Loan Officer Sales Training 4/29/24: Fortune is in The Follow Up

In this episode of "Loan Officer Sales Training," we delve into the often underestimated art of follow-up and its profound impact on your success in the mortgage industry. Join our host, seasoned loan officer and sales expert, as they uncover the strategies and techniques that can transform a simple inquiry into a closed deal.

Discover why follow-up isn't just a matter of persistence but a strategic process that builds trust, nurtures relationships, and ultimately leads to conversions. Our guest speakers, industry veterans with a proven track record, share their insights on crafting personalized follow-up approaches that resonate with clients and keep you top of mind.

From leveraging technology to implementing effective communication methods, this episode equips you with actionable steps to master the follow-up game. Learn how to navigate the fine line between being persistent and respectful, and harness the power of consistent follow-up to propel your mortgage business forward.

Tune in to "Fortune is in The Follow Up" and unlock the secrets to turning leads into loyal clients, one follow-up at a time.

For more episodes visit:
https://themortgagecalculator.com/Page/Loan-Officer-Sales-Training-Podcast

About The Mortgage Calculator:

The Mortgage Calculator is a licensed Mortgage Lender (NMLS #2377459) that specializes in using technology to enable borrowers to access Conventional, FHA, VA, and USDA Programs, as well as over 5,000 Non-QM mortgage loan programs using alternative income documentation! 

Using The Mortgage Calculator proprietary technology, borrowers can instantly price and quote thousands of mortgage loan programs in just a few clicks. The Mortgage Calculator technology also enables borrowers to instantly complete a full loan application and upload documents to our AI powered software to get qualified in just minutes!

Our team of over 350 licensed Mortgage Loan Originators can assist our customers with Conventional, FHA, VA and USDA mortgages as well as access thousands of mortgage programs using Alternative Income Documentation such as Bank Statement Mortgages, P&L Mortgages, Asset Based Mortgage Programs, No Ratio CDFI Loan Programs, DSCR Investor Mortgages, Commercial Mortgages, Fix and Flip Mortgages and thousands more!

Our Mortgage Loan Originators are trained to

The Mortgage Calculator is a licensed Mortgage Lender (NMLS #2377459) that specializes in using technology to enable borrowers to access Conventional, FHA, VA, and USDA Programs, as well as thousands of Non-QM mortgage loan program variations using alternative income documentation!

Using The Mortgage Calculator proprietary technology, borrowers can instantly price and quote thousands of mortgage loan programs in just a few clicks. The Mortgage Calculator technology also enables borrowers to instantly complete a full loan application and upload documents to our AI powered software to get qualified in just minutes!

Our team of licensed Mortgage Loan Originators can assist our customers with Conventional, FHA, VA and USDA mortgages as well as access thousands of mortgage programs using Alternative Income Documentation such as Bank Statement Mortgages...

