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The Blueprint for Funding $50 Million in Today's Market · Mortgage Marketing Radio

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Hey, it's Jeff Zimmer. Welcome to this episode of the mortgage marketing radio podcast. Thank
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you for tuning in. Question for you. Do you struggle with getting attention from real estate
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agents? Do you struggle with getting appointments? Do you struggle with what do I say on the
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appointment? How do I follow up? What do you do when you get ghosted? How do you identify
0:29
if somebody is the right partner for you or not? My special guest is going to answer those
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questions and more in just a moment. But before we get there, it's time for me to tell you about a
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brand new program that I'm launching. It is called the agent referral accelerator. And it is a 90 day
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intensive roll up your sleeves, get in the trenches with me, and let's get into the local market and
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attract instead of chase real estate agents and do what successful originators do. They lead with
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education, content and value. The most successful originators do not show up as a solicitor as a vendor.
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They show up as a peer and a partner. And one of the primary ways to do that is by hosting educational
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events and classes in your local market in person or over zoom. But I know many of you struggle with
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what do I say? What do I present? What do I get the material? How do I put the slides together?
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How do I get butts and seats? How do I team up with affiliate partners, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?
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How do I convert those to attend to conversations and contracts? That's what the agent referral
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accelerator is all about. We are going to spend 90 days going through and teaching you the entire
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system and process that I've put together and done myself as an originator helped me go from zero
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to 37 to $50 million in annual production and more that I've done for the last decade teaching
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hundreds and hundreds of originators around the country of the book that I wrote 10 years ago
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called instant referrals. If you are looking to take your realtor engagement and attention
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conversations that leads to contracts to the next level and you don't want to do the by
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cold calling chasing, co-paying leads and things like that. You'll want to follow a proven formula.
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If this sounds interesting for you, I've got a wait list put up. This is not going to be for
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everybody, but if you want to get on the wait list, we're going to go live with this in June.
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Go to getmoreagentreferals.com and just simply say, yep, I want to be on the wait list. Be
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notified of when this thing goes live and I'm going to be basically hosting an introductory session
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that's going to walk you through this entire process that we're going to provide for the handful
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of people. I'm only looking for 30 people, 30 people only, so some people will be turned away
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for a variety of different reasons. But once again, if you're hearing this and you're sounding like,
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this is something of interest for you, then let me know. Go to the waiting list, getmoreagentreferals.com
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and you can learn more there. Okay, so my special guest this week, I had the privilege of sitting
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in and watching her presentation at an event. I recently attended. I've been talking up a lot,
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which was the Slay with Shay event, Shayla Gifford with Guild Mortgage. She put on this event
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in Reno recently for a day and a half and it was fantastic. Lots of amazing lessons learned. And
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one of the key highlights or standouts for me is my special guest, Alison Larson.
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Alison is crushing it in her market in Minnesota, doing 50, 60 million dollars in this market today.
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And what I bring to you in this conversation today is how she approaches
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attracting and engaging and converting real estate agents to referral partners. Her mindset,
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her process, her strategy, what she says to realtors during the meeting. How she identifies
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if realtors, which realtors are going to be the right partner for her or not. We unpack kind of her
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process, you know, both before the meeting during and after. And a lot of other key nuggets and
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takeaways about how she's quickly built an amazing business for herself in her market.
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In addition to that, she's also doing some free content with Shayla, a free three week course
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called Solitude to Synergy. The link to that is in the show notes. So make sure you click that
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to get on board because there's only two more sessions for that. And that is upcoming on May 29th.
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And then once again, on June 5th, I believe is the final date for that. Yes, I am correct.
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So make sure you check the link in the show notes because that is full of some incredible
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information to learn effective prospecting techniques to elevate your leadership skills, improve
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your communication, and basically level up your team and get insights from, right, Alison, Shayla,
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who've got their thumb on the pulse of what's working in today's market because there are people
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succeeding in today's market. They're just doing some of the right things, the right activities
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repeatedly over and over again. And perhaps you'd like to get an insight into what some of those
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activities are. Did number one check and see if you're doing them. Are you doing them consistently
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enough? And maybe you're not doing some of the activities. So once again, that's you know,
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check the links in the show notes for that event, Solitude to Synergy, but also make sure you check
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the links in the show notes after you listen to today's conversation with Alison to go follow her
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on the link to provide one is her Instagram and second is her YouTube channel. And I encourage you
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to do that. And if you've connected with her here by way of the podcast, please let her know.
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So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Alison, welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me. I am thrilled to have you here. I had the privilege of sitting in an
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event that Shayla Gifford put on. Slay with Shay. And I watched your presentation about your
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process, about executing realtor appointments and stuff. And we're going to unpack that in a
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moment. And I was very impressed. But before we get into that, what do you want to share with
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the listeners about who you are kind of, you know, any highlights around your career and mortgage
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so far? Yeah. I think one thing that makes me very different than a lot of people in this industry is
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one. I'm 33 years old. I learned that slay with Shay. I did not know that there's only 13% of
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licensed mortgage originators who are under the age of 40. I had that make sense, but I just had no
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idea that that was the staff. So that's something that's a little different about me. So I haven't had
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20 years in this business to really build 10,000 past clients and all this stuff. And so what we've
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built is really in the last few years in not the greatest market that ever existed for mortgage
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loan officers. And so the things we're doing and the things I talk about are I think it resonates
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with people because they're actually doing them too if they're trying to build their business.
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And so anything I'm talking about, I probably did this week and it's either working or it's not
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working or constantly tweaking and changing it as we go. For to put into contacts this past year,
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my branch did a little under 60 million in volume. My branches, myself, a full-time staff member
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and a part-time marketing person. We did have a junior loan officer for about 60 days who quit
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to start his own company. And a processor who left us a week before I had a baby. So we were
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running real skinny there for the second half of the year. Yeah, lean and mean. All right, fantastic.
