Your Sales Process Is Broken! Here’s What Today’s Borrowers Actually Want

Are your sales and marketing speaking the same language? Are they quietly sabotaging each other? In today's market, where every lead counts and borrower trust is fragile, disconnected messaging and rush processes don't just cost you deals. They erode your long-term growth. If you haven't rethought the borrower experience since Rayter and the Threes, you're already behind. My name is Jeff Zimfer and you're listening to the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast, the number one podcast for mortgage professionals who want to sharpen their skills, shift their mindset and close more business in any market. Today on the show, we're asking, how do you create a sales and marketing system that actually converts in today's market and builds deeper, more loyal borrower relationships? To help us answer that, we're joined by Jake Vermillion, CMO of mortgage champions where he helps re-engineer sales and marketing strategies to increase pull-through, close more loans and elevate the borrower experience. And in this episode, you're going to learn three crucial things. Why apply now calls are killing trust and what to do instead. How loan officers can stop being order takers and start becoming true mortgage advisors and where AI belongs in your process and where it absolutely doesn't belong. We're also going to talk about the biggest mistake retail loan officers are making right now what consumer direct teams are doing differently and how to rethink networking for real business growth. So if you're ready to close more loans with smarter systems and stand out by leading with value, stick around for this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Jake, welcome to the show. It's great to be here, Jeff. Thank you so much for having me. I've been listening to your show for quite a while now. I know Dale's been on in the past. Yeah, it's really fun to come on myself. Yeah, it's good to have you here as well because I know your need deep in the trenches with working with companies and loan officers, all about sales and marketing. As a matter of fact, one of these things I'm doing now is I'm doing these little who is or roasts, if you will, on GPT of like who is Jake for millions CMO of mortgage champions. And what he does, according to GPT, you can tell me if this is accurate or not, is you lead all marketing promotion and branding work for mortgage champions. Number one, is that accurate? Yes. Okay. Now this is where I think, yeah, so far so good, right? Now this where we're going to probably unpack some of these little bullets here. So it also says that you work to align marketing around what drives real results, not just tactics, fixing broken sales processes and making the marketing sales alignment tighter. I'd be curious to see where I got that. I feel like it's probably from like a panel I did for the gathering with housing our this past summer, but yeah, we certainly do that for sure. Absolutely. And speaking of housing wire, you are a housing wire rising star. Congratulations. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. So let's get into that jumping off point from chat to BT. Do you see that marketing sales is often misaligned? Yeah, absolutely. And there's a couple of places that that happens. Maybe the easiest way to kind of think through it is just from the bar's experience, right? So before we get there though, let me back up a bit. You know, I'm obviously the chief marketing officer more champions. Been around for 30 years at this point. One of the go to solutions for sales training in the space, right? So listening to this, you know, knowing my association with our company and then of course, my dad deal with millions of been around doing this forever and be thinking, why are we talking about marketing and not sales, right? Well, the reality is when you go into a shop like we do and you begin to implement a system for the loan officers to be able to sell more effectively, have more compelling conversations with their customers, convert customers, more quickly and get a more secure bar where by getting upfront commitment from that bar, right? When we rework the way that they are talking to the referral partners, for example, you then can create the opportunity for a disconnect. If you've transitioned a loan officer, for example, from having a highly transactional conversation with their customers, predominantly around pricing, right? Rates, fees, points, you name it, and products to instead having a conversation around life goals, how mortgage can serve them, the customer's needs, their desires, right, and talking about how you can benefit them through the way that you structure their loan. So those are all good things. Obviously, that's the transition we want to make, but it presents an opportunity where there could become a disconnect between the quality of conversation that the sales people are having with their customers and the referral partners and what's being pushed in the marketing, does that make sense? So for example, I mean, to surface level, the big picture we all know this, if you land on a lender's website, what's the first call to action you're more than likely to see? Yeah, fill out a form. Yeah, but even more than that start a formal application that's going to push you towards what? You had a birth and so security number, right? Like, you need to have built some trust, right? That's like what we're telling the loan officers, right? It is, hey, before we get to the point, where we're asking a customer to commit to us, we need to show us some commitment to that. We need to understand their situation, their goals, their qualifications. I make sure that this is the right time, that they're not, you know, that low likelihood of a declination, for example, but you go to the marketing, if you will, whether that's social media, post talking about specific products and programs, whether that's banner ads talking about pricing, such as rates, or whether it's a website, pushing them immediately to apply in line without having built any trust relationship with the loan officer, there's a big disconnect there. