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How To Get 300+ Five-Star Google Reviews · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  Hey, hey, hey, you have Simfer. Welcome to another episode of the Mortgage
• 0:10
  Marketing Radio Podcast. I'm feeling a little punchy today afternoon here. I've
• 0:15
  been on the on the phone on the on the recorder interviewing, talking with
• 0:21
  loan officers with leaders all over the country. And we're bringing another one
• 0:25
  to you here today, bringing some heat. Conversation that's very relevant for
• 0:30
  you coming from one of my favorite peeps out there in the mortgage world. It's
• 0:33
  it's his second time visiting us on the podcast. And who am I talking about? I am
• 0:40
  talking about John Cornish with QC home loans in Davenport, Iowa, shout out, Iowa.
• 0:47
  Hey, I got to say this even though I'll upset a few people.
• 0:50
  No cyclones. And those who know, no, what I'm talking about with that. So John has
• 0:59
  this amazing process I wanted to share with you guys, which is all about five star
• 1:04
  reviews and how to level up your five star reviews on Google both for you and to
• 1:11
  share your knowledge of how to do so with real estate agents. John has, I'm
• 1:18
  looking at his Google business profile right now. I'll put a link in the show notes
• 1:21
  as well. John has 300 and four five star Google reviews on his Google business
• 1:29
  profile. That's what's called Google authority. John has also fully optimized his
• 1:34
  Google profile with other types of content photos, right? He's responding to all
• 1:40
  the reviews personally. He has regular updates on his Google business profile in
• 1:45
  the area or section called products. As a matter of fact, the one I'm looking at today
• 1:50
  as we just recorded this six hours ago, he just posted an update. It's basically like
• 1:55
  a post. And so how can this benefit you? Well, let me ask you a question. Do you want
• 2:01
  more organic outreach people finding you through Google search? Do you want more people
• 2:07
  referring to you? Do you want to be more referable? Do you want to get more referrals?
• 2:11
  Do you want to grow your business? Look in today's day and age, look, ask yourself
• 2:15
  this question. Before you buy a product, invest in a product or service, especially
• 2:19
  if it's a sizable investment, do you look at reviews wherever there, Amazon, Google,
• 2:25
  elsewhere? Well, Google is what we call the first impression. And the more quality
• 2:30
  Google reviews you have on Google, the more Google authority you have, therefore the
• 2:34
  more likelihood is you may show up in local search when people are using local search
• 2:39
  terms. Most importantly, when and if you do get reviews from others, they're going to
• 2:44
  go check you out. They're going to look you up on Google. And the question is, what do
• 2:48
  they find? Is your Google profile a graveyard, a ghost town? Do you even have a Google
• 2:53
  business profile? How do you know? Type in your name right now into Google and you'll
• 2:57
  see what comes up. That's what other people are seeing. So this conversation with John
• 3:02
  today unpacks his five star review process, how he gets reviews, how he asks for reviews,
• 3:08
  the tools and tech that he uses and how he's leveraging his knowledge to attract real estate
• 3:13
  agents through teaching the same content, Google business review to real estate agents. By the way,
• 3:19
  we just so happen to have a class for our pro members that does the same thing. If you haven't
• 3:25
  heard about it, you can go to mortgagemarketing.pro check it out. So I think you're going to love this
• 3:29
  conversation. Take notes. Most importantly, apply what you hear from John and feel free to connect
• 3:34
  with him. Links in the show notes without further ado. Let's get into this week's show. John,
• 3:40
  welcome back to the show. Hey, very excited to be here. Thank you so much.
• 3:44
  Good to have you back and you're back with the vengeance back bringing some value. We're going to
• 3:48
  talk about that in a moment. How to improve your Google five star review process and help
• 3:53
  realtors do the same. But before we do, for those that may not be familiar with you, even though
• 3:57
  this is your second appearance on the podcast, who are you? Tell us a little bit about how long
• 4:02
  in the biz and numbers. Yeah, so John Cornish, I've been in mortgage lending for I think I'm
• 4:08
  coming up on 21 years, 2022 numbers, a little bit less than 65 million for 204 units, 20 and 21,
• 4:18
  got real close to 100 million both years, north of 400 units. Anybody in the industry knows that
• 4:24
  those years were a little bit easier than they are right now, but just still plugging away and
• 4:28
  trying to win every day that I can. Yeah, got a got a family love what I do and really,
• 4:36
  really excited to be back on the podcast. Yeah, and you do love what you do and you're also
• 4:41
  great leader. That's what I hear other people say about you when you're leading from the front,
• 4:44
  which of course is kind of why you're here today. Somehow this what you're doing with five star
• 4:49
  review process came across my radar and I said, I got to have you back on the show to talk about that
• 4:54
  because I think I interface with both agents and lenders and I see often usually I see a variety
• 5:02
  of things either on the agent side, they've been too heavy onzilla for too long and so their
• 5:07
  Google reviews are light and they recognize it and or on the lender side, I see they've been using