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Thank you for that. I want to let's enter this conversation of,
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all right, so you talked about your quote unquote younger as compared to the average age of an
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L.O. in this industry. How long did it take you to gain confidence in who you are in your place
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as a mortgage originator? Sometimes on different days, I don't know if I still have it, but
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right, there's always that little bit in us that that one phone call kind of scares you to make.
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To me, that's what makes the business still fun is getting to call that dream realtor,
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that dream builder that kind of gives you the shivers, be like, oh, can I really get them?
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Can I really call them? That's what keeps us going. But it took me probably three or four years
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into it before I really felt like I could sit down with a truly established agent
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and talk the talk. Maybe I wasn't really walking the walk at that point, but I could at least have
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the conversation and not feel like I left the coffee meeting wondering, you know, what was the
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point of that even? Okay, and agents are your primary source of business? Yes, they are. Agents
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and builder relationships. We get a little bit from financial advisors and past clients, but it
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primarily agents. So you mentioned, you know, I think you use the word like dream call or whatever,
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right? Or I call it the chicken list. You know, we all have agents or people on our list that we've
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been thinking about calling or we see in our market and maybe we're a little intimidated perhaps by
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them, right? Because of that external perception that they're quote unquote successful or maybe they're
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doing a huge presence on Instagram or something. Is that what you're talking about when you describe
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that type of version? Yeah, we all have those people. I don't have as much of it with realtores anymore,
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but I that's not true even because there's some realtores I've met with that when they do first
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on that lead and I see that my phone right away. Oh my gosh, they're actually calling me back.
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They want to send me something and it feels kind of surreal when we win that opportunity still.
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Yeah. Well, all right. So let's enter the conversation there. What are the primary activities?
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I wrote down some notes from your conversation or yeah, at the Shayla event and plus, you know,
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with this three-part series you're doing with her as well. How many let's do it this way?
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Because I thought this was very useful because there's a lot of, as you know, noise around real estate
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agents from the loan officer perspective, right? Like I was on a call a couple of weeks ago
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and one of these mortgage professionals wrote in the chat on the Zoom that that realtors are PITA.
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And I was like, so John, I just want to call this out for a second. PITA, are you saying that
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they're a pain in the ass, right? And I kind of pushed back on him, but I want to unpack this
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conversation for a moment because you seem to be in a really good place when it comes to the dynamics
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of real estate agents that you appear to be engaged with. And maybe that was a process to go
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through where you had to maybe work with some PITAs, right? Maybe, but how do you, is there a frame,
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is there a, like when you think of real estate agents as referral partners, how would you,
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what do you think about that? Most of my top agents at this point, I consider as friends. Like they
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are friends and family to me, we've gotten to that point where if they needed a house to stay at,
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I would say, you can stay at mine. Like these people mean the world to me, they feed my family,
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they take care of me, they prefer me to other realtors. But that's not how they all start, right?
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And so I think one thing that's helpful now is they've seen that progression with some of these
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agents. And so, and some of them who are best friends now, they still can be at PITAs sometimes.
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But now it's a little different. And go, hold on a second here. This is, we got to do this,
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we got to do that. Or this is how this has to work. And part of that is finding your own self-confidence
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and standing in your own power and knowing your own value and worth, because someone will
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actually respect you more if you're willing to draw a line in the sand and just be stern and say
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how it, how it is or be sure of yourself versus, well, let me see what I can do. And what about
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maybe this and maybe that? No, just have one clear concise answer for them. And then they'll
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start to respect you back just like they have the same respect for themselves.
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Yeah, I've often described, you know, the, the world of agents working with agents as a moving
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parade. There's a third come in, a third stain, and a third going. And I'm curious what the
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movement or influx outgo of your kind of, you know, agent engagement and group that you work with,
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what does that kind of look like? Yeah, we have our, we have our stable core that we always have.
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And then we have our kind of segment below that where we probably get four to five transactions
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a year from them. And then there's a ton of agents we get one transaction a year from even
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last year we got more transactions for just one off transactions from people than we ever have before
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because those agents feel scared. They don't have the same business they did. It's a tougher
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market for them too. I think a lot of times agents aren't actually trying to be a pain in the
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ass. They have a client who's a pain in the ass. And instead of just calling, we sit and we
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stew and we're like, what is wrong with this agent? Why would they say this? And why would the
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clients say this? And instead, if you just call the realtor and say, hey, give me this skinny
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a little bit about this client and just zip it and listen to what they say. They'll probably start
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inventing about how awful the client is being to them too. And now we've got to, now we're in this
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together. How can we go at it with United Front and level up both of our services? And I can have
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your back too. Most times agents don't want to be a pain. They don't want to call you on a
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Saturday afternoon. They also don't want to be working on a Saturday afternoon. And so it's
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figuring out how can we expedite this? How can I help this better? And having those honest
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conversations with the agent that usually gets rid of some of that. But in terms of agents coming
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and going, yes, we have some agents we've worked with for years and then they've got three kids
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who are not school aged right now and they're pretty much stay home moms. But we still keep
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in touch and we still invite them to staff and everything else because when all their kids are
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back in school, who knows what their career will become, right? And so we're in relationship with
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them. There's no point to let that go. And people's careers go through segments like that.
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So when you're choosing to work with real estate agents, I know you've heard of this. You know,
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some people look at agents and they're looking for a minimum buy side production.
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How do you evaluate that or is there any framework you put around how you or who you pursue as far
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as agents? If I'm going to go pursue someone, I typically want them to have at least five buy side
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transactions in the last 12 months and have been licensed for at least a year. Otherwise, I don't
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think they really even understand. They don't even know what you do as lender. They don't
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they don't know what's coming or going. They're still learning it all. If that's not them and they
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reach out to me or they want to get connected, I'm happy to still connect with them. I'm just not
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chasing down agents who don't at least have that stat and not anything against those agents. It's
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just if I went and sat down with them for coffee and told them all the things we do to add value
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to their clients and had all these big conversations with them about their business, they probably
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don't even know how to answer those questions yet. That's not even helpful to them. I want to make
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sure I'm being a good partner to these people and I might not be the best partner to that person.