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's kind of the first point where we need to get some alignment, and then obviously there's, you know, sort of smaller details that we need to work out as well to make sure that that customer experience from the top of the funnel all the way to that point, where they connect with the loan officer, and then through the process, and closing, it's all seamless. Where do you see with your experience, 30 years in mortgage champions, you get called into a company to fix, right? Fix, we want more productivity, we want more production, more volume, etc. When you're walking in, you've got your, I don't know, put sure like homes on or whatever, and you know, you're digging, you're uncovering stuff. Do you usually find the, you know, patterns that are seem to be repetitive across companies, where the, you know, most of the opportunities are existing? Yeah, and I think the patterns are universal, especially across channels, right? So you want to start with consumer director retail, which would be a better place to start. Well, that's very interesting. I'm going to take most, let's take retail first, because that's most of the audience. I kind of figured, so let's start there. What's the number one thing that we're hearing from loan officers, right, especially walking to shops, of why they feel like their business is not able to grow as quickly as they want it to grow? Well, in most cases, we hear the same answer. They feel that it's a lack of inventory or it's the affordability problem, which granted we do have affordability challenges in this marketplace, no doubt. But let's start with inventory. Inventory is actually not nearly as much of a problem as you would think. In fact, actually, if you account for the number of loan officers who have left the business since the heights of COVID, right, that post COVID market, we actually have more inventory per active loan, and I don't mean license. I mean, active originating loan officer than we did in 2019. 2019 is about 5.8 units per loan officer. Today, it's about 6.2. Does that make sense? Yeah. Now, that's not to say that we don't have, you know, we could use more inventory to serve and change demographics, of course we could. You know what I mean? But the reality is, as a loan officer on any given transaction, you're only really competing with one customer against other loan officers, right? The reality is you're competing against fewer today because of that inventory equation. Furthermore, we've seen that at least half of markets across the countries, according to the NARs chief economist, have seen price reductions this year, okay? We know that there's a reduction in volatility. This market has shifted to a buyer's market, right? So there is an argument we made that, yes, of course, rates are higher. That's going to affect the payment. But the reality is, if we went back in a time machine back to 2020 and 2021, and we reminded ourselves of how hard it was to serve a borer, sure, rates were on the twos and threes, but home price appreciation was like 5% to 10% per month, increasing one over the other, people were competing 10, 20, 30, even 40 plus $1,000 over asking price. They were waving all of their contingencies. They were buying side unseen. You have so much more power as a buyer today to be able to actually control the transaction even though rates are higher, okay? So yes, there's affordability challenges. But even on that front, talking about a retail loan officer, one of the things that we've been teaching them, that we've been using on the consumer side for a long time, that a lot of retail loan officers just don't even think to incorporate into their conversation with a borer. It's the fact that today, we have more consumer debt and more equity, right? Then we've ever seen before. Well, of course, the equity we can only use with existing homeowners, but if someone's in a purchase transaction and they're trying to bring to the table, a large amount of cash for a down payment to trying to press that monthly payment, reverse or alternative strategy that you could take instead is, what if we actually put less down solidated some of the consumer debt rate, just eliminated it outright? And when you start to look at the blended rates of, you're no longer paying 21.9%, right? On $10,000, $20,000 from consumer debt, you're effectively rolling that into a mortgage that you're taking on by putting 10% down, for example, instead of 20%. We actually really, when you look at the total amount that a consumer spending month of her month to service all of their debt, not just mortgage, but mortgage, student loans, auto loans, credit cards, you name it, we're actually bringing down that total amount, right? Even stepping into a purchase. So these are some of the core issues that we see all the time every shopping walk into, as things like people saying, it's the affordability, it's the inventory, it's usually not those things. Usually what it is is a lack of understanding of how you conserve your bar, frankly, a shortage of referral partners. You just tend to have a lot more referral partners today because inventory is constrained in certain markets. And the only way to get around that is to have more partners who can send you more business, right? And even within that, to evaluate your existing partners, and to look at the type of deals that they're sending you and the volume, and to give yourself an honest assessment of, is this someone who's just sort of, you know what I mean? Like paying me favors, and they don't really see me, this is a partnership. And it's not really something you can elevate. And it might be better off actually ending this partnership, and pursuing ones that are going to be more productive. Or is this just something that, either they, or I have not invested enough in taking the time to say, hey, look, there's a ton of potential here. We're super aligned. I love working with you. How can we work together better and more often? And not just elevate your own business, but elevate your partners as well. Like, these are the things that we need to address, basically every shop we walk into. Yeah, so those are some critical areas you're auditing there. I want to go back to the example you gave of the direct lender and the buyer, and what I wrote down was consultant. And so what it sounds like you're saying there is that one of the strategies, if you will, is instead of, you know, rushing rate to rate term, things like that, take a pause. I mean, this is kind of our job as a mortgage loan originator is beyond just quoting rates and fees if you really want to have a career and differentiate yourself. What you're saying is you're suggesting to give advice that's not normal or that's not expected to that potential buyer, and you're going to evaluate their total financial situation and see where the opportunities are for them to do some financial restructuring, rather than just, oh, here's what you're going to for it for a 30-year fixed. That's right. 