• 5:13
  the corporate version of the review process, which doesn't necessarily show up on Google and I think
• 5:20
  they're also missing out on that. So that's one of the things we talked about in the class is that
• 5:24
  those internal referrals or regional reviews, which are a lot easier to get. They don't have near
• 5:29
  the same power. I take a fraction of those on Google and they're going to be a lot more powerful
• 5:34
  all around. So I agree on a percent. Let's start there. Why did this come to your attention, your
• 5:39
  five star review process? So honestly, it came with listen, when when I knew there was going to be a
• 5:45
  slowdown coming after in 2021, I've been through this before I lived through eight, no nine, I tried
• 5:50
  to coach my people through this. Listen, get ready. When things are this good, there's going to be a
• 5:54
  downside that follows. We're all going to have to work smarter and harder to do less business when
• 5:59
  this is all done. So I went back to the playbook and I also like doing things that I enjoy and I've
• 6:05
  also and I've always gotten enjoyment. I found a lot of value out of educating agents, right? So
• 6:12
  going out and listen to this ties in directly to the class that you offer going out and saying,
• 6:16
  I close loans on time with my hands out to give me loans. I don't really like doing that. It's not
• 6:22
  my personality. So if I can provide a value to an agent and help them increase their business,
• 6:27
  I'm creating value and I think it's a lot stickier relationship and they're going to see me more
• 6:32
  as something that's asking for loans and more as a business partner. And selfishly, if I can help
• 6:37
  the agents that I already have relationship with grow their business and I get x percentage of
• 6:42
  their business, the referral opportunities that I get are going to increase. So the last 12 months
• 6:47
  has been a big push getting back in front of an educating educating agents. And this is a topic that
• 6:53
  I'm very passionate about and I do better when I talk about things that I'm passionate about because
• 6:58
  it comes through. And I'm much more passionate about creating I'm a people pleaser by nature. So my
• 7:05
  passion comes from creating a process that people really, really love and making sure my customers
• 7:10
  are happy. The review that happens or the reviews that I get are kind of a sublet of that. So I
• 7:15
  mean, that's kind of a icing on the cake, cake, but the focus has been and the biggest percentage
• 7:21
  of my business has always been either past clients or referrals from past clients. So it's tying
• 7:26
  those two things together. So I didn't intentionally do this when I started it. We just consistently
• 7:31
  look at our process. We try to make it better for the customer. We review it every single month on
• 7:35
  ways that we can get better. And then we started getting these online reviews and seeing the value
• 7:40
  in that. And as talking to agents, I was looking for different topics. I think would help them grow
• 7:44
  their business. And so many of them don't have Google pages. They haven't pushed reviews. Anything
• 7:49
  except for the ones that are internal on the websites that their brokers offer the easy ones.
• 7:55
  And thought it was a hold that was there and thought something that I could help people learn
• 7:59
  our process. And if they implemented, I think it'll actually help them grow their business.
• 8:04
  That's kind of where the motivation came from.
• 8:08
  Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there. First, let me start with what have you changed? Do you
• 8:14
  started this when you when did you say you kind of began the focus on this?
• 8:20
  The creating the process has always been my focus for doing this. So creating it,
• 8:24
  the raving fans is how I started from day one in the industry. So focusing more on the online
• 8:32
  reviews will say the last five years. And then I was following a guy Tyler out of Des Moines as
• 8:38
  a fantastic job within that kind of mimicked the process that he has. He does a wonderful job.
• 8:43
  And I don't know if I ever catch him. But learning what the new world was about and how valuable
• 8:48
  social media was and having a digital footprint of being out there. So if I'm going to get referred
• 8:53
  by an agent, they're going to give out multiple names. If I'm out there with multiple online reviews,
• 8:58
  educational videos and a good social media presence, I feel and I've experienced my opportunity
• 9:03
  of getting an at bat and executing growth goes up exponentially and also past clients. If your
• 9:10
  past clients are seeing the social media, they're seeing these things, they're seeing the online
• 9:14
  reviews. It also makes it easier to gain their business and trust over and over again. And also
• 9:19
  when they mention your name and somebody who does the research, it validates what those people
• 9:23
  are telling me. So telling them. So not only that John say he loved the process, I looked them
• 9:27
  up and I now see that he has all these on like these five star reviews. So that's when I really
• 9:31
  started about five years ago, I would say. Okay. And we'll put a link to your Google page in
• 9:36
  the show notes as well as your website, qchomeloan.com. But on Google alone at this moment, you've got
• 9:43
  304 five star Google reviews. Needs to be more trying to get more, but it's better than it was
• 9:52
  two months ago and it's better than it was 12 months ago. So we're just continuing to grow on that.
