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Closing 418 Loans With a Team of Only Four · Mortgage Marketing Radio

0:00
In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
0:04
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1:07
Hey, listeners, what's up?
1:10
It's Jeff Zimfer.
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So welcome to another episode of mortgage marketing radio.
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So glad that you tuned in here.
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All right.
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My first, I believe, interview of the new year where I'm bringing back the guests featuring
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our top producers and I'm really excited about the guests we've got on this one.
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Before I get to that, I just want to give you a quick reminder.
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If you haven't yet jumped into our private Facebook group for podcast listeners,
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go ahead and do that now or when you get back in front of a computer on your mobile phone.
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I don't pull over on the freeway.
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Don't do it while you're driving.
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But you want to go to the Facebook and you want to type in mortgage marketing radio, right?
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That's the podcast group.
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It's private, just for loan officers.
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And I've got some big plans in there for you guys to bring you more resources,
1:52
access to tools and tech that can help you with your goals for your business.
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So go to over to Facebook and check that out.
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All right.
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So for this interview, really thrilled to have Amanda Ray.
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She is out of Reno, Nevada, and she's only been a loan officer since 2014.
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Let me give you some numbers on her.
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For the numbers we were tracking and talking about in 2018.
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So just four years after essentially becoming a loan officer, right?
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She did 226 loans, 219, 312 loans, 220, 418 loans, 104 million dollars.
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Yes, 104 million dollars.
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And with roughly three people on her team,
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what I believe are two front-end-pert people, like loan partners and one back-end person.
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And that doesn't include the corporate processing that's provided to her.
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But this is like many of the interviews that I try and do.
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And by the way, for those of you who've given me feedback around the deep questions that you like
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me to ask the getting real specific on team structure and processes and lead sources.
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Essentially, how does somebody at this level and scale manage that type of flow?
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This is great because we really break down some really cool numbers from Amanda.
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For instance, every week she has a goal, her and her team, that they must generate 22 leads
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and seven contracts.
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And she knows her numbers.
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She knows what her app-to-funding ratio is.
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She knows what her lead to app-funding ratio is.
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And so she's very clear and specific on her metrics and knows what they are.
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And if you're not a person who's running your business based on that,
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look at it's all math.
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If you're looking to go to the next level, if you're looking to do X amount of loans to earn
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a certain level of income, it's all math.
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So when's the last time you checked your math?
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When's the last time you checked how consistent you are with the lead flow you need to generate?
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I mean, simply work it backwards.
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We all know that, right?
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You want to make X amount of money?
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Great, with your average loan amount, how many loans do you need to close per year, per month,
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per week, and then how many conversations do you need to have and where, how are you at converting
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those conversations?
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And of course, there's a multitude of conversations around that, right?
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The source, quality of lead source, etc., etc., right?
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But this conversation with Amanda, I think breaks that down and goes into a lot of it.
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What's very impressive about Amanda is that the efficiency that she works with her team.
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Yes, she's putting in a lot of hours, right?
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But, you know, she's got a team that she's built that are all committed to that.
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And so I think you really enjoy the direction we go with this interview and get a lot of
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ahas and learnings out of it for those of you that are in this place of like,
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you know, maybe you want to grow a team, maybe you're looking to hire somebody,
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you want to obviously add value, add volume.
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Maybe you want to just get some more efficiencies or some bandwidth in your business.
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I think this will be very beneficial to you.
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And so she reveals some of the strategies she uses to generate those 22 leads per week,
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seven contracts per week.
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That's pretty, that's pretty strong.
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That's good stuff.
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And real quick, as a reminder, one of the things she talks about getting back to pre-covert
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that we're doing, for example, one way she generates realtor relationships.
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By the way, she has about 65.
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You'll hear 65
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um, uh, realtors that earn her sphere that center business over the course of a year,
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15 or 20, who send her business more consistently.
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One of the ways she builds agent relationships is with classes.
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And what you'll hear her talk about is that she is pivoting this year to get started on the zoom
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classes. So if you're looking for a better way to reach out to real estate agents,
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scale your reach, never have to call agents again, never chase agents, but be able to attract agents
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at scale to build your referral base. You may have heard by now.
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We have a little system called the mortgagemarketing.pro membership,
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in which we provide you a turnkey, ready to go, zoom, friendly, social media,
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equipped platform for you to teach agent classes,
5:56
and reach agents at scale, get relationships, conversations, and referrals.
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If you want to check that out, mortgagemarketing.pro. Okay, so without further ado,
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let's get into this week's show.
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Amanda Ria, welcome to the show.
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Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. You get the bravery award.
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I know I told you I was nervous.
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Don't be nervous. We're all about having fun here. Besides that, you're like the fifth
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guild person I've had on the show. Guilds doing it. You know, our slogan is Guild is everywhere,
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an all over your podcast apparently. Apparently, we're going to continue to add to it. So,
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why don't for those listening just give us the quick background or where do you operate out of
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and then, you know, how long you've been in the biz, and then 2020 numbers.
