Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Ep #14: David Krushinsky: Crushing it With Client and Agent Events

Transcript

Ep #14: David Krushinsky: Crushing it With Client and Agent Events · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
• 0:04
  real estate agents is essential for success.
• 0:06
  However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
• 0:11
  With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents,
• 0:15
  it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
• 0:20
  Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
• 0:25
  This has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
• 0:31
  And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
• 0:35
  with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
• 0:39
  To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
• 0:45
  of the case study today.
• 0:47
  You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
• 0:52
  in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too.
• 0:56
  Don't miss out.
• 0:57
  Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
• 1:17
  Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio.
• 1:19
  Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute.
• 1:22
  Your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing.
• 1:26
  Hey, loyal listeners, welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio, Jeff Zemfer, your humble host.
• 1:32
  So once again, we've got another great guest lined up for this week's episode, Mr. David
• 1:36
  Krasinski out of Peoria, Arizona, really great or phoenix area, if you will.
• 1:42
  And David's got a very interesting insights to share with us.
• 1:46
  Specifically, number one, a great story about how he got into the mortgage loan origination
• 1:51
  business by being on the opposite end of botched loan real estate transactions.
• 1:55
  And more importantly, perhaps is I think you'll learn a lot as David reveals the two areas
• 2:02
  from which he obtains the bulk of his business and those are client appreciation events,
• 2:09
  which he does twice a year, and ongoing launch and learns that he hosts for real estate
• 2:13
  agents.
• 2:14
  We're really deep dive into how David manages client appreciation events, what's involved,
• 2:19
  where he does them, all the moving parts that go into that.
• 2:23
  And the real estate agent lunch and learns, we dive into the topics, how he gets butts
• 2:27
  in the seats, how he teams up with his affiliate title, escrow co-sponsors to help defer costs
• 2:32
  and make sure that he has a successful event.
• 2:35
  And of course, most importantly, how he is very highly targeted, he calls it sniper targeting,
• 2:40
  where it's very strategic in who he invites to these real estate agent lunch and learns,
• 2:44
  so that he makes sure that he's using his time in the highest leverage possible way.
• 2:50
  So by the way, if you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe to mortgage marketing radio,
• 2:55
  where we're bringing you truth in mortgage marketing.
• 2:57
  Don't want to miss another episode, click subscribe, like us on iTunes, leave us a review,
• 3:03
  and so without further ado, let's transition over to this episode of mortgage marketing radio.
• 3:08
  So David, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here, man.
• 3:13
  Thanks a lot, Jeff. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.
• 3:15
  Yeah, you bet. So I wanted to get right into it today, because I know you're very busy.
• 3:20
  You are in the Phoenix, Arizona market. How's the weather today?
• 3:27
  Well, today is July 7th, so it's about 115, I would imagine, by the time the record
• 3:34
  temperatures hit, so it's pretty warm here, buddy.
• 3:36
  Yeah, I just actually spent the 4th of July weekend at Lake Mojave out there in Arizona,
• 3:42
  so I can appreciate the heat, although I was on the water still. It was about a buck 12 out there.
• 3:46
  Nice. Yeah, it's a great lake. Yeah, it is. We had a lot of fun, wave runners, boats,
• 3:51
  all that fun stuff. So okay, so let's do this. Let's start with the listeners who may not be
• 3:56
  familiar with you, David. If you wouldn't mind, just kind of giving a brief intro backgrounder,
• 4:01
  and what I'm really intrigued about was kind of how you got into the mortgage business.
• 4:05
  I know there's a personal story there, so maybe take a couple of minutes and share that if you
• 4:09
  wouldn't mind. Sure. So I got in the business in 2002, and one of the ways that I found the
• 4:17
  mortgage business was I had a house that I was selling. My wife was pregnant at the time.
• 4:25
  Basically, the real estate agents that we were working with were representing us on the cell
• 4:32
  side and the buy side, and so we sold the house we lived in, we moved all of our stuff in my
• 4:38
  dad's garage, and we were waiting for a day or two for the new house to close. Meanwhile, my wife
• 4:46
  was getting ready to give birth to my daughter and my within a few days. So the people that were
• 4:53
  buying the house from, you know, they wouldn't get out of the house. So they wouldn't leave. So,
• 4:59
  you know, like we're like stressing out, I have all my stuff in boxes and my daughter's getting ready
• 5:04
  to be born. And it was because of the down payment assistance programs and some other things
• 5:08
  that were going on with the time that delayed the closing, and so the sellers didn't have a place
• 5:13
  to go. And so that was my first encounter with a boss real estate transaction, I guess. And my
• 5:20
  second encounter was when I was buying my next home. And the loan officer just really didn't tell
• 5:26
  us about anything that we needed to do to be successful for the transaction. So having those two
• 5:32
  experiences really helped me to realize that there was a need for customer service and a need for
• 5:39
  walking people through the home buying process. And I ran into a guy that I was selling windows
• 5:46
  too at the time. And he was actually doing mortgages and making a really good living. And he was
• 5:51
  kind of the guy that brought me into the business. And I worked under him for about eight years and
• 5:55
  learned a lot from him from, you know, from that. And from that's kind of where my career took off.
• 6:01
  Wow. Yeah. So you can relate to some of the pain points from personal experience. So you
• 6:08
  mentioned something you worked under this other person for eight years. And essentially he
• 6:13
  mentored you, right? Yeah. Correct. What would you say were some of the biggest,
• 6:19
  if you look back on that, you know, takeaways from that mentorship that you're perhaps still
• 6:25
  using today that help you be successful? Well, I think some of the things that, you know,
• 6:34
  that I learned from him was just to have, you know, have really good character.
