following the class. She got three new purchase loan leads and scheduled two appointments immediately after the class. That's just within less than 24 hours of the class. If you want results like that for yourself, make sure to check out the my agent classes and mortgage marketing pro membership over at mortgagemarketing.pro for more information and I'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 purchase loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. 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 seeds, 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 from 8 to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. And we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagemarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat, we'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagemarketing.pro.