• 9:56
  Before we break down your process for getting those reviews, let's bring the question forward,
• 10:02
  which people always are curious about is, have you noticed? Can you do a dotted line of reviews
• 10:10
  to generating business or people choosing you? Yes, I can directly with Google and online leads
• 10:18
  has increased noticeably as they have went up. It wasn't an immediate thing. So we'll say when I
• 10:25
  got to 150, it seemed like I started to get some more traction with Google. When you're playing
• 10:31
  their games and you're using their programs, it does seem like in working on overall creating an
• 10:36
  SEO where your name comes up when people search you. Probably about two, two and a half years ago,
• 10:41
  is when I started consistently hearing from people because we track every lead that comes in. Hey,
• 10:45
  where'd you hear about us? I was just looking online to buy a home and your name came up. I saw
• 10:50
  the online reviews. I saw your videos and what I realized or learned is that there was almost a
• 10:56
  trust in a relationship that was already built there, even though I didn't know those people
• 11:00
  because they've already done some research on me. That's awesome. All right, so let's unpack your
• 11:07
  process. Start from the beginning. When do you start prepping people preparing for them that you
• 11:14
  going to be asking for a review and take a week from that forward? So I don't really, and that's
• 11:20
  also tell you this is a constant evolution. I also don't think I have all the answers. So
• 11:27
  I don't mention asking for the review until the approval process when we actually check in,
• 11:34
  but I let them know from the moment that I talk to them on the app intake or their first
• 11:38
  consultations that my number one priority is that they're 100% satisfied with the process.
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  And I explained to them that my business has grown in the biggest source of my business is
• 11:48
  referral from past clients and the only way that that happens is if they're 100% satisfied.
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  So I set those expectations and I let them know by using certain words by saying five star.
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  I tell them for myself and my entire team, I expect nothing short of five star service from
• 12:04
  start to finish. So I set that in their mind very, very early in the process because people outside
• 12:09
  of this industry don't know how we work, right? We've all in the industry have all gotten calls from
• 12:14
  people saying, Hey, would you mind talking to my sister? Would you mind talking to my neighbor?
• 12:18
  I would love to. You know, that's the hardest part of my job besides getting offers accepted
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  in this competitive market is finding people and finding those customers. They don't realize that,
• 12:27
  right? They don't know how we're compensated. So I think we have to explain that to people and I
• 12:31
  think we have to kind of draw a picture for them or paint a picture of what we're expecting.
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  So we set their mindset of what we're trying to do. We tell them what we're going to do.
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  We execute and hopefully they're happy with it and we get the end result that we are looking for.
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  Do you have this process documented? I do, yes. Is it a one-pager?
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  Nope, it's multiple. It's a Google document and it's now a PowerPoint for the presentation.
• 12:57
  But that's one thing. When I started coaching with with Kai McBride who's done, you know,
• 13:02
  great things for for my career and taking me to the next level that we're talking
• 13:06
  around and he's like, so where do you have your process? He started asking questions. He's like,
• 13:10
  it's in your mind, isn't it? And I said, it is. And very hard to scale, very hard to track,
• 13:15
  very hard to hold other people accountable if I don't have it in writing. But yes, we do have it,
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  have it every step of the process from lead intake to post closing. And when we make changes,
• 13:24
  you know, there's there's constant changes that are being made.
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  So when do you actually ask for the review?
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  We ask for the review at clear to close. In between clear to close, depending on how busy it is,
• 13:35
  the link actually gets sent between one in three days after closing. And I send out a post-closing
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  video through bomb bomb to every customer that is first and foremost a customer service thing,
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  letting them know going over three frequently asked questions and always come up. So I keep track
• 13:53
  of questions and if multiple questions come up at any point of my process, we try to proactively
• 13:58
  answer them before people even think about asking. So we dig into that first and at the very end,
• 14:03
  that's when I actually ask them for that online review and let them know that either the team
• 14:07
  already has or they will be sending a link through text message and email to fill out a very
• 14:13
  quick and easy online review on online review with both Google and Facebook. So that's when we're
• 14:18
  actually asking for them to execute. I know I've talked to people that do it earlier in the process.
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  It's just not right for me and everything that I've always done, I've tried to do it true to the person
• 14:28
  that I am in my personality and my focus is much more on making the process great than it is getting
• 14:35
  the review. So I really want to focus and make sure it goes through well and make sure that is
• 14:39
  sincere. And I do think I might have a little bit more success or get more reviews if you ask for
• 14:45
  earlier in the process. But for me, it's just not what I feel comfortable with. It's not what I'm
• 14:48
  doing right now. Well, what's funny about that is even though you might feel like you may have
• 14:52
  some more success because that sounds like a good idea. I think it always comes back to like you
• 14:57
  just said what's more true about who you really are. You probably wouldn't convert that well because
• 15:02
  it doesn't feel natural to you. And I don't and honestly, if I had to pick whether I had a really,
• 15:07
  really happy customer that didn't leave a review or a customer that was kind of happy that felt
• 15:12
  the left review because they felt like they needed to. I'd rather have the really, really happy
• 15:16
  customer that didn't leave the review. And that happens a lot. I mean, we talk with everybody and
• 15:20
  get a verbal commitment during loan approval to check in to see how we're doing from a one to five.
• 15:25
  And anybody that is not a five, I call and have a conversation with them. It doesn't happen very
• 15:29
  often. But I want to find out why. Listen, what's happened? What can we change? And even when those
• 15:34
  things do come up few and far between, we make some tweaks. And then all of a sudden that person
• 15:39
  is a five. And the percentage of people that say there are five and fill out an online review,
• 15:45
  I'm probably only collecting 35 to 40% of people that tell us that they were a five star happy.