100%. Yeah. And so real quick, do you think is that hard for most originators to switch like that, to switch hats? No, I really don't think it's hard for originators. I think it's new, doesn't make sense. Yeah. So they fall into a habit. Maybe it's the way that someone else in their office sells, and they seem to do pretty well. So why not do what that guy does, right? Maybe it's from some of the habits that we picked up in those heydays of 2020-2021, where loans were just kind of fallen in our lap. I mean, still today, where we can look at the average number of units or the average volume that a loan officer is doing, obviously it peels in comparison to what many, who if they were in the business at the time, we're doing four years ago. And yet we look at the way that they handle customers on the phone, and it's very similar, right? It's a very quick pre-qualification, confirmation of basic information. None of that is being typically actively input into an actual application. And then the bar basically, I mean, the loan officer basically says to the bar, okay, great, sounds like, you know, there's some opportunity here. I'm going to shoot you a link. You go ahead and fill that out, and when I see it come through, then we'll have a conversation, right? And so they're forcing the bar to self-serve. Why is the loan officer doing that? They've gotten in their head that, one, that's what the customer wants, and let's be honest, if you look at the actual data, no customer actually wants that. Very few, right? I mean, sure, maybe if this is someone you've done, five other loans with, they're an investor. It's, you know, the DCR kind of thing. They're familiar with the drill, like, yeah, maybe they do want to do some self-service there. But when you're talking about your typical retail loan officer who's handling a purchase transaction, especially with the first time home buyer, this is someone who actually wants some guidance and some advice, and they want more than anything for someone to confirm for them, give them confidence that they are making the right decision for themselves or their loved ones, okay? Walking through an application together on the phone is a critical way to do that. And it's also the only way that you're going to disarm the objections that are going to come up when they get to those critical fields, like data birth, like social security number, like, hey, attach your bank account here. What do you want that for? I mean, if you're not there on the phone to explain in the moment, why it is that you need that? And how ultimately getting that documentation sooner rather than later is going to allow you to do your job better and get them a actual offer that they can take to the bank, right? Then they're just going to assume that it's nefarious or now's not the right time, or maybe they should, you know, talk to a few other lenders before they commit to one lender, right? Like you're positioning yourself to be shopped in that situation. Yeah, we would say to loan officers, like slow down, it's not 2020, it's not 2021, you have time, take 20 minutes with that borrower, and don't waste it. Don't ask all the questions that you could be asking my complete application and then still just send a link, just start completing the application and get that customer bought in from the front. Yeah, I'm curious as I hear this around what you're seeing and what you might be able to forecast the road ahead, you know, the intersection of AI with this human involvement. And I'm curious, you know, because we're talking about marketing and sales and that whole integration there. And I know you're pretty savvy on this whole AI thing. And my curiosity is at what stage of the consumer funnel, right? Your journey, better word. Are you seeing that your clients are starting to ask you about, about when and where do we implement, because this is facet, right? It is, it's simpler in a lot of ways in terms of collecting some of the information. And I'm seeing some examples of it out there. But there is that point, that sweet spot, you know what I mean? When you're in that dance, what are you seeing? What are you recommending? Yeah, so first of all, I appreciate you saying that there is in fact a sweet spot and that this is a dance, right? I couldn't agree more. And the way that I like to think about it and when I'm talking with our clients about these decisions and you're exactly right. They're asking questions from the very top of the funnel all the way through to how, you know, ISIS making updates to encompass, for example, we have more options to be able to do automated underwriting. What do you think about that? And I mean, so it's, it's the full cradle of the great origination and manufacturing that they're exploring how they can implement this new technology. And I think that's smart. Like I think you really should think about every aspect of this process being influenced by the existence of artificial intelligence. Where I would push back though, as you hear this phrase a lot of human and elute, right? I think it's the other way around is the way that we need to think about. We need to think about AI and the loop. This is a human driven process that we need to be selectively and strategically injecting artificial intelligence into for efficiencies and for accuracy, right? Like that's the way that we need to think about it. So when you're thinking about what's, we're in that dance, right? Should you be allowing artificial intelligence to interact with the customer versus your people? I would strongly recommend you need to think through like the nature of the type of information that you're looking for or that the customer's looking for. Okay? And so let me break that down. There, I would say there's low sort of relationship information that a customer might seek, right? And now I think the basics of mortgage, like what's a baseline credit score that might qualify you? What's the difference between a 30 and a 20 year term? How much does that typically impact payment? What is an FHA loan, these sorts of things? Not to say that you can't build relationship and establish yourself as an expert, if you choose to answer those questions for your customer, you absolutely can. But there's a difference between that type of sort of transactional information, if you will, or just background information, versus the type of information that you want to be extract from the customer and where the customer is starting to think about, like there's an emotional connection to the answer to the question that they're beginning to ask, right? Like is now a good time for me to buy, right? If you're thinking, if it's a renter, if you think about should I get in a home ownership? I want to participate in equity is home ownership, the right type of equity that I want to accumulate, right? How big of a home should I buy? How much of a payment should I take on? I'm hearing that home insurance is increasing, right? Like should I consider buying less house? These are all the types of questions that you have an opportunity to build relationship and trust by