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And also, kind of your point, what you might be saying in here is they're too new or they don't have
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enough transactions or experience yet to appreciate the value. They don't even know they literally
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don't even know what the lender does. They've never been to the closing table. They also don't know
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what the title company does, right? I mean, I see in the real estate 101.
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And so I do every once in a while host a mortgage 101, how the mortgage side of things work,
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I just hosted one the other week. And any agents I see who are newer, I invite them to that staff.
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I still want to include them. I want to educate them. I want to help them grow. I just am not
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physically taking the time to have coffee with them every other month.
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Then give me some insight into either how when you were growing and building or how currently
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you are identifying new agents to add to your bus. How does that happen for you?
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So every month we start with listing agents. Of course, they're your lowest hanging fruit.
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And if they fit that criteria that I just mentioned, we're absolutely trying to set an appointment
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with them. If it's outside of that, we're really having conversations with people we know like
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and trust to see who, who, what realtor would you refer if you had a friend call you and ask
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who you should work with? Because the days of cold calling, you're going to, no one's answering
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a cold call. They're just no one's answering a phone number. They don't know. It's likely spam
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whatever the case might be. Or we will engage with them on social media. But you have to be careful
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with social media because a lot of the agents who have a lot of time to post these beautiful
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curated Instagram pages aren't, aren't also the agents who aren't doing a ton of business.
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So we just want to be really impactful there. And then one thing I think is totally lost on people
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is when you're writing offers, connect with the other agent who you're writing the offer on,
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even if your client doesn't get it on social. You're already standing out to them. You follow them,
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you called them on a Saturday afternoon, you're really going through the ringer to work for your
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client, make sure they actually know who you are, and then slowly start trickling on that person
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to have coffee down the road. Hmm, smart. You mentioned listing agents. You start there.
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Does that mean only listing agents on the other side of the deal you're on or are you looking for
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listing agents in your backyard? Listing agents on the other side of the deal.
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Okay. All right. Yeah. So you're kind of just actively prospecting them, reaching out,
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doing the Tuesday updates as a minimum, right? Yep. Yeah. So we do our Tuesday updates.
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Well, one they've already heard from us when they're writing the offer because we've already
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helped set the client apart. We do a lot of strategy call and I dig. I don't just call a generic
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number and leave a voicemail. I like dig into who this agent is. I see if we have any mutual
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connections and that they would know before even call them. So I really try and build rapport
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in that phone call so that they feel excited to work with us even going into it. And I'll say,
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oh, I follow you on social. Do you have you ever seen my stuff? Oh, wait. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I
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want to build all of that. I don't want to just be another lender who's checking it off their
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list on that phone call on a Saturday afternoon. Right. So they're already excited to work with us.
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We get into the transaction. I call them again and let them know. We've got a Monday. We've got
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the purchase agreement. This is what's going on. You're going to get the Tuesday updates. You're
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going to get Milestone updates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's all this stuff. They're excited. We
19:06
communicate all the way through. And then after closing, I typically don't tell people this.
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They don't want everyone to copy it, but I'll share it. But I leave a Google review on their
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business page. And then I snip at the review. And I send it to them via email. And I say,
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seriously, I mean, you were awesome to work with, yeah, whatever, blah, blah. And then I set the
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appointment that way. Hmm. Wow. That's brilliant. So back to then identifying those agencies to work
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with, you know, we mentioned the criteria of five buy sides. You know, I know for years the narrative
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has been like with the listing. Oh, I'm just a listing agent. Or sometimes the loan officer,
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they just don't go after listing agents because they think they don't have buyers. I've always pushed
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back against that because listings or at least this is what my mentor originally taught me was the
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listing agents are the ones who have the frigging buyers because they're the ones inquiring about
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the listing. So how do you look at that? Right? So it's a quote unquote listing agent. Why would
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you still pursue them? Well, if they, well, I look up their numbers first. And I want to make sure
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that they fit my criteria. Most listing agents have had at least a few buy side transactions. And any
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agent who's telling you I only sell listings. Well, then who's your buyer's agent? And if they
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don't have a buyer's agent, well, they're just being polite. That's their reason to not meet with
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you. And sometimes that's okay too, right? You could call the same, you could call the same
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realtor twice a year for five years. And on the sixth year, they finally go, yep, I know you're the
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best. I've seen you in our market for years. You've called on me for years. I know all these other
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agents that work with you. Let's take the meeting. My guy just retired. Mm hmm. Right. Or you're one of the
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13% that are under the age of 40. I need to have a female I'm referring to as well because it's
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2024. Ever you can't always just refer to an older guy who sits in his office and doesn't go out
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do anything, right? Like you got to have your token girl on your list. So sometimes they'll even
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make jokes like that. And you're like, okay, yeah, fine. I'll have coffee with you. Yeah, I like it.
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That's good. And plus, you're doing a lot of research and recon ahead of time, like you said,
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like, you know, stalking people essentially looking up up in social media and see, you know,
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what connection points do you have in place? So that's kind of like the lost out of selling.
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And if you, yeah, and if you don't have the connection points, like in our market,
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I think we have 16,000 realtors license in our area. There's 16,000 of them. If I have no
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connections, I can't release, I don't really can't really make sense of their volume. They already
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don't want to meet with me. It, you're probably not going to win it. Like to take the time to go to
21:35
the coffee and track them down to drive across town and sit there for a half hour and then they're
21:39
10 minutes late and the whole, it just, it probably isn't worth it at the end of the day or maybe in
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the next few years it might be worth it. But if you're trying to gain traction in business right now,
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that's not which has been my strategy. I haven't done that long-term game as much just because I
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needed to figure out how to pay my bills and close loans tomorrow, not in five years from now.
