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I'd guess that I've given about 800 presentations to Realtors in my time as a loan officer. I could get an exact count, but the first say, 300 were absolutely awful meandering things. They worked, but that's because of the famous "dog with an order form," rule. I did everything I could to waste the work I did getting the appointment. Oh, they still got me business because Agens do work with those LOs that show initiative, but they were not useful, they didn't build my brand, and they didn't help me do anything that I was going to do. I made more mistakes than you're ever going to make, so without more adieu, here are the ten things you can do to make the presentation you've worked with useless. 10.) Logorrhea. That means talking to much. You gotta shut up, you gotta LISTEN to what the hell the agent wants. 2 ears, one mouth, baby. 9.) No testimonials/advance work: Mike Mueller is getting great at this. So is Mark Shandrow. Having video testimonials sent in advance of the meeting will absolutely make your job WAY easier. 8.) Bashing the competition. How do you look like a jackass? Bash the compeition. 7.) Bashing Programs Every loan we do is a tool to achieve a purpose. They're not inheirently immoral or moral. Let's keep that in mind at all times here. An Option arm has a purpose, and so does an FHA loan. Ignorant people bash things. The farthest you should go? "I don't do a lot of X." 6.) Not having standards Being willing to not work with an agent (if they are crooked or if they are hostile) makes you unfakably confident. Takes the 'begging' aspect out of what you're doing. 5.) WASTING A REALTOR'S TIME WITH A DRAWN OUT SPIEL. World class, paid professional speakers don't usually have two hour presentations. They can't hold an audience's attention that long. Why should we? We want to convey competence, we can do that in 15 focused minutes. We want to show that we care, but we want to get moving, because familiarity breads contempt. 4.) Not closing. Duh. Ask for the next deal. "Can we start working together with the next buyer you have?" 3.) Not educating Right now, agents have to know what's closing, what's not. They don't care about your dog, they care about their clients. Teach that. 2.) No enthusiasm. C'mon people, we GOTTA HAVE ENTHUSIASM when we do our jobs. MASSIVE amounts, especially over the phone. 1.) Not asking Questions You think we'd get this, but we wanna learn about THEM, not bark about us. There are a few skills that make the difference between winning and losing in Real Estate. I'm going to talk about them all this week here on the Rain (and maybe some on my blog). There are a lot of things that LO's/agents must/should have or do to be successful, but there are a few core skills that really matter a lot.
A lot of the rest doesn't matter. I'm going to talk about being consistent with your marketing right now. A lot of survivors and wannabes don't have any real idea how much their marketing actually costs. And a lot of people don't stick to their own plans. So I'm going to give you a real simple breakdown. I've recently come away from church of 'schedules.' I believe that a schedule is a last resort if you're having trouble getting stuff accomplished. I'm in the church of 'activity stacks.' Each day, you pick a start time, and do your work, more or less, in a set order. This eliminates the guilt or procrastination caused by being 'off schedule.' For me, selling training services my marketing stack is:
And then I can get to various projects, callbacks, etc. A real estate agent/loan officer should make sure that the VERY FIRST THING they do is lead generation EVERY day, no matter what. A preset list of things will keep the business healthy. Once you get into "deal churning" mode, you lose the ability to accept the tension that it takes to create your business. What I tell my people is that it's critical to begin with lead generation. Everything else comes into focus from that point, and you go thrrough the day much more energized. There's always time for it, whether you're blogging, using social media, doing telephone outreach, calling on past clients, or whatever, you've got the time, and you can be truly free when you can generate your own leads. You generate your own leads by making a doable daily plan,and doing it first, and being ruthless about execution. Chris Johnson runs LoanOfficerSurvivalTraining.Com, and has many free resources for LOs and Real Estate agents that are interested in generating their own leads. I know. You know. There's too much CRAP to do. There is an absolute TON of information (stuff) flying at us all from a ton of directions. We have email accounts, we have calendar reminders, we have blogs to read and blogs to write. We go to bed with a half full inbox and a half fried mind. What happened to that client we were supposed to call? What happened to our connection with our Higher Power? And why do we procrastinate the stuff that we have to do? The books like MREA and even 7 Habits are fantastic, but the thing is, most of us have a general sense of right and wrong, and a general sense of where we want out business to go. It's the driving it and plugging away at the details that gets us totally swamped. I then recommend to you, in the strongest terms possible, the book "Getting Things Done," by David Allen. The link below is an affiliate link. This book eliminated stress in m life, and put me on the path I'm on with the confidence to do it. A lot of David's advice is (admittedly) comon sense. Getting Things Done, By David Allen But, it's common sense SPECIFICALLY applied. If you're going to prioritize, HOW do you prioitize? How do you make sure that you don't leave stuff hanging out there? This $9.00 book has ultra-specific information that I really don't think any real estate agent should do without. The "back of the envelope" version:
There's more to it than that (like if the thing takes 1-2 minuts do do, bang it out now rather than put it in a list). But that's the gist. No CRM/Top Producer/Program thinks with this much forced simplicity. In a world that we live in where we're asked to be constantly 'on,' this book provides an absolute ton of answers. Are any of you out there GTDers? If so, what are your favorite 'crutches/tricks?' Chris Johnson helps loan officers turn their business around by generating their own leads through multiple sources.