answering much more so than defining what an FHA loan is. This is a convention alone, does that make sense? Yeah, I want to make sure I'm understanding there. Are you saying that those questions are the human involved questions? Yes, so you should be asking the questions and you should always be making sure that you're the one in conversation with the customer, not your artificial intelligence, for example, when you're getting into anything that can have an emotional connection. Now, this may not be evident on the surface to most loan officers, right? So for example, when we walk through a loan application, one of the things that we have to fill in is employment and income debt, right? Most loan officers ask that like a doctor, right? Where are you currently employed? Do you have any dependence that you would like to declare? You know what I mean? Like it's very, you know, it doesn't build relationship or trust. You can ask those questions in a different way. And so some of these questions should be very obvious to people like a question like, you know, well, what are your goals in trying to become a homeowner, right? Why is that that you're trying to leverage the equity in your home? You know what I mean? What are you trying to accomplish? How can I help you with that, right? Like these are questions have emotional connections. That should be pretty evident to people. But even when you're getting what might seem like basic information on a 10-03, there are still opportunities to build relationship and ask questions in a way where it's like, hey, what do you do for them? You seem like a great person. Like, help me understand what you do for a career. They're family, you know, it's not dependent. You know, hey, do you have any kids? Are you married? Oh, how long have you been married? You know what I mean? Like this is a way for, and then to share about your home, oh, that's so great. We've been married for 10 years as well. Oh, yeah, we just took the kids on vacation. Now they're back in school, we're all sick. Like they're always to build a connection with a customer. If you just treat it the right way and don't just sort of check the box. And what you're saying is people want that. Absolutely, absolutely. So we listen to calls for every single one of our enterprise clients. In fact, we're actually in the process of building out an AI call scoring platform that can do this automatically by integrating directly with the dialer based on the thousands of calls that we've already scored, right? But having, like, we listen to these calls every single week, right? And so I can tell you, you know, we, we onboard a client and we listen to the calls, we listen to those transactional questions, we see a call that's, you know, five, six, seven minutes in length at the very end of that call is just, okay, great. Let me send you a link. We know what the, we know what the pull-through and conversion rates on those are and they're abysmal to be just blunt with you, right? And as we get through this training, we impart the system to the law of service. We change the way that they think about how they can interact with their customers. You start listening to those calls again, the times they go up, they're no longer five, six, seven minute calls, they're 15, 18, 22 minute long calls, right? And we're hearing this interaction between the customers and bars. Do you know what suddenly drops out of the transcript when you get to that point where it's a longer call? It's about the benefits that you're gonna give to the borrower through the mortgage and your establishing relationship with these application questions, rate immediately drops out of the question every single time. It's almost like an afterthought at the very end of the call where someone goes, well, actually, I think I forgot to ask is, you're right. Right, yeah. And all the learners have to do say, super competitive. Absolutely. We're gonna get to the lowest rate we possibly can. It's gonna be great. I'm curious, we're gonna dance a little bit between consumer direct and the retail. Yes. A lot of officer or broker. I'm curious to your point about all those calls you're listening to. And it's abysmal to use your word there. I'm curious if the source of the lead makes a difference. And are you, do you put the different types of originator in different categories, consumer direct versus relationship-based, referral-based realtor, right? Do you see that the context or the framework of that lead engagement, that referral engagement, those are two different things? It is, and I'll say two things here. And just to clarify, the pull-through and conversion of those calls as abysmal, the calls themselves, usually not abysmal, I don't come across that many loan officers that I really think, wow, this person really shouldn't be in this role, if it does happen, it's rare, you know. But you can see the potential for improvement. And you unlock something in that person of, wow, they really are an amazing salesperson, they just didn't have the right playbook. And now that they've got it, those conversion pull-through rates are through the roof, right? So as far as the difference between consumer direct and retail, the first thing I'll say is consumer direct loan officer, naturally has to be a more competitive salesperson. Because there is no context, there's very rarely an established relationship, they're competing on a more national scale, right? So there tends to be a higher floor in terms of call quality when it comes to a consumer direct loan officer. Now, the reality is though, you know, their margins are thinner, they have to do more units and more volume, right? I mean, in order to sort of live a similar lifestyle with a retail loan officer. So, you know, that just is what it is. The floor allotment is different. The nature of the conversation really is not very different except for the very beginning of the call, which is that a consumer direct loan officer has to do a whole lot more work to explain why it is that they're in touch with that customer at that moment, to remind that customer of how they receive their information. Often there has to be a declaration of something like a recorded line, for example. And so it's more important to front load immediately within the first 30 seconds of the call, exactly what you think you can do for that customer, to get them to want to buy into at least the next couple of minutes and then from there more time beyond that. Makes sense. Yeah. Retail loan officers get a bit more leash, right? But I will say this, where we often see, which is surprising to me, miss if you will on the retail side, is there's just not enough recognition of the referral source when we listen to calls even by retail loan officers. You will hear