The "Outlook" looks good... Re-invent yourself

Sean Biggins (Wells Fargo) — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:18:42 -0700

I've been a loan officer for 20 years. Every once in a while you have to re-invent yourself. I not only reinvented myself professionally, but personally as well. I moved from CT to Hilton Head Island, SC which is 951 miles away from my market. This isn't such a big deal since I work for a National lender. I'm able to maintain my volume in CT and build a new clientele in SC.

So the challenge is "how do you get the attention of a group of Realtors as quickly as possible to begin building a business"? This is a conundrum. I'm a newbie all over again, even though I'm a top producer and the go-to guy in my area up north.

I thought long and hard to try to determine what I could give Realtors that had value and that would give me the opportunity to spend time with them so they could get to know me. Knowing allot of agents have not mastered the art of contact management, I decided to create a training class using Microsoft Outlook that would incorporate such a skill. I selected Outlook because just about everyone already uses it, so all I have to do is to expand on their knowledge of the product and teach how to make the product do something it really wasn't intended to do.

The end result is a Microsoft Outlook 2003 (this is the version most people have still) training class that incorporates 4 1-hour long sessions using Microsoft PowerPont (56 slides) for the screen shots and handouts with step by step directions on how to perform each task.

I had been going to the brokers of individual office to offer it to them as a group. My little training program was so well received, it was accepted by the local board of Realtors and is now offered by them as a free class. I just completed my first board sponsored series with 44 agents from 19 companies. The head of the board is very excited as it was gotten great reviews from the attendees. Since I started offering the class, I have completed training with 114 agents. The market is slow here, so its a great time to hold the classes.

I've been asked to come up with more tech classes to help the agents market themselves. Many of them have added me to the top of their Lender list, and it has begun generating referrals.

So that's my story..... what do you think?

Sean's Blog

The "Outlook" looks good... Re-invent yourself