Why You’re Losing Repeat Business—and How to Fix It Fast

Have you ever had a past client go silent only to find out that they just closed alone with someone else? You did everything right, but somehow you didn't stay in the conversation. Well, what if you could change that so that your name is the one they remember at every key moment in their financial journey? You're listening to the mortgage marketing radio podcast where we help mortgage professionals grow their business with proven strategies, expert insights in real world success stories. My name is Jeff Zimfer. I am your host. Today on the show, we're asking how do you stop losing business? You should be winning. And instead, become the trusted advisor, your clients, never forget. To help us answer that, today we're talking with Joe Wello, CEO of Total Expert. His platform powers some of the biggest players in the mortgage space and helps thousands of originators show up at exactly the right moment with the right message. And today we're going to talk about how a loan officer reconnected with a client after nine years and closed a new deal thanks to a simple alert. We're also talking about rocket mortgaging. Why they can retain up to 80% of their clients and how you can compete and win. And also we'll have a conversation about how AI powered automation is giving loan officers more conversations, better referrals, and yes, more time back in their day. And stay tuned because we'll get into something pretty wild about AI voice agents and how they might be outperforming human call centers in empathy, follow-up and consistency. So if you're ready to stay top of mind, stop leaving money on the table, stick around for this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Joe, welcome back to the show. Hey Jeff, thanks for having me, man. Pleasure to be here. It's been a minute, Joe. We were talking about that just a second ago. Looking at the last time you and I talked, I was doing episode 17 of this show, which was about seven years ago, man. So long time to see. Time really does fly and congratulations on your journey and a successful show and sticking with it all of it. Yeah, well, thank you for that. And I know you can appreciate the whole theme of sticking with it as well, building a platform like you've done a total expert. That's not easy. Lots of headwinds in the market. And we're going to talk about a couple of those here today. So let's just jump right into it. I caught that if I'm correct, your mission statement is to deliver the perfect customer journey. Is that correct? Yeah, really deliver the perfect customer journey for every financial milestone is how we think about the mission of the company. Right. Okay, so I'm curious then. Here we are. It's been what, seven years, issues since we last spoke. There's a lot that's evolved technology wise from. I'm curious like, how do you think the customer journey has changed over the last handful of years? So many ways, Jeff. So first of all, the consumer, their expectations for how an organization should engage with them and communicate with them has has evolved and the bar has just been raised tremendously. If you think about places like e-commerce and retail, generally are speaking are a little farther along than financial services and the way they personalize content and communication. So that's really the biggest changes ultimately the expectations and the bar that you have to hit to really deliver an amazing customer journey, which you can put customer experience over the top of that with the intention that you're building a lifelong customer. And I would say, what we have seen from our customer base and the industry at large is really a focus this past year to two years on the importance of customer loyalty and how much value you can create for your organization and ultimately the value and benefit you can deliver to the customer if you're thinking very long term and not just transactional. So I would say that's some of the biggest changes we've seen of consumers expectations and then the way a lender or bank looks at and manages that process is really now geared towards lifelong customer versus I got to generate a lead and close a deal. And do you think have you seen the attitude or the adoption, the acceptance of that evolve and people are embracing that more than they have in the past? Yes, in many cases I would say the most strategic executives and I get the pleasure for best part of my job is I get to spend time with a lot of really great executives and leaders from lenders and banks as well as the technology environment and get to have a lot of strategic conversations about how their organizations are navigating some of the changes that they feel are required and I would say the thing that really resonates is when you see the data that an average lender only retains 20% or less of their customer base and you have the big rocket at the top of the mountain who retains 85%. Well what's the difference? That's 65% difference. That compounds every year and so if you think of I'm a lender and I say I'm going to take my retention and recapture from 20% to 40% just that how that compounds over two to three year periods profound. And so once you look at the data yeah it really resonates and there's like okay now how do we how do we really harness this because the nature of the beast in particularly retail lending and direct as consumer lending is so focused on the transactional process. You have to take a step back and really have a strategic lens and make sure you have the right team. Okay so you mentioned rocket it was on my list here to talk about the obviously they hit the news earlier this year. I didn't know that figure 85% retention. It's something I might be off by one or two percentage points is something ridiculous. But 80ish you know compared to 20 that is unbelievable difference and and you think it's because let's just geek out here for a second technical you know technology wise they've obviously invested a lot in infrastructure to build out kind of to to identify those milestones along the customer journey. Let's go back to that. You think they've built