Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / The Blueprint for Closing 575 Units per Year

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The Blueprint for Closing 575 Units per Year · Mortgage Marketing Radio

0:00
In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
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the real estate agents is essential for success.
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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, it
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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
Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
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And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
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with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
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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.
1:03
Hey, listeners, what's up, Jeff Zimper.
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Welcome to this episode of the mortgage market radio podcast.
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Hey, question for you.
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Do you ever struggle with how to identify the right realtors to work with?
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Do you ever wonder, should you be working with the onesy-to-the agents or not?
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Well, my special guest today is going to answer that question for you.
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He knows what he's talking about because he closed to 575 units last year.
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So stay tuned because we get started in just one moment.
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All right, all right, all right, yes.
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So today we're talking all realtors and I'm really excited to bring my special guest
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on in just a moment.
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But before we do, seeing as we are talking about realtors, look, I know realtors
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can be a challenge to get attention, right, to get them to respond, to get them to send
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you referrals.
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It's a bit of a numbers game.
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Let's face it, you want to succeed with real estate agents, but you face all the challenges
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that every other loan officer faces in that they're tough to get its attention and response
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and they're quote, not loyal and whatever else you want to say about those real estate agents,
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but they're worth it because 89% of people still buy a house and use a realtor and folks
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purchase businesses where it's at, but you struggle to get the realtor attention.
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You struggle to add value to build referrals and relationships and you need a solution.
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Therefore, I want to take a moment and tell you about the mortgage marketing pro membership.
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In there, we have a platform called My Aging Classes.
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It is a turnkey plug and play done for you educational platform that allows you to attract
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agents at scale.
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What I mean by that is get more agent referrals in less time with no chasing, no co-calling,
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no begging, no pay to play.
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None of that.
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Imagine a completely turnkey library of high value, easy to deliver in person or virtual
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classes that you deliver and that we equip you with everything for that.
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A video, train the trainer of me showing you how to actually do the class.
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We give you the PowerPoint, the speaker notes, the transcript, we give you any handouts,
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we give you the social media images to promote.
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We even give you the emails and the text messages and use our marketing automation platform
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with landing pages branded for you with every single class so that you can build your own
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real estate agent database, increase your attendance, your conversions and conversations, and
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build your realtor referral business.
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Want to learn more?
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Go check out a brief video I put up.
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It's over at mortgagemarketing.pro.
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See if it's for you either way, I'm glad you're tuning into this episode.
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So my special guest for this week is Derek Polter.
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Derek is out of the Phoenix, Arizona area and Derek is just, what can I say, a stud, right?
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Derek in 2021 closed 575 units and what I love about part of the conversation with Derek
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is that we break down his realtor strategy and identifying, you know, the big question
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is, hey, who do you work with his realtor?
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Should I chase the ones he twosies or not?
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Well, Derek has the answer to that question and a whole lot more and Derek is a big believer
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in education and classes.
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As a matter of fact, it's one of the primary ways he's built such a strong brand for himself
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and has built such strong relationships and a flow of business from real estate agents.
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So he's already ranked in the top five loan officers in Arizona, top 1% nationwide and
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I am thrilled to be bringing you our special conversation today with Derek Polter.
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So without further ado, you know what's next.
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Let's get into this week's show.
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Derek, welcome to the show.
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Jeff, thanks for having me here.
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Thanks for being here, man.
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I know you're super busy and let's get right down to it.
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For the listeners, tell me just the background or how long you've been in the biz and kind
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of a look back to 2021, what was the units and volume?
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Got in the business at the right time of 2006 and got to ride that crazy wave of the implosion
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and been doing, didn't get out, stayed in the business, worked the way through it.
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And so now it's going on with 16 years and last year we did 575 units for 154 million.
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Wow, that's awesome, man.
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Congratulations.
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Thank you.
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Seriously, that's what they call a baller, you know?
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That would they call it?
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For sure, that's top, top 1% top 100, you know that.
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All right, so next when people hear that, they're naturally curious what your team structure
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looks like and like, where are you involved?
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Are you taking apps?
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Where do you interface with clients and just if you could walk us through that flow process?
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Yeah, what the team looks like.
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So I have Laways or Lone Offs resistance or Lone partners as you might call it.
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And I have four, what we would call front end.
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And those are guys that help take the apps, take the 1003 pool credit, you know, do all that.
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The pre-qualification portion, I participate in that as well.
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So I'd be your fifth guy if the team is very well trained.
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If there is a slam dunk scenario, they can take it, they can run with it.
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And if there's a problem or a question or whatnot,
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that of course it hits my desk for an escalation review.