A few questions for Lenders (and any ambitious Realtors). I've been online networking for five years. I didn't call it that in the beginning. I joined Livejournal in 2002, and have since collected an easy six figures off of local referrals from that site (when it was a hobby-blog, not a money-blog). I joined Facebook last year, (feel free to add me here ) and earned $29,000 from first and second level referrals on that site, (7 total closings) from acquaintances I haven't spoken with in year. When I started marketing to strangers it started to feel like work, but it still worked for me. I added more closable business to my pipeline, by comenting on profiles, and eaves dropping on conversatoins (myspace's blogs were a good source of that kind of thing). I've tried a little of everything. My questions are (and this is only directed at folks that have had closings via social networking though I'm sure everyone will answer).
My answers are basically this:
I know that nobody is yet the end-all-be all with this stuff, but I'm just looking at different working philosophies. What I've done is participate in forums to the best of my ability. I had to do two things:
The #1 was to keep me from having all of my lead generating eggs in one basket. Idea #2 is to let go and focus on productive work. Engaging morons is rarely productive. I got into a bitchfest with someone on Livejournal about if you should or shouldn't put 20% down. He said yes, I said no, and I was engaged with responding to somone who wasn't convincable because I felt like he besmirched my charachter. Well, I'm really curious about the five questions, particularly ones regarding how spammy you can be. I think self promotion is normal, but where is the line for giving value? Chris Johnson is the founder of LoanOfficerSurvivalTraining.Com Tim, here's the way to do it. Lenders, Converting agents is serious stuff. You want to make sure you convert them using methods that work in TODAY'S market. So I invite you to come before the next course starts. All NEW students get my book, "Loan Officer Survival Guide" absolutely FREE.
I'm not advocating spending big bucks on mailings right now--this is the time we need to really be firing For less than a tank of gas, you've got the complete survival guide. Over 200 pages of content that you can and should use today. All you gotta do is swallow your ego, roll up your sleeves and grind out deals. We all know how radically different this market is--and we have to adapt and adjust. So, I put togethe the best ideas on how to work with this market reality. Everything from finding deals... ...to getting 6 out of 7 deals clear to close on the first pass. Is in here. Less than a tank of gas adds you a deal a month. ...if you're willing to block out distractions and work it. What do you say? Are you game? Oh, and if you think I might not know what i'm talking about? Why not click the book, scroll down, and see what mega-producers said about the FIRST version of my stuff...(I've completely revised, expanded, and made this right).
I spent some time on the phone today, and asked how big the bribe was from the big banks. First Check 21, now this: This was originally in http://genuinechris.com From a fantastic email sent out from Dave Biggers, Chairmain… a la mode, inc. Background: I get a lot of prelegislation panic. This happens all the time. This, seems to be the real deal.