a really solid infrastructure for that? They they have but but here's what I would tell you Jeff the it's not their infrastructure per se that is because there's a lot of big lenders that have really great infrastructures and great tech stacks. You know we're fortunate to be a part of that in many cases but it's really the combination of things and let me explain so company like rocket and their playbook they have a lot of data and intelligence which is a lot of these data sources are available to the industry okay but rocket does a great job of harnessing data on their existing customers past customers and making sure they are getting as up funnel as possible when it comes to intent to do alone or make a move right so they understand that data but what they do that's magical is they pair that data then with a lot of action on the sales and marketing side and that action on the sales and marketing side equates to a very discipline sales and marketing journey that has multiple touch points it's very rigorous it's very refined and they have because they have a different type of loan officer than a lot of the retail lenders they have internal call center team and so their job is to follow that regimented consistent process so if you think about the math for a second if I'm a lender and I surface an opportunity I'm saying okay I'm monitoring my database this consumer for whatever reason shows a propensity to to do loan in the next three to six months and my my move might be I'm going to go then send that back to my loan officer the retail originator who's busy out in the field what happens from there well what we've learned from studying the analytics and the data is over half of the conversion meaning over half of those deals that are recaptured happen after the twelfth touch so 12 touches 12 calls text emails whatever it is and so if you think about that how many lenders are structured in such a way that they understand the cadence the timing of those touches and the consistency of doing that every single time and so it's the intelligence and the data with a very consistent sales and marketing process that brings the magic and of course huge branding never hurts right so the customer awareness of the brand is magnificent but but that is really in my opinion not what makes them magical at recapture so I think it's a great inspiration for the industry and I think that technology is evolved to a point where it's very real that a lender can compete on that level and I can go into into details as to why because it wasn't exactly possible a year ago oh interesting well before we get to that I want to riff on that for a second because you know to the degree that I am familiar with your capabilities in your platform of total expert isn't that what you're trying to equip people to do is to be there at the moment of decision so to speak yeah we want our customers to be able to show up in the moments that matter right and we think of showing up as being educating engaging and advising giving high quality advice in those key moments and that is very intentional approach to how we think about it it's not just sending a marketing flyer it's what type of content is my customer interested and how do I use data equity or value in their home maybe debt consolidation scenarios that educate them on a path to better financial outcome and then I communicate with them when they show intent or interest in a channel that they want text phone voice email whatever that might be and so it's just the combination of those things and our our our focus every day is we wake up every day and obsessing about how do we how do we deliver an engine a platform to the industry that allows them to build that customer for life playbook and and execute it and so that's you know the accumulation of all of our capabilities really lead up to that that platform that allows them and enables them to do large parts of that yeah well I mean really at the end of the day when it comes back to like you know you described rockets playbook you know how your platform that helps people run similar plays I guess it gets back to like are you showing up right when that client or prospect needs you are you even in the conversation right yeah and that's the the data would tell us if you just look at the data that many times they're not and it's not because they don't want to but if you think about the nature of the business when when you're you have the retail loan officer in many cases a lot of our customer base large retail teams who have amazing relationships and visibility in the community they're on the go they're engaging they're doing events those types of things and they're getting referrals and they're taking care of those referrals and that's all consuming many times I was with one of the top teams in the industry last week on the east coast and we were unpacking it and I think they're exceptional right and we looked at their data I want to disclose exactly it's it's more than 20 percent it's more than the industry average by far but it's nowhere near sort of that 75 85 percent and they're like well let's break down why not and the why not is really hey we're busy every day and we don't have we're not systemizing we're not executing that strategy as well as we should right and so you know it's fun to have those conversations and then whiteboard out saying where are the holes and then where can we put some automation in place where can we add some intelligence onto your database where do you have gaps let's start closing those gaps yeah it makes me curious I know AI has obviously become huge and you guys have an AI play there and we talk a little bit about that as well the investments you've made but it makes me coming back to you know this rock example they've got this huge call center right forced to be able to like jump on those opportunities when the platform gives them the alerts etc so then maybe some of these other lenders who may not have the same budget or capabilities right of rocket does that mean can they solve this with let's let's see where AI we can overlay AI over this to you know integrate with a platform like yours