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Yeah, so I am in Reno, Nevada, my favorite place in the world. I've been in the mortgage business
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since 2012, and I've been a loan officer since 2014. We had a really killerly year as I'm sure
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everyone did in 2020, but my team closed 418 loans for 104 million. So I've never broken that
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100 million mark. I was like, you know, it's all right. You're out of applause for you.
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That's amazing. We're tired. We're tired. I know, right? I know. That's why I appreciate you
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doing this. So 104 loans. Okay, so you're up in Reno, which is arguably kind of a small community,
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right? Yeah, you could say that. We're growing. Everyone wants to leave California so they're coming
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to Reno. That's true. I'm down in Vegas. I don't know if you knew that. Oh, I didn't know that.
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My sister's at Guilden Vegas. Is that right? Well, we'll have to get her on the show too.
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Yeah, I moved here about three years ago from California. So I'm one of those.
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Okay, but I was an early adopter. Yeah, you're the type of person that says to keep
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Californians out in Nevada even though you can't prove California. Don't tell anybody.
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Right. Another drive in our prices up, which is good if you're an owner, but if you're trying to buy,
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you know, that's a whole different thing. All right, so let's break this down. 104 loans.
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What's your number one? 104 million.
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Sorry, 104 million. God. What? That was a massive 104 million, 418 loans. What is your number one
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source of business? Well, there's a lot of past clients, a ton of past clients, three financing,
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but other than that, realtors and builders. Okay. This is what I like to do. I like to kind of
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break down right the specifics of where all those source their business from. So when you say past
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clients, naturally, one thing I'm curious about there is like, did you proactively or do you have
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any systems in place to farm those past clients or was it just a largely result of the market for
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refus? So two different things to that. So we do farm, like if we need to, if we need business,
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if there's some weeks, like, you know, we have a goal, we need to bring in seven deals every single
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week. That's my goal. My team's, they call it a secret goal is 10 deals a week. Okay.
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So if we go seven there, goal 10, if we don't have enough deals, we will farm, like we'll go and pull
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up reports of deals we've closed of our past clients, you know, in this year with rates being
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really low, so we could call based on their interest rate. One thing that we're super lucky on
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with guild though is that we service a bunch of our loans. So our servicing department is actually
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looking at the servicing portfolio. They're analyzing how much equity people have, what their rate
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is and they send us lists. They send us a list. They said these people can refide, get them. So then
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we call them, but it's a lot of inbound calls too, because everyone knows rates are low right now.
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Sure. That's great on the servicing side. Back to the seven deals a week as your own goal.
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What qualifies as a deal?
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A purchase contract that we get or a refinance client that lets us lock in their interest rate
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and is ready to sign the soldiers. Okay. Got it. How do you, so before I go on, tell us about your
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team setup, like how many people you got and what are their roles? Yeah, we've been running really
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lean. We need more people on our team. So for a good bulk of the year, there was me and two other
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people. Wow. We have a third person on our team right now. Like it's in my setup right now,
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I have two people doing all the pre-approvals. So new clients call in, they pre-approve them,
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they get their documents. When people want to refinance, they're the ones working up the initial
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numbers and presenting those to the clients. And then I have another person on, we call it our
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back end. So from the time the contract comes in or the refinance comes in, she's working with
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our processing and writing to close them. So essentially you have two front end loan partners,
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you don't call them whatever you want, loan officer assistance, that kind of stuff.
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So whenever I hear that, when I know of somebody doing a large volume like you,
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and as you just described, you've got two people on the front essentially taking, are these people
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licensed by the way? One is licensed, one is getting licensed. He's only better than a team for
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four months. Any background in the mortgage industry for that person? No, I never hire anyone
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with mortgage background. Really? How come? Bad habits? I think so. Yeah, I don't know. I just,
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I didn't have any like mortgages. I didn't know anything about mortgages when my bought
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took me on. So I kind of more look for a personality versus mortgage bills. Yeah, that's a good fit.
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So as you've described at these two people on your front end are essentially doing,
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if I heard you correctly, pre-approvals, pre-quals, that kind of stuff, taking apps, right?
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Correct. So where are you in the mix of this for them to be, you know, for these leads to becoming
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your deals per week? Like when do I get involved with the client? Yeah. Uh-huh.
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I get involved with the client once they, like, it's kind of like a screening process for my front
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end people. So they'll take the lead. If they're good, qualified lead, they book them to meet with
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me. So either here at the office, you know, through Zoom, we do a pre-approval meeting.
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Okay. If they're not qualified, then they're working with them on credit and things like that
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until they are qualified. So I'll meet every single client at every single time, but once they're
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qualified. This is pretty smart. So you'll do a pre-approval meeting. You've already got all the
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info on them, credit pulled and all that, right? Yes. App taken. So before they get to you, you know
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that they're, that it's a deal that's likely going to close. Yes. Wow. That's pretty cool.
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That's called using your time efficiently. Yeah. I mean, I definitely had to jump in on some
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of the other pre-approvals this year too. Like, we had a lot of leads, of course, but
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so essentially, so people are working with the Amanda Ria team, right? And it's right. Oh, sorry.
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Sorry. Yeah. I did. Right. Yes. We're working with the Amanda Ria team.
