If you’re new to the mortgage business or even well-seasoned you’re probably looking to increase your production 

I mean, we’re salespeople, and salespeople have a reputation for an insatiable appetite for growth. 

Sadly, for many loan officers, their appetite for growing production doesn’t keep them from getting stuck “maintaining” instead of “thriving”. 

How do you break this cycle?

It’s a simple answer, but not an easy one. It can really be summed up in one sentence:

Get in front of as many prospects as you can, close those loans effectively and efficiently, and master your short, medium and long-term follow-up. 

It’s easier said than done though so we’ve broken this down into 3 easy steps.

Step One: Get in Front of as Many Prospects as You Can

As a loan officer, you have probably been tasked with getting business in the door at some point.  Before you might’ve found yourself cold-calling for hours, these days you might find yourself Googling for the top mortgage lead generation companies, or dodging their ads. Thank goodness it’s not as hard as it used to be to get your name out there but it can still be a challenge to navigate the ever-widening world.

So where do we start?

Building relationships with other professionals is a fantastic method for growing your mortgage business. 

What type of professionals can we reach out to and what do they offer? 

• Accountants can offer referrals to their clients who are selling or buying homes.

• Appraisers know which real estate agents are producing the most. 

• Real Estate Attorneys & Relocation Specialists can point prospects in your direction.

• Listing Agents can cross-sell services with referrals.

• Construction crews

If you use these relationships to build a referral network it will definitely help your mortgage origination business grow. There may be an easier method though.

Take control of generating exclusive purchase leads instead of relying on others to feed your mortgage business. 

The most obvious benefit of generating mortgage leads that you own is your ability to leverage them to build your realtor partnerships. If you’ve been a loan officer for any amount of time, you’ve asked yourself how to get mortgage referrals from realtors.

At Empower LO we generate thousands of leads per month for our clients. Of the leads that close, around 80% self-report that they aren’t working with a realtor. This gives you ample opportunity to build your realtor referrals by offering them leads in return. 

Looking for more help in building your realtor relationships? Check out our Realtor Outreach Playbook here.

Additionally, this means you don’t have to spend more time “kissing the feet” of your referral partners or taking leads you really don’t want. When you are the source of your mortgage leads from the very beginning, you control the entire process. This ends up saving you a ton of time and reducing the stress of pleasing others to get what your business needs.

In truth, the most praised aspect of our lead generation service is the level of control our clients have over their mortgage business.

Step Two: Handling Your Mortgage Business Effectively & Efficiently  

You have deals coming in the door now, what's left? Providing a positive loan experience while making sure you have the capacity to scale your business. You need to remain efficient, provide a high-quality service, and most importantly, close the loan!

Want to know a secret? No one said you have to do all this alone. 

Who will assist with this process, and how?

Being willing and able to delegate tedious tasks that don’t take your expertise is where we see our clients set their mortgage business apart and really optimize their production.

If you are able, hiring helpers to balance your workload is the simplest solution.  Having an in-house assistant and/or processor frees up time that you can use to focus on the deals that need more attention. Doing this will allow you to increase the sheer number of deals you can work at a time. A total game changer for exploding your production is an in-house support team.

Your team can focus on wrapping up those lingering tasks, and you can focus your efforts on selling and closing.

Additionally, using mortgage drip campaigns saves even more of your valuable time, allowing you to focus on closing deals and growing your business partnerships.

As an added bonus, you can make use of mortgage drip campaigns to save even more of your valuable time.

What is a Mortgage Drip Campaign?

Drip campaigns are a marketing communication strategy that sends (drips) pre-written messages and media to prospects over a set amount of time. 

This strategy can nurture your leads into clients, without much effort at all. For more loan officer strategies, check out our blog.

Step Three: Master Your Follow-Up Game!

Okay, so now you have deals coming in,  a team to support you, and now it’s time to get to work. We all know that organizing, managing, and storing a prospect’s information can be a nightmare.  On top of that, learning REAL loan officer strategies and staying relevant in a prospect’s eyes can be just as hard. This often results in LOs struggling to add the personalized service that customers are looking for.

How do you deal with this?

Thankfully, we’re in an era of cutting-edge technology and software development is plentiful. Here, we are seeing fresh Customer Relationship Management (CRMs) that were created directly for the mortgage industry.

If you have a basic understanding of CRMs, you know that they help you organize information on your prospects such as name, phone number, email address, physical address, date of birth, etc…

Some go as far as storing social security number, current income, employment info, and loan number. All of this gives you the ability to assist the customer to a higher degree, proving your value, and advancing efficiently through the loan process.

Your CRM can be so much more though! For instance, at Empower LO, the CRM stores relevant information that can be quickly accessed and combined with personalized marketing campaigns sent through a Marketing Automation System (MAS).

If you take it a little further, the right CRM will assist you in organizing your clients based on any number of factors, like type of loan, credit score, or disposition. 

Our clients also love the ability to stage their mortgage prospects and clients based on where they are in their customer journey or loan process.

One of our main staging dashboards consists of:

• Pre-Application

• Applied: Non-Qualified

• Applied: Qualified

Your CRM should make it incredibly easy to differentiate between the clients who need frequent attention, versus clients who only need to be checked in with once a quarter. Tools like your CRM or MAS should make it easier for you to work smarter, instead of grind, grind, grind. This frees up your time to increase production, stay in the zone, and close more deals. That’s what we’re here for, right?

The sole obstacle between thriving and simply maintaining in the mortgage industry is your ability and willingness to put these three steps into action. Since we started in 2018 we’ve seen mortgage businesses transformed, getting MORE clients, giving high-quality service from START TO FINISH, and closing MORE deals than ever before.

Thanks for reading, we’ll see you at the top! 

Michael

Curious about how we can help you scale and transform your mortgage business? 

Just click this link, request your live demo, and start leveling up your business today.