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Yeah. Okay. Good stuff there, which leads me to kind of the next section of
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you creating a brand awareness for the Allison Larson team in your local market.
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One of the things you talked about is events. You do a fair amount of events. Is it one a month?
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What does your schedule look like roughly? It depends. So summer in Minnesota, no one's ever
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around. Everyone's gone and they're too busy. So then we kind of take a pause a little bit in
22:30
the summertime and then fall. People are excited to get back together. So we really do kind of
22:35
dictated on what's happening in the market. What realtors have an appetite for? Are they craving
22:41
something in person? Are they craving something virtual? Are they craving happier? Are they
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craving a networking coffee? We have just a goal that we have a minimum of six events a year.
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In-person events. Right. Right. But sometimes they get more stacked up like all of a sudden the fall,
22:59
sometimes we're really stacked with things. And we also do quite a bit of realtor partnering with
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a realtor on mutual clients or their VIP client. We do a lot of that kind of stuff too.
23:11
Like client appreciation events, things like that or? Yes, but with one realtor reverse that we do
23:16
our one annual client event. But then we also do a lot. For example, a realtor and I just hosted
23:20
an event for clients two weeks ago where we did a floral workshop making class. Come join us,
23:26
apps, wine. We're going to learn how to make floral arrangements and bring a front.
23:32
Well, one of the things you mentioned on the training was I wrote down that you mentioned if I'm
23:38
correct on this that last year you received, you closed a deal, at least one deal or more across
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94 different realtors. That's a lot. I didn't realize that stat until I literally looked it up
23:55
myself on Reddit. I looked it up. I was like, wow, that's a lot of realtors.
24:00
A lot of realtors. The point you made about that, what I love was this is that I've gone through
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the exercises. I'm sure many people listening have where, first of all, LOs, you spend too much time
24:10
looking up other LOs. You're looking at their production and I remember I did this with
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Denise Donahue as well. Denise Donahue is similar to you. She had closed I think 100 plus deals
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across 100 realtors. But I think the brilliant point you made was to the earlier conversation we
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had about if they're only doing five sides a year and by the way, you're probably not going to
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capture 100% of that business. I know you have a couple of realtors where you're capturing 80%
24:39
of their business or whatever, maybe one or two. But by and large, that's not usually how the
24:43
business plays out. Is it usually it's across one to three or so deals across many realtors, right?
24:50
Yeah. If you want proof, look up every when you are wasting your time looking up on officers,
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numbers. Go look up some of the people you admire the most. This was very eye opening to me.
25:05
Most of them don't get more than four deals a year from one realtor. Maybe they're getting more
25:10
leads, but they're not enclosing the deals necessarily. In this market, it is hard to convert that many
25:15
deals from certain agents. And so really watching where those deals are actually coming from and
25:20
where the relationships are coming from, half the time we're giving so much attention to realtors
25:24
and we're actually not closing loans from them. We're just getting leads from them.
25:29
Excellent point. And speaking of that, by the way, how do you, is there a lead management process
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you have when you get a referral or something and they go into your CRM or like, what does that look like?
25:38
We have a lot of people have probably heard of the lead tracker, which a lot of coach students
25:42
probably utilize something similar. Guild has all of those tools built in to our CRM. So I have
25:49
a full lead tracker screen that I put in with the notes and the referral partner tagged and all
25:54
of that that can then convert into an active loan, which is nice because then it's really easy to
25:59
track your stats from lead to conversion and who didn't get pre-approved and what realtors are
26:04
sending us the most qualified leads versus not, et cetera. Okay. Another point you made about
26:11
deals across many agents is that that's number one, how the business plays out. And then,
26:19
you know, a lot of L.O.'s get caught in their head where they're like, well, I want to narrow it
26:23
down and I want to work with less realtors who are giving me more and that's a little bit of a
26:27
separate conversation perhaps we can go there. But the point you hit on was like, it's really hard
26:32
to stay top of mind with 94 realtors, right, who you close to deal with, which is why I think
26:38
you dovetailed that back into events, classes, whatever, which is, and of course social media, but
26:45
that's one of the methods you use to stay top of mind, to stay aware, right, with these agents,
26:51
these these 90 plus agents, because I think what I love that you said is like, you can't go to coffee,
26:57
like with 94 agents, right? And no one wants to. They don't want to go to, if you're only doing one
27:03
deal a year with them, do you really think they want to go to coffee with you every other month?
27:08
Probably not. I have an insurance agent. We refer almost all of our businesses to this one
27:12
insurance agent. I've known him since college. We have like childhood friends together.
27:17
He texts all the time. Can I bring you lunch? Can I do that? No, I don't I don't even need to see
27:21
you this year. I'm totally good. I'm really busy. I think you're the best. Thanks for checking in.
27:26
Here you go. But that's sometimes that's all people need. They people don't even have time to see
27:32
their friends in 2024 or spend a time with their kids. They don't necessarily need to go make small
27:37
talk with the lender all the time. How what does your agent recruiting process look like?
27:46
Are you, you know what I mean? You're kind of, you know, you're, you're fishing, right? You're
27:50
recruiting for other agents to bring on board. Yeah. Other loan officers, other agents.