and the past client database can can can that be a solution or a road that they go down to solve that problem it you know you hit the nail on the head the advancements in AI over the past year has has now allowed the technology now is there for a lender to scale a call center without hiring a bunch of humans without managing a bunch of teams and have many of the benefits of that call center and some of the AI advancements are nothing nothing short of profound and extraordinary I mean it's it's the greatest technological shift humanity's ever seen and I know that sounds crazy but it's a hundred percent true and in my strong belief after being really immersed in what's happening well let's let's that's a double tap on that for a second because I wrote down a question for you AI real versus hype I mean yeah what would you just propose there is like I can have a call center without having human beings like there's some non-believers out there right yeah so yeah so we've got an announcement coming up depending on when the show airs here that is there's going to you know address a big part of a part of that and the proof is in the results and I will tell you that we started down the path with the technology late last year went into some proof of concepts with some very early customers and we're absolutely shocked at with with the right architecture team and the right technology ecosystem because there's an ecosystem of different tech that you have to bring together to do it correctly when you bring that together the pace of progress and the results were absolutely extraordinary and we have now seen people be able to stand up AI agents voice-powered AI human-like voice AI that is having human-like conversation with a customer prospect and able to do in many cases a better job of having empathy of listening of being consistent of gathering information than a real call center agent and so that technology is is existing is it exists today and it's getting honed and hardened in the wild and it's going to be transformational for the industry it's kind of comical that you said the AI in some cases have has a better empathy and listening skill true true yeah yeah it's true that's the fundamental better go back to the developing your skillset salespeople right yeah you know I I think it's so here's the way I think about it Jeff salespeople do somebody said to me well it sounds like you think salespeople are going to get replaced absolutely not the case I think mediocre salespeople are going to get replaced without question and I would say you could take that if you look at AI in the in the evolution and how quickly it's evolving you can say mediocrity in every position will end up getting replaced because I I can do so many things with a gentick AI now what we believe is the magic touch is having the humans that can give the advice and there's things that a licensed human still really brings and adds a lot of value and if you can give them superpowers and make them 10 times more productive and allow them to help more people and have more high quality conversations and not spend as much time calling bogus leads or bad you know referrals that aren't going anywhere they can have an AI agent helping them do that and then just team up the things that are ready to go it starts to really shift the business and so I think the magic is going to be really giving the superpowers to to the top producers or the key producers and the organizations that want to embrace that is part of their strategy and then you know if you think about what's not going to go away is the need to have really top tier experts loan officers advisors in the communities talking about home ownership educating first time home buyers you know educating the other demographics on reverse lending older demographic on reverse lending and in how handling mortgage correctly really is going to deliver better financial outcomes to to your families right you need the people to continue to do that and the best already do that naturally of course yeah it makes me curious about the intersection between the human touch and the high tech touch because as you well know there are some correct or incorrect use cases of technology that actually don't help with your brand and in building trust so any notes or words of warning you want to give around that so let me let me speak to that in general the analogy that I've been using the this wave of AI it feels and looks a lot like humans just discovered fire and people are going around and lighting everything on fire all the time every day it's like AI AI like I'm just going to light this thing on fire with AI and I assume it's going to be better right the vast majority of that noise is is exactly that it's not necessarily delivering transformational value you see a lot of tech providers are just splashing it we've been very intentional about focusing on outcomes for our customers and working backwards and how to apply the technology and a lot of people are saying well we've got to be AI first of course let's just throw AI on everything even if we're not exactly sure where the value is going to get delivered right and so that's a dramatic oversimplification and there's a tremendous amount of detail of course that matters under that but that's you know generally I think there's a lot of people that are just splashing AI everywhere yeah and trying to see what sticks so to speak and I think there's a much better more strategic approach and what we see organizations will will maybe go down and spend some money on some things that are a little bit of hype and then they get more strategic about okay what are the outcomes that we want yeah and they're they're also looking for leadership on this as well yeah and it sounds like you guys can play a role in that as you know you said is like being being intentional right not just doing it for the sake of saying oh we have this AI engine yeah I mean ultimately I I love having conversations with executives whether they do business with us or not and just sharing some knowledge things that I've learned I always learned stuff from talking to them and saying I think it's