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Amanda Ria team. Nobody told me that before. They should have prepped me better. Team, what do you
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everyone says, Ria? I barely don't even know. It's easier than my last name, Zimfer. Come on.
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Okay. And how was there a point like you weren't always the Amanda Ria team, right? You had to
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transition into that, right? Oftentimes I hear loan officers run into some resistance working with
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realtors, for example, about how, you know, they're not going to get you. They're going to get your
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team. Yeah. Did you hear that? Oh, of course. So that's what's so funny. Because, you know,
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when I started in the business and I had no business, you know, walking around to realtors,
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you're only going to get me. It's going to be so great. You get me every single time on the
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alone talking to clients and then the next day. So it's so great. I have a team. We're going to
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want to serve you even better. Yeah. That's great. So you had to check my team too. I'm like,
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people are not going to work with us if they don't like you because you're the first person I
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talk to. So not only do you have to build relationships with the clients of the teammate,
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you have to build relationships with our business partners. So the other client's not going to
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talk to me every time. So how does the real to referral work? Does it go straight to somebody on
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your front end? No, I mean, we already got leads all different ways like realtors will text it to me.
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I'll send it out to the team. People call in to like our team line and then somebody answers it.
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They might email me and then I'll like email them back and do an intro with the team.
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Thanks so much for reaching out. I'm super excited to work with you. I'm copying my teammates,
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Jeremiah and Jessica, so that they could reach out and schedule a time for us to meet.
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In that team line, that's like a round robin kind of phone ring system.
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Yeah, it rings to me and then if I don't answer, then it rolls over to my two front end people
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and just whoever can answer at the fastest. Is there any parameters you have around that regarding
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hours, you know what I mean, after a certain time of day, APM, whatever? No. No, like the phone rings
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at eight o'clock at night. Do you typically answer it? Does it roll or you know what I mean?
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I'm trying to understand. Do you? This is the line of my desk. So no, it doesn't like it's not
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forwarded to my cell phone. Your mobile. Okay. Okay. Yeah, our agents know that if they need to
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reach me after hours to call me on my cell phone. And how many agents like a player agents,
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you know what I mean, that refer business to consistently? How many roughly do you work with?
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Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on like what you'd call an A agent, but like how many people
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actually refer to us, maybe not that we're closing a bunch of deals with every year, at least 60
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by realtors. So let me clarify because you're right, there's there's a lot of variances there.
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What I mean by it for myself personally by an A player realtor, I'm not talking about their
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production. What I mean is are they sending you deals, you know, almost every single month,
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or at least trying to get you, you know what I'm saying? Well, I don't know that exact number,
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but I would say I mean, at least 15 to 20. 15 to 20. Okay. But 65 in your whole total kind of
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wheelhouse. Yeah, that are actually sending us leads regularly over the course of a year. Some
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who are often than others, etc. Yeah, and some might be one deal a year. Right, right. And you'll,
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you don't try and weed them out per se, right? No, I've heard so many things that I'm supposed to
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when I just don't. No, it's so funny. I mean, that's why I kind of has it because it's like there's
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different ways to run this business. And you know, I've had other people at your level say,
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look at if they're low maintenance, you know what I mean? And they're going to flip me two deals a
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year and it's a piece of cake. Why would I ever want to kick that away? Yeah, no, I don't. They just
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keep coming back and I'm grateful for them. Yeah, for sure. I mean, hey, take 10 of those,
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right? That's 10 extra deals a year. So yeah, we could lose those deals. We got
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all right. Nice. Nice. All right. So two people front and man, I'm just like, I love that. So
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are you doing a ton of Zoom pre-approvals then? Yeah, I had never done a Zoom in my life. But
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before COVID, and now we're doing a lot of it. And I love it so much because
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you know, obviously I've had out of town clients before and I never got to meet with them. Right.
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Just did everything over the phone and phone calls are so much less productive in person or a Zoom.
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So yeah, we're doing a lot of Zoom now. And it's great. All right. So just to get back to where
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we left off, we've got the leads coming in to go to your front end team. They're doing the pre-qual
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pre-approval on them. And then if they're solid, they're going to set them up on your calendar
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for a consult, right? And are your people scheduling this themselves like a through a calendar or
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a joint calendar? Something like that? Is that a joint calendar? Yeah, that's cool because that
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takes you out of the loop as well. What happens? Let's just assume everything goes well, green light.
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Okay, you're good to go. From the point of your awesome Mr. Mrs. Barrower, then you hand it back to
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your team, right? I do. But I tell the clients that if they have questions along the way, they can
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you sure either reach out to me or my team. And so some of the clients will reach out to me directly
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for questions they have. And like, I'll answer a lot of them myself. Just because I do like to
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be really involved with the barbers. Yeah, okay. Anything else you think that's relevant for those
17:45
that are listening? Because there's a lot of people, you know, are in that space that maybe you
17:49
were a couple three years ago where you needed to add people. That's one of the biggest requests I
17:55
get from people. It's like, hey, how do I grow my team? How do I scale? You know what I mean?
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Any key things you want to remind people of there? Just about like the type of people to hire.
18:07
Yeah, like what are some lessons you learned in hiring? I've been learning so many lessons recently.