Transcript

Restream recording Apr 29, 2024 • 04:01:25 PM: 0:00

All right. So welcome everyone. My name is Kyle Hiersche. I'm the COO of the Mortgage Calculator, and this is our loan officer sales training that we do every weekday at 12 p. m. Eastern time, where we go through the front end of the mortgage business and the sales side of things. Today, we're going to be talking about following up. Fortune is in the follow up. Everybody's heard it a million times, but let's talk about it. And let's also talk about how that applies to us here at the Mortgage Calculator specifically, right? For loan officers here at the Mortgage Calculator. So we'll go through some general stuff and then we'll also go through some stuff more specific to us here at the Mortgage Calculator. So let me go ahead and get into it. I'm gonna take the chat off the screen for now, but feel free to keep dropping comments in there, dropping questions in there that you have as well. Let me go ahead and pull this over here. And we'll get, oh, okay. All right. So, first of all, just some quick follow up stats here. 80 percent of sales require 5 follow up calls at least, right? 60 percent of sales say no 4 times before saying yes. And it typically will take 6 contacts to make a sale once you're connected, right? So, That's once you're connected. I'm not talking about six calls before the sale, six calls. Once you actually contacted them, you might need to contact them six times in order to actually connect and get ahold of them. And then after that, now this is especially true in our business, because as you all know, the sales process can be months long, right? Like even when you do a deal, the deal can last for 30, 60, 90 days until it closes, depending on. What kind of loan it is and the situation, right? So it's, it's so much more than just making a sale here. We have to make the sale and then we have to do the whole loan. And in the meantime, we have to remain the salesperson, right? So we quote unquote, make the sale when they agree to a quote in there. You know, moving forward and we found a program that works for them and they, they've signed the initial disclosures. Right? So now it's like, okay, we essentially made the sale, right? We're moving forward, but now we have to turn into our actual loan officer of doing the loan. But while remaining the salesperson to the client the entire time, so our sales process is so long that we you know, are essentially a salesperson for, you know, 20, 30, 60, 90 days the entire time. So. Very important for us to understand that even more so than other businesses. Ours is very much a follow up business, not just to make the sale, but after the sale, we're going to talk to our client dozens of times until the sale is actually made, and then we're going to talk to them after the sale is made, which we'll get into a little bit later. 48 percent of salespeople never make a single follow up. Let that sink in there for you. So statistically speaking, 48 percent of your competition isn't following up at all. So just doing one follow up, you're beating out 48 percent of your competition, doing two follow ups, three follow ups, four, five, six, seven, eight. Like the classic story of Mike here at the mortgage calculator doing almost 5 million in production in his first 90 days. A large amount of that coming from that one client that he had to call eight times before the person actually gave him a shot. So he called him eight times and then connected with him. And then obviously was in contact and it probably rang true here to about six times before he, you know, made the quote unquote sale. And then of course he had to communicate with them through closing the deal. And then that same gentleman, he closed two more deals with, right. During that, his first 90 days as a loan officer. So you know, obviously he talked to them, him a lot through that process, but he had to call him eight times just to connect in the first place. And then last bullet point here, a lead is forever. That is one of our mottos here. We're always going to follow up. And we know that the fortune is in the followup, right? So why would we ever stop following up? A lead is forever. We never stopped following up until they've, you know, talked to us or told us what they're looking to do or not do, or told us to stop calling them or unsubscribed or, you know, you know, whatever it is, right? But we're going to keep doing our job. Don't feel like you're doing too much. Don't feel like you're pestering people. Now if you're making cold calls, that's one thing, but most of the, especially at the mortgage calculator, most of the people you're calling are opted in leads, even the ones in the auto dialer and stuff, right? Now, obviously there's some cold call lists and. Realtor call lists and stuff like that, right? So at the end of the day, of course, this doesn't apply to everything, but most of the leads you're contacting are opted in. And so, of course, it's going to be forever. You don't need to feel like you're being too pushy following up a lot. They requested the information from you. They opted in. And remember, most of our ads are coming. From our ad or most of our leads are coming from our ad campaigns, which they're double opting in to be contacted right then. Right? So it's no mystery. Now, of course, it could be a wrong number or something. But in that case, if they answer says the wrong person unsubscribe them and, you know, you move on. Right? But a lead is going to be forever. So we're always going to follow up and don't feel like we're following up too much or, you know, You know, we're at the, at the end of the day, you know, we have the follow up schedule in the training, right? So follow that and you're not going to be doing too much. Okay. So let's talk about actually following up here at the mortgage calculator. So our follow up tools, obviously set a reminder task, right? That is the, Actual setting a task to follow up with them, and that's going to typically be triggering a phone call, right? Because when it comes to you know, make sure you follow the training, right? The 1st 3 days we do what we were trained to do that procedure that all of, you know, here at the mortgage calculator. But then at that point, after those first three days, we're going to put them on an action plan, right? Action plan. You know, some people call them drip campaigns, whatever you want to call them, automatically going to follow up. So at that point, once you put them on an action plan, it's going to automatically text them and email them for you. Right? So you're setting a task here, a reminder task. To trigger the actual call, right? You're setting the manual task to that day. When you log in, you see on your to do list, you got to call this person. And so typically, you know, again, the action plan is going to be doing the automatic emailing and texting. You're going to be setting reminder tasks to call and remember. That were you know, following the training, right? And so once we put them on an action plan, we're still going to set a reminder task to call them at least once a month and check in. So those are the two main tools there. Now, the other thing here is re quoting their scenarios. So that's, what's great. About the mortgage calculator and the tools that we provide you is things like the re quoting scenarios, the quotes in general, the quoting system, and then also the re quoting because you're following up with actionable items or following up with something of value. It's their scenario. We're re quoting it for them. We're pulling actual data, keeping them informed on what's going on with the pricing. And you know, it's an actionable item because as soon as they, whenever they do decide to pull that trigger, they have that button right there on that quote that you sent them on that updated quote, they have that button right there that says proceed