great it's going to elevate the industry and I think Verune at Rocket does a great job of this of saying you know yeah there's a lot of people that compete but ultimately having a really collaborative industry and a collaborative ecosystem and an inclusive ecosystem between tech and lenders collectively and everybody can win I think so the right mindset that's our mindset and I give those guys a lot of credit for for having that mindset for sure hey are you tired of cold calling realtors and feeling like you're getting nowhere with my agent classes you don't have to chase agents anymore we hand you a done for you system of ready to teach presentations plug and play marketing and even 200 producing agents to invite so you can double your agent referrals in 90 days or less plus you'll get weekly coaching and a community of loan officers sharing exactly what's working right now here's a quick win from one of our members been part of my agent classes for a little over a year and totally changed my business I agree at least 25% and that was during a pretty down market and I have only grown every single month that I've kept doing it communities great jump to the Friday calls it's awesome have fun with it teaches many classes you can just do more do better are you ready to stop chasing and start attracting agent referrals on demand book a call at mortgage marketing dot pro or hit the link in the show notes now back to our shop okay last question then I guess around the rocket redfin mr. Cooper situation how would you how do you want to respond to that is that a threat or an opportunity through what framework do you look at so I think it's both and let me explain oh if I think about the amount of servicing that they now have access to I think it's like one in six mortgages being serviced and it's a threat to lenders that have sold their servicing that don't have a playbook or an engine happening to actually make sure they're getting up funnel with those opportunities uh in making sure they're interesting in contact in the right ways so it's it's definitely a threat for those folks but it's also in in my mind an opportunity um to elevate and differentiate so into really makes takes them action and makes some progress towards just getting better about delivering customer loyalty so I think it's an opportunity and a threat at the same time but I largely think it's going to be a net positive to the industry because it has forced it has forced lenders to really take a step back and think about that whole customer journey and say wait a second the reason these guys are so big there's lots of reasons but if you look at the essence of it the retention of the customer is so magnificent that that is probably the single biggest force multiplier that they have so maybe we start there you know as an organization if I'm thinking as a lender maybe we start there by just doubling down in that area and then we're going to naturally grow more and more be more profitable if we do that yeah so it's kind of like a cold arms wake up call yeah I really think so yeah all right let's pivot for a moment if you don't mind I know we have some actual loan officers mortgage loan originators listening and those are a lot of the folks are in in in your platform on a daily basis and I've been in as well back in the day when I was at movement for a period but what for those listening whether it's total expert or any CRM any quick hits on so based on what we've laid the groundwork so far on showing up at the right time right and you know you know being there engaged with the client over their life cycle any quick hits on best practices that they should be using regardless of the platform yeah so I think ultimately the platforms there's good capabilities and all of the platforms it's a question of how how has your company or how are you adopting it and architecting it and what are you trying to accomplish right I mean we've put we've got many many millions of investments that are you know enhancing our platform based on the feedback of our users over this last couple of years we've been really deep in the R&D space and the whole purpose of that is to help they they want enablement and they want really to to have technology that can make them more productive at the end of the day right that that's not how they describe it always but if I'm a loan officer listening today I'm like how can you just make me more productive right and probably the simplest way is to say I'm going to actually put my arms metaphorically speaking around the database that you have your realtors and your your customers leads in prospects past customers leads in prospects and I'm going to make sure that I have a customer journey or whatever you want to call it we call it a customer journey that is set up with a combination of good intelligence to tell you when you should be communicating and then automating up much of those communications as I can but then setting up my systems so that when a consumer responds or wants to engage I can be on it very quickly and so as a best practice I'm going to make sure that I have a underlying customer journey automation in place as a baseline because that's going to really be my growth engine and then from there there's tremendous variability in how people want to work you know one of the examples we're investing very heavily in sort of that lead to app workflow for for loan officers if I'm thinking about I want to really be able to manage that opportunity and so making sure that the system that you're using is set up to not you don't want to overcomplicate it but you want to be able to run a process and be consistent have a consistent sales and marketing process and I would say as a best practice consistent sales and marketing process and over overarching customer journey automation for as many of the touch points as you can that's there's going nothing's going to bring more value than that yeah I think you know because I interface with a lot of loan officers I just what I hear is just missed opportunity in that they're not aware that the customers at this stage right right and so whatever they can build that