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So I started off really easy for me in hiring because my first hire was my sister who's in
18:18
Vegas now. My second hire was my brother. Oh wow. So I actually like literally just had a conference
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call with our managers about this yesterday because I've been struggling to hire people. Because at
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first, like, I know them. I know my brother and sister. I know how they're going to work. I know
18:32
they're work ethic. And I feel like I've made a lot of bad choices lately. I have some rock stars on
18:39
my team right now, but anytime we've tried to bring somebody on this year, we've had a lot of struggles.
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So I've been trying to nail down and figure out who's the right person. Like so, but it's like every
18:50
time I make a mistake, then I try and hire the opposite. So I hired one lady and her attitude was a
18:54
10. Like I still love this person, but I didn't think she was made smart enough in my form harsh
18:59
to say. So then I started looking for only smart people. And then you know, I hired somebody
19:04
who thought was smart and like he just didn't like the job. So yeah, I don't know. Like, oh, go ahead.
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Do you use any profiling stuff like disc or anything like that? My problem is I like everybody
19:17
immediately. So like everybody's a win for me, but I'm hiring. I'm about to make an offer to
19:23
two people. So like these people are a little bit, I've always hired really young people. So
19:30
they're a little bit more mature. They both have a finance background. So when one lady is doing
19:35
personal loans right now, which is my background. So she doesn't know about mortgages, but she understands
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how to deal with clients. Like she's worked at applications and all of her clients are
19:45
via phone, which is a phone job. So I felt like she would be a good fit. And then the other person
19:51
I'm hiring has degree in finance. But she did her current job. She does finance, which she'd
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wants to deal with people. So we thought that that would be a great fit for her. So that's our point
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to figure out somebody who maybe doesn't have mortgage skills, but has similar like transferable
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skills. Yeah, making applications. And are you hiring support people? Allos? What?
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Support people. Yeah, so we're hiring more people on the pre-approval side. But my very first hire
20:17
was somebody to do like more backend stuff. I candle like the loan paperwork once they've been
20:22
pre-approved. Are you also managing a branch? No. No, okay, just check it. Because that would be
20:28
crazy. No. In terms of so it's perhaps calling database in realtors, you know, 15 or 20 kind of
20:36
a player realtors like we talked about, what do you do? Especially and how has it changed during
20:41
COVID, right? To stay top of mind with those realtors and keep the level live, so to speak.
20:48
Yeah, I mean, because they are getting hit up. But so we don't get to see them in person as much
20:53
before. We do a weekly video to our database of realtors. So try and bring them some kind of
21:00
helpful information. My most successful videos were around COVID. Like when things were changing
21:05
in the market, those were my most watched videos and I told them what was going on. But I'll do
21:09
weekly video. It's either like what's going on with market, what's going on with interest rates,
21:14
different loan programs, but then you know, also add to that how they can use that to get more clients
21:19
and basically make more money. So here's the program. Here's how you sell it. Here's why it's important to
21:24
you. I'm going to stay in touch with them that way. I like that. Is that a bomb on video? It's a
21:30
bomb on video. Okay. And are you recording that just once a week off the cuff versus batch recording?
21:35
Once a week off the cuff. Okay. Cool. Got it. All right. So you do the weekly video that goes
21:41
out to your and I imagine your database of realtors is larger than that 65? Yeah, but not a lot larger.
21:47
Like we're not just sending it to people that I don't know. I'm pretty much sending it to the
21:51
agents that I do know. Okay. All right. Weekly video. That's cool. Anything else with agents?
21:57
It's in calls. So within our database, we can track how often we call our agents.
22:03
Like we use Salesforce. So there's different like dashboards. If we want a top agent,
22:09
we haven't called him on so long. They'll show up on a list. So working through that list to make
22:13
sure that they at least get phone call, text, something. Oh, you'll get an alert that says you
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haven't talked to Bill Smith in three months. Yeah. Really? That's pretty cool. Do you have a goal
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then of like weekly conversations with agents? Yeah. So I've never been super, super strong at making
22:33
a lot of calls. Like I mean, I killed. We got coached by the core forever where make 48
22:39
calls on Monday. I did do that. But I try and have more like really quality long conversations,
22:48
more impactful conversations. I mean, I don't even kind of embarrass to say my go on here, but it's
22:54
10 a week. I mean, I'll talk to more agents, of course, because we have a bunch of deals going
23:00
and stuff like that and pre-approvals, but like really quality conversations.
23:04
No, I mean, that goes a long way. I'm a, you know, what I've been doing with everybody in the new
23:08
year is, you know, have the go deep versus wide conversation, right? Which is about how do I be a
23:12
better partner this year instead of being spread too thin across too many people? So I'm in the same
23:17
camp as you are. Okay, so the weekly calls, agents, the weekly video, anything else?
23:25
Prior to COVID, were you doing events or classes or anything like that?