• 15:51
  It's just human nature, right? It's another step to do. Some people may not have the login saved or
• 15:56
  they forget to do it. You know, it's just life happens. But I'd much rather have somebody truly happy
• 16:00
  and be a long-term client that sends me business and be a raving fan that doesn't leave a review
• 16:06
  than the other way around. So my motivation, and when I give, when I put this class on, I tell them,
• 16:11
  listen, I think your motivation needs to be in creating a great process first because that's what's
• 16:16
  going to drive you to do really well. This is a byproduct of that, the actual online reviews.
• 16:20
  Even though they're extremely valuable, I think doing well is more important.
• 16:24
  Oh, yeah, 100%. So you mentioned you sent them a request with a link to both Google and Facebook
• 16:31
  for the reviews. Do you have any insights on them choosing one more than the other?
• 16:39
  And do they wind up just choosing one instead of two?
• 16:41
  They do. It's usually just one. Google is definitely the one that comes up the most.
• 16:47
  And I can request the system that I use and I've had a local marketing guy set up a follow-up system
• 16:55
  to do this and automate the requesting and sending out the text messages. We could request more
• 17:01
  but those are the ones I want. I think Google is the most powerful. The reason we use Facebook is
• 17:06
  because the people that don't have Google, a lot of times they'll have Facebook. Facebook is
• 17:10
  easy to share. A lot of people are on Facebook, but I think Google is the most powerful and that's
• 17:14
  why I only request two. I don't ask them for both. I know people that do. I know I would get more
• 17:19
  reviews if I ask for two. But again, it's just something that I'm not comfortable with and I don't
• 17:23
  want to come across as being annoying. And I hate asking for anything to be honest with you. I don't
• 17:28
  like asking agents for referrals. I want them to send them. I want to provide my value and they
• 17:33
  hope that it follows. The same thing for the online reviews. I don't necessarily feel comfortable
• 17:38
  asking, but I hope that if I do a really, really good job, they almost feel obligated to do it or
• 17:42
  they feel, you know what? I'm completely comfortable. I want people to know my experience so they
• 17:46
  can have a similar experience. Well, there's something to be said for simplicity and giving people
• 17:51
  too many choices. And in you, of course, understand the power of reviews on Google and all that goes
• 17:58
  into that. As you mentioned earlier, search and a Google authority and all those things. And if I
• 18:03
  were having to decide where I would want my reviews, they would definitely be on Google first.
• 18:09
  But you're right. Some people, interestingly enough, don't have a Gmail account, which
• 18:13
  creates a whole separate. That's why you give them the second option, right?
• 18:15
  You're exactly correct. You're not a people that use Yelp. I know people that use Zillow
• 18:21
  just on platforms that I'm not going to support Zillow for kind of obvious reasons. And Yelp
• 18:26
  seems more like a restaurant for me. Yeah, I would agree. So you mentioned you have this automated.
• 18:31
  Is there one ask or are there several asks? There is there's follows up twice. And then we're
• 18:38
  actually creating a campaign. I'm working with my team on whether we're going to do it. How we're
• 18:45
  going to do it exactly. But I think what we're going to do or what we're going to implement. I just
• 18:48
  haven't finalized it yet. The details is anybody that said that they were a five star on the phone call
• 18:54
  that didn't fill one out where it has sent out a second follow up sometime in between 45 and 60 days
• 18:59
  after closing. It's going to be very low pressure. It's going to be along the lines of, hey,
• 19:03
  listen, I know that there's many times there's things that I look at doing and I don't get to them
• 19:08
  because life gets busy. You mentioned on the phone call that you're happy five out of five. We haven't
• 19:12
  got an online review. This is just a friendly reminder that it's still out there. We still love
• 19:17
  that. And I'll probably throw something in there that says, listen, if you're not comfortable,
• 19:20
  no pressure because that's again, just my personality. But I think I can probably execute because
• 19:25
  I would imagine that there's people that had an intention of doing it that just didn't get to it
• 19:29
  because we hear that all the time where I'll get one through weeks later say, hey, John, sorry,
• 19:33
  this is so late. I just said, have been busy. You know, life happens. People are busy. They're moving.
• 19:38
  Absolutely. Okay. So there was two asks, 45 to 60 days, Google Facebook,
• 19:49
  oh, the five stars. So I wanted to ask you that earlier is when you have a conversation with
• 19:55
  people and you're asking them for the ranking, sounds like, but just to confirm the obvious,
• 20:00
  someone is making a note of that in your CRM or whatever with the ranking you, hey, how's your
• 20:05
  experience? Oh, it's would you read the five stars? Somebody's putting notes in. Yes, correct.
• 20:09
  And I get it. We do those phone calls at loan commitment and loan approval. We check in with
• 20:14
  the customers. We check in with the agents. We don't get a hold of everybody. And then again,
• 20:17
  I get a list from Olivia and my team that does those phone calls of all of them and anybody that
• 20:23
  is not a five, I call them. It's, I mean, I'd call them almost right away to check in.