• 6:38
  To obviously, you know, do what you're saying you're going to do. He wasn't like,
• 6:44
  he was a big producer, but he wasn't one of these guys that you see in mortgage originally
• 6:48
  or magazine or whatever. But he had a lot of, you know, clients that were past referrals. And
• 6:54
  you know, he just taught me to be fair with people. You know, we always priced our loans
• 6:58
  similar to the way that we have to do now. But we always priced our loans the way that, you
• 7:05
  know, we were giving the client the same deal every time. And so it was fair to them. And they,
• 7:10
  you know, we weren't trying to overcharge borrowers just because we knew we could get away with it.
• 7:15
  And so, you know, when L.O. comp came around, like I had already been practicing my business that
• 7:19
  way. So it was there was no adjustment for me. But I just learned a lot about integrity and honesty
• 7:27
  and the way that, you know, you want to treat other people how you want to be treated.
• 7:31
  Yeah, absolutely. And especially back then, you know, before the resolve of this regulation
• 7:37
  in the industry, it was a little bit kind of crazy and all over the place to your point about,
• 7:41
  you know, the way we have to charge for loans now versus you were trying to do the right thing
• 7:46
  by people because you had the longer term view in the business, I think.
• 7:51
  For sure. Yeah. Very good. So, all right. So let's transition then to current day. Tell us
• 7:57
  real quickly about your current setup, such as, right, your team, what it looks like,
• 8:01
  production units, kind of stuff that anybody listening wants to know.
• 8:06
  So I'm a producing branch manager. I'm in Peoria, Arizona. So our amounts are, you know,
• 8:14
  less than they are in most of the rest of the United States. It seems like. But my average loan
• 8:21
  amounts around, I would say 200,000. Manual production is right around 29 million. We do about
• 8:30
  145 units a year. What my team looks like is I have my wife is like, kind of manages our contract
• 8:40
  to close portion of it. She's the smartest person on the team, which is wonderful because she's
• 8:47
  much smarter than me. She's a CPA by trade. And so she's the one that looks out for all the,
• 8:54
  that, you know, like as a salesperson, you want to say yes to everybody, but she's the one that's,
• 8:59
  you know, the more realistic person says, yeah, we can't do this. So she gives me out of trouble.
• 9:05
  And then I have a guide that I brought on as a dealer. I hired him to kind of beta test this
• 9:14
  dealer program that the court teaches. And he's been with me for right around three years now.
• 9:20
  And so I brought him on. He's a licensed loan officer. He generally takes applications and
• 9:27
  does a lot of follow up for me. You know, he's really good with starting new relationships where,
• 9:34
  like he's a, he's a, you know, he's a single guy. He's like 27 years old. So I'm an older guy.
• 9:41
  He's the, he's the young guy that will walk up to any girl in the bar and ask.
• 9:46
  So, you know, that helps with getting me out of my comfort zone and meeting more real estate agents
• 9:53
  because I, I look in. Right. And then, so, so let's pause there for a second. So tell me what
• 9:58
  do you have him doing? You know, who's he calling? You mentioned earlier before we were recording
• 10:03
  the past database, but it sounds like he's also contacting agents for some reasons. So tell us
• 10:07
  a little bit about that. Sure. Um, so, you know, initially when I hired him, I thought,
• 10:14
  who am I going to have this guy make phone calls to? Because, uh, you know, if I'm a loan officer
• 10:21
  in the business, I'm not comfortable making phone calls to just any real estate agent with
• 10:24
  if I have nothing to say, right? So what I did is I just basically got a list of my past clients,
• 10:32
  which we had in our database. And, um, I told them, hey, call every single one of these people
• 10:37
  and tell them that we're having a party. You know, we're, we're going to have a client appreciation
• 10:42
  party and we want to make sure that we have their address and their phone number on file. And, um,
• 10:47
  and just, you know, a random phone call that you're on my team and we want to invite them and
• 10:51
  we want to make sure that they get the invitation. And then before you hang up, just say, hey,
• 10:56
  do you have any questions that I can have David answer about your current mortgage?
• 11:01
  And so, um, what that did is two things. It obviously made us contact our best
• 11:06
  past client database and get some revised. And then also, you know, get our database up the speed
• 11:13
  and have the correct information in there. And so, um, that's kind of how I started him
• 11:19
  was to make warm phone calls so that way he wasn't so nervous. And then what we would do is every time
• 11:25
  somebody said, yeah, I was thinking about doing a re-fi, I would have him put the coffee sheet
• 11:28
  together. And so I'm actively training with hands-on information. And then I would have him
• 11:35
  send it to me. I would check it and then I would forward it out to the client. And, um, so that's
• 11:41
  how we started. But then obviously, after we went through our whole database, then we had to figure
• 11:46
  out what the next step was and that was the next step was to start contacting our existing real
• 11:52
  state database and then by writing in the classes and things like that, because those are easier
• 11:58
  phone calls to make than just random call call to agents. And so we just kept progressing.
• 12:03
  You know, we just kept raising the bar and making it more uncomfortable, more uncomfortable until,
• 12:09
  you know, we were calling brand new agents out of the blue. And inviting them to your classes.
• 12:16
  Correct. Yeah. All right. So let's, I want to go back to the client appreciation party for a second.
• 12:21
  Reason being is I think, you know, a lot of loan officers have heard about those,
• 12:24
  but I think most still haven't done them for a variety of reasons. So you invited,
• 12:30
  obviously, past clients, but also some realtors to this client appreciation party, right?