23:28
Oh, yeah. We were doing happy hours. We were doing lunch and learns. So that's probably one
23:33
thing that I definitely want to add this year as a virtual lunch and learn. I guess I kept hoping
23:38
that COVID would end, you know, as everybody else in the world. And then we just be able to start
23:42
lunch and learns is clearly not happening. So I need to get, I'll do virtual lunch and learns
23:47
this year. Yeah, well, now that you're a Zoom master, no problem. I know. I know I have the paid
23:52
versions. I can have people on there. That's awesome. Okay, are you using any like, you know,
24:00
tools, tech tools, software, home bot, mortgage coach or anything like that?
24:05
We have mortgage coach. I haven't implemented it yet, but we do home bot. Yeah, we have home bot,
24:10
but Guild had implemented Salesforce, which has been huge for our business this last couple
24:18
years. So we're really trying to utilize all the tools that are in there, like the different lists
24:22
and things like that. But home bot is great. Hope absolutely love it. It generates so many
24:28
links for our team and our clients love home bot. It blows my mind that every single time I meet
24:33
with a client, you know, for refinance, one of the questions we ask them is how much is your
24:37
house worth? And every single, every single person will that report that you send me every month,
24:43
sends us worth this? I'm like, okay, so you people are opening it. Yeah. It's not one of my
24:47
neighbors, how's Salesforce? Not one of my realtors. Tell me it's, will you the report use that
24:51
and you says this? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. It's getting massive open rates, click through rates,
24:55
all that. I'm sure you have revised because of it. Absolutely. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Have you done
25:00
the thing where you're sponsoring agents on home bot yet? Yeah. We have some agents that are signed
25:05
up. And they all love it, getting the agents to put their people in home bot has been a little
25:12
bit trickier. Yeah. Different. I think I would love if you have any tips of how I kid,
25:18
how do you need somebody on your team to specialize in that? You know, because it's pretty much,
25:24
they need to upload their database to home bot. I know, and they don't have a database.
25:29
Well, yeah. Can't fix broken, right? That's where some virtual assistant services or something
25:35
like that might come in handy with, well, where is it? Is it in Excel? Well, let's get that
25:40
formatted and set up. I know it's a bit of a problem, but good for you for doing it.
25:48
When you, I want to go back to like, we finished 2020, 418 loans, just to remind everybody,
25:55
sorry, yes, 418 loans, 104 millions Friday, little punchy. When you set your goals, by the way,
26:02
I'm assuming some, let me ask instead, are you a goal planner, a business planning person?
26:09
Guild makes us set goals. Well, I guess not maybe not Guild, but our branch manager,
26:15
Shayla is all about goals. So yeah, we have the goal setting. My goals are always way lower than
26:20
my team's goals. We have a goal this year. So this was a goal that my brother, when he was on
26:26
my team, he came up with this goal years ago, and it's 252 loans because that's one for every
26:32
business day of the year. So I love that. So that's been my goal every single year. I can tell you
26:37
my team would kill me if we did 252 loans because that's why they have their secret goal.
26:42
Yeah, I mean, you blew that out of the water. Their goal is to book Amanda client appointments
26:47
Friday at 7 o'clock at night, and just like kill me. Are they incentivized in terms of,
26:54
you know, appointments booked and stuff like that? They're not, but they get bonus on every single
27:00
closing we do. Every single person of the team is bonus on every single closing that we do.
27:04
So in a way, they are. The more, right? Yeah, the more at that, they give you, they know.
27:09
Yeah, and they know our goals for how many leads we want a week. They know how many appointments
27:13
I want book to week. They know how many deals we need to get a week to keep it going, and we
27:18
talk about those goals every single Monday. And they know how many of the leads they're supposed to
27:22
convert. So we're watching it every single week. Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that. You have a
27:27
conversion percentage goal. Absolutely. Yeah, like the fact we're reporting it every single Monday,
27:33
like, hey, we need 22 leads. Did we get 22 leads? We need seven contracts. Did we get seven contracts?
27:40
Of those 22 leads, we need to convert like at least 35% of them, meaning they've sent us their
27:47
documents. And of the leads, we need to take applications on at least 75% of them. So we're like,
27:54
and so that's why if we, you know, we reported on a Monday and we're not there that following week,
27:59
like for the week before that that week, that Monday, we're following it every single week,
28:04
every single day. Okay, we didn't hit it last week. It's Tuesday. Are we closed Wednesday? How many do we
28:10
have Thursday? How many do we have to make sure that there's not two weeks in a row where we
28:14
are cutting those goals? All right. So this goes back to that number we talked about earlier,
28:18
which is it's 22 leads that leads to the quote seven deals, which is actually seven contracts.
28:25
Okay, I got it. And so the leads sourcing, besides the realtors and past client database,
28:32
are there any other things you haven't played that are generating those 22 leads?
28:38
Not a lot. I don't know if you said builders, but we do have a couple builders that we work with.
28:43
So that's part of it. We do try and get current client referrals and our current client referrals
28:49
have been going up. So we're getting more referrals from our past clients and our current clients.
28:54
And that's it. I haven't done the Facebook thing. Well, I'm not on TikTok yet.
28:59
Uh-huh. Are you on Instagram?
29:03
I don't even have a personal Instagram. I know. I do research ahead of time, and I'm like,
29:09
I cannot find you anywhere except for your business profiles. No, I'm not on Facebook.