• 20:29
  So when you're reviewing loan status, that's part of your review process. Yes. Okay. So that's,
• 20:34
  there's no like trigger that notifies John. Hey, man, we got a four check in, you know,
• 20:39
  no, yeah, it is a manual. It's a manual step at this time. I actually have somebody that calls and
• 20:44
  sends a text message that they don't answer to check in. And the thought behind that is if I check
• 20:50
  in during the process and somebody, we don't want to assume just because we haven't heard anything
• 20:54
  that people are happy. So if there's for some reason, somebody's not happy, I want to find out why
• 20:58
  and I want to solve the problem. And what we've seen consistently, the ones that do it again, it's not
• 21:03
  very often. A lot of times it's something that's a little bit older that doesn't like the technology
• 21:07
  or ways of communicating that is done now in our industry. So they say, hey, you guys send a lot
• 21:12
  of emails. I don't check my email very often. It's a little bit overwhelming. So, you know,
• 21:17
  what I'll have in that conversation say, listen, I can completely understand that. But we are doing
• 21:20
  a, you know, a mortgage loan and this is the best way to communicate. And I usually offer an
• 21:24
  alternative, like, listen, would it be easier if we sent you a text message before we're going
• 21:28
  to send out an important email, like loan conditions that were needed. And they say, yeah, that'd be
• 21:32
  fantastic. And then we add that step for that customer. Do I want to do that for everybody? I don't
• 21:38
  for obvious reasons because it's not scalable. But what that individual feels like is that I heard
• 21:43
  them. Their business is important to me. I empathize with them. And I move my process around a little
• 21:48
  bit to meet their individual needs. And most of them afterwards are ecstatic with us because we've
• 21:54
  made that change. We also get some, you know, complaints are the wrong words. But everything's going
• 21:59
  great. But the uploading of documents doesn't always work great. And again, we just empathize with
• 22:03
  technology. And I just make a phone call and say, hey, technology is great when it works, isn't it?
• 22:07
  And I get go with them and say, listen, if that ever happens again, you can't upload something.
• 22:11
  Just email to my team and we'll upload it for you. How does that sound? Oh, I didn't even know
• 22:14
  that's an option. You'll do that for me. Absolutely. If you have a problem uploading it, I don't want
• 22:18
  you to waste your entire time trying three, four or five times. Just email to the team. We'll
• 22:24
  get it uploaded for you. We'll take care of that step of the process. And again, we're letting
• 22:28
  you know that we care. We actually reached out. And then we're taking action on the item that
• 22:32
  they weren't impressed with or that that that isn't making this process a five star process. And
• 22:37
  again, the motivation for that is not necessarily to get that online review. It's to make sure that
• 22:42
  customers is happiest possible with our process. Absolutely. All right. Who responds to your reviews
• 22:48
  when somebody leaves you one? I do every single one of them. Really? Wow. And it's usually
• 22:53
  pretty quickly. I get I get excited when I see them. So and you can use your phone for anything.
• 22:59
  I get a little pop up and I jump in right there and thank them, you know, mention something.
• 23:04
  If there's something I can remember specifically about the transaction. But yes, I respond to every
• 23:08
  single one of them. That's cool. I'm looking at your reviews right now. They're solid, man. I see
• 23:14
  somebody just posted a picture of themselves in front of their house. And you know, that's by the
• 23:17
  way, a little tip for anybody who's not aware of it is you need to respond to every single one of
• 23:23
  your reviews. Yep. One percent. That's going to affect your quote unquote Google authority again.
• 23:27
  All right. That's good stuff. Let's transition briefly then into now you're teaching your process
• 23:32
  to real estate agents, correct? Absolutely. Yep. All right. So tell me about that. How often do you do it?
• 23:40
  How do you know? I've probably done a half dozen classes over the last month. Okay.
• 23:48
  You've probably been face to face in front of close to 60 agents. And I'll probably do one on zoom
• 23:56
  before it's done. I obviously utilize zoom, but I really enjoy being face to face. It's kind of
• 24:03
  my personality. So that's where I started with it. So that's the amount that we've done done so far.
• 24:09
  Okay. And obviously you're I know this, but you're intent for hosting this educational class for
• 24:16
  agents is what? It's to prove I mean, obviously the the idea of anything we do with agents is to
• 24:23
  increase our business and increase our real three relationships. But if if I can again going out
• 24:29
  and asking for businesses one thing, but if I can provide a value for somebody and be different
• 24:34
  and really strike, you know, strike somewhere deeper, I think the relations that they're going to be
• 24:39
  stickier. So twofold, A, you want them to feel comfortable with their customers. So you can explain
• 24:46
  to them how important it is to take care of all their customers. So we explain how we do with our
• 24:50
  process. And then I emulate how they can create it with a with as with with a real estate agent.
• 24:55
  And it's really not that much different. I mean, our businesses are very similar. We're dealing
• 24:59
  with people. There's steps in the process. You have to tell people what to expect. You have to
• 25:03
  lay out expectations. You have to let them know how you're going to communicate. So they know what to
• 25:07
  expect. You know, if they think that you're going to call them back within 30 seconds every time they
• 25:11
  call you, they're probably going to be disappointed. But if you explain to them, listen, when I'm with
• 25:15
  clients, I'm engaged with them and giving them good advice, just like I did you. So if you call back,
• 25:20
  you know, they're call back maybe within a couple hours. If something is urgent, I need you to send
• 25:25
  a text message to this number and we'll get on it quickly. So you set those expectations
• 25:29
  of how communications going to work. So you give yourself a chance of meeting those expectations
• 25:33
  and people aren't creating unrealistic expectations in their mind. But so the agency, the value there
• 25:40
  and working with the customers and they see a process that they can build and create online reviews.