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And then when files are in contract, that's where I also keep my finger on the pole.
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So those deals, I'm in the trenches involved with every one of those 575 deals at some scope.
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There's no way, in my opinion, that originally can originate that much business
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and do the 1003 to credit pool and all that.
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But the way that I keep my finger print on it and quality control is every Monday,
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I do a pipeline meeting and we talk about every loan and I go off.
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And my Mondays are pretty much dedicated to the outbound phone calls involved with buyers
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that have questions or issues or listing agents or buyers agents.
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And so my Mondays are dedicated to that pipeline management and quality control.
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Wow, that's a lot.
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And so your front end guys, those 4 people, I think you said it was, their license?
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Yeah, license in the front end.
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And so again, they can do everything from pool credit to talk rates and whatnot.
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And again, there's 4 and then plus me.
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So what we do is we go buy a schedule for inbound leads.
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The idea is you want to avoid leads going to voicemail, get to leads immediately
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and try not to allow it to pass more than an hour before we make contact.
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And so in order to keep that service level, we have to, you know, organize our shifts appropriately
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where if in the last hour I took two leads, I can't stay on deck and do a good job
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taking two more leads because I have to get those people documents reviewed and all that.
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So I might be on schedule for an hour, the next team member, so forth and so on.
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Okay. And you mentioned incoming leads.
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So what is your primary source of business?
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Real estate agents, I love real estate agents.
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They are the ripe tree to pick from.
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And there's a wide range of the realtor that you work with.
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I love to work with.
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My ideal realtor is a big producing team that is understands the dynamic of a reciprocal
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relationship.
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You know, yes, we're a lender and yes, you know, we're a rate and get clients up to have
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a good rate, good fee, but they also appreciate that a mortgage pro is truly a pro and they're
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in that relationship with us because they trust us as a business partner and don't just
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commoditize us.
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You know, they expect us to be competitive, but they still appreciate it.
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Hey, you got to work with Derek.
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His team is great.
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They refers the right way versus, you know, call Derek and five other people and let's
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have those guys fight it out for your business.
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My second favorite realtor is somebody who is alone wolf, but is in the business full
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time.
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That might look like somebody who's in their first year getting started and is very hungry
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and we can teach them the way to do business the right way or it would be somebody who's
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been doing it forever, but they're happy doing, you know, two to four transactions a month
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and they really hold their hands with their clients, they're not the person who's doing
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real estate part time.
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Okay.
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So there's a couple of things I heard in there.
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First of all, your favorite being that the team and what I'm hearing overall is that
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what it sounds like is you recognize, I mean, look, whenever you bring up realtors with
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loan officers, there's a bunch of often baggage that comes with that, right?
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There's some beliefs, some preconceived notions, like, you know, realtors are blank, filling
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the blank and then you're going to hear a lot of stuff, right?
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But what I love about what I just heard from you is that you're like, hello, you can
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be selective.
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You can actually choose who you work with, right?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah, and you seem pretty intentional about that.
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Well, yeah, so I'll give you this analogy.
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I believe that I say we were talking for, you know, I'm in the core as well and so I
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have a really interesting view on the mortgage, not just mortgage, but real estate industry.
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I've been in the industry for 16 years.
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I've been professionally coached for, I think, 12 of those 16 and of those 12 years I've
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been a coach now for last five or six.
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So I get to see the mortgage business at that 10,000 square foot view or 10,000 foot view
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from my business, from the different students I coach and the conferences I go to twice
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a year and what I've learned in terms of being selective is, you know, you should define
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your accounts.
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And so for me, an A account is, or a channel account would be any realtor that I can
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give me 12 or more deals a year, basically a deal a month.
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And I target those by agents that have 20 or more buy sides.
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I know I'm, there's no way I'm going to get 100% of the business.
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But if they do 20 or more buy sides, there's an opportunity that I can capture 12 or more.
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An account for me, which would be an A relationship, is four or more deals, which means I can do
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a deal a quarter with them.
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And I can tell you that in 2021, I had almost 30 accounts.
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So you know, that would be four or more transactions of which I believe eight of those were channel
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accounts.
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That's 12 or more.
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And what's really interesting though is I had over 170 closings that came from ones
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easy twosies.
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So yes, you can pick who you're, who you're going to do business with.
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But I think you also, if you're going to work with realtors, you also have to know that
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there's a lot of realtors out there that aren't going to do, you know, $50 million a year.
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And they don't want to, you know, they just want to do a deal or two and, and you do a
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good job taking care of them.
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So I like to spend a lot of my energy going after the potential for big accounts.