29:14
We're on Yelp. We actually get some calls from Yelp. You do. And as a matter of fact,
29:20
you have 176 reviews. I believe on your guild page, your branch page. Yeah, guild has a way
29:29
of getting reviews on our page. And then we ask our clients to review us on Yelp,
29:34
just because I've noticed that on Yelp, when people search mortgage broker or mortgage
29:40
person and Reno, Yelp helps our name come up really high. If we have high ratings on there,
29:46
we ask our clients to rate us on Yelp. And the process for getting those reviews is there's
29:52
a software that Guild sends out at the close. Guild does. Yeah. So after closing,
29:58
an automated thing comes out from Guild with a survey. Yep. If they score as high on the survey,
30:05
then Guild asks for review. If they score as low on the survey, the survey doesn't ask for review.
30:11
Sounds like it might be social survey. Maybe. Yeah. That's a third party testimony. I think
30:17
goodness, they're not asking it for like the people that ran as low. Well, I just know that that's
30:21
one of their functionality. Yeah. And that is actually helpful. Okay. I love that.
30:27
22 lead seven contracts. Do you? Do you? I think you said that you have a metric around like
30:34
app to funding ratio. Right? Like how many apps? Yeah. The lead to funding. I guess our goal
30:40
technically is 22%. Okay. Lead to funding 22%. Wow. You really manage your business by the numbers.
30:47
I like that. I think that's smart because that really tells you if you want to grow or if you
30:53
want to make a certain amount of income, it's all on the math, you know? Yeah. Absolutely.
30:59
Hmm. I like that. All right. That means you can control, right? You can control the number of leads.
31:05
If you don't get enough, you just have to work harder and call more of your data. Okay. So that's
31:10
where you're saying like do we proactively reach out? Well, yeah. If we don't hit our lead goal
31:14
that week, we're absolutely calling him. If it's Friday at three o'clock and we don't have enough
31:18
leads, like, you know, I'm yelling at the team nicely, but we're not leaving until we have 22 leads.
31:24
So then it's like get on the phone and start calling agents. We're ordering pizza or whatever.
31:28
We have to all keep our jobs. So we have to have 22 leads. Like we can't continue to work
31:33
here unless we have that many leads. Wow. That's awesome. Do you do in it during a purchase
31:38
transaction? Do you do any proactive cross-selling of listing agents?
31:45
What was should I say? Yes. No. No. No, no. I have. In the past I have, I think the
31:52
refinance market has, you know, allowed a lot of the things that we used to do. It's a lot
31:57
of us to be a little bit lazier loan officers. Yes. So this last year or not as much, just because
32:02
we haven't needed it. But yeah, I mean, I picked up a couple of my very best agents ever from the
32:06
listing side. Just from doing the Tuesday updates and really trying to wow them. So I've definitely
32:12
foreshared on it in the past and gotten business that way. But like lately I haven't done it as well
32:17
as I should have. Tell me about your Tuesday updates. Are those phone calls? Absolutely. So because
32:23
I've never like made my 40 calls on Monday, I've always really, I've always done my Tuesday updates.
32:29
From the time I started the business till today, like I rarely ever miss those because that's my
32:34
prospecting time. I didn't call anyone on Monday. So I feel guilty. So I've got to call and do
32:40
really good updates to the agents on Tuesday. And for me, it gives me a reason to call them.
32:47
And to be able to then like, okay, I'm updating you. But let's talk about other stuff. Let's have
32:51
that deep conversation at the same time. And are you updating all parties in the trends,
32:55
you know, listing by side client as well? I don't do the client. My partner Sarah does that.
33:00
My teammate. She's the one that does the backend stuff. So she calls the clients. I call the
33:05
buyer's agent and the listing agent. Okay. Got it. And that is all done on the same day on Tuesdays.
33:14
Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Tuesday and Wednesday morning. How long does it take you roughly
33:18
to cover the bases? I mean, you're doing a lot of loans. So
33:24
depending on how many people answer, I mean, about two hours ish. A lot of our loans right now are
33:29
reficed. So I don't have to call on those ones. But it's about two, two and a half hours.
33:34
Now, and I asked that question specifically because, you know, I'm definitely a big promoter of doing
33:39
live updates with a phone call. Many people rely on automated emails and that kind of stuff.
33:43
And to me, you lose the relationship building aspect of it as you've discovered. But the pushback
33:49
I get is exactly what you just said. Two hours. I don't have two hours to do that.
33:55
Yeah, out of 40 to prospect. I mean, if you think of it as prospecting time, which I do,
34:00
like, I can't not do it because that's two hours of prospecting. And maybe the rest of the week
34:05
gets away from me and I don't do prospecting as much as I should at the other time. Exactly.
34:09
Like, we could kill two hours of one stone prospect and do your Tuesday updates.
34:13
Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, how many clients do you have in a purchase transaction? Well,
34:17
you've got three, right? You got listing side by side in the clients. So that's your opportunity.
34:22
You know, I mean, technically, you could call the listing agent a prospect, I guess, but they're
34:26
really kind of a client, you know, in that situation. To me, that's why I say, yeah, we're currently
34:32
working together. So that's a client. Yeah. No, they may not be sending you business or
34:36
they might not be a relationship, but it's your chance to, to wow them, you know.