• 12:36
  I did. Yeah. And how often do you do these?
• 12:39
  We generally do two client appreciation parties every year. Okay. And the first one that we do is
• 12:46
  in October. We just pick out a restaurant like a, we do it at a Mexican food restaurant that has
• 12:51
  outdoor seating that holds, you know, about 100 people. And we invite everybody to that. We have
• 12:57
  dinner and we, you know, we do, we have an open bar for a certain period of time so they can have
• 13:03
  some drinks, but we obviously limited to make sure everyone's safe. And then we do that. And then
• 13:10
  we do a spring training baseball game every year, which is super cool because, you know, Arizona,
• 13:16
  weather's really, really nice in spring. And so a lot of people come out and we get a chance to talk
• 13:21
  to our clients and take them to a baseball game and it's pretty inexpensive. You know,
• 13:25
  it's like $10 a ticket. So we usually have 50 to 75 people show up and talk about diamond backs.
• 13:32
  No, we actually were right by pure sports complex. So it's the pot raise and spring training.
• 13:38
  Mariners. Yep. Okay. Got it. Great. Thank you for that. How many do you get out for that for the
• 13:45
  game? For the baseball game, we normally get at least 50, you know, anywhere from 50 to 75,
• 13:54
  generally. And we let them and bring their kids and everything because the tickets are super cheap.
• 14:00
  So that's great. I'm curious on the restaurant thing when you're doing the hosting the open bar
• 14:05
  at the Mexican restaurant and all that stuff in October every year, do you involve other affiliates
• 14:10
  like title escrow or anything like that or strictly, hey, it's skyline. It's, it's you guys.
• 14:20
  No, we do. Yeah, can you still hear me? Yep. Go ahead.
• 14:25
  Yeah, we normally involve our title partners and, you know, allow them to be part of it if they
• 14:32
  want to and we'll let them bring gift cards and giveaways and stuff like that to our clients.
• 14:38
  And so that way they can they can see them and they can be part of that. And then if we have
• 14:44
  past clients that have real estate agents that we worked with or that we work with, we also
• 14:48
  invite them and let them know, hey, you know, the challenges are going to be here. If you want to come,
• 14:53
  it'd be great time for you to reconnect with them. Absolutely. So how would you rate,
• 14:58
  rate that both the baseball function and the, you know, the dinner past the client appreciation
• 15:04
  dinner at the restaurant? How would you rate that in terms of overall impact to your business for,
• 15:09
  you know, generating an uptick in business every time you do that? And I don't know how do we
• 15:13
  rate this right down a scale of one to 10 or whatever a percentage basis, but in general,
• 15:17
  what would you say the impact from that is? I would say it has a huge impact just because
• 15:25
  you get the opportunity to stay in front of your your past client database and have face-to-face
• 15:30
  meetings with them and reconnect with them and they, you know, we, we always get a bunch of
• 15:34
  referrals right after we do those things from past clients. So it's probably, I would say a nine or 10.
• 15:42
  Wow. That's great. That is awesome. So for those listening, you know, if you haven't done your
• 15:47
  client appreciation parties, I mean, two great, very easy, applicable ideas there. You know,
• 15:51
  I've heard of other people doing stuff like, you know, these little, especially at Halloween is
• 15:56
  kind of fun because you can tie in the theme of Halloween and costumes and all that stuff if you want
• 16:00
  to, little trick-or-treating parties in your neighborhoods, bowling, whatever. Have you guys,
• 16:06
  any other things you've done besides baseball? Is that pretty much what you do consistently?
• 16:11
  That's what we pretty much do consistently just because, you know, we kind of,
• 16:16
  we struggled the first year with it, then we got better, then we got better, and then we got
• 16:19
  better, and so we have it down pretty well. And, you know, our clients know they expect it, it's
• 16:25
  consistent, and it just, you know, every year it gets bigger and bigger. So, cool. Very good. Awesome.
• 16:32
  All right. So let's get into kind of like current day, help us understand what your top lead
• 16:41
  generation strategies are. So meaning, you know, where does most of your business come from,
• 16:46
  on a monthly basis, let's say, are you able to kind of articulate that?
• 16:51
  Sure. I would say over 50% of our businesses from real estate agents,
• 16:56
  and then past clients is probably second, you know, with revised and
• 17:06
  referring, you know, other clients to us, I would say that's probably maybe, you know, 35%
• 17:12
  roughly, and then 15% is probably from internet, social media type stuff, financial planners,
• 17:21
  or things like that. Well, we'll come back to the internet, social media type stuff in a moment,
• 17:28
  but obviously the bulkier businesses from real estate agents, and you had mentioned classes
• 17:32
  a few minutes ago. So what are the strategies you have in place to stay in front,
• 17:38
  in top of mind, with agents, but also to put new agents in the hopper to build those referral
• 17:43
  relationships? Yeah. I started actually teaching CE classes in 2008, I became a licensed instructor
• 17:51
  because I thought that was kind of like the Holy Grail, and you know, I was going to go out there
• 17:55
  and meet, you know, 30 agents, and I was going to, you know, get all of them. And, you know, that
• 18:02
  turned out to not work out the way that I thought it did, but it was great because what it allowed
• 18:07
  me to do was be uncomfortable. Again, you know, and that's the way I've always found that I
• 18:11
  increase my businesses to constantly be uncomfortable, whether it's, you know, meeting people, or,
• 18:17
  you know, I don't know about you, Jeff, but I'm not like, I'm kind of like anti-social a little bit.