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But my business is also set up where I cast a wide net so I can capture a lot of those
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that are only going to do a few deals a year and might only be one or two.
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Hmm.
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Yeah, that's interesting.
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First question then is, how do you manage those, those, those hundred and whatever other
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realtors who send you the onesy twosies, right?
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How do you stay top of mind, you know, the whole agents aren't loyal thing.
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That's the other thing.
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So how do you keep coming back to you?
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You know, let's, let's drill down on what you just said.
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I think it's such a limited belief that shoots a lot of loan officers in the floor that
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where they shoot themselves in the foot.
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It's funny that I could say this is my realtor and I have yet I have 170 plus of them.
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But then I get all bent out of shape if I found out that they have more than one lender.
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So the way that I look at it is, you know what, you could view it as there's only so much
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business or there's an abundance of business and what I realize is in order to hit my goals
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and live a good life and, you know, take care of my family.
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I don't, you know, you could do that with just a few loans.
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We like to do, you know, more than a few loans a month.
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But even with that number, if I want to do 50 loans a month, that's still such a small
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percentage of the overall available market share for me.
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And so I just need to do a good job, have people that know my name and, and get a percentage
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of their business.
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I don't own them.
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So a lot of things I try to teach loan officers when I'm talking to them is like, you're not
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married to them, forget you're married, go dating with them.
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Date the agents because then you got to put your best foot forward.
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You got to recognize that they're on a date with another lender the day after they met
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with you.
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And that's just going to make you be on your A game and you're going to have to follow
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up and keep that relationship, keep that spark going.
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So I don't expect an agent to be loyal if I, if they are loyal, that's great, that's
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just a cherry on top.
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I would love every agent I work with to be 100% loyal to me because it would just make
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my job a lot easier.
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But I just, I don't expect that to be the case.
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Going back to your original question of how do I manage all of this?
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I'll give you an analogy I like to use is let's forget that we're in the mortgage business
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and let's just say that we're in the fishing business, okay?
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So every day I go out on my boat.
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I'm going to sail the seas and I have to catch a lot of fish.
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So I'm armed with three tools.
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I have a harpoon gun.
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I have a nice fishing line, you know, the strength for the open seas and then I have a big net.
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And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend my energy sailing the seas looking for
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a big fish.
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You know, I'm going to hunt whales and when I find a whale, I'm going to use that harpoon
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gun.
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There's a lot of time and energy and attention because I'm going to direct my boat there.
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I'm going to have to aim for it, shoot it, reel it in.
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Maybe I don't come across a whale but I come across a school of bigger fish, you know,
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tuna, whatnot.
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I'm going to bring out my line for that.
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That's still going to take more energy not as much as really in the whale.
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But as I'm navigating the seas looking for the big fish in the whales, I'm just carrying
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a net behind me.
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And what I want is to grow the biggest net that I can get.
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So all the little schools of fish get caught in there.
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And that's how I got 170 plus me.
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If you look at my 2021 and my 2020 business, it's, it's so close.
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I think I did 170 in 2020, the onesie 2Z agents and 172 or 171 onesie 2Z agents in 21.
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So that's my big net carrying behind me, which is done via email marketing.
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It's done by doing things such as this.
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It's done by social media, you know, building a brand and sailing my ship and, you know,
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a realtor here and there gets conics, they go, oh, call Derek for this or I know I heard
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about this guy.
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And so I get a lot of those guys, but my energy Monday through Friday is spent strategically
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focused on going after the bigger teams or the bigger agents that could give me, you
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know, four deals a year or 12 deals a year, again, my accounts or my channel accounts.
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So you're saying that by, you know, whale hunting, essentially, that the bigger fish are
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just going to come along, you know, the bigger than the less bigger, the smaller, right?
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Because you're using that net while you're whale hunting that they're just going to come
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along during the process and you'll scoop those up.
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Yeah.
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So, so that's an analogy, right?
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So let me give you an example.
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So if I'm going to go after lunches or dinners or the phone calls, the energy that was
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the analogy of, you know, shooting the harpoon and rolling it in, I'm going to spend that
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energy on the agents that I know are doing more business, that therefore I can capture
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more in.
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But what is the analogy of my fishing net?
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Well, that is, you know, making sure that every single week I'm sending out market-based
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emails, I'm targeting all the agents, I want to grow my net mailing list.
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So every month, if I'm doing 30 or 40 or 50 closings, there's going to be listing agents
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on the other side at the end of the month.
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Yeah, I'm going to have the people that say, please, I'm a subscriber, remove me.