34:40
Yeah, but even if you don't get business from them, like how awesome of it is that when
34:46
this listing agent gets you an offer with your name on it. Yeah.
34:49
Well, my gosh, Amanda, she calls me every single Tuesday and low working with her.
34:53
Like, I've never sent her business, but I might accept your clients offer because they're
34:57
working with Amanda and I know she's going to call me and I know she's going to do a good job
35:00
during the transaction. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you about back to setting goals for this year.
35:06
You did 418 loans in 2020. What did you set out to be your goal for this year for units or volume?
35:14
252. Okay. So what I'm getting at is this is a, you did an amazing number this year,
35:24
and 252 is the new minimum. So for me, yeah, for me, like, I mean, this was the same last year
35:31
at the end of 2019. I was super afraid that all the refives were going to go away. Of course,
35:36
they didn't, but then I was like, okay, we need 252 loans to function as a team and I'll make
35:42
good income. Like, that's just what's going to keep the wheels churning and keep our business really
35:46
high and keep our numbers really high. Okay. So if all the refives went away, we still need to do 252
35:52
loans. So that's why that's my personal goal, because I don't know what's going to happen with
35:55
the rates. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And anything above that is just gravy. Yeah. Totally. I mean,
36:02
I'm sure, like, if we have the opportunity to do 400 again, we'll do it. You're not going to turn
36:06
it down. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll take them. But, but what was the internal challenge, though,
36:10
to go from, if you roll this back to the end of 2019 and you set out into 2020 to do 252,
36:18
all of a sudden, you're scaling up and doing 418. That must have been a lot of pressure
36:22
on your infrastructure, right? Well, okay. So if I'm looking, I'm going to glance over and look at
36:26
my numbers because I have them all the while. But in 2018, we did two 26. Okay. In 2019, we did
36:34
312. And then 2020, we did 418. So it's been about 100 loans a year for the last two years.
36:42
Yeah. And that's what I'm getting at is that the likelihood is, and we didn't add any people to
36:48
the team. We just worked late. We just worked really late. You must have a really awesome team.
36:55
They're amazing. They're the best. Seriously. I mean, I'll just joke with them, though. And I'm like,
37:01
you guys just need to work faster, work faster and harder. I'll yell that out the office start.
37:06
How many hours on average is everybody putting in? Yeah, we, it's, yeah, this last year, we've been
37:11
in the office till like seven or seven thirty every night. My team has been here with me till seven
37:16
or seven thirty every single day. Wow. That's awesome. They're very dedicated. They all believe in
37:22
what we do. What does that mean? They believe in what you do. Like, they believe that, like, we're
37:28
doing good work here at Guild. It's not a job. Like, we're helping people, we're making people's
37:34
lives better. Whether it is a refinance and they're saving and it's helping their family,
37:38
whether they're buying a new house, like, we just believe that we're making an impact on people's
37:44
lives. And we want to make, you know, the best and the biggest impact that we can. Do you have just
37:48
one processor or two? Yeah. So the person that I say is my back and person, she works in addition
37:56
to our processors, but we have like two main processors that we work with at Guild.
38:01
I don't consider it as like on my team because they're like operations, but that we work with,
38:06
like, in addition to the teammates. Yeah, they're processing all your loans, though.
38:12
Are those two dedicated to you? Yes. Okay. Got it. Are they in your local office?
38:19
They're not. No. No. Well, one of them is in Arizona and then one of them is here in Reno,
38:26
but it works from home. Okay. Interesting. Very interesting setup. Yeah. So back to the numbers.
38:31
I mean, let's see here. I mean, you've been adding, you know, units every single year.
38:36
The assumption I would make seeing that trend is, you're going to do it again this year.
38:41
500. No pressure. 500. That sounds like a good number. That would be a better number.
38:48
Nice round number. Anything you're doing differently as we head into this year, whether you're at,
38:54
you know, let me put it this way. There's three areas I look at. People process technology.
38:58
Right. So you're doing anything in those three areas as we're heading into this year.
39:04
There is. So I think I mentioned this, but I'm in the process of hiring two people right now.
39:10
One person is leaving my team. He's becoming a loan officer actually in 45 days.
39:15
He's a rock star. So I'm trying to replace him, but I'm also not just adding one person to replace
39:19
them. I'm adding two. So he's done like all of my leads for me and now they're well technically,
39:25
I guess, be three of him after I hire the two new people. So three people. But the reason I want more
39:31
than just one is because I think that there's so much stuff that we can do that we're not doing.
39:36
You know, which gives me a lot of hope because we did 400 loans. Yeah.
39:40
But there's stuff we didn't do. Like, for instance, we didn't do anniversary calls to all of our
39:44
clients. We can do that. We can be calling our database even more to get more refinances.
39:52
We could be doing client birthdays. We could be doing realtor birthdays even more.
39:57
Yep. You know, go looking at Homebot and Homebot tells you how much activity you have like from
40:04
clients. We could look at the Homebot and see who are the most active people. Call them and see if
40:08
there's anything that they need to go over. So there's so many different things that we can do.