to fill out their application. Right. To move forward. And so we're always going to follow up with, you know, value. We're going to follow up with actionable items. That way we're providing more than anybody else. Right. Anybody else just calling them over and over. Can I start pulling your credit? This, this and that. Right? So even if they are working with other loan officers, or maybe they, you know, pulled credit with somebody and turned into a trigger lead, we're going to be doing something different than everybody else is right now, follow up for referrals. So of course, fortune is in the followup, not only before you make the sale, but after you make the sale, right? That's what really leads to the fortune is the referrals. It really, in this business should be fortune is in the referrals, right? Because that really is. Where you're going to you know, close all of your business. That's just going to, it kind of takes itself, right? You don't have to buy leads. You don't have to, you know, do that type of stuff. That's going to turn into and just exponentially grow by itself. Now at the mortgage calculator, we send out that closing gift. That's a perfect reason to follow up. Remember when the loan closes, your client gets an email and it asks them a few questions so it can curate a gift box for them. It then sends them that gift box. It says the mortgage calculator on it. It's from us. So you want to check with them and not only make sure that they receive the email and say, Hey, we're sending you out a gift package. Be on the lookout for email. You know, answer a few questions and I'll curate a gift package for you. So that's a reason to follow up, which is goodwill while you're just telling them that that's going to happen. And then later, a couple of weeks later to follow up and make sure they got the gifts right. And ask how they liked it. Now the gift packages, you know, it's just things like a cool water bottle and a mini speaker or like a coffee cup and a cutting board or something, you know, it depends on what they you know, what they answer on the questions. Right. But the point is here, it gives two amazing. Opportunities to follow up, right? Which is a, you're going to get this email. A gift is coming, which is a great opportunity to ask for more referrals because they're going, Oh, wow. That was so that's so thoughtful. That's so nice. I'll be on the lookout for it. Right. And then boom, you want to ask for referrals then. And then again, a couple of weeks later, now you get to follow up with another gesture of goodwill. And on that exact phone call where they're going, yeah, it was so great. Thank you so much. I love the thing. Okay. Well, just wanted to remind you that, you know, if you or anybody else, you know is looking for a mortgage, please keep me in mind, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So. We want to make sure that we do that. So that is, you know, again, I'm trying to keep these a little bit shorter here since we're doing them every day. But that is just some basic stuff there I'm following up. And especially here at the mortgage calculator, these are the actual items that we're going to be using on a daily basis. Now notice there's only a few, you know, bullet points here. Cause that's all that needs to be there. We have the amazing tools where. At the end of the day, you have your action plans. You have the ability to re quote people and the re quotes going out. And you have the reminder task. I mean, the reminder task is crucial because you need to make calls. So I would say 1 of the big things to leave you with here today is make sure you're not 1 of the people that just likes to try to put people on action plans and not have a task set to call them. Remember, we don't ever just only text and email them, right? Unless they've told us, Hey, I don't want to communicate by phone, right? And then we'd have to know that. And we would know, but at the end of the day, we always want to call. So don't think you can just put somebody on action plan and say, Oh yeah, whenever they, you know, re engage I'll, I'll call them then. No, you want to make sure you have a task set, even if it's every month or whatever, you know, the situation is right now, I do see a question here. So I will take. The question, let's see here. If elite says they're not interested at this time, how long should you wait to check back in with them three months too far out? It's kind of your call there, Michael, depending on the, you know, conversation, right. Three months would be good for somebody who's kind of just like, yeah, I'm just not even in the realm of ready. Right. Then yeah, that would be. Fine, or maybe they already did it with somebody you know, and they just closed the deal or whatever. Actually, by the time you got a hold of them, then yeah, 3 months, 6 months, something like that. But somebody who's just like, you know, a little bit not deciding or whatever saying, hey, I'm not quite ready yet. You know, maybe next month, right? And after our first three days, like in the training, it's going, we're going to kind of default to a month for setting that manual task to call them. Right now, here's the other part of that there, Michael, is that's a good question, is that. You need to decide whether you're going to also put them on an action plan. So those are two things where the loan officer kind of has to make that decision based on the conversation and what the client, you know, what stage the client is in. Because at the end of the day, it may be a situation where. You should give them a call in three months, but you're not going to put them on an action plan in the meantime, because they straight up told you I'm not even in the realm of getting started until three months from now or whatever. So it wouldn't make sense for this action plan to be happening, checking in with them. Hey, are you ready? And you know, all these emails and texts going out to them, right? So those are some things where, you know, the training can't tell you exactly what to do because it's going to be based on each particular situation. So you want to keep that in mind. Of, you know, knowing when I need to only set a task to call and when I should set the task to call and keep the action plan going because the person is not really engaged or I want to make sure that we're staying on top of them. Let's see here. Another question. When you put them on an action plan and set up a reminder to call them and let's say 3 weeks of the system, send the campaign text or emails in the interim. Yeah, absolutely. So the action plan is going to run. Right. You're sending your reminder task to call them. Right. So they're separate the tasks and the, the action plan is not going to be you know, attached to each other. Right. So yes, the action plan will run. And then that's what we're saying is then you're going to manually set that task. Which is going to trigger you to call them because again, the system can, can text and email them automatically. So that's easy. You press a button in the CRM. We do all that for you. Right. But the system can't call them for you or set the date on when you should call them after, you know, when you're the one who spoke to the client and should know when you should be following up with them. Right. So they're not attached to the action plan. We'll run a, you're just setting, you're just using that task to set the call. All right. All right. Well, let's go ahead and wrap it up then. I appreciate everybody tuning in. Remember, we do this at 12 p. m. Eastern time every weekday where we go through the front end of the sales business. So we have some more topics for this week. I also have a guest for later this week. So appreciate everybody tuning in. We will see you tomorrow, 12 p. m. Eastern for the next episode of the loan officer sales training with the mortgage calculator. Have a great day, everyone.