27:55
You are looking to bring agents on. Yeah. Yeah. So for example, this morning,
28:01
first thing this morning is I spent about 45 minutes kind of reverse prospecting the listing
28:06
agents from April's closings, the reviews, the ass, all of that kind of circling on, okay,
28:14
we're following this person on Instagram. Is this like a really, really good one that I need a
28:18
email text call today or is this like a let's just toss out an email and see if it sticks kind of
28:24
one, right? Like what is the level of interest on this? And then if we don't get a response from
28:28
them and they have high level of interest and they go on another list or then we're tracking it
28:32
through our CRM have they've been reached out to every single week for eight weeks to try and
28:37
get in front of them for coffee. And so then my CRM literally just gives me tasks of this person
28:42
still hasn't responded. Keep trying to go get that. I am a very ADD person. So I'm really good at
28:51
something for a little bit and then I'm not and then I'm exhausted of it and I think a lot of us
28:56
are wired that way. That's how we probably ended up here. And so for me, I love to stack real
29:02
terapointments. Like I want to stack them all in and get really, really intense dialed in on it.
29:07
And then the next week or the next couple days, I need to be like really in on my pre-approvals.
29:13
I don't like to have a real terapointment here and a real terapointment there. I think I forget
29:17
who they are and I'm not as intentional. I don't follow up as well. And so kind of sparsing those
29:23
out helps. And so then that way I typically have three or four agents all at one time that I really
29:28
liked that are new to me that I can make a big deal about coming to this next event.
29:34
Typically with these events, I have a few people who always come to this stuff.
29:38
You could almost host the exact same events year over year because you don't ever really get
29:43
a lot of the same realtors. And the ones who are showing up again, it's just because they're big
29:47
supporters of you and like the social aspect. You're constantly getting turnover on who actually
29:53
shows up those types of things. Exactly. That's kind of like I look at events and classes as you
30:00
know, you're running for office. And that's part of your campaign, right? And you're running on this
30:04
platform, which elevates you and helps you rise above the noise because it's something out of the
30:08
usual stream of things you're doing. Yeah. And even with events, it got really saturated for,
30:15
I mean, and I don't know in our market everywhere you turn every other week, there's a real terapanile.
30:20
So then I had to get a little bit crafter of like, okay, no one needs another real terapanile.
30:26
What else can I do, right? Do I make smaller events? Is this a big social event? Like, how do we
30:31
set ourselves apart and do something differently to still attract people to come?
30:37
Yeah, it was interesting. I was thinking about this while I was listening to you. It's one of
30:40
the things that I do with those people, not to sound self-promotional, but it's like we help them
30:46
teach classes, right? Which is all kinds of different topics and ideas, whether it's
30:51
winning strategies for buyer's agents in light of the NIR settlement, or it's social media trends,
30:56
or it's like YouTube, or whatever it is. So there's that constant menu of different things that
31:01
realtors want to learn. And there's not, there's not always the same topics, right? Like social media
31:09
and branding have been the topics that every real terapanile wants to learn about every other month
31:13
for three years right now. It's bringing in different speakers, setting it up differently,
31:17
bringing it to a new audience. Sometimes we'll do an event on one set of town, and we can do the
31:22
exact same event on the other side of town and get a totally different audience.
31:26
Well, it's like you said a moment ago, too. There's like 16,000 realtors or whatever, right? So,
31:31
I mean, I know a lot of officers who, like one of the classes we do is Google Business Profile,
31:36
and it's Glenda in Texas. So if you're listening Glenda, shout out to you. She did the Google
31:41
Business Profile class eight times last year, right? And it's like you said, it's a different
31:46
audience every single time, or people come back as they want to get the net, you know, they want to
31:49
continue to learn. So it's just one of those strategies that makes sense to stay in front of people.
31:54
All right, I'm holding in my hand your real ter executing
32:01
I love real ter and executing in the same phrase. No, just kidding, just kidding, everyone.
32:05
What I loved about you is your prep, I think, is spot like before we hit record, I was saying,
32:11
you know, that you're very professional. And you're one of the most, you know, quote, professional,
32:17
prepared mortgage professionals that I've seen. And I think that speaks to why you're successful,
32:25
but why you're also not, well, perhaps at this stage in a way, pulling your hair out like you
32:29
might have been early on in the career. But, um, you know, I think what I see is the mistake is
32:37
a lot of originally did you make is that they are not intentional when they're having real ter
32:43
appointments. And you were very brilliant in that. So I want to unpack this a little bit.
32:49
If you want to just take us through a very abbreviated version of your kind of how you approach
32:54
a real ter appointment, let's start with there. What's the mindset you have going into a real
32:59
ter appointment? Yeah. So many people have eliminated themselves before they walked in the door,
33:04
whether they have just already discredited the real ter that this is a waste of time. Like it
33:09
almost makes ourselves feel better if we downplay what we're walking into versus hyping it up.
33:14
And so it's just human nature that we just kind of like throw our opportunity in front of the
33:18
boss before we even try and take it. And so we, and I've done it before too, where you show up to
33:22
a coffee meal like this is going to be a total waste of time. And they're probably going to stand
33:25
me up. Why are they late? I should be doing this email. This person, oh, I just looked them up
33:29
again. They don't even do that much business. So they're going to even send me anything. Or they
33:33
are a really good agent. And we get in our mindset of, well, I've only done this for X amount of
33:38
years and then this and that and they're not going to send me business. As soon as you take all of
33:43
that out of it, when you look up before the meeting and you look up their Facebook or their Instagram,
33:48
don't just look at all their business pictures of their close signs. Look at who they are.
33:53
60% of our people in this country get a divorce. Like, are they going through a divorce?
33:57
Are they a single parent? Do they have little kids and they haven't slept in three weeks?
34:02
No one is thinking about you as much as you think about you. They probably can barely remember
34:07
who you are when they're on the way to that coffee meeting. And so going in there with the mindset
34:12
of the only goal is to find, understand where their pain points are and find some kind of
34:18
connection with them so that you can continue to follow up. That's, that's all it has to be.