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But, you know, hopefully I had three unsubscribes and six, you know, new names I read.
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It's the mailing list just continues to grow every month.
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And by me, consistently marketing, that doesn't take a lot of energy, right?
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That's, it takes a plan, it takes energy weekly and monthly to have a plan and to do that,
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building out of the net.
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But when I do the activities like the marketing or teaching a class or touching a pain point
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like low inventory and multiple offers, that's the analogy of the bigger net where the
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onesie twosies get caught in.
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I love that, love that.
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So as you had mentioned in that wonderful explanation, by the way, thank you for that.
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I think that makes a lot of sense to people listening and that hopefully also deals with
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the question or issue about, you know, do you go after the onesie two agents and it's
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perhaps less so do you go after them versus attract them?
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Yeah, well, and it kind of go back to the analogy I'm giving you is that, you know,
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somebody who's doing one or two deals this year could be your hundred deals five years from now.
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And I've had a couple of stories like that.
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So I am not a fan of subscribing to qualify them first and, you know, screen them out.
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And, you know, if I obviously I do know who the whales are and that's from spending my energy
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inviting them to a lunch or inviting them out to basketball game to, you know, to get to know
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them better. I'm going to spend my energy there. But if I had somebody that is brand new in
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the business and wants to meet and talk shop, I will absolutely meet with them and invest that time
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in them because I believe in that how to win friends and influence people model of help them get
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to where they want and you're going to have more people helping you get to where you want to go.
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But going back to your point is if I am spending the energy of, you know, building out a plan
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that attracts people or building out a plan that just kind of scoops open as I'm going to give
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you a great example. I'm teaching a class right now of how to do three deals a month in 60 days and
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that is a series. It's a bootcamp series where I market it out and I market it to, you know,
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any agent can join it. But I also strategically target new agents because I know they're going to
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want to figure out how to get to three deals a month. And, you know, maybe they want to attract it to
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it, but I'm sailing my boat and they got caught in my marketing, you know, I do my part of my
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sailing of my boat is to make sure I'm marketing every single week and what am I marketing and so
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it just so happens right now that I'm marketing this bootcamp and, you know, we'll have anywhere
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from 30 to 40 realtors at shop to that class and we teach them how to be better at their business.
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Yeah, that's a multi-part series. How many sessions in that?
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I do that for seven weeks. Seven weeks once a week for seven weeks. I do it every quarter.
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Oh, okay. Every quarter then you take a break and come back next quarter.
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Yeah, I'm looking at it on Facebook right here where you're promoting it.
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I just because I do a lot of classes just did one this morning.
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So, and it works. That's why you do it. I see somebody like you doing it. It's because it works.
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What makes me so many I see a couple questions about this. You're delivering it over Zoom, right?
20:17
Um, did you used to do classes in person before?
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Yep. Yep. So, we had to move, you know, who moved our cheese? We had to shift with the...
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What's the plan for the like you're going to go back to in person or hybrid or what do you think?
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Probably hybrid. I've actually been surprised at how well a ton of the Zoom has been.
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Yeah. Yeah. I think it's comfortable. People want both. Nothing replaces the human face to face it.
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But obviously the part of the outcome from the classes is you're going to get in person conversations.
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And I already have that. So, I think I've done three of these classes now and I've already had two
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really good meetings come from it. Wow. Okay. So, let me just couple of other things here.
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So, you're promoting this on social. You have a database of real estate agents. Obviously,
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you're emailing them, capturing the reservations on Eventbrite. And is it you teaching the entire
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series? Mm-hmm. And I have a marketing assistant. And so, her name is Anna. She's great. She calls
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herself the camp counselor since we're going with the bootcamp. And so, she sits on there and
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engages and interacts or brings things up or sometimes I ask her a question or two just so I'm
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not talking at a camera for an hour. Right. And because she's been running marketing with me,
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her and I've worked together for 10 years. So, she... We have a great relationship.
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And this particular class is not CE? No, but I do own a CE school and I do teach CE classes too.
