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This week I want to talk about a vital step in the selling process: realationship!
You are probably thinking I misspelled the word. Actually, I meant to do that. To succeed you need more than just relationship, you need real-ationships. What are realationships? Relationships that are founded on the two most important criteria for selling – trust and loyalty.
How are your relationships with your borrowers? I have asked that question to hundreds of thousands of mortgage professionals and the answer is always the same – “good, great, fantastic!” Interestingly enough, no one ever says “I’m a real loser… my customers hate me!” Yet if you poll borrowers or read the paper today, you will find that mortgage professionals are among the most disliked salespeople in any industry. The fact is, our relationships are not as good as we think. Why? Because we miss the most important and critical characteristic to building relationships: TIME.
Time is the key to all relationships. Without spending time with your customer, there is simply no way to really know them. The average loan officer spends 7 to 20 minutes with their borrowers on the first call or meeting. How is it possible to qualify a borrower, complete their application, identify their short-term financial needs and long-term goals, build trust and establish loyalty in 20 minutes or less? It’s not! These all require time. Let me give you four benefits to spending time:
Time Increases Knowledge: The more time you spend, the more you know the borrower and understand their needs. Without this, you cannot provide meaningful or life-changing solutions.
Time Builds Trust and Loyalty: The more time you spend, the more the borrower knows and trusts you. This builds loyalty. Loyalty is ultimately more important than trust, because you can trust someone without being loyal, but you can’t be loyal without trusting. Trust is a necessity – loyalty is a higher level of trust.
Time Ensures Complete Applications: We perceive we don’t have time to spend with our borrowers because we are too “busy”. Busy doing what? Probably reselling, de-selling and down-selling deals we have already “sold” or chasing documentation or answers we didn’t get the first time. Why? Because we did not spend enough time the first time to complete the application, commitment and documentation.
Time is Offensive and Defensive: The more time you spend with your borrower, the less time your competition gets. If the borrower spends an hour with you, not only do they not want to do that again, but they showed you, through their actions, that they were interested in you and are committed to buying. These are key buying signals that you will probably get the sale.
Starting today, slow down and spend more time with your qualified borrowers. Employ the philosophy that “a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush” instead of the philosophy “sales is a numbers game”. The first points to quality while the latter points to quantity. Quality always wins!
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Source by Dale Vermillion