34:23
It doesn't have to be any magical meeting where you leave there forever best friends or they've
34:29
committed their next three deals to you or anything like that. You just have to walk in there with
34:33
that mindset and know what you're going to talk about ahead of time. There's nothing more awkward
34:38
than getting to a coffee meeting, not even knowing what the person looks like or standing in line
34:43
making a small talk and going, oh, so you've got kids, right? And they're like, no, I'm not married
34:47
and I don't have kids. And I'm like, I've had people have coffee with me who have reached out to
34:55
me, asked me to grab coffee and I go meet with them and they know they're like, oh, you're pregnant?
35:01
Yeah. Like, oh, is this your first? No, I have a 10-month-old at home and two stepkits.
35:07
Like, you asked me to coffee, you said you've heard good things about me and then you show up and
35:11
you literally don't know anything about me and you're not even leaving the conversation. What,
35:15
why am I here, right? We never want to give that impression. As loan officers too,
35:23
if you are like most loan officers, you are, do you do all the things? You're the market area,
35:27
you're the rate locker, you're the application takeer, you're the whipping boy or girl with
35:32
something goes wrong and we have to get all of that out of our head so we can really show up
35:36
and be present for this meeting. So whether it's 15 or 20 minutes beforehand, just making sure
35:41
while you're in the car, don't answer the phone call. Like, any of those, don't answer the
35:46
crabby email, don't even look at it. Just, hey, I'm focused in on this meeting on my calendar,
35:52
I even blocked drive time because that's my time in the car to not bug me with anything to make
35:57
sure I'm in the right mindset when I show up to something. I'm always there a few minutes early,
36:02
there's also nothing worse than getting there and being like, oh, we don't even have a table to
36:06
sit at because the coffee shop is too busy, right? In terms of one thing too, if you're
36:13
good agents, a lot of times if you text them the day before and confirm, they will cancel on you
36:18
because they're like, why did I set this coffee meeting? A lot of times, a lot of times I won't do
36:25
that. I'll play it a different way and I'll text them like 30 minutes before and say, hey,
36:29
I'm going to be working at the coffee shop for a little bit before our meeting. What's your coffee
36:34
order? I'll have it ready when you get here. Then if they've totally forgotten, they're going to text
36:38
you or call you and go, I am so sorry, but they're not going to last minute, cancel on you,
36:43
it just as an easy out, right? And then you can what a good experience if they get there, if the coffee
36:49
shop is really busy and you've got the coffee ready, you don't want to waste this person's time,
36:52
you value their time, just like you want someone to value your time. And then they're there for
36:58
business meetings, so treat it like a business meeting. It's, if I go to coffee with someone and they
37:02
said they want to talk about XYZ and we show up and we make small talk about kids for an hour,
37:07
and I leave. I'm like, well, I could, now I don't just spend time with my kids tonight because I'm
37:11
an hour behind on my work day because I was making small talk with you for an hour, right? We want
37:16
to make sure it's an impactful meeting and one we can really both gain something out of. And I
37:21
truly go in with the mindset of this person's going to sit down with me, they're going to be blown
37:26
away by how my services can help their clients, which is going to make them look better and help
37:32
ultimately elevate their business. And so this is a good use of their time.
37:38
What's your intention on the meeting or the outcome, the desired outcome?
37:44
To see if we're a good fit to work together. If I sit down with someone and you kind of leave
37:49
there and you're like, it's very rare at this point that I sit down with someone I'm like,
37:54
that was awful because I used to cold call and I would sit down with the weirdest people who are
37:58
like, wait, you don't even have your real estate license anymore? Why were you on this list? I was
38:02
calling. This is so awkward. Why would you say yes to coffee with me? This is weird.
38:06
So now with social media, that doesn't happen. It's often typically these people are
38:11
sign normal individuals, but you'll hear things right away where you know if you're a good fit to
38:15
work together. My team doesn't pay for any internet leads. It's not our best value prop. It's not
38:20
we're really wired to help people. So if right away I find out, oh, I'm on a team and we buy
38:25
Zillow leads, probably not a huge need to follow up. Because they probably, if they have a preferred
38:33
lender who's paying for after Zillow leads, then I've got a buyer's agent who is already indebted
38:38
to a loan officer to send those Zillow leads there. That's the only leads they're working. What
38:43
are they going to send me? I'm not going to follow up the same as I would an agent where I leave
38:48
and I'm like, I'd like you. I really like you. I want to work together. I would refer a
38:54
friend or family to you. I would love to. I would, I won't be mad and think you're paying
39:00
the ass if you have to call me on a Saturday and want me to call a listing agent, right? Or your
39:05
client has last minute questions. Those are things I want to be in it with people I like. So
39:09
I'm going to the coffee meeting with the intention of making sure we both fit together to work together.
39:15
How do you handle a no show? Let's just say, have you gotten ghosted?
39:21
Oh my gosh, so many times. How do you handle a ghosted?
39:28
Well, I won't drive all the way to someone else anymore. So if I'm going to
39:35
depending on the type of agent, I'm usually going to try, we have a
39:39
intentionally moved our office to a location that is about four minutes from the most central
39:45
spot in town that has a coffee shop right there. That is where I do all of my coffee meetings.
39:49
It is very intentional. So if I get straight up ghosted, I typically have another coffee
39:54
meeting coming up next and I'll just sit there and I work and I'm always prepared for that to
39:58
happen and have a short list of like, no big deal. This is what I'm going to work through. If I do
40:02
get ghosted and they're a good agent, I am going to call them and go, hey, I'm sitting at the
40:07
coffee shop. Must have been a miscommunication. Are you on your way? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:13
Nine times or ten people don't mean to ghost you and they just totally messed up and they're
40:17
going to reschedule. Recently I had someone set a coffee meeting with me, reach out to me.
40:22
I do the whole thing. I'm on my way there and she lets me know that her
40:28
spin teacher is going to be going out of town and she really doesn't want to miss the class.