21:39
Own a CE school. Well, that helps. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that in the beginning of my career when I was
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begging realtors to take a coffee or lunch with me. You know, you'd get a good meeting and I felt
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gosh, when I could sit down with somebody, I can connect pretty well and you know, you don't win
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them all, but you have a pretty good success rate once we sit down. And I said, but gosh,
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just getting them to sit down is so hard. You know, you get hung up on, you get canceled on,
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and so I thought, gosh, how could I get in front of more people? I said, hey, they need CE. So,
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and... Man, to open a CE school, is that difficult? Yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot of checkboxes and
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going through a new, I mean, to get it where I think it's viable took a lot of time. I mean,
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I had to not only do you have to do your L.O. license renewal stuff, but I remember a period
22:31
there where I was working my 10-hour days in the office and then afterwards sitting in a CE class
22:36
for three hours at night and I did that for months. You know, I'm just, you know, all, you know,
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breaks in between, but because you have to get all the, you have to have enough fair housing,
22:45
credits, ability to teach fair housing and, you know, so forth and so on. So, you'd have to target
22:49
the CE classes that you had to take in order to be qualified to be the teacher. And then on top
22:55
of that, you have to have enough credit hours in that particular subject, but then you have to
23:01
go do all the instructor courses for the state and then you have to submit your license or submit
23:05
your application and you're new it. So, it's a lot, but, you know, going back to the net,
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it's great when the association says, hey, can you come on and teach and there's, you know,
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150 realtor sitting in a room that I even have to set up, you know, so things like that
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pay for itself. And then also, as you know, you can just get a class approved by CE in your
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local state. That's another approach. It's funny. Of all the classes I've ever taught, I don't
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think, and we're talking back since 2003. I don't think I've ever taught a CE class, right?
23:34
Is that right? Yeah. And I know a lot of lenders ask me because I provide classes for lenders
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and they're like, hey, are your classes CE approved? I'm like, no, they're not, and they don't
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need to be, by the way, if you want to succeed with classes. Yeah, I would tell you, I teach far
23:49
more non CE classes than CE because CE is very rigid, right? A lot of times you had to do three
23:54
hours, you know, minimum to make them worthwhile. And you can't sell, you know, you have to be very
24:01
non bias. So, yeah. So, you know, and then on top of that, the busier that you get, the more that
24:09
you might have somebody just waiting for you to trip up, I've literally had competitors in the class
24:13
just waiting, you know, so CE is good, but really what it is is that branding thing. And then like
24:20
you said earlier, it's the attraction piece. If you do a good job, you know, you're craft,
24:24
and 50 people in a room, you know, there might be three people afterwards that call you and say,
24:28
hey, I really want to get to know you more and do business with you. But you do just a regular
24:34
class like what you're talking about, it's great because you can sell and you can add on.
24:39
And you can pitch. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Thanks. All right. So let's talk a little bit. Let's talk about
24:45
in terms of, so that's how you get in front of these agents that scale and manage them. You've got
24:49
these. You're branding and you've got these top of funnel activities. Classes is one of them.
24:55
And of course, I've already picked up on that you're building your agent database. Very smart.
24:59
Marketing to them. Tell me about social, like I see you've got some videos here about market
25:05
updates, and I'm just on Facebook. But where do you have a main primary social platform you
25:09
hang out on? Yeah. So we have a business Facebook page. So the folder group is on Facebook as well
25:15
as Instagram. And I think, you know, I definitely, the goal is to grow that and improve that.
25:20
We made a rule a while back. We're not going to buy our following. So I think we have over 5,000
25:25
on Facebook. We have over 5,000 on Instagram. I haven't checked in a while, but I know it's
25:30
it's north of those numbers. And, you know, pretty simple marketing plan, right? Post off then,
25:36
do a video or two a week. Promote things that we're doing marketing wise on our social as well.
25:42
Yep. And what's that? You win some reels. Yeah, you know, you always have to, they change up the
25:50
rules and you got to go with it. So, rules is, I guess, the newer way to go. So we're just starting
25:54
to do that. Yep. We're all figuring it out, man. Yeah. And they make it where you can't just
26:00
master it. You got to consistently evolve. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. What are other primary sources of
26:07
your business? We talked about real estate agents. What's next? You know, when you're fortunate
26:12
enough that we've been busy. So as the business grows, a bigger business be gets more business,
26:18
right? So you work with a couple hundred clients a year and then you get a database of thousands
26:23
of past clients. So, database would probably be number two. I would say it's realtor number one,
26:28
database is number two. And then I'd say business people is number three. I'd say advertising is
26:34
number three and business people's number four. So if I had to say what are the four leading
26:39
pillars of my business would be that order, realtors, database, marketing, and business people.
26:44
All right. We'll get to ads in a second. But regarding the database, curious if you're using,
26:49
like what do you must have tools are using homebot or anything or using homebots? A great tool.
26:53
Definitely think you should have homebots. It's basically the interactive Zillow on steroids.
26:57
If you do use homebot, my question would be what is your management campaign for that? You know,
27:03
how do you make sure that all the CMAs that were requested were filled? Do you follow up with
27:07
your agents to make sure that got done? So, you know, we do sweeps on homebot every month to make
27:14
sure that the triggers it gave us was fulfilled by the team or by the partners we referred it out to.
