Creating your own audience & content

This article is intended for Mortgage Industry professionals: First and foremost follow your company policy regarding any materials you might publish.

Find your voice: Everyone sells differently. I enjoyed a long run as a top five AE, ASM and producing RM through a number of rate cycles. Selling execution, rather than price, is more fun & results in greater share. The key to making the model work is making sure that everyone understands "What this means to me as: (LO, owner, processor,contract processor, et al.)"

Know your audience: Many AE's make the mistake of assuming the "owner" drives the bus with respect to the investor decisions. To an extent, the owner does drive the bus. That said, it's as important to the owner that his (or her) LO's are engaged. Your role is to share ideas & expertise for the LO's to win loans. The perception of you as educator establishes you as a reliable partner. My comfort level with respect to that endeavor was running LO meetings. The goal in every instance was to find something of value for the "what this means to me as a loan officer" question. I started meetings with a relevant statement of the situation followed by an idea. I quickly moved to how the idea works and the next steps for the audience to take. If I found myself in the weeds (happens often) I would say out loud 'what this means to me as a loan officer' to get things on track. Every meeting was about LO's "winning" more loans. I would leave each LO meeting with the next meeting scheduled for the following month or quarter. I'd also leave with every LO in the meeting's name, phone number & email in my cell as a contact.

Believe in what you sell: I did not spend any time looking at rates of the competitors, or worrying about who is working for which company. I found value in the model I had to sell. I woke up every day knowing (as far as I was concerned) we had the best secondary department on the planet, best UW's, and the best outsourced fulfillment platform for our Brokers to close with after CTC. One thing was clear: I was not going to fund 150 loans a month engaged in the loan level file flow. My role in the file flow was asking the customer for an email w/loan number in the subject line. I would then forwarded to the mgr assigned & ask to get the loan BOT (Back on Track.) If BOT meant declined or sent to audit hold, that was fine with me. I trusted the system & it worked. Most issues were handled without me and a reply with "handled" works.

When to engage loan level: Pretty much never with respect to normal file flow through to CTC. I never once logged in to the database of record to review loan level. I instead relied on the website the customers used. That said, when it came to post close file flow & counter party risk, proactive was the mantra. I could see systemic repeat flow problems manifesting & would elevate to management accordingly. Key here: Never leave a counter party or LO/Owner customer hanging with respect to secondary, origination, or fatal compliance risk.

Back to selling. What this article means to me the AE:

1. Reaching the funded levels you are capable of is not likely to happen publishing fliers with stock photos or someone else's inspirational quotes.
2. Processing loans or otherwise engaged in the file flow will limit you to 40 funded loans or less.
3. Happy hour is not where the top earning LO's & counter parties are engaged to learn their craft to win more business (national Sales meetings & awards trips are exempt from this rule.)
4. Conferences: Platoon & support your peer AE's. One conference per geography in your region to support your teammates & dominate. Plan on being part of an expert panel or running your own meetings to make the most out of a conference. Otherwise, while everyone is out chasing company owners, you're in the offices or at a central venue running LO meetings & stealing share.
5. Focus on Purchase Business when rates are low. Friends and family refinance is overrated as a repeat referral source of business. Position yourself as the purchase money expert everyone wants to hear from. Need content help, ask a sales peer that is 85% purchase.
6. Avoid the FIVE reasons: As a sales person it is possible every day to come up with five reasons that you are not winning. Every sales person has this voice inside, it's OK. Don't listen to that voice.
7. The hardest door to open in sales is your own. What are you waiting for ? Find a topic and get busy identifying "what it means to me" as a repeat realtor or builder referral customer.

To get you started, I published an article regarding Listing Agents from the "What this means to me as an LO" perspective.

Good selling.