• 25:45
  And if they can increase their business and I'm doing business with them selfishly, most likely
• 25:52
  the referral opportunities that I'm going to get from that agent if I help them grow by 20%
• 25:56
  is also going to increase. And I think the loyalty increases substantially. And we've got,
• 26:01
  I've got great feedback from the class. People enjoy it. They see the value. They say they're
• 26:05
  going to implement it. I've had multiple people reach out to the marketing guy locally that created
• 26:10
  the system that I use on the back end to get set up for that. I offer to do one on one stuff with
• 26:15
  people if they want to. So again, twofold, it's to gain their trust and hopefully increase the,
• 26:21
  you know, amount of referrals that we get from them, but also help them grow their business so you
• 26:25
  can provide value and become a sticky relationship with that individual where you're no longer a commodity.
• 26:30
  You're not a price. You're not an interest rate. You're a trusted business partner.
• 26:35
  Yeah, it's funny. You say that I keep reaching for this quote that somebody shared with me
• 26:39
  a couple of weeks ago and you nailed it right there. But the quote is if you want their business,
• 26:44
  you need to become part of their business. I was like, that's brilliant right there because,
• 26:51
  you know, showing up, as you said at the beginning of this call, like, oh, I'm a lender. I got my
• 26:56
  hands out. We close on time. I got great, great rates. I've been in the business 10 years.
• 26:59
  Like there's no shortage of that in any local market. That is not a unique value proposition.
• 27:08
  Okay, so what I'm curious because as you know, I do a lot of classes and that's one of the classes
• 27:12
  we teach, of course, is a Google business profile. Tell me about your your your process to,
• 27:20
  you know, articulate your process of teaching a class that leads to agent conversations.
• 27:25
  So that again, your your process of you teach a class, you get agents in the room,
• 27:30
  right, 10, 20 agents, whatever it is. And then kind of do you have a process for after them?
• 27:37
  Following up with them. Yeah. Yeah. They made it easy on me. A lot of them reached out to me
• 27:43
  and have expressed and I've had people that have reached out just about the process.
• 27:49
  And obviously when I have an agent that I don't work with, maybe a listening agent on the end,
• 27:52
  they reach out and tell us how much they enjoyed the class or how much they enjoyed our process.
• 27:57
  That's a, you know, teeing it up for me to set up a coffee, to set up a lunch. I'm very old
• 28:03
  school. I still do a lot of face-to-face appointments with agents. One thing I'm going to be
• 28:08
  changing very soon because I can only have so many lunches and I can only have so many coffees and
• 28:12
  I do want to scale this and technology we can meet with more people. I'm going to start doing
• 28:18
  one-on-one Zoom calls and one-on-one phone calls. So, you know, I can add 10 of those per week where
• 28:23
  I can only have five lunches and five coffees and occasionally I like to go to lunch with my wife or
• 28:27
  with a friend. So it's kind of falling up from from that standpoint. So we have a captive agent audience
• 28:34
  that we always keep that we send video content to that we keep track of how often we're meeting with
• 28:39
  them whether it's lunches whether it's coffee whether it's just reaching out for a phone conversation
• 28:44
  and we try to stay consistently engaged. So when somebody new comes to the class that I haven't done
• 28:50
  business with before isn't in that audience. The first thing I do is I get them engaged in that
• 28:54
  audience and when something new comes out like the loan level price adjustments that came out that
• 28:59
  we're also thrilled about, right? I'm going to get a video created and I'm going to send it out to
• 29:03
  all the agents as quickly as I can. So they're getting that information from me and I'm trying to
• 29:08
  relate it to how it impacts their business. So here's what it is, here's what you need to know
• 29:12
  and getting them engaged in that audience and then obviously you feel out what you know what type
• 29:18
  of relationship it could be and then you kind of take it take it from there and I keep them all
• 29:24
  I think a lot of us do and actually I picked this up in one of the many of these podcasts that I've
• 29:29
  listened to which is why it's so so cool to be asked to be honest. I've listened to so many
• 29:32
  and got so many so much advice from them. I rank my agents and my partners right of the value
• 29:40
  what it is and there's different things that we do for different people and you can obviously move
• 29:45
  those around as time comes and figure out you have to track it again I can't keep track of it in
• 29:50
  my head any longer that's for sure. It's a Google document that Olivia keeps track of. We look at it
• 29:57
  probably on a weekly or biweekly basis of where we're at who I haven't touched based with recently
• 30:02
  when I'm setting up my goals and my weekly execution of you know you're you're working out for work
• 30:08
  you know I'm gonna work out Monday Wednesday and Friday for my work I have similar weekly goals we
• 30:13
  have to do the the little things daily and weekly that we need to do to execute long-term and we
• 30:18
  really focus on those Xs and O's. Are you also in terms of tracking, you tracking referrals and
• 30:24
  closings yep and just to reiterate what I heard you say there in terms of the classes is you take
• 30:31
  those attendees and put them into that kind of bucket I'll call it a VIP bucket or whatever
• 30:36
  we're an attended class and they're going to now be on your forward mix of content videos and
• 30:41
  all that absolutely and that's how you kind of stay top. Yeah because with anything if we do a great
• 30:46
  class in 12 months from now six months 12 months 18 months every month it goes by that value is
• 30:52
  going to go away so if I'm not staying in front of them and providing continued value it's not
• 30:58
  going to be as effective. Right yeah it's like the last time you brought your wife flowers right it's
• 31:02
  like we need to do that we just had Mother's Day I got this years ago don't miss it don't miss it
• 31:09
  that's a start that's for sure. It was brought to mind. And then we're trying to come up and we
• 31:15
  have other classes that we're working on so I'm you know the process of doing another one I've
• 31:19
  actually had some brokers reach out to me and you know hey I would love to have a class on this
• 31:25
  you have one I was like I don't but I'm going to create one now so it's great to hear the
• 31:29
  engagement for them where I know that they actually enjoy it because they're asking me to create a
• 31:32
  class you know for something that they would like to go over. Speaking of classes all right I'm
• 31:38
  going to sit here for a second then I'm going to come back to the Google and we'll wrap up.