27:20
Do you have you done the partnership with realtors on homebot where they upload their database?
27:26
Yep. Have you run into any headwinds on getting agents to actually follow through and do that?
27:31
Well, that's where we get the CMA requests. You know, what we did is add a sweep on there of,
27:35
hey, you know, we had X amount of CMAs. What's the status on that? And so it forces, you know,
27:41
makes us go back to them and forces them to follow through. We could clarify the CMA thing.
27:46
So, let's just pretend that, you know, you and I are working together on it and I get a ping for
27:51
CMA and it happens to be on a client that you and I are connected on. We're going to ping that over
27:56
to you. Hey Jeff, Derek wants a CMA and you follow up and then we're going to circle back around.
28:01
Hey Jeff, how did that CMA go? Did, you know, Derek have any questions or anything we can do to help?
28:06
Versus just pointing it off and then, you know, Jeff never falls through and I'm paying for this
28:10
service. That's just, you know, this client, this client did a call to action and nothing happened
28:14
with it. Inspect what you expect. There you go. Yep. So yeah, homebots great. And then, you know,
28:21
several things I learned from the core, which is, you know, doing anniversary reviews, doing letters
28:27
of the week, having a top client, top client list, doing events. We do a Santa event in December.
28:34
We do a Thanksgiving pie giveaway in November. We do some type of other event like Easter,
28:42
hide the Easter eggs, invite the clients, kids out there to find the eggs, take photos with Easter
28:45
Bunny, run out of movie theater. All just different reasons to say thank you and stay connected with
28:50
our past clients. Other tools you can't live without as a mortgage professional? You know, what I
28:58
will say is I'm surprised at how many people that do very, very well that they keep it very simple.
29:07
I've seen a lot of people over complicate their ability to be successful because they have to have
29:11
a CRM that's 87 steps to master. And some of the most successful people that I follow were using
29:19
Google Sheets using Excel. And what I found is it's called work for a reason. There's no substitution
29:26
for it. There's no, if it's new, it ain't true and if it's true, it ain't new. So, you know, I got
29:33
to use my LOS, we're using Compass, but believe it or not, I've run a pretty good business off of
29:39
just Google Sheets and printed lists that I get put on my desk of call these people today.
29:47
Really? Wow. That's cool. Yeah, that's true. I've seen that as well. And I guess it comes down to,
29:52
you know, operational efficiency. If a tool or a platform, if you're going to use it, right,
29:58
as provide certain levels of efficiency or scale, whatever, then that might make sense. And
30:02
it's not everything is right for everybody. Yeah, in fairness, to give you, I mean, I definitely
30:07
am a big fan of MMG Weekly or MBS Highway. Like, you got to know it's gone on in the market and
30:12
get those alerts. That's been huge. I definitely have to have some type of video mailing. So, we do
30:17
MailChimp and bomb bomb. And we use them for different reasons. Obviously, bomb bombs to send videos,
30:23
MailChimp to send mass marketing. Social media tools are very touched on.
30:31
That's good. Yeah. I wanted to, before I get into advertising, asking this other question, because
30:36
you mentioned earlier, something about helping, you know, like any professional, you help people
30:41
solve problems, right? And you alluded to helping them solve, if I'm correct, the low inventory problem.
30:47
But I was curious as well. Like, how are you addressing that? How are you helping if at all agents
30:54
with that? Are you leveraging creative financing? Or like, yeah, for sure. So, I work for Cross Country
31:00
Mortgage. Ron, who's a CEO, is an amazing bright-minded duck. He asked me, how would you solve that?
31:08
And I kind of did a wish list program. And he literally created the program for us, a bridge
31:13
that we have 100% in-house. So, that bridge loan allows us to make non-contingent
31:18
pre-approvals and advance the equity out of their vacating residents. So, that's a great tool
31:24
for this market. So, that's one thing that we're doing. And then the other thing is teaching agents
31:29
just little things. Like, again, being in the court gives me that bird's eye view, talking to one
31:34
of my friends in North Carolina, who's a $120 million producers, a real turn. I'm like, what are you
31:39
doing to be successful? You're still putting up 100 million. And he gave you just a short story.
31:44
He said, well, Derek, we used to do inspection deposits. We don't have that in Arizona, so I don't
31:51
know exactly what they call North Carolina. But the idea is, when we boot the sellers out of their
31:56
house for a day to inspect their house, we would pay them 500 or a thousand bucks, just non-refundable
32:01
to kick them out of the house and walk around the house and poke around. And he goes, now what I
32:07
trained my buyers to do is they need people in to put up 5% of the purchase price and doing that.
