We work so hard to GET clients that often the most difficult thing you can do is fire a client.

Why should we EVER fire a client? Here are my 3 top reasons that are non-negotiable:

1. Verbal abuse. They believe it is okay to yell, scream, and threaten. It is not.
2. Disloyalty and dishonesty. They are using your time and resources, but fully intend to do the transaction with a different agent.
3. They ask you to do something that is unethical or against the law or puts your license at stake.

But there is a fourth reason, and one I struggle with often in this kind of uncertain lending environment. When do you decide the hours involved in bringing the transaction to a successful close will just not justify what you will be getting paid?

And what about the risk it will NEVER close after you have invested even more hours?

Have you ever made that decision? Is it sort of like getting rid of the boyfriend you love because he won't marry you? Maybe he will...someday? Is it worth it to wait for him and miss other "opportunities?" And what about your time already invested? Do you cut your losses and run?

Or does everything depend on his reaction when you try to fire him?

I was feeling defeated and hopeless with every intention of firing one of my clients one hot August day. Read the first part of this story here.

 Nothing I had done had worked. I was ready, SO READY, to fire the client. I could never make enough money to compensate me for the work I had already put in and the work that would still would be required to approve this client. IF she was even approvable....!

In the end, I just couldn't fire her.

She believed in me and talked about the Christmas tree she would have in the first house she ever owned because of me. About us toasting with champagne when the loan closed because of me. About how far we had come together.

Apparently the fact she believed in me meant more to me than the money I might eventually make, or the huge risk that the loan would never close.

 Either that, or I am a big sucker for Christmas. 

And so I did yet another round of credit repair. Her original 512 score zoomed to a respectable 617. Still, she received her 3rd turn down. When I left my old company to go to the new company, the processor laughed and threw her file at me.

"Let your new company take a crack at this jewel" she said sarcastically.

I took an intense FHA training course offered by my new company, one designed to certify the loan officer in FHA financing. I read FHA manuals at night. 

Spellbinding reading. NOT! But it worked. I became convinced I knew a path to an approval.

I tweaked the file. The tiniest little details you would never think would make a difference.

I wrote a shamelessly long letter about overcoming hardships and why my client deserved an FHA loan (a girl has to use every talent and advantage she has, my mother used to preach).

Finally, the system spit out an approval in November after 9 months of stuggle. It was appropriately to become my first closing at the new company.

When the appraisal came in $25,000 low, I was still in the "Nothing will defeat me mode". Another long letter went out straight to the seller of the property written on a night I should have been have been at the company Christmas party. Never before had I tried such a bold tactic.

I instructed the listing agent to deliver it with a copy of the appraisal. I begged them to lower the price and it worked. They did.

When signing day finally came, I arrived early and placed a bottle of champagne at the head of the table with 2 glasses and a big ribbon. We looked across the table at each other and smiled.

Later there were bubbles and that surreal feeling that you just don't quite believe what has happened. A bond that can only come from a year long struggle, and winning the game as a team, had been formed.

I had made a difference. The commission check had become a very distant bonus to this fact.

I believe when we are motivated by what is best for the client, and NOT by money, the money will roll in ANYWAY.

Funny how that works.

Written by Janet Guilbault, Mortgage Lending Specialist Based Out of the San Francisco Bay Area