• 31:42
  Have you always been doing classes in your career? I don't know if I've called them classes I've
• 31:47
  always been I've always done education so back in 2009 2010 obviously which followed
• 31:56
  0809 I remember myself and a guy by the name of Ryan Kennedy that I worked with everybody was
• 32:01
  living on the you know easy low hanging fruit the low interest rates the the harp that was out
• 32:05
  there and I was like okay this isn't going to continue forever so what are we going to do now
• 32:09
  that's going to position us for when the purchase market comes back around we started going out
• 32:14
  to sales meeting and educating agents you know on down payment assistance programs the different
• 32:19
  programs that were available I had success with that so it's things that I've always done I've
• 32:24
  always tried to lead with financial you know literacy and helping coaching my clients and agents
• 32:30
  and coming across to somebody that is educated in the field but actually a structured class
• 32:36
  I haven't always done structured classes but I've always been big on the education of agents.
• 32:42
  Interesting and obviously you feel it's paid off or else you wouldn't be doing it all these years
• 32:46
  later 100% and I and I have multiple people on my sales team that have you know taken your classes
• 32:52
  and implemented them with great success so I mean it works I mean if you're looking if you're a
• 32:57
  lender that's newer in the industry and you're looking for something that's effective it's a great
• 33:01
  place to start. Shout out to Louis. All right let me go back to your Google profile for a second
• 33:07
  because I noticed you are optimizing your profile in a few key ways but many people overlook one of
• 33:14
  those is products and I can see and photos and I can see here looking at your page you've got
• 33:22
  what out this is to me I believe it's in the product section you've got photos of like you at your
• 33:25
  office looks like you're signing handwritten thank you cards yep things like that you've got pictures
• 33:30
  of your team who's posting that for you. I got by the name of Reggie Zorg with Zorb Tech so I
• 33:37
  outsource all my social media. All right so that's a local guy you're talking about. Yeah that's
• 33:42
  actually a different local guy. They got this up through a user guy by the name of Ryan
• 33:46
  Harmson with noco social as well I actually went to college with both of these guys so Reggie runs
• 33:53
  all of my my Google and my social media. Ryan does that platform that I talked about on the back
• 33:59
  in for the online collecting those online reviews and he's working with me on my short short
• 34:05
  form videos the TikToks the real so he comes to produce those and give me content on how to do
• 34:10
  those because I don't know what's trending in TikTok in reals and I don't want to so he tells me
• 34:16
  what it is and then we figure out how we I figure out how to make it mortgage relevant if that makes
• 34:22
  any sense so taking a trend that's going to not be viral I'm not going to say it's viral I'm not
• 34:28
  to that point but it's going to get some attention and how do I make it relevant to what I'm doing.
• 34:32
  Does that mean we're going to see John lip-syncing and dancing on some videos.