32:12
So, now people are spending 20 to 30 thousand dollars non-refundable to win these contracts. And
32:20
he goes, and until my buyers even get into that point of mind that they're that serious,
32:23
I tell them that their chances of winning are 50-50. And I spend more of my time with the buyers
32:28
that are willing to take that big risk. And so I'm like, oh gosh, that's pretty crazy. I've never
32:33
heard of that. And so then I bring that back to my market. And we don't have that, but I teach my
32:38
referral partners, hey, this is what they're doing in a market. It's more competitive than us,
32:42
which means it's only coming matter time before it comes here. So, you know, we're used to earn
32:46
us money. Why don't you make a portion off or more and make a portion of the earnest money
32:52
non-refundable? And you could even do it sooner. So I've won several or helps our buyers win several
32:59
bidding wars by saying, don't just keep bidding because a smart listening agent's going to say that
33:05
price isn't going to stick and we're just going to waste time chasing the birds and the bush instead
33:08
of the one on the hand. And so instead, let's do 10,000 dollars of earnest money instead of 1%.
33:14
And let's make $5,000 of that earnest money non-refundable by this day. If you really want to go
33:19
step further, let's make that $5,000 be released to the to the seller within 72 hours of contract
33:25
acceptance. And so now that seller actually has $5,000 more in their pocket, not three weeks from
33:31
now or 45 days from now. They're 5 grand richer three days from now because they took your offer
33:36
versus somebody else. So I mean, there's a lot of things like that that I have helped my sleeve because
33:42
the I eat, sleep, and breathe the real estate. Love it. And that's certainly a way to weed out,
33:48
you know, the separate the weed from the Jeff as they say. It's really going to be committed to
33:52
playing ball in this tough market. Yeah. All right. So keep it on the clock. Let's not forget to
33:58
go back to advertising. What are you doing for ads? So advertising, I think number one, what you
34:04
got to do is the social stuff. You share your successes on social, be on social often. It's
34:08
crazy to me that it's free. It's basically a free production studio that fits in our pocket and
34:12
how many people don't use it. That's just blows my mind. So number one, be very active on social.
34:17
Number two is I want to start the week and end the week with people thinking about me or,
34:22
you know, top of mind. So I do email marketing that would include the standard stuff, which,
34:29
you know, of course, there's the hot highlights breaking news stuff. But the standard stuff is
34:33
I'm going to send out weekly rate breakdown. So this is this is the market rate on a 30, 15 year,
34:39
et cetera. And then I'm going to do a highlight, which would be the product update or something
34:46
like that. So twice a week, you're going to get something for me. We're going to teach you what's
34:49
going on in the market. What's the trend of interest rates? And then I'm going to give you a program
34:53
highlight or a market update or something like that. Lastly, we're really big on reviews. You know,
35:00
we have over 600 Google reviews. We push that a lot. So I want to make sure that I organically pop
35:07
up on SEO because we do a good job on our clients like us and they review us. Wow. Congrats. I'm pulling
35:13
up your Google business profile right now, spending a lot of time helping with agents with that as well.
35:18
602 Google reviews. That's rocking. What is it? How have you been so successful in driving reviews
35:24
there? Do you have a process? Well, do a good job and ask for it. So I have two Macy's credit cards
35:29
because when they when they get me at the point of sale, they ask me for it and they got me twice
35:34
because they convert it to American Express and said, we'll give you 10% off if you sign up for
35:40
the new one. So a lot of times you do a good job and you ask and you get you'll get the business.
35:44
And if you don't ask, you're not going to get it. That's brilliant. Do Macy's cards. Yeah.
35:50
Love it. Love it. Okay. But I need to go back to the question. Do a good job and ask for it.
35:56
It sounds very simple. But literally, do you ask, you know what I mean?
36:02
Yeah. So the you know, they have to click a link, you know? Yeah. So up front, we really drive the
36:08
fact that we're a referral based business and it's really important to, you know, all this
36:13
spiel, you know, refer us. Don't give us a secret. But at the end, it is part of our process that
36:18
when we fund, we congratulate them. We tell them that a service coming out and it would mean a lot
36:21
if they surveyed us, it helps us a ton. And so that is a process triggered at the time of funding.
36:27
And is your focus for the reviews? Is it Google versus other places?
36:31
Yeah. So we have internally the auto software that comes out and does a, you know,
36:36
send them a link that comes back for us internally. So we have, I mean, probably thousands of
36:40
reviews on that. But I'm really driving the, hey, you're going to get that. And if you want to
36:44
do both great, if you had to pick one, really help us if you did the Google review.
36:50
And you mentioned something about like Google Business Profile Profile helps arguably with SIO
36:55
and showing up in search. Have you found if anybody contacting you because of your Google
37:00
Business Profile? Absolutely. Yeah. Google is definitely a good channel where we get business from.
37:06
I'm hearing more and more of that. And as you may well know, Google's doing a lot of things
37:10
to better serve the local business owner in a right way. So that's cool, man. Good for you.
37:16
Yeah. I mean, like it's not surprising. I've interviewed quite a number of people that are
37:21
part of the core. And one thing that's very clear about that is that you guys approach it like a
37:26
business, right? And you take it very seriously and you've got systems and process. And like,
37:31
if that's, first of all, if that's all you get from the core, that's well worth it. But I know
37:36
there's so much more. But if anybody's listening, it's like, look, success leaves clues, right?
37:40
And you've heard of Derek here. You've heard of many others. It's about system process,
37:43
clarity of value, right? Communicating, being clear on who your targets are, being out there in
37:48
front of people. I mean, dude, this is like textbook for how to build a successful business.
37:53
Well, you know, early on, I just started to grind and make some money and figure out how to do
37:59
the business. And I would learn from corporate America. The best way to hold yourself accountable is
38:03
to have somebody else do it. So right out the gates, I maxed out a credit card, hired some coach
38:07
out of Scottsdale. And he got my business off the ground. And after a couple years with him,
38:13
I felt I needed more industry-specific coaching and training. And so I asked around the core of
38:18
the radar. And so my thought is, I love the core. It's changed my life. I've been a part of it
38:22
for a while. But any plan would work. If I'm trying to lose 10 pounds, I could commit myself to yoga
38:27
or I could do, and P90X or whatever that's called, any product would work as long as I commit to it.
38:34
And you hit the nail in the head. I think the biggest opportunity I would say to a loan officer
38:39
or to a broker or a realtor is, yes, you're selling yourself and you're in the business of sales,
38:44
but you're in business. So start running a business. And I see that we're spoiled often because
38:51
the margins are so high that you can afford to be very sloppy and do two deals a month and still be
38:56
okay. If you and I were running a subway franchise, you wouldn't get away with being sloppy.
39:00
You know, everything is a process in the system because you're working off of
39:04
nickels instead of thousands of dollars. And so if you really just approached your business,
39:09
like a business, like you said, and it had systems and structure and a process for everything
39:13
that you do, guess what? It stops becoming a rollercoaster and it becomes predictable and repeatable.
39:18
Yes, and scalable. Love it. All right, man. This has been awesome. I really enjoyed it. For
39:22
anybody who wants to connect with you, which is the best place, and we'll put links in the show notes,
39:25
but where do you want to send them to? Go to my Instagram, go to the Polter Group,
39:29
underscore real experts, follow us there. We got some good content that you can download right on
39:33
our link tree, my contact information's there. And I'm always happy to help. So pay it forward.
39:38
I've had great mentors in my life that have changed it. So if there's anyone that's listening that I
39:43
can help, I'm happy to do so. Open line. Awesome. Grateful for the time. Grateful for the lessons,
39:48
man. Appreciate it very, very much. And listeners, hey, if you like this episode,
39:51
do you know what to do? Please leave us a review and we'll put links to his Instagram in the show
39:56
notes. Thanks for tuning in. Derek, once again, thank you, my man. Jeff, thanks for the opportunity.
40:00
Thanks for reaching out and for giving me your time tonight. Appreciate it. Take care.
40:05
You bet. Everybody will see you on the next one. Thanks a lot for tuning in.
40:08
Hey, thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. I hope
40:11
you enjoyed it. And remember if you like this episode, please leave us a review that helps us
40:16
reach more people and bring more good value and content to you, our listeners. And then,
40:21
don't forget, if you are a loan officer who wants more agent referrals in less time, be sure to
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check out the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership at mortgagemarketing.pro and learn more about our
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turnkey system of agent classes that puts you front and center of your local real estate agents,
40:40
attracting agents instead of chasing them and getting agent referrals like clockwork every single
40:46
month, just like Kerry Cobb, who her first year in the business with closing over 75 loans,
40:54
achieved 40% of those 75 loans exclusively from agent classes. And if you want to learn how
41:00
she did it, now you can do it too. Once again, go to Mortgage Marketing.pro and I'll see you
41:04
over there. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.
41:08
Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before
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