it on occasion, but even then usually it's light. It's not as sort of as congratulatory and partner oriented as it could be. If you're a retail loan officer and you pick up the phone or the customer, even a warm referred customer, you need to go above and beyond to express how great the partner is that gave you that opportunity and to make it seem like you are two peas and a pod, you've been working together forever and you are gonna do everything that you possibly can, hell or I water to make sure that their experience is, as topnotches can be, and you're not gonna blow a closing date, for example, right? Like that needs to be communicated quickly up front. Also, I would say retail loan officers probably should lean a bit more on their personal credentials, a little less on the corporate, corporate still matters. So don't, if you work for a retail organization, don't not mention the name of your company or how long you've been in business or you're to be in like some of the awards and everyone recently, mention all of those, but those are gonna be a little bit more front and center with a consumer rec shop where it's a bit more of a branded experience if that makes sense and a little less focused on the individual loan officer. Yeah, there's a lot in there actually. 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. I joined it because I was tired of doing business the way that regular loan officers have been doing it in my market, which is just making the core calls every Monday and Friday, checking in with real estate agents. I had done that for years and seemed like everybody was doing that. I needed something different and I wanted to find a way that I could work with the agents that I want to work with. I wanted to find a way that I could have a captive audience every month, every couple of weeks where I could find agents that were like-minded and that wanted to work with me as well. So it's probably brought in, I'm just guessing here, but it's probably brought on in the three years I've been back with the program, it's probably brought on. I'd probably say about $40 million in volume since then, right? And it's led us some massive relationships and I wouldn't be able to do those things without this program. The value of these Friday calls are so incredibly valuable for all of us. I get upset if I miss it on a Friday. The cost of this program is worth it just because of these Friday calls that we're on where we help coach each other. We're just here to help each other add value to our real estate partners. Are you ready to stop chasing and start attracting agent referrals on demand? Book a call at mortgagedmarketing.pro or hit the link in the show notes. Now back to our show. When I think about like- when you're talking about the retail loan officer, I've wrote down set the frame and I'm glad that you brought up the referral partner situation because I agree that there's a lot more opportunity to edify that referral partner situation. Both on by the way, and I'm sure you know this too, is the source of the referral to edify you as the recipient, right? Loan Officer, as that handoff is taking place. It's a two-way street there for sure to create a more symbiotic relationship there. So I'm glad you said that. After that first call, CC that partner, keep them involved. The number one complaint we hear from realtors, they never feel like they know what's going on with something borrowed that they've handed off, a buyer that they've handed off, or then once they actually get into process that's status of that file, right? So just keep them looped in from the very beginning as soon as you get off the phone, send an email to the customer saying, hey, it was so great to talk with you. I'm super excited. We're gonna get you the perfect loan. I've got Joe, who already is gonna meet CC in here. Like he's asking to make sure you're in the perfect home. Like we're so excited to partner together and make sure that we get this cross-align for you. It's not complicated, it's not rocket science, but it goes so, so far with those partners. It does, and I've always thought about this of like, I've always used the word of like architecting this process. Like you think about going to a very fine dining restaurant, like a Michelin star restaurant, right? For those that have been there, it's different. You can actually, there's a Michelin star restaurant that I read about and heard about on a podcast that's in Japan and it only seats like 10 people and it's just tiny little hole in the wall. But it's the quality, I know, it's crazy. It's a sushi place and it's the quality of the sushi. It's only open for like four hours a day, but it's crazy, right? But why it got the Michelin star is the attention to, yes, the quality of the fish, but really the attention to detail and the almost level of art that goes into the sushi dishes that they create. And so I think of also like Ritz Carlton and other traditional exact, and it always befuddles me, and I remember when I was an originator, I definitely felt that I was conscious of this and always tried to not only edify the referral partner, but I think about framing again, you've got to set the frame and you've got to architecture this process, like you've probably had this experience as well, like so often today, our consumer experience is lousy, where we go to different places, the doctor, the whatever, dentists seem to be a little bit better but the average consumer experience is average, right? And it's so easy to stand out if you would just put some structure and some format into that first engagement, even pre-engagement and then that first engagement. Yeah, well, and I think, you know, because that is the keyword, right? It's like structure, we like to use the word systems a lot. I think a lot of loan officers, they feel like that's taking something away from what makes them unique, right? It's like, well, I'm not a cookie cutter loan officer. We're not asking you to be. Yeah. Like, you can't tell me that any star quarterback in the NFL is exactly the same as another quarterback and yet they've all used playbooks and operate within systems, right? They're personality, they're unique skill sets, what they're best at, still absolutely shines through and yet they can still wear the teen colors, abide by the playbook, call the plays, you know what I mean? Yeah. This is, you know, we can do this. Well, it reminds me of like, you know, the process and, you know, what is your process and you have a process, you, it just may be terrible. You know what I mean? So how consciously have you thought about the process? Cause you have one. That's, that's, I'm a believer and I think of CS Lewis, right? He said we're all theologians. It's a question of whether or not you're a