• 18:23
  So I'm not the greatest, you know, gregarious person, but when I find myself that I push myself
• 18:28
  out of my comfort zone, that's when I'm, you know, earning money. And so what I like to do is,
• 18:34
  I actually like to do that. And, but I found that with the CE classes, it was just consuming
• 18:41
  so much time because it's three hours. I was getting in front of people, but I wasn't converting
• 18:47
  any of those people because I would teach a class, and then I would never follow up with them.
• 18:52
  So, so what we started doing was we started doing shorter classes, like lunch and learn style
• 18:57
  classes, about things that people were relevant to their business now, and how, how we could help
• 19:03
  them get more business and make it more about them. And then we would find a way during the class
• 19:11
  to have a reason to follow up with them. So I was already setting up those next appointments before I
• 19:16
  even ended the class. Like I would say, hey, so, you know, we're going to reach out to you and see
• 19:22
  if you implemented this tactic in your business over the next week or so. And, you know, we would
• 19:30
  purposely plant those follow up phone calls, so that way they would be expecting them and not
• 19:35
  be turned off when I called them. Ah, interesting. And so how did that process go from there?
• 19:41
  Obviously, you're trying to convert to an appointment with those calls, right?
• 19:45
  Absolutely. And that's really what the classes are designed around. They're designed around.
• 19:50
  Like, for example, what we would do is, and what we've been doing more recently is we would take
• 19:58
  one of the core CDs that they give us. And we would burn the CDs and then send it to our
• 20:04
  agents. And we would invite into the class and say, here's a topic we're going to teach you about.
• 20:13
  In the last class we did, we did how to build a real estate team. And so rather than me
• 20:18
  teach the class, I brought in a top producing real estate agent that had a team already. And,
• 20:24
  you know, he does like 15 million a month. So he's a super producer. So he was, he's got a really
• 20:29
  big ego. And he wanted to, you know, share about his success. And so we invited him to be the
• 20:35
  instructor for our class. And we invited, you know, all the agents and like 50 agents showed up.
• 20:41
  And then, you know, we told him, hey, we're going to follow up with you and see what tactics that,
• 20:46
  you know, Jason Mitchell taught you about today. Have you implemented in your business?
• 20:50
  Right. Or, you know, where you are retiring somebody or whatever. And so that's how we, you know,
• 20:58
  try and stay consistent with because then I'm able to keep following up with them every,
• 21:05
  you know, 30 days or whatever it is. And until they say, hey, I'm good. I don't want to talk to
• 21:09
  you anymore. Don't call me. Okay. So a couple of things there. One, Jason Mitchell is this top
• 21:13
  mega producing agent. Did you have a relationship with him prior to hosting this lunch and learn?
• 21:19
  No, I really didn't. I took him out to a golf tournament, defeating soap. And then we have
• 21:26
  every year. And he works with our title company guy, which we brought him as an affiliate to our
• 21:34
  class. And he sponsored it. So the title, title affiliate, how a co-sponsored. So they helped you
• 21:39
  get him there. Right. Okay. Great. And do you just, is he sending you any business today?
• 21:44
  Jason. No. No. Okay. And then by the way, that's, that's cool. I mean, first of all, look at that,
• 21:49
  right? This is what I talk about a lot, which is right, leveraging your affiliate relationships,
• 21:53
  title, escrow. You're, you've demonstrated it right here. They can bring you and get you in front
• 21:58
  of people in places that you couldn't otherwise get. So you're not getting business from Jason,
• 22:02
  but Jason was a key part of, you know, getting 50 agents, butts in the seats. And that's just,
• 22:08
  I know you do these lunch and learns kind of ongoing. But I want to go back to the follow up calls for
• 22:13
  a second. When you're making these calls, hey, did you implement this tactic that Jason talked
• 22:17
  about, you know, yes, no, whatever, how do you, whatever the answer is? Is the answer, does the
• 22:23
  answer to determine whether or not you go for that lunch and learn, or is it ultimately you want
• 22:28
  to sit with them to help them implement that or other ideas? Well, the answer never really dictates
• 22:37
  like it's kind of like this, you know, this show, we don't know how it's going to turn out,
• 22:44
  but we just start talking and we have, you know, great conversation. Yeah, exactly.
• 22:48
  I never have like a prescripted answer. Whatever they say, I'm always looking for some way that I can
• 22:54
  help them to take it to the next level if they if they want to. You know, we pull all their numbers
• 23:02
  to see any transactions they've done and the ones that, you know, haven't done any transactions,
• 23:07
  you know, we're not really interested in meeting with those agents. We're interested in meeting
• 23:12
  with the agents to have big numbers or have a big like in that class, if they wanted to build a big
• 23:18
  team, we would say, hey, look, we're a big team. We have, you know, five people on our team. So
• 23:24
  we can help you like whether it be with the hiring process or how to, how to, you know,
• 23:30
  find resumes and look for what you're trying to hire and, you know, all those things. And so
• 23:37
  any situation that they have questions on, you know, generally, we're able to answer them and
• 23:40
  be a resource for them. And that's what we try and do. All right. So that's great. You're doing
• 23:45
  your homework. You're researching the agents and their production levels. Are you still calling
• 23:51
  those low producers just because you told them you would? Of course. Yeah. You know, we want to make
• 23:56
  sure that if we, if we were up there saying, we're going to do something that we follow through
• 24:00
  with it. So we just don't try and be hyper focused on them like the other agents.