in bottom line just you know more frequent touches like you said earlier yeah yeah you have to really have I mean the way we've described was on an investor call a couple weeks ago and they were asking to walk them through how we think about our platform and really the industry needs a system of intelligence combined with a system of action and engagement right I believe we've done a really great job of assembling many of those components together but as a loan officer I'm like what intelligence do I need there's you know we have products and services that do this but there's many companies that do I want to have as much intelligence on my database as possible so they oh they make me aware in those moments that actually matter and and then an ideally not just make me aware but there's action being taken appropriately so that they can get the person to the moment of actually they're ready to go and then I'm on having high quality conversations and appointments and I'm spending my time chasing my tail every day right exactly you know I'm on your website right now in preparing for our conversation I wanted to look at some content and I'm looking at one of the success stories here from Steve Kick at Lake Michigan Credit Union and I don't know if you're familiar with that story but that's something about a listing alert that has hit his inbox yeah you know that story yeah I do yeah I'm not putting down a spot am I just like no no no no do you want to share that briefly because that's an example of like I wrote down and this is probably an extended answer to the question I wrote down how does a how does the CRM go from being just data to a true growth engine and that might be an example to jump off from that that's a great example so I don't have the detailed case study in front of me but the essence of what what he experienced was our customer intelligence surfacing an opportunity engaging with the customer and making him aware and actually bringing a deal back into his hands that would have otherwise been lost had he had lost those things a past client had listed their property that's just one piece of intelligence right with one data point and you know that's obviously if somebody is listing their property they're going to be moving and if they're moving good chance if they own a home they're going to buy another home in many cases and so it's a very basic use case that gets missed all the time organizations even that have the data don't necessarily pair it with the automation and the workflow right and that's usually where the breakdown happens and this this this case study it was just a showcase of that and he's he's great guy and you know love have love having loan officers like that really take part in in our platform well I just think that's a great example right to I'll hit that phrase again growth engine because a lot of people have a CRM which is I think the bigger frustration with people when they complain about CRM's is like they use it as a data repository like a fancy Excel spreadsheet you know and there's got to be what we've been talking about here all along is there got there has to be intelligence and then integration between these various you know life events that go on and I think that's so you guys knowing from when you and I talked originally like seven years ago you've come a long way and really built that capability from what I can see yeah yeah we we haven't I think there's amazing loan officers in our industry and we're very very grateful for the opportunity to you know partner with them and build alongside of them and I would say where you know where we're at in our evolution is really building we built tremendous amounts of infrastructure enterprise great infrastructure that can do things at massive scale and then now we're we're really going in and obsessing about how do we help loan officers just be more productive with little things you know UI enhancements and sort of those little things that really matter to them day to day you know so our team's actually sitting by and we're pretty excited about some of the things that you know that we're doing here and most of this feedback has just come from you know hearing from the loan officers who are in the trenches every day but what's exciting Jeff is the conversations that we're having you know maybe two three years ago it was well I want the button to be blue and I want this to this drop down to be here they're asking better questions they're saying here's what I'm trying to accomplish right here's the outcome that I'm trying to get and many cases uh in it's inspiring that you get to work with these people because they're very forward thinking but in many cases they're saying yeah the way that such and such team has done it for the last 20 years I'm not necessarily concerned with that what I am concerned with is is there a better way and what's the way what's the where's the industry going so that I can be on the bleeding edge of how to build this growth engine correctly not just hey I want to manage a lead they're asking better questions yeah exactly and I'm going to close out on that question in a moment about where the industry is going but before we get to that question I got to ask this one hot take on how loan officers in today's market can be more valuable to real estate agents yeah um very simple and uh I you know I had the opportunity one of the best in the business shoppanozian you may know who shant is I think he's just an exceptional loan officer advisor expert he's now president of a large lender uh and because he's put such a great team in place his his goal every day when he's out doing what he does is educating the real estate partners and consumers as well but specifically speaking about real estate agents the value that he brings to them is collaboration and and and really education on how they can close more business how they can grow their business right and he approaches it from that perspective right versus just this transactional relationship and I think that's really ultimately it is be more uh strategic in your relationships with realtors sometimes quality over quantity right so I