I HATE Cold Calling

I HATE Cold-Calling

My Marketing Plan - Week 2 - Is there a way I can avoid cold calling?

 

You know the drill.  You pick up the phone and start calling agents, CPAs or builders. You don't get through.  You get voicemail.  Or, worse, you get your prospect on the phone and they don't want to talk to you.  "Tom, thanks for the call.  But I already have a loan officer.  (Click)."  And that's a civil one.  A few rejections like that, and I start to question what I am doing.  In my mind, before I even dial I am getting rejected. 

Boy.  That's what I want to do today.... NOT!

Triggering Call Reluctance

What I just did was trigger my own call reluctance.  Now I am afraid or unwilling to make further calls, even though I know that this is the ONLY way I will start creating new relationships.  We are told we HAVE to push out of our comfort zone.  Most people I know, including myself, don't want to do this and will avoid it.  The result is predictable - sales failure.

Comfort Zone Selling

The key to pushing out of your comfort zone is to take small steps to creating new comfort zones around your prospects.  For me the first step in getting over call reluctance with new prospects is to NOT MAKE COLD CALLS.  Instead, I make "follow-up" calls.  I send my prospect a very short letter saying I think I have something to offer them.  Then I tell them that I will follow up with them within the next couple of weeks. 

Practical Guide to Marketing

PRESTO!  No cold-calls!  When I pick up the phone and call to try and get a face to face meeting, I am following up on the letter I sent. 

The intro letter is just the first in a series of between 6 and 10 letters I'll send designed to allow me to follow up.  

The next step?  Making the calls! 

These are part of the value package I have at my use in The Loan Officer's Practical Guide to Marketing

 

 

Week 1 - Choosing Prospects

My Marketing Plan - Week 1 - Choosing Prospects

Choosing prospects is one of the most important elements in developing a marketing plan.  Once I identified how many loans I needed, I knew how many referral sources I needed.  Too few prospects and I am not active enough.  Too many and I cannot possibly reach them all. 

 

Unqualified prospects

 

When I don't know what that prospect would want from me, I have no business reaching out to that person.  It shows I don't really understand what I have to offer.  I need to think it through because every prospect should have a need that I can fulfill.  More on this later. 

 

The Math

 

I decided I needed 6 or 7 loans a month to earn my desired income.  Based on average production sources producing one referral a month, I need 7 referral sources.  How many prospects will I need  to source to get to 7?

 

Statistics say that you will go through 40 prospects to generate 1 referral source.  Can that be right? I need to call 280 people to get to 7 referral sources?  Now you know why it takes so long to get up to speed as a loan originator.  I have to make a large number of calls, but they also must be to good prospects.  How do I manage this?

 

First, I have to figure out how many people can I meaningfully follow up with in the course of a week.  Is it 280?  No WAY.  What about 5?  I can do that in a day.  Maybe even 6 or 7.  When you get down to it and start actually calling you will realize that these 5 calls are a lot of work.  You have to plan the call, make the call and then do the follow up.  Then there are other things I have to do, like go to meetings, fill out paperwork, and pick up the kids.  Also, if I set myself up to do an unreasonable number of calls, I will become disenchanted with the process.  

 

If I call on 5 people a day, that's 25 people a week.  My initial prospect list is 25. 

 

This doesn't mean that at the end of 6 weeks I am going to have 125 people on a list that grows every day.  These first 25 people will stay on my prospect list for at least 6 weeks, until I have touched them at least 5 times.  If one of these prospects tells me he really doesn't want to talk to me, then I'll move him off my prospect list to my mailing list.  I will add another prospect. 

 

You have heard the adage, 80% of sales happen after the 5th call, but most people don't even get to the 2nd call.   I have to call the prospect at least 6 times, because the sale will happen AFTER the 5th call.  I do this because I have to give people a chance to be my customer. 

 

How long will this take?

 

Following this system I should get my first full time referral source between week 6 and week 12,  because I will have moved completely through 50 prospects.  I should pick up my second full time referral source within the next 6 week cycle (75 prospects).  I hope I am doing better at choosing more suitable prospects, and also doing better at closing them by this point.  But if not, I am going to continue working through this cycle and the next customer should come within the next two 6 week cycles. (125 Prospects)

 

Under the worst-case, where I am having to really churn through prospects, it will take me about 6 months to get 3 full time referral sources.  I AM HALFWAY TO MY GOAL!!  Assuming I am not improving any techniques or choosing any better prospects initially, I will reach my final goal of 6 referral sources in about 13-14 months. 

 

Realistically, I won't actually work all prospects for 6 weeks, so the process should go faster.  I'll learn that one prospect owns a mortgage company - dead to me.  Another prospect's son is a loan officer - dead to me.  Another prospect has been working with another lender for 20 years - not going to change... and so on. 

 

Track the Whole Process

 

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 All of these tools are in The Loan Officer's Practical Guide to Marketing - available at www.quick-start.net

 

 

Week 1 - Day 1

Loan Originators - Back to Basics - Your 2011 Marketing Plan

by Tom Morgan

 

I have decided to go back to my roots as a loan originator and start making some real money again.  The very real question is "Do I have what it takes to re-make myself as a top producer?" 

Thoughts of building production also happen to be on the minds of many loan officers.  When I talk to mortgage pros I hear  "When this refi boomlet is over, how will I generate business?"  and "With the changes, do I even want to be in this business any more?"  

Day 1 - My Business Plan

It's a lot easier to tell someone how to do something than it is to do it. 

In looking at my business plan I realize something else.  My choices about where and how to get business are virtually infinite.  If I am going to be successful I need a very specific plan.  Where do I start? 

Begin with the end in mind...

Goals Based Planning

For me, and every other loan originator, the process starts with the basic question - what do I need to earn?  Too many loan originators throw out a dollar volume without thinking about the underlying principles.  How do I get there?  They say "I want to make $300,000" and stop there… NO idea about how to get there. 

To get to this number I filled out this worksheet I got from Ralph Massella, who used to run sales at American Home Mortgage.

 

I substituted out the 2006-2007 numbers and learned that I have to close 6-7 units a month to make my salary goal.  This is the first part of writing a plan – a process that goes from understanding the needs of a marketplace to knowing how I will go about meeting those needs.  This is the process we outline in “The Loan Officer’s Practical Guide to Marketing.”

It answers the question “How do I do that?”

I’ll be walking through this process in real time with you.  I hope you'll join me in my quest to revisit what for me has always been the most fun part of the mortgage business - getting new business.

If you'd like to get the original Mortgage Sales Management Process tool ' The Loan Officer's Practical Guide to Marketing" , the download version is currently on sale ($20 off!!).