• 24:06
  Yeah. So, so I want to really drill it down for the listener, right? Because they're sitting
• 24:10
  here going, okay, that's cool. That makes sense. I've followed up on this one tactic. How do I then
• 24:14
  get in front of that agent next? And, you know, and that's why I go back to the, it seems like
• 24:20
  you're on that same path is, you know, we're here to help you as a team implement ideas that are
• 24:25
  going to help you be more successful. Mr. Mrs. Agent, is that essentially kind of the general
• 24:29
  talk track? And it's like, would you like to meet and talk about ways we can, you know,
• 24:32
  potentially help you do that? Or what is, you know, how do you guys get to that point of let's meet?
• 24:37
  Yeah. Essentially, we're looking to find, you know, what their pain point is. Or like some,
• 24:45
  sometimes with the agents, what we'll do is, if they have big numbers and we want to get
• 24:52
  them on our radar, you know, we'll, we'll go by like some silly gifts or whatever and drop it
• 24:57
  off for them. And it's like, you know, before the Super Bowl, I bought footballs and I, you know,
• 25:01
  wrote, we want to be on your team, you know, took the footballs and dropped them off their offices.
• 25:07
  And then the next weekend was Valentine's weekend. And so I brought a box of chocolates and I was
• 25:11
  like, hey, hopefully your lender's not like a box of chocolates and you never know what you're
• 25:15
  like that, you know, that's good. So, you know, things like that, we do, we go out of the way and like,
• 25:21
  really like, like, like when I say hyper focus, like we hyper focus until we get a meeting and
• 25:28
  just keep following up with them. And then, and, you know, if we do that with 10 agents, like
• 25:32
  five of them will meet with us. And, you know, we might not, nothing might ever come from those
• 25:37
  meetings, but, you know, generally more so than not, we get one agent out of 10. And, you know,
• 25:44
  they sent, they at least give us a shot. Yeah. Who's, uh, who's making those calls? Your
• 25:48
  dealer or you or? Um, I'm generally making the phone, those phone calls because, uh, you know,
• 25:55
  that's when we go into script mode and, and I'll tell them, hey, the reason that you want to work
• 26:00
  with me and the reason that you want to sit down with me is because, uh, you know, we work a database
• 26:05
  and, and I'm different than every other lender that says that they're going to deliver clients to
• 26:10
  you, you know, I, I will because, and I'll show you, you know, my database, and I'll show you how
• 26:14
  we do it. And I'll, you know, tell them that sitting down with me will result in business for them.
• 26:19
  And, you know, and generally that's enough to get an appointment with them.
• 26:23
  Um, so it's generally me that's making those phone calls because, you know,
• 26:28
  they're, they're big time agents and, and they don't want to just have some dealer call,
• 26:32
  generally they want to feel like they're being treated like royalty.
• 26:36
  Sure. So how do you work through, because I'm sure you face it like every other
• 26:40
  loan officer, you know, the initial resistance, whether it's, hey, I've already got a lender or,
• 26:46
  um, like you said, you're hyper focused. So I guess maybe that's the question first. How do you
• 26:51
  respond or handle those initial people who try and, you know, give you that
• 26:56
  objection, which, which may be a legit answer, right? I'm sure they're already working with a
• 26:59
  lender. So how do you, how do you work around that? Is it just a process of over time you're wearing
• 27:04
  it down by adding value and being unique and different or do you as a specific scripted answer
• 27:08
  you have to that? Um, no, it's actually, that's a great question. So generally, um, you know,
• 27:15
  like I said, we're doing, we're delivering the gifts. Um, and, and I'm calling them just to make
• 27:21
  sure that they got the gift, you know, like I'm, I'm just like I, like I just call you and say,
• 27:26
  hey, Jeff, you know, this is David Krzyszewski. I just want to follow up and make sure that you
• 27:29
  receive the gift that I left for you at your office last Friday. And, um, if, if you're like,
• 27:36
  no, I didn't get it. I would say, okay, well, that's cool. Or if you said, yeah, I got it. Thank
• 27:40
  you, you know, like I, I can go both ways. And I would say, well, the reason I wanted to send you a
• 27:45
  gift, Jeff, because I know you're a top producing real estate agent. You know, we looked at your numbers
• 27:48
  and we know you do a lot of business. And what I'd like to do is I'd like to set up a 15-minute
• 27:52
  appointment with you to sit down with you and show you how we might be able to add business to
• 27:57
  what you're currently doing. Um, you know, who do you work with for your lender? And I just kind of
• 28:02
  like keep it, you know, keep it real. I mean, because that's what we're trying to do is trying to
• 28:06
  add to your life or the agent's life. Right. And, um, you know, generally like I found that 50% of
• 28:13
  the people are open to meeting with you. And ones that say, hey, I already have two lenders or I have
• 28:18
  three lenders, then I just take them off my list. And I just find another one. Okay. All right,
• 28:24
  it's a sift in sorts because the efforts get it's going to take to to overcome that hurdle.
• 28:30
  You're probably better off redirecting those efforts to somebody who's more open to saying yes.
• 28:37
  Correct. Yeah, who doesn't have another, you know, two, three lenders, whatever they're already
• 28:40
  married or sleeping with a lender. Yeah. Very cool, very cool. So then when you talk about value
• 28:47
  add, all right, we get to the place where you've got the follow up, you know, you made the call,
• 28:51
  got the gift. Yeah, sure. Let's let's let's sit down and talk, David, about, you know, how you can
• 28:56
  add more value to me. What, what does that meeting look like? What do you present to them that position
• 29:03
  you as being able to add value? Well, that's that's where we talk about the things that we do that are
• 29:12
  a little bit unique. The database mining through our past clients and we, you know, we have a thousand
• 29:18
  past clients that we work with and generally, you know, we get one to two clients every month that
• 29:23
  don't have a real estate agent and we like to refer those people to the insider network with us
• 29:28
  and send us business that we like to work with. And so it's not like I'm going to be able to send
• 29:34
  you a bunch of clients, but I would guarantee it's probably more than your current lender sends you.
• 29:39
  And if that's not true, then obviously, you know, I don't, you know, I don't expect you to send me
• 29:45
  business, but generally most lenders don't send their real estate agents business. And so,
• 29:51
  you know, right there, we're able to have a little bit of a unique selling proposition.
• 29:56
  And then also, you know, through the use of social media are our internet presence that we have,
• 30:03
  we, you know, if you Google Phoenix Home Loans, we're on page one or Phoenix Mortgage or whatever.
• 30:08
  So, you know, we do get a lot of people that are kind of lucky, Lou. And we can, you know,
• 30:13
  for those deals out to agents and like my guide Tyler, the dialer guy, he's a millennial. So,
• 30:19
  he's got a lot of people that he knows that are first time home buyers that are entering the market
• 30:24
  that don't have allegiance to real estate agents. And so, we are actually able to refer one to two
• 30:29
  clients a month to an agent that we work with. So, when we tell him that it's true, it's not just,
• 30:34
  you know, some smoke and mirror thing that we're telling them. Right.
• 30:39
  Interesting. And so, you know, I'm curious because I've heard this as well. This is a great track
• 30:45
  we're on and I'm trying to run you through this stuff I hear from loan officers a lot.
• 30:50
  And so, you're successful. You've got the meeting. You've positioned yourself as unique and different,
• 30:56
  you know, through obviously what you just shared. Do you ever have the situation, though, of,
• 31:00
  you know, the agent where it's like, you feel like you've got a good synergy. You feel like you're
• 31:04
  going to start getting some referrals from them. And then nothing crickets.
• 31:10
  Yeah, of course. We work off lists is what the core teaches us. And so, what we generally do is
• 31:20
  we, you know, we'll add them to our top 40 agent list if it really seems like it's going to be a
• 31:24
  good fit. And then I'll just continue to call them like every Monday or every other Monday,
• 31:28
  you know, depending on what my work loads like. Sometimes I'm not as diligent as I should be,
• 31:32
  but I'll just call them and follow up with them and just say, hey,
• 31:37
  Jeff, did you hear about what happened with the Brexit, you know, that the EU rates are low,
• 31:42
  or call them and say, hey, we're having this class coming up. And, you know, how was your weekend,
• 31:47
  you know, type of thing? And so, really, it's just about like if you have it, if you feel like you
• 31:51
  have a good connection with them, they're going to forget about you unless you make that part of
• 31:56
  your follow up is, you know, part of your daily weekly monthly routine. But yeah, we do have
• 32:02
  that. And in some agents, sometimes it just isn't a good fit. And eventually, you know, we never
• 32:08
  hear back from them. We just keep moving on and moving on and prospecting for new agents.
• 32:12
  Do you have agents on any type of, you know, newsletter email, video thing, anything like that?
• 32:19
  You know, I would say that I'm probably rank D in that area. I appreciate your honesty.
• 32:25
  Yeah. I would say that I definitely could use a lot of improvement in that.
• 32:30
  Okay. Cool. Just curious. Hey, back to the classes. How often do you do these lunch and learns?
• 32:37
  So our goal is to do one a month. We're probably successful
• 32:42
  to do that one a month, maybe 80% of the time. You know, I think anything more than that gets
• 32:52
  kind of watered down. But, you know, we want to provide good value, get the class with 30 people.
• 32:57
  And that's how we kind of narrow down our, our list of people that we're, we're trying to go
• 33:02
  after, if you will. Are you, are you targeting new and you're also inviting your existing agents?
• 33:08
  Yeah. We like, we work with our affiliates because our title company has a whole bunch of real
• 33:12
  state agents. We don't know. And so we, you know, we have, we generally have a title company that
• 33:17
  helps us sponsor events. And then they invite their database. We invite our database. And then,
• 33:24
  you know, we work with each other and synergy to try and help each other complement each other
• 33:29
  and say, hey, you know, this is why you want to work with XYZ title company or whatever the
• 33:34
  case is. And where do you get generally the content or topics to present monthly?
• 33:42
  So it depends on what's going on in the industry. Sometimes like when, you know,
• 33:46
  Trid came out, we were teaching some Trid stuff. But a lot of it comes from just the, you know,
• 33:53
  the core. And they sent, they sent me that, you know, I'm on a CD program,
• 33:59
  where they send out the CDs, you know, and so I just used that material.
• 34:04
  And rather that I just try and find the, the material that's relevant to real estate agents.
• 34:10
  And then I just try and teach based on that because since I'm doing that with my own business,
• 34:15
  you know, on a day-to-day basis, it just comes natural. So the CD is an audio interview,
• 34:21
  or it's on a particular topic. And then you're converting that to a PowerPoint day.
• 34:26
  Yeah, generally I just don't teach off PowerPoint. I just teach off, you know,
• 34:32
  just words. And I generally start the class by asking people what they want to get out of the class.
• 34:39
  So, you know, let's say that you're a student and you're there. And to learn, I would say,
• 34:42
  Jeff, you know, what is it that you would like to get out of today's class?
• 34:48
  Maybe not you specifically, but I would ask everybody to, you know, provide some feedback.
• 34:52
  And then we would make sure we touch on all those points that the people want to learn about.
• 34:56
  And then we would go over any other topics that I had that I had on my own agenda as well,
• 35:01
  to, you know, but what we normally do to try and make them successful is we start the class,
• 35:07
  like we'll say the start times 1130. But we won't actually start teaching until around 1145 or 12,
• 35:15
  because we found that if you start right at 1130, people are going to be late,
• 35:19
  and then you're going to have to start back over and cover them in material that they missed.
• 35:22
  And so we serve food right away. And we kind of let people kind of get to know each other and talk
• 35:27
  to each other and feel comfortable. And then, you know, once it feels like everybody's there,
• 35:32
  and everyone's ready, we'll generally start between 1150 and 12 o'clock.
• 35:37
  And then how long do you usually speak or teach?
• 35:41
  Usually for one hour. One hour, okay. And sometimes you, sometimes you bring in special guests?
• 35:48
  Correct, yeah. We generally try and bring in a special guest as much as possible,
• 35:52
  because that kind of breaks them a notany of just me. I'm kind of monotonous. I'm not a great speaker
• 35:59
  or energetic or anything, but we try and bring in guest speakers. So that way it just makes it
• 36:04
  more exciting. And, you know, if people know them, they'll get invitations from them as well.
• 36:11
  And it just makes it a better class, in my opinion.
• 36:15
  It sounds like mostly your title company is, and correct me if I'm wrong, responsible for most
• 36:22
  of the butts and the seats that show up. I would say that we're probably 25% and they're probably
• 36:28
  75% yeah. That's great. Good title relationship there. Obviously you're sending them all your
• 36:34
  business, right? Yeah, awesome. So in terms of the lunch and learns, where would you rank that
• 36:41
  for you getting new agent relationships in the hopper and converting them to referral partners?
• 36:48
  You know, I would rank it right up there in the top with one of the things that I've done over
• 36:52
  my career. I think that, you know, it's the sniper approach to getting good business partners
• 37:00
  versus just going out there and trying to just, you know, blast out information through emails
• 37:07
  or, or, you know, go to open houses where you have agents that don't do any business and you're
• 37:13
  falling up with people. I mean, it's this sniper approach. Right, very targeted, right? Because you're
• 37:18
  doing the research on who you're inviting and all that stuff. And so you're only, ideally,
• 37:22
  getting in front of people who have business to send you. Right. Yep, very cool. All right,
• 37:28
  before we run out of time here because I know you have another call to get on. I promised I was
• 37:32
  going to talk briefly on online social media stuff. And of course, that's a big broad topic. So
• 37:39
  just maybe anything you want to touch on that's working. You mentioned Google, you guys come up
• 37:43
  and search there. Anything you want to touch on there that's working for you online, you know,
• 37:48
  focused. You know, I haven't been doing this as much, but I would say video marketing is huge.
• 37:58
  If you can help agents do their video marketing and provide a platform for them to
• 38:05
  to train them and teach them, you know, we've done several classes on video marketing that we've
• 38:09
  had 30 agents in there. And the great thing about that is you can follow up with them and help
• 38:14
  them with, you know, making customer testimonials or community videos, you know, whatever it is
• 38:22
  that they're into. I think that's a huge home run for guys like us that are trying to find,
• 38:29
  you know, big, big time real estate agents. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if you would ever
• 38:35
  actually shoot agents for them, you know, like a quick one minute agent intro, you put up the
• 38:40
  tripod, the iPhone, whatever boom and then send them that video they could use it. Oh yeah,
• 38:45
  we do that all the time. Oh, click. We'll meet our agents like I have one top agent that
• 38:52
  we were meeting once a month and we were doing videos in her community. And you know, we would go
• 38:57
  out there and we would take, we would just do it off an iPhone and with a tripod and we do,
• 39:02
  you know, a quick video where we would be in it and then we would put it on her site for and,
• 39:06
  you know, edit it and stuff like that. But it was great. It just allowed me to have a base-to-face
• 39:11
  meeting with her and just build that relationship even deeper. So a neighborhood video with you in it.
• 39:16
  So is that if I'm picturing this? It's a somebody else is holding the iPhone. They're pointing at
• 39:20
  the two of you and you're talking about a neighborhood or area topic. Yeah, we just use a tripod
• 39:28
  and so I just have a little device in my finger. Oh, okay. Yep. On my
• 39:32
  the remote and it just starts it and we just say, hey, this is Lindsay and David and we're in,
• 39:36
  you know, Cordobello and talk about the neighborhood and talk about the characteristics of it.
• 39:42
  That's very cool. And that's on her website? Not yours? Yeah. It's on hers. Very cool. And
• 39:48
  that is that is a great idea. It's something that's very simple. And as you well know, I'm sure one of
• 39:52
  the reasons why agents and loan officers are reluctant. It's like, oh, I don't like how I look
• 39:57
  on video or they're afraid to do it alone. So you kind of hand holding them and doing that. I mean,
• 40:03
  that talk about building a relationship and really some reciprocation there. Now you guys are
• 40:08
  essentially attached at the hip, right? You know, for a long time until and if she downloads,
• 40:15
  takes that video off her website. Exactly. That's awesome. No, that's great. Man, you could have
• 40:21
  a whole library of those on their site and blog and those are also great to share via social media.
• 40:27
  Anything else real quick online wise? You're doing social media, for example. Everybody wants to know,
• 40:32
  how do I do it on social media? Yeah. You know, I wish I had some good advice on that, but I
• 40:41
  really don't. I started using internet in 2007 and had a guy blogging for me and stuff and
• 40:48
  you know, built a decent presence, but I really don't do anything very well.