40:32
So she's wondering if we can reschedule and I was like, I'm not, I didn't even reply. That's not
40:37
my person. I am, because if you, if that's who you, that's who you are, that's who you attract
40:44
as clients. Then she's also going to send me clients who don't respect my time and don't treat
40:50
me as another professional. And so that wouldn't be the right fit for me. If you're a person whose
40:55
last minute or shows up to work out closed meetings, then that person is a good fit for you.
41:00
Double, that's your, that's your person, right? That's your spot. Double into it. It's just not
41:04
the right fit for me. Yeah. Now, who knows to you for standing your ground and recognizing your
41:09
value, you know? Love that. All right. You also, you're looking for, I'm looking at some notes
41:17
I took from the Shaila event, you're looking for a something to follow up on to collaborate
41:23
potentially or work, work together on what would be a couple examples of things where you walk out
41:29
and you say, you know, hey, can I actually follow up on X that we talked about? What would be an
41:34
example of that? Yes. So I used to go all in with people maybe like, I really want to do a client
41:39
event, like, I'll do a client event with you. Let me help with this. Let me help with that. I'll
41:43
partner on your open houses. And then I found people almost, that almost is not good because then
41:48
we've like held this big thing that they're going to be accountable for that maybe they kind of
41:52
set on a whim and they don't even know if they want to do it with me. And now I'm following up with
41:57
them to try and show up to an empty house with them on Saturday and they don't even really want
42:01
me there. And so then they kind of start ghosting you. So it's really loose things. It's,
42:07
hey, I have, yeah, I don't really know my lender. I don't know what really what their follow-up
42:11
system looks like. Could I follow up with you and show you what our system looks like? They don't
42:16
need you to tell them like, on day three, I send a handwritten thank you. And on day six, I do that,
42:21
blah, blah, blah, blah. We just send them the information after the fact on that. Sometimes they'll
42:26
say, I don't, I just don't know if my lender really educates my first time buyers really well.
42:32
Perfect. I have an entire YouTube channel built out. Could I send that to you as a resource in case
42:37
you ever want to utilize it? Little things like that. And because I am a podcast person and I
42:43
listen to a lot of stuff like that, I'll usually ask them to, some more and it'll come up what
42:48
they're trying to build or what they're trying to grow. And I'll say, are you a podcast person?
42:51
Like, oh, yeah, perfect. I'm going to follow up with you on this thing. I just listen to you. I think
42:54
you're going to find it really helpful. Yeah. So resources, books, podcasts, so things I can
43:00
email because the other thing is these agents, sometimes they'll give you their home address,
43:05
sometimes not. They don't go to the office. Sometimes I'll mail things to them. And then they
43:10
they're like eight months later, they're like, thanks for that book. Right. Right. Exactly.
43:16
Interesting. Interesting. Speaking of your YouTube channel, by the way, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned
43:19
that. Well, actually, hold on. Before we get there, I wanted to finish out this loop of how you
43:26
close out or how you follow up after the agent meeting. If I'm correct, you send a handwritten
43:33
thank you card and you have a flip book. Give us that real quick. Yes. So handwritten thank you
43:41
card. I always ask, hey, what's the best mailing address for you? Sometimes they gave me their
43:47
office. That's fine. I'll just send that there, but I try not to send additional mail there.
43:50
If they give me their home address, I do keep out on a separate list. I don't put it in our
43:54
Salesforce database. I just matched it up because I don't want I don't want them to feel like all
43:58
of a sudden they're getting spam mail from guild or whatever. Right. Like that all of a sudden,
44:02
they're in a database. I want to keep that home address separate for the dog dies and I want to send
44:06
flowers or something along those lines. So that goes on a separate list. That's like a personal
44:11
connection thing. And then the flip book is that is where we have our I think we call it something
44:19
kitschy like our recipe for success. I don't remember, but and it's our it's the recipe. And so it's
44:26
the steps of how we follow up with the pre-approval. It's the things we do after closing. It's how
44:32
many checkpoints we do before they're pre-approved. It has all of those things broken out in it.
44:37
And you can see day three, day six, day seven, month one, month two. And our I mean, our agents don't
44:44
follow up with their people because they know that we're on it. Interesting. Yeah. And so I thought
44:49
that was very impressive because it's unique and different. And like nobody I know of uses those,
44:54
even though you had pointed out they're easy to create. Use hazing, HEY, ZIN, hazing flip books.
45:01
I'm looking at that one right now, which is yeah, and it's free. It's free.
45:10
Now you could do the video thing too. Hey, what's up, Alison? Just wanted to follow up. Here's my
45:13
takeaways from the meeting, right? I'm going to circle back on this, this, this. But the flip books
45:19
impressive, because you get sell your sell your process in there, you know. So I you'll hear me say
45:25
a million times, I only sell how I want to be sold to. So if I go to a conference and I hear a
45:30
hundred people send me to text someone a video, but I feel weird if someone texts me a video,
45:35
I'm not going to text them a video. That's not how I want to be sold to. For me, if someone text
45:41
me a video, I'm like, I'm with my kids. I don't have to watch this video. What is this? Like I just,
45:47
I don't, if I'm watching a video, I want to be on Instagram, I want to be on YouTube, but I want
45:51
it to be in my time when I can do it. When you text me something now, I feel like I have to reply.
45:56
The only person who's ever texted me a video that I was okay and like was a wild received video
46:03
was when Shayla called me like over a year ago and then she sent me a video. It was like, hey,
46:09
like it's really me. I'm calling you. We've connected online. I just want to show you I'm legit.
46:15
Blah blah blah. Call me when you have time. And I was excited to hear from her. A lot of times
46:22
the realtor and your client is like, not that excited to hear from the mortgage person via text
46:26
video. They're like, well, what does it say? Can you just text it to me? Is it 96 or 98% of things
46:31
on our phone? People don't listen to. They just read the subtitle. So if I'm sending someone a
46:37
video that they have to turn the sound down, now I've taken up their time. So I don't do the text,
46:43
I don't do the text videos. That's why. But there are a whole demographic of people out there who
46:47
probably love it. Well, I think the point is context, right? Context is important of that relationship.