• 34:36
  If you look on TikTok I said I would never do it I'm doing it so if you want to talk about getting
• 34:40
  out of your comfort zone I'm not comfortable doing it but like anything else it doesn't bug me now
• 34:45
  the first ones were a little bit uncomfortable but you have to adapt right I mean you have to
• 34:50
  change this is an ever evolving career consumers are always changing and evolving and if you're not
• 34:55
  you're going to get passed by at some point. That's awesome yeah and one thing you said a moment
• 34:59
  ago too is during member 08 I was there as well is the heart program man remember that yeah you
• 35:05
  were you were you seem like a guy twice in our conversation already 2008 harp all that down payment
• 35:11
  assistance you're already looking you're like going where the puck is about to go the whole Wayne
• 35:15
  Gretzky thing and you're like this isn't going to last forever and you said something earlier in this
• 35:21
  conversation as well that I wonder if you're of the same mindset right now meaning clearly we had a
• 35:27
  downturn we had a big pause we had interest rates go spike up but now we're seeing a little bit
• 35:33
  more settling out of maybe an acceptance of the new reality so are you also prepping now like you
• 35:38
  did in 08 for the upswing and purchase volume 100% and I've always looked at this downturn as an
• 35:45
  opportunity and I coached that to my to my team that we can't control it and I love it when it's
• 35:51
  busy but it's going to get tougher for a lot of people and you just have to you have to win and
• 35:58
  focus on growing your market share and even if you don't really notice the fruits of your labor
• 36:02
  we use the term a lot in our in our zoom call that you're going to be doing activities right now that
• 36:06
  are maybe not checks that you're going to cash right away but it will pay out at some point so 100%
• 36:11
  we've been working on and we started focusing on that before the run was even over. Hey these
• 36:16
  refides in 2021 are not going to last if you're not focusing on purchase business you're going to
• 36:21
  get left behind so we're absolutely focusing on that and looking forward to it. Yeah so what do you
• 36:26
  see or what are you doing for the for the balance of this year like what's it you pretend I'm one of
• 36:32
  your L.O.'s what are you coaching me to do now? Getting back to the basics I mean again setting up
• 36:38
  everybody has a little bit of a different sphere of influence or pillars of business so finding
• 36:44
  out what your pillars of business are figuring out what you have to do on a daily and weekly
• 36:49
  basis to execute on those and focus on those little things right so and then also find some value
• 36:55
  in the little wins right so if you're supposed to meet with five agents per week and you do it
• 37:01
  that's a win even if you didn't get a deal from it right then that could be because of things we
• 37:06
  can't control market conditions things like that you can control the effort that you can put in so
• 37:11
  we talk a lot about or I talk about mastering the things that we can control and really focusing
• 37:16
  on those because we can't control the comments that anybody's going to make that's going to make
• 37:21
  mortgage back securities volatile and interest rates bounce all over the place we can't help out
• 37:26
  what certain things a lot of things are out of our control so focus on the things that we can control
• 37:30
  and really own the small things and mastering and it's no different than if you're looking at
• 37:35
  exercise or working out you got to look at it what am I going to do today and what I'm going to do
• 37:40
  after day it's consistency and execution there's so many different places that you can get great
• 37:46
  ideas in this industry or any any industry there's so many places you can get them easily with your
• 37:50
  phone right now right but what makes the people really good are the people that execute and execute
• 37:55
  consistently and that's the biggest thing right now love that love that what I wrote down was process
• 38:00
  versus outcome yep yep that's what my coach I was having a down day once and my coach is like you
• 38:07
  know basically realigning my focus saying wait a minute time out right we're not focused on
• 38:12
  the outcome because if we focus on the process and the daily activities to your point the outcome
• 38:17
  will take care of itself yep yeah love that yeah back to you know calling customers the annual
• 38:23
  you know again it's easier to call somebody in 2020 in 2021 and say hey I'm going to save you
• 38:29
  $300 you know fill out an application but you still need to be in contact with your database right
• 38:35
  you still need to make those phone calls to your to your client base to your agents you have to
• 38:39
  stay relevant you have to provide value at all times you can't pick and choose when somebody's
• 38:44
  going to buy a home and right now there's not a lot of opportunity for anything but purchase
• 38:48
  business you have to make sure when that time is right for that customer that you're the person
• 38:52
  that they think of you want to just own that space in their mind yeah it's like a shout out to
• 38:58
  Shayla Gifford I was talking to her the other day and she shared this phrase which was you kind of
• 39:03
  alluded to this earlier which was right now everyone's working twice as hard for half the results
• 39:09
  yeah and here's the thing I love what I do so it doesn't bother me yeah if you'd love it you
• 39:13
  do you're not working hard right because it's passion yeah yeah I mean you have to transition so
• 39:18
  it was weird because in 2021 we're working hard to keep things going and making sure we're
• 39:23
  worth letting people down and then it slowed down pretty quickly for a lot of us and okay we got
• 39:28
  we got to change things we got it we got it we got a shift and we got to focus more about making
• 39:33
  the phone ring and taking time doing those business development activities versus reacting to
• 39:39
  business or executing on business the worst thing to do is do nothing 100% that does not work
• 39:44
  of the looking at your phone and hoping that it rings is a very ineffective strategy
• 39:50
  exactly yeah all right listen man I know your time is very valuable you've shared tons of nuggets
• 39:55
  once again for anybody who wants to connect with you I'll put a link in the show notes it's qc
• 39:59
  home loan dot com shout out to you john thanks for making time a second time now I appreciate
• 40:04
  it thank you so much appreciate what you're doing thanks for putting out that consistent great content
• 40:08
  for all of us you bad you bad listeners you know what to do if you like this episode share it leave
• 40:12
  a review and we'll see you on the next one bye for now hey guys what's up real quick you've heard
• 40:17
  about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you if that
• 40:20
  you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans you need to fill
• 40:25
  your pipeline with purchase business let's just face it agents are still a solid pillar of business
• 40:31
  and sources of purchase business for you well good news our mortgage marketing pro membership helps
• 40:36
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  and plug-and-play content to make promoting your class getting agents butts and seeds
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• 41:23
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• 41:29
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• 41:35
  so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents so what are you waiting for
• 41:40
  you can check out more at mortgagemarketing.pro see more of the success stories there
• 41:45
  and if you feel compelled to do so book a call we'll have a chat we'll see if it's a fit
• 41:50
  don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now
• 41:54
  head over to mortgagemarketing.pro