• 40:54
  Well, it sounds like you're coming up in search pretty well. How do you guys get high rankings in search?
• 41:00
  It's just been, you know, years and years of having him do like, I just had him work on my stuff
• 41:06
  for years and I had a like I had a top agent in 2007 after the crash that he was just selling
• 41:12
  a ton of houses and I was like, dude, where are you getting all these leads from? And he was like,
• 41:16
  oh, just the internet. And so I was like, I contact my buddy, doing SEO. And I was like, you
• 41:21
  got to start doing SEO for me so I can start referring business back to these agents and get more
• 41:26
  agents. And so he started working on it and it was working really well. I was doing some active
• 41:32
  rain and blogging and WordPress blogging. And I know a bunch of guys in that arena. And so,
• 41:39
  you know, we formed a little group and they were writing blog posts that we tweaked and made our
• 41:44
  own. And so I've done that a lot. But, you know, really, I was only doing that just so I could
• 41:49
  refer deals back to the agents. Oh, I see. Right. Got it. Got it. Okay. Cool. Very nice.
• 41:56
  Well, clearly we know that the bulk of your business isn't coming from online in the first place.
• 42:01
  And it sounds like you are aware that while online can be great, right? The challenge with that
• 42:08
  is it's constantly changing in terms of how you're going to rank and get positioning. So you're
• 42:11
  kind of in terms of the search rankings. You're outsourcing that to somebody who's been doing it
• 42:15
  for a long time and that you trust. And you seem like you're really focused on, you know,
• 42:21
  the activities that are going to generate the biggest return for you, the return on effort as
• 42:26
  I like to call, which seems to be very agent focused and client appreciation is the two areas
• 42:30
  where you get most of your business. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. That's great. Awesome. Cool. Well,
• 42:35
  let's we got to close it out here. But I always like to ask this one question. You know,
• 42:40
  is there any online tool app software, you know, whether it's business or personal that you just
• 42:45
  are in love with and can't live without? You know, in my marketplace, I would say we have
• 42:53
  a product that's called MTAGO. And it's basically just, it allows us to go in and find the
• 43:00
  realtor rankings and what the production levels are for the last 12 months. And so for me,
• 43:07
  you know, as a real estate agent, driven loan officer, that's like the, I wish I had it 14 years
• 43:12
  ago because every agent that I would have met with I would have, you know, put in there to see what
• 43:16
  they were doing for production and known how to spend my hours. Right. But for me, that's been the
• 43:21
  biggest tool that's been helpful for me, just knowing which people to focus my energy and effort on.
• 43:28
  Yeah. Obviously, as you alluded to earlier, you're doing you're doing that research as you
• 43:32
  refer to it as sniper strategy before you even attempt to market to those people because you
• 43:38
  want to make sure they're producing, right? Right. Right. Yep. And by the way, the MTA report, you know,
• 43:43
  you can get that from your local title rap bias. Is that where you get it from or you can get it
• 43:47
  independently? No, we get it. We have like an app on our phone. So if I, before I sit down with
• 43:53
  anybody, like I can pull up their numbers on my phone and just find out production is interesting.
• 43:58
  Yeah, I know in some areas of the country that information is harder to come by. But yeah, I've
• 44:03
  known, I know that the title reps can usually pull those kind of stats, but and you can also find
• 44:08
  that via MLS, I believe, if you have access. But yeah, great stuff. So cool. Well, David, for
• 44:14
  anybody who wants to connect with you online, what's the best place for them to go to connect with you?
• 44:18
  All of my information is on my website and that's dkhomeloans.com. And you know, anybody that has
• 44:25
  any questions from your show, I'm happy to help them and give them my, you know, the struggles
• 44:32
  I've had and the failures I've had and, you know, trying to build my business over the last 14
• 44:37
  years. So I'm definitely happy to, if anyone wants to reach out to me, I'm more happy to share
• 44:42
  anything with them. Awesome. Well, we appreciate you sharing today. I think there was a lot of value
• 44:47
  for the listeners. And I would say the biggest thing for anybody listening to this is take at
• 44:51
  least one idea and put it into action. If it's, if it's hosting agent lunch and learns, do that.
• 44:56
  If it's hosting a client appreciation party, do that bottom line. There's definitely some nuggets for
• 45:00
  you to start applying today. And I want to thank you for listening. If you like the podcast,
• 45:04
  please let us know, subscribe on iTunes and leave us a review because that helps us just reach
• 45:10
  more loan officers and make a bigger difference. So once again, it's Jeff Zimp for your host,
• 45:14
  Mortgage Marketing Radio. Thank you for listening and we'll see you on the next one.
• 45:27
  Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing.
• 45:33
  Get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com.
• 45:44
  Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before.
• 45:50
  And I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply
• 45:54
  need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it,
• 45:59
  agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well,
• 46:04
  good news. Our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans
• 46:09
  without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you agent classes,
• 46:14
  expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you,
• 46:20
  everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents
• 46:24
  into referral partners. Plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content
• 46:30
  to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seeds, partnering with affiliates,
• 46:35
  real easy. But that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls
• 46:41
  with top LOs, authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business
• 46:47
  right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time, for all new members,
• 46:53
  you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere to
• 46:59
  from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. And we'll provide that list uploaded
• 47:05
  into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents.
• 47:10
  So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagedmarketing.pro,
• 47:14
  see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so,
• 47:18
  book a call, we'll have a chat. We'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity
• 47:22
  to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagedmarketing.pro.