46:53
Okay. Let's pivot briefly to you mentioned your YouTube channel now. Now so oftentimes when I
46:59
prepare for these these interviews is, you know, I'm going to get on your various channels and
47:04
links or whatever and go through your stuff. And I thought it was really cool that on your
47:09
Instagram, you have this link tree and you've got these different links over there. And one of them
47:15
is first step to buy, which brings me to your YouTube playlist, which is 10 short videos. I'm talking
47:23
like less than two minutes most of these, which is like how to get pre-approved. How long does a
47:30
pre-approval last? Do you have any sense of how many people? We so we created the YouTube channel
47:41
probably like a year or two ago at this point. And I, you know, I don't think a lot of people really
47:48
go and watch all the videos, but it was one of those, I always get the same questions and I want
47:53
people to be able to look online and go, oh wow, Allison's resource for this too. And Allison can
47:57
be a resource for this too. I don't need them to go watch the video instead of me answering it.
48:02
I just want them to go, I can ask her about any of these things and she's happy to have a conversation
48:06
with me about it. I'm just going to message her. We send those out to realtors as a follow-up point
48:12
and then they also go out as a follow-up after our pre-approval meeting. I think it's one of them is
48:19
I'm pre-approved what next or something. And so that is essentially the same things I talk about
48:24
in the pre-approval meeting, but sometimes both spouses didn't hear it or sometimes you're not
48:29
listening at all because you're distracted by your kids. And now you're going before bed and you'll
48:34
actually listen to some of this stuff. So it's supposed to be just an extra place for someone to
48:38
receive the information if they want to. And for someone to go through and just go, oh she's
48:43
credible. Okay. Right. So many times you look people up on Instagram. The amount of loan officers
48:48
actually who followed me after yesterday's webinar. And when I go to their Instagram, I can't even
48:54
figure out what company they work for. If they do mortgages or if they're in real estate,
48:58
what city are you in, I have no idea when I look at their social media. Even if I click on their
49:03
link tree, I still can't figure out. Apply now, but where am I even applying it? Well, company
49:09
do you work at? I don't even know. So just sharing more information. So someone who has you have
49:17
their attention for one second goes, oh wow, she's like kind of the real thing. Okay. Yeah. I don't
49:23
know. Seems legit. She's not some girl just like doing mortgages out of her basement.
49:27
Exactly. Which I actually did all the videos in my basement. So that's a look at her too.
49:31
Awesome. Well, I mean, let's let's be honest, right? First impressions matter. We do judge a book
49:38
by its cover, by its title. So if you are, yeah, I remember somebody used to say is, you know,
49:44
so people are going to look at that's what they do. They look you up online today. Obviously.
49:47
And the question is, what do they find? Like, is it professional? Is it clear who you are,
49:54
who you help? Like I'm looking at your Instagram bio and your, you know, your bio is very clear,
49:58
helping you finance your home, home buyer education resources, NMLS guild mortgage, right?
50:03
Then your link tree. So it's very clear, like who you are, what you do. Yeah. My last
50:10
tidbit would be we all look to each other to copy other mortgage people and other real estate
50:16
people to copy each other. Guys, we're like decades behind the times on technology and marketing
50:22
all these things. Like look to other industries and see what they're doing and take advice
50:27
and tidbits from there who have whole marketing teams. Not just, I mean, I don't have a marketing
50:33
team. I have a part-time gal who is related to me that helps me post on social media. We're just
50:37
doing the best we can. So everyone then goes and copies my stuff. I'm like, maybe a marketing
50:42
company would say this sucks. I have no idea, but maybe just take a little bit here, take a little
50:48
bit there, piece it together, make it your own thing, do a little research, make it impactful.
50:53
You don't just have to copy literally everything you saw one other person do. Yeah, exactly.
50:58
And remember, we're all, you know, what makes us attractive or stand out to whoever it is we're
51:04
trying to engage with is us, who we are, our uniqueness, you and the fact of your story with
51:10
your family and the kids and your pregnant again right now. I'm grateful for you being here doing
51:15
this. So the goal isn't to copy and have us all look like clones. Like we've already made that
51:21
mistake enough, right? Now it's time to like embrace the uniqueness that we have. So listen,
51:27
Allison, this has been a fantastic education, a clinic for everybody listening. So I'm going to do
51:32
this. Let's link up where people can follow you. Is there any recommendations where you prefer?
51:37
Because I'm going to link up, you know, YouTube, Instagram, what you want to do. Yes, go, go follow
51:43
me on Instagram. We're doing a three week webinar series right now. We're going to be doing more
51:48
things like that to come. Our one of our reasons of moving to guild was to have the platform to help
51:54
lead other lawn officers. And we are totally looking to engage with other like-minded people who
52:00
want to grow into the same thing that I've done in the last few years. So go follow me on Instagram,
52:06
MPLS made mortgage, and follow me and say hi. Well, would you like people to sit in on the
52:12
final two sessions of that webinar you have? Yes, yes, there's also a link in the bio. Go ahead and
52:19
sign up. You can sign up for the next couple of weeks on there as well. And if you miss the first
52:24
one and you sign up, you'll get a recording too. Well, I'll make sure I put that as a primary link.
52:28
It's called solitude to synergy. I sat in on the first session with you and Shayla. It was fantastic.
52:34
The next sessions are coming up May 29th and June 5th, 11 a.m. Pacific. So make sure you check the
52:40
link in the show notes to get registered for that because you know, whatever you're doing with Shayla
52:44
is always fantastic. And I've learned a lot and I'm sure everybody else will too. So thanks again
52:49
for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. All right, everybody. You know
52:53
what to need to do. If you like this episode, go check the links in the show notes and leave us a
52:57
review. If you're so inclined, we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.