Now…David talks about some of the issues:
That’s all normal stuff, and I hear it all the time. What we don’t hear all the time is this:
That is candor and honesty, and leadership. The REAL reason is that he’s self interested. And this is good. Many brokers are good. Most are bad. (Yes, most).I don’t know what the odds are that we can stop this regulation; there is talk that it doesn’t apply to correspondent lenders, so most of the good shops will get one or more correspondent lines. But it worse than the disease, a big wet kiss to the banking industry (like Check 21). This too shall pass. However, I’m more optimistic than David. This too, shall pass, and we will continue our roles and our excellence. Don’t let this scare ya. Good people will survive whatever nonsense the bad people throw at us. The problem is that the industry brought this upon ourselves. Really. We all did, bit by bit because inquiries became a bidding war to see what value what appraiser could get for what house. Now go conquer!
Chris Johnson is a loan officer, blogger, and author of the LO Survival Guide. He can be reached at chris@chrisdoesloans.com Active Rain Post. Last year, I hit a production slump. It was in April, after a phenomenal March. All March long I was fielding the "Where's my deal" calls from Realtors. The mess was on, and we'd just started to hear the din of the bad news get louder and louder. I got into the office, and had the Cranberry Wink of my voice mail light flashing...all the time. Realtors were worried. We didn't know how bad it was going to get yet, or what to do. We hadn't fully adapted to the new market conditions. The deal I was holding was a sacred trust, and I had to do a great job...because otherwise the Realtor might be 30 days late on their own mortgage. We were in denial for a long time that the market radically changed in November of 2007 with the collapse of Freemont Capital. The Realtors had a higher level of anxiety and needed more reassurance. And...dammit, they deserved it. If someone is going to honor me with their livelihood, they DESERVE to know what's going on with it. So it dawned on me that there was an easy way to control this. DAILY updates, BEFORE 8am, with EVERYONE CC'd. I first amended our disclosure process to include the Listing agent in the process. I wanted to be able to communicate honestly with them, because open communication keeps deals alive in this market. If there was a problem, they needed to know. Then, I began sending a 3-4 sentence email to everyone on the deal; openly ccing them. Listing agent, Selling Agent, Title Company, Processor and even the Seller. Sentence #1: What happened today, and the status:
Sentence #2: What the next step is and when we expect it:
Sentence #3: What to expect at that point:
Sentence #4: What we still need and what the plan is for getting it:
Then it's boiler plate:
It's dead simple to use Google Aps or Outlook to create a group to make this simple, so do it in the beginning. I supposed you'd get most of the impact if you did it every OTHER day, but I want daily contact. Now, sometimes my deals went sideways. A government loan would require something goofy, or an underwriter would not like something, a value might not be there...there might be a delay...I had the credibility to tell EVERYONE what would happen and when because I had performed so far. This hits the Realtor's inbox. I do it myself, from my email address, 100% of the time. I can usually cut and paste text from the day before, but it gives everyone the idea that I'm 100% in control of what's going on. It keeps me from dealing with "where's my deal," calls, too. Now, I love talking to people, but inbound calls are always interruptions, and they always keep us from delivering service and focusing on what's happening. People want MASSIVE amounts of reassurance in this market. They can't live without it, because every deal is a sacred trust, and every deal matters. (And for those of you that get on me for calling deals "deals" go soak your head, I'll never care.) How much time could you save every single day if you just took the time to realize that people want status updates. Chris Johnson Blogs All Over The Internet. His E-Book Loan Officer Survival Guide has been called the #1 Investment you can make by Brian Brady. He's now podcasting at survivalcast.newmarketsurvivalguide.com. He is seeking contributors for NMSG right now, to help "rotary club" businesses go to the next level. So Monday, I talked about starting EACH day at zero-zero. But what I didn’t get into is keeping score. BEFORE you check email/take down your Reader/do the normal things that you do, it’s important to get some stuff done to move your business forward. For me, it’s prospecting. You can see it tracked at GenuineChris.Com–the sidebar has a little bit of it. The gist though, is the MINIMUM I need to do to get my business going. And it’s REALLY not that much:
That’s it for me–I know if I hit 35 contacts in a kind and focused manner, I’ll get an application each day. I get THAT Stuff done, and I know that–no matter what–my business is healthy. The goal is a little higher than those standards, but if I did those things each day…I’d hit my goal of a 6 figure income on not a lot of hours per week. |
Chris Johnson Westerville, OH More about me… New Market Survival Guide Office Phone: (614) 839-4850 Email Me ;) Links;) Tags (Tag Cloud);) Archives
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