good one or a bad one. That's how I said, yeah. I like that. I want to go back to, again, this, this, this dance between Consumer Direct and Retail because, you know, you and I both know there's, there's, there's people out there that have this lead opt-in process, outforms, for example. And you know, you see lending trees, the classic is good. You've seen the forms, which is the questions and it's, it's slide slide. It's another question, another question. And that whole, do you think that is appropriate for both Consumer Direct and Retail? I'm not sure that I see a reason to have that be front and center as a retail loan officer. If you're predominantly working off a referred book of business, you know, I think the key consideration here that a lot of retail loan officers maybe take for granted is speed to need, right? People just move faster today. It's, you know, if by the time that someone's looking at a property or even has contracted with a realtor, and let's keep in mind, you have to contract with a realtor today. You gotta be like, it's a much stronger signal of intent to proceed now, not six months from now, than it's been ever in the history of this business. So, so just because it's a one referral, you know, if you get a phone call and you can't take it right the second, you get a text message or an email, whatever it is, you still need to respond immediately, even if it's just to say, hey, you know, thank you so much for your call or your text, email, whatever it is, right? You know, I'm currently in a meeting, but I'm gonna get back to you at this time. I'm looking so forward to speaking with you, right? So yeah, I mean, do you need to be redirecting to forms and having the customer pre-flow information? You can choose to do that. I would say be very, like be very honest with yourself about whether like to drop off on that. And if it's, if it's even like 10%, I would seriously consider, do you really want to lose 10% of opportunities, you know, 10% of opportunities to get that person on the phone? Probably not, especially on this market, you know? Right. Yeah, that's such a good point, by the way, when we have this, you know, reduction in transactions, every one of these is that much more important. Yeah, so we've got to do the best that we can on that. That's interesting. So you've got to start your first piece of need. Directly consumer, there's gonna be more of that form filling, if that makes sense. Yeah. But even still, I mean, I've told people before, if I could build a mortgage company today and was crafting a digital experience that's top of funnel, knowing that I'm driving first party traffic, right? I have people coming to my website, for example. Yeah. Honestly, the way that I would build it is I would have a chatbot, if you want to call it, it's not a bot, it's a chat widget. And I would do live direct connections, not necessarily with a loan officer, but with like an LWA or business development representative who is highly trained and can do a soft pre-qualification, value presentation, and then transfer to an agent. I would just have it. So my customers, LWA, they see a human face and it's like, hey, walk now, and they can choose their preferred channel and begin a conversation, and then immediately get connected with a loan officer. That's how I'd run it, if I was, if I was stepping into the business myself. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that's smart. Just this morning I was listening to a HubSpot conversation about chat widgets, if you will, and kind of what's coming around those. Once again, the integration between marketing and sales, and even when somebody on that widget drops off and says they're not ready to do the next step or whatever it is, nowadays, you can have technology to reroute that back to prospecting because they didn't complete the process. Well, let's put that back automatically into that prospecting workflow. Yeah, love that, really smart. Think about it this way, because we've touched on this idea of like integrating sales marketing more closely and mortgage. I think the primary reason why to do so is think about marketing and many other industries, right? You're marketing the specific features of a product. What's the product in mortgage? You don't know until you've assessed that cost-married conversation and already have them moving in process, right? Until you've done this sort of discovery process to identify what's gonna be best for them. So this idea that you can steal the playbooks, right? That are designed by other companies to market products with defined features, just simply doesn't apply to our business. What you need to market is what ultimately converts in a sales conversation. So I would highly recommend if you don't know what you should be marketing, just think back to the last thing you said that really clearly changed the mindset of a borrower, right? And when they were like, oh, yeah, 100%, I'm doing that. Like I'm gonna work with you and I'm not gonna talk to anyone else at this point. I'm in, take that thing and put it in your marketing. Like what sells is what markets in our business? Does that make sense? Yeah, no, that's very smart. I like that. Okay, cool. So let's pivot for a second. You are also a part of a soon to be published book in the rethink everything series. What do you wanna tell us about that? What are we rethinking now with the whole? And so we're gonna, like, rethought everything. Yeah, right. Kyle and the team are just cranking their bushes. I mean, awesome. But yeah, this time we're rethinking networking. That's what we're rethinking. So why is that of particular interest to you? Yeah. So I think the reason why I was approached to be a part of this book is because, two things. First and foremost, you know, there's probably a lot of people in your audience who've heard of my dad, who've heard the familiar name. It's been around for 42 years. He's been around our business for 30 years. He won every award you can think of, spoken on every stage, you know, worked with all the logos, all the people. He's tried over a million and a half loan officers, right? Like he walks with a large shadow. Okay. And so myself stepping into this business, this sort of family business, you know. It's been a question of like how exactly without, you know, like while celebrating this incredible legacy that he's still living and building, how do I in some way step out from that shadow and begin to find my own voice and you know what I mean, find my own crew and all these other things. And so I think people have seen me do that over the years. And I think that's part of the reason why I was asked to participate in this book is because there might be other people feel kind of the same way. And who knows what that shadow is? You know, maybe it's father figure. There's a lot of people in the business who come in from family, you know. But, you know, it could just be other influencers in the space, your competitors in your local market. You know, you just feel like you can't figure out how to carve out your own space. Well, I tried to share a playbook to help people understand how they can do that and to give them the courage to try and do so. The second reason would just be because I have accumulated a decent following on LinkedIn and have a few tricks up my sleeve for how to do that. And to do it in a way that really is driven around authentic connection and not just sort of trying to build a following for building a following sake. Cause that really doesn't, I'm assuming if you're in this business, you're not monetizing your views. Otherwise, you just become an influencer, right? Why sell loans anymore? So for those of us who aren't making money off of millions of clicks, you know, having a following on social only has limited value. What really has value is real connections that you can call on and, you know what I mean? That can actually drive your business forward. Yeah, so what specifically is your chapter about what can people look forward to? Yeah, so I give basically a couple of principles, basically working towards the thesis that what you really need is not a following but actually an engaged network. So the first principle that I, and these are principles that I live by, right? But a couple of years ago, I did exactly what the book title is, right? I rethought, why am I on LinkedIn? Why am I saying out connection requests? Why am I like going to conferences? They're not going to conferences. What's the whole point of this networking thing that I'm kind of got one foot in and one foot out, right? And ultimately what I realized was that the first thing that I needed my network to be was to give me intelligence. Does that make sense? And so that shifted my perspective from I just need to connect with anyone and everyone and build up this audience that I don't even really necessarily know what to do with. To instead, who are the type of people that I can serve and have value to and to go out and define those people, build a relationship with them and then what naturally happens is conversation through that conversation, you get intelligence, right? You learn who's hiring, who's making a change in product, who's moved to a new company, who's exploiting a new market opportunity, like all of these things that are incredibly valuable for our business. And for you, that might be something different, right? Like for the local loan officers, what's happening in your local market in terms of like referral partners? Is there a new builder who's come in town that you can build a relationship with? Is there a CPA who's looking for a new loan officer to partner with? Yeah, you name it. Is there a brokerage that had a falling out with a loan officer who was doing a lot of business with them and you have an opportunity to step in and snap up some of that business? So that was the first principle. It's like, I like that. Get intelligence from your network. The second thing is recognizing that ultimately you can differentiate yourself by actually paying attention to what other people say and worrying less about what you're trying to say on social. Does that make sense? So really simple, a couple of strategies here. But the first and foremost thing I would say is ultimately, so take AI, right? We've been sort of dancing around like AI and his applications today. Most people see AI when it comes to the social media, networking, building following all you name it, they see AI is like an escape hatch, if you will, to avoid having to do the work, to create content, to be able to put content out on at least a daily, if not weekly basis, right? I don't think that's the best use of AI. I honestly think that the best use of AI is to be able to better identify who you can be prospecting and then to leverage its power for it to do the homework for you so that you can actually learn who it is that you wanna be doing business with or doing more business with. Does that make sense? And so once you are able to identify the right people that you should be listening to online, and then you can even ingest large amounts of their posts at one time, it allows you to be able to strategically leave a comment, a reaction, to send a message. Like the way that I run my social now, if you will, is I actually have spreadsheet after spreadsheet of the type of people that I know I wanna add value to, and I do a sort of how, when was the last time I actually, like they put out a post and I was able to engage with it, and I reverse filter it, does that make sense? To find people why it's been the longest amount of time since I had engaged with them, and I checked their profiles to see what they're up to, and I leave a thoughtful comment or send a message saying, hey, I saw that you pushed about this, that remind me of this, I wanna connect you with this person, and just add value in whatever way I can. I can honestly tell you that's done so much more for me than when I was trying to post every single day and sort of keep up with the Joneses, if you will, if you will, of social media. So that's the second principle, and the third, I will leave for anyone who wants to read the book. There you go, I like it, a little trailer, teaser. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up the digital social thing because networking, of course, implies not only in person, but online as well. And sorry, I should clarify, I was sort of, I was told by the powers that be, that there was plenty of content in the book already on how to network in person, and they really wanted more perspectives on how to network online. But I really do think that the majority, your networking in person is gonna be that much more effective if you've actually already made it content online. Yeah, so I think it's a great starting point, and it's budget friendly, if you will. You don't have to spend a lot of money going all over the place or hosting your own events, although hosting your own events can be an amazing strategy for building and growing your network. I know, Jeff, you've got the playbook on that. Oh, yes, thank you very much. That is so true. And I always say, let the online drive the offline, right? And I love your strategy about being smart and intelligent with how, because I mean, I can definitely relate to, it's Wednesday, boy, I gotta get up and post something, I gotta connect with people, and use a rainly throwing crap against the wall. Well, and here's the thing, this is one of the things I point out in the chapter. It dawned on me when I was posting a lot, that that was, I was most exposed to being controlled by whatever the algorithm wanted to show today, when I was deciding that I was gonna build my network by posting my own content, right? It controls who sees your content when you post. What it does not control is who's content you choose to go out and see and engage with. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course, yeah. It doesn't handcuff you to go visit, yeah. Yeah, there's no way they can control it. And so, I think if you're, if you leverage tools like AI to identify who it is that you really do wanna be connected with, engaging with online, and then you just do the work to go out and engage, it's sort of an algorithm proof way to go about growing your business and building more real connections that you can then follow up with in person, when you decide to host that event or go to that conference or whatever it is. This is more a question for me, I'm curious, because you do put a lot of content on LinkedIn writing, you've got 10,000 plus followers. How do you, or should by the way, your tagline on LinkedIn is actually written by a human? Well, I'm wondering where I'm gonna make an assumption here, but where and how do you kind of close out on this? Where and how do you incorporate AI in your writing, for example, on LinkedIn in some of the content you're posting? Yeah, I let it do you like a typo grammar check at the end and that's it. And honestly, I'm debating not even doing that, moving forward to be honest. Right. I think there is a genuine, I think it would be strategic to assume that the algorithms will be able to detect AI generated and AI edited content better, faster, right? And so there's sort of a long-term play, I think that would actually be very wise for a lot of people who are serious about posting on LinkedIn or any other content platform for that matter to seriously keep their content close at hand and not expose it to too much AI. Interesting. Do you use AI as a kind of a brainstorming partner? I use it as a research tool. Research tool. I appreciate that secondary follow because I should have said that, yeah, up front. Yeah, I love to use it for research, but you do have to treat it like interns, if that makes sense. You have to, it's trust but verify, right? You absolutely have to verify. Yeah, very interesting, okay, cool. All right, well, listen, 30 years mortgage champions, congratulations to you and your dad and the whole team out there. You guys obviously made a huge impact in the industry. We're closing out here. It is September, 2025. We're heading into the end of 25 and into 26. What are you optimistic about for 2026? Everything. Everything. You're an optimist. Well, I mean, look, rates are gonna come down and that don't make that your saving grace, but the reality is, lower rates is not necessarily guaranteeing more business. What it does is it brings borrowers back into the market and you've seen uptick in activity, right? So if you're a loan officer or you're a lender listening to this, what you need to prepare for is the ability to be able to effectively capture more borrower activity, that makes sense. So, but that's good for our business. Ultimately, more activity is good for our business. So that's a huge thing to be excited about in 2026. I also think there's gonna be a little bit of like necessary bursting of the bubble on some of the AI enthusiasm and I think that's good, right? The reality is nine out of 10 AI startups fail right now. So the ROI is simply not there in many of its applications. And so what I think lenders and vendors who are supporting lenders are going to do is they're gonna be a lot less generic in their approach to AI and they're gonna be much more strategic. So let's solve this huge problem. Let's like focus on this tiny little one. Make sure that we can be cost efficient and then let's deploy that and then iterate from there. Like I think that's gonna be much more productive for the industry than some of the sort of sweeping claims and big picture ideas that we have out there right now that's kind of the wildest of AI. So that plus some younger loan officers getting into the business, like I think we have nothing but you know, we should have nothing but enthusiasm for this industry in my opinion. Yeah, that's good to hear. New blood is the life blood. Well, listen, it's not enough of it but we're seeing more hiring on that front which is good, you know? Yeah. Well, we need to create a compelling case, you know, use case for them to consider this as a career. 100%? Yeah, 100%. That's what's missing a little bit is like a lot of that same playbook that is still there that I got which is here's your business cards go get some realtors, you know? But think about this though. Think about the impact of AI on industries like traditional knowledge work or even like Silicon Valley like a lot of the careers that these current college kids were going into school for. They're sort of seeing in real time. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get a job, right? Like there's so much more efficiency with developers now. Like why would they hire some junior developer to do code when it's like they can have a senior to do vibe coding and you had to be in like it's done. So you will have people who will be in this like I need to find a job that they can make a little bit more money like what I was expecting to make for having on a school. Orch is an amazing opportunity for this individual. To your point though, we just got to get the message out. Well said, well said. All right, for people who want to connect with you, we'll put the links in the show notes. But what is the best place for them to connect with you? Mortgage champions dot com or just shoot me a message on LinkedIn. I pretty much live on there. So we'd love to connect. All right, we'll link that up in the show notes. Jake so much. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate you, man. And like I said, I've been listening for a long time and I feel like you're one of the OGs of mortgage podcasting. And so it's just such an honor to be here with you and share some tips. I hope it's helpful for your audience. I appreciate you being here as well. You bring a lot of value to our community and hopefully to the listeners today. So listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode? Go follow Jake on LinkedIn. And by the way, if you're looking to improve your sales and or marketing, check the link for mortgage champions and learn more over there. Everybody, 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 your 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 why you're there. Don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening and I'll see you. On the next episode.