I don't need to touch a thousand of them I want to find the 50 or 20 or even 10 that I believe match with my business and where I want to do business and then I want to figure out how to be a valuable partner to them and I might might start by making them aware of how to close more buyers or how to feed their you know how to how to help their team grow right those types of things 100% yeah shan's awesome he's been on the show twice uh he does something his playbook is similar to what we help elbows do uh which is lead with education right what we're talking about here teaching classes events all that kind of stuff yeah educating gauge advisement it's those three goals do you have that trademark because I might swipe it yeah well I think we're supposed to have a trademark but you can use it buddy anytime I whatever we'll work that out later all right so the closing question then we'll be um soon as you just referenced that a second ago uh what will be um we'll be significantly different you think um in this industry marketing wise you know two years from now that's that's people need to prepare for so they're they're ultimately uh agentic AI is going to be um augmenting enhancing and replacing certain parts of the process right and so I'll speak to the part that I'm closest to which is I'm going to as a loan officer have AI agents that can um call my past customer database for me can schedule appointments on my behalf can um text every single person in my pipeline to let them know when there's a movement in rates all of these things can be done automatically um by AI right and so if I think about um just how that transforms that customer journey uh it's going to be a dramatic shift for for in a dramatic benefit uh in my opinion uh for many many loan officers and producers that that think this way and embrace it so um the industry is still going to be about getting people into home ownership educating the market the differences are going to be in some of the machining and the systems and how it's executed well I think that's a positive message for us who are you know sales oriented where you know those are some of those tasks that are time consuming um and those can kind of pick up or capture those missed opportunities where we might be too busy or you know working on more strategic things deep work those kinds of things but ultimately back to us having a conversation with a prospector client and you know not to go to to down the rabbit hole on this but ultimately uh I think it has the not I think I know it has the potential to really elevate the quality of life for a lot of salespeople as well yeah right yeah what gives you energy probably gives you energy is not calling leads looking for opportunities or calling databases or calling my age pipeline it's actually having really meaningful conversations with consumers and realtor partners and so on and so forth and if I can do more of that my quality of life better is better I'm happier and and by the way you're going to produce more because you're doing high value activities yeah I like what you said though like better quality of life as well because you know there's some emotions attached to this whole AI thing bubbling up and some people yeah different reactions to it but I think ultimately I like to give the example Joe this is funny and I know you can appreciate this is every technical technical advance has has usually met with some bit of resistance early on and I was reading I was reading an article that said when um electricity was invented and starting to be used there were people who rejected it and wanted to maintain gas lamps yeah because they thought it was possessed yeah yeah it's it's a hundred percent true that's just the way it is in every innovation cycle yeah this one's no different yeah so embrace and uh yeah it's it's just gonna be there's gonna be people who are going to resist that and you know my strong opinion is I I wouldn't want to be in that camp because um I I ultimately think it just elevates so many things there's so much potential and uh it's it's it's it's happening everywhere in every industry uh and very quickly well Joe this has been awesome conversation great to catch up after seven years uh for those who want to learn more I think two places perhaps we talked about they could connect with you on LinkedIn number one right of course yeah well on LinkedIn absolutely so we'll link up your uh profile link in the show notes and then of course they can go to totalexpert.com there's all kinds of great content in there they can request a demo they can go to your blog any other direction you want to give them as far as connecting with you yeah yeah reach out and engage with us our teams at a lot of the conferences and things like that we'd love to have a conversation show you what we're up to if you haven't been in the system for a while educate you we're we've invested many millions of dollars in in R&D this past year and a half to two years and a lot of that's now coming to market and so there's a lot of really great things happening inside total expert with our customers and a big announcement coming soon depending on when you're listening to this so yes very soon we look forward to that Joe appreciate your time I know you're super busy and listeners you know what to do if you like this episode share it with somebody who you think might find this conversation relevant leave us a review and uh we'll see you on the next one bye for now okay that's it for today's episode before we wrap up I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days imagine never having to co-call again instead building real lasting relationships with top-producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations marketing automation weekly coaching it's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun so if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income visit mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes and while you're there don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage bros who've already seen incredible results thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode