A New Post By The Mortgage Cicerone.
A Guide for Mortgage Professionals.
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One of the most common complaints I hear from mortgage originators is the boom-bust roller coaster component to the business. While it is real and happens to a large contingent of originators, there are mortgage professionals that seem to be immune from the fluctuation their peers experience.
Why?
Bottom line is there are a few key critical elements or fundamentals these mega-producers practice that make their business and income more predictable. One of them is they treat and practice the art of building a consistent annuity of referrals and make it part of their everyday processes and practice. In fact, I have found they get down-right obsessive about building and service their annuity client base when times are good, because they know and expect the market to turn. So while most of their peers are focused on funding the loans in their pipeline (and subsequently not marketing their database of clients), these top producers are a bit contrarian in they are like squirrels and are building up a storehouse of food for the winter months.
It's about referrals from both clients and referral partners.
We always hear about building a 100% referral based business. While I don't think very many can claim 100% of their business is referral based, I know numerous superstar mortgage and real estate professionals who's business is in fact at least 90 to 95% referral.
The Best Time To Get A Referral
What do people talk about with their friends when they're buying a new car? About new cars! Better yet, what do people talk about when they are buying a new house or refinancing a mortgage? That's right...houses and mortgages.
More importantly, when they talk about mortgages, are your customers talking about YOU?
Your goal as a salesperson is to maximize your referral business. To do that, you MUST make the process systematic and so easy that every client working with you will recommend their both family and friends exclusively TO YOU.
Yet, most mortgage and real estate professionals don't live on referrals - WHY NOT?
I've found they are either embarrassed or they get so busy with the transaction details during the mortgage process they never get around to asking!
How I Turned One Transaction Into 72 Closed Loans
Yes, you read that correctly...72 closed loans.
It all started with taking the application and consistently asking for referrals throughout the loan process and loan management period after the loan closed. In fact, from the time I took the loan application and the loan closed, my client referred six other family, friends and neighbors (they all closed). Long story short, within the next four years I closed 72 loans that stemmed from the original six referrals provided me by my client....talking about a referral tree with a lot of branches!
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