40:13
And like now with Salesforce and like how we're able to track our leads better. I mean, we can go
40:18
back through a year of leads and convert people that we didn't. So those are some of the things
40:23
that I'm thinking about just that there's so many more touches that we can have on our database
40:27
this year compared to what we did last year. Yeah, it's all about optimization. You know,
40:33
I mean, we have an app called Guild to Go. We've never even used it. And like we could learn to
40:38
use that with more people. So there's there is so many programs we could learn. Speaking of that,
40:43
I didn't ask that earlier, but with people applying, are they using some type of online tool?
40:50
A lot of more people are. I really don't push my team. I push my team to not get online applications.
40:58
And this is kind of changing, but what I've noticed in the past is a client calls in.
41:04
We have them on the phone. They're like, okay, go to our website to apply. And then we're
41:08
hounding them for a week. Like, why don't you do their application? It's like, we had them on
41:11
the phone. Why don't we just take 10 minutes to get their app right there? And then and then
41:15
not have to spend so much time hounding them. So we really don't push our people to apply online.
41:21
But I have gotten more online apps than I've ever gotten in my entire life where people are
41:26
starting on the website. They don't call us and then go to the website. They start on the website
41:30
and then we call them. But it's not something that we're promoting, but I have noticed that
41:34
where people are replying on there. Got it. You do any kind of post-closing gifts, anything like that
41:39
for clients? Yeah, so this year we we always did. Our signature gift was a bottle of wine
41:48
with a hammer tied to it. And it says, take a break from your hard work and get hammered.
41:53
You know, home and then love it. They loved it. But we had to go to to signings to give those to
41:59
people. And we have like more rural areas that we're working with. And it was like kind of tough
42:03
to get to all those signings. So people like they slept through the cracks and then with COVID,
42:07
as her officers don't want you in there. Yeah.
42:10
Once we don't even know when people are signing. So we stopped doing this. We completely stopped.
42:16
And then like it finally clicked to me Amazon. Like it's so easy and free. So I brought my mom
42:21
in this year. She's not working a lot. She got her hours cut from COVID and like she's been our
42:27
giftor. So we're a list every month of everyone who closed and she'll go on Amazon and we've
42:32
gotten the greatest feedback. Is it still the hammer and wine thing or something else?
42:37
No, because it's so hard to shift alcohol. But we started doing like engraved cutting words,
42:42
people love those. I never thought that they were that exciting before I've seen them, but people
42:47
love them. That's what our best feedback. Yeah. Well, they use them a lot and they see your name,
42:51
you know, every time it's it. And then on the refizable sundown, like some kind of candy or
42:56
snacks or cookies or nuts, but just the gifting, I get so many thank yous and it's been really cool.
43:04
And I guess closing it out like, you know, I'm on your Facebook page here and like we had mentioned
43:09
earlier, this can't be true. This can't be true. Like the last post was October 2019. Come on.
43:18
I know. So my teammate, Jeremiah, he's like to ask me earlier today. He's like,
43:21
do you see what's on post on Facebook? I was like, no.
43:27
I mean, it's it's very telling because, you know, social media gets a lot of attention, right? As
43:32
like, oh, you should be there. You need to be there. You're missing out. And look at, I think it has
43:36
its place, but you're another example of a top producer who's crushing it without having a super
43:44
strong presence on social. Yeah. Somebody had just kind of told me like, you should prospect in
43:49
the way that's fun for you. Yeah. That is not fun for me. That's the key. Listen, everybody listening
43:56
right there. So I mean, I just said the key thing there. You should prospect in a way that's fun
44:00
for you. What are the activities that you enjoy that generates business? And if it ain't social
44:05
media, if it isn't like, oh, my God, I hate video. I don't want to be on video. There's a hundred
44:08
other different things you could do. You know, so. Yeah. There's more lack of ideas or things to try.
44:16
That is foe show. All right. This has been very, very educational, helpful and insightful.
44:22
I'm just blown away that you're doing that kind of volume with a couple of three people. Only cow.
44:29
Yeah. That's crazy. I'm lucky. They're hard workers. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, look, I know you're
44:34
busy. It is Friday afternoon. And we probably want to, you know, kind of wrap up the day or you
44:38
probably need to check your numbers and see, hey, do you have 20 appointments today? I told you,
44:43
my team will literally book me a six o'clock appointment on a Friday night. I'm keeping you from
44:47
your leads. You got to go get them. All right. Listen, Amanda, I really, really appreciate it.
44:53
And listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode. Let us know. Leave us a review,
44:57
tune in for the next one. Amanda, if anybody wants to reach out and say hi, where do they do that?
45:01
What's the best place to connect with you? Well, not through a Facebook messenger.
45:06
Right. I want to, you know, for like six months, but you know, it's called me text me. My work
45:12
number is seven, seven, five, three, four, five, three, one, five, five is probably the best spot.
45:17
All right. Awesome. We appreciate you being here, Amanda. Thank you very much.
45:20
Oh, yeah. All right. Everybody will see you on the next one. Bye for now.
45:25
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