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Jeff Zimfer
Welcome to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Your host, Jeff Zimfer. Thanks a lot for tuning in. Today we're diving into a real world scenario that many of you might relate to building and maintaining relationships with real estate agents. We've got a great question from a listener. This comes from our private group over on Facebook, a private community just for you podcast listeners. If you haven't yet joined that private group, please go to Facebook and search Mortgage Marketing Radio. I'll link it up in the show notes as well. But it's a great way for you to get in there and enjoy enjoying the conversation. I'm going to be taking more of your questions and featuring them live here on the podcast, give you a shout out. And so this is a great way for you to get your answers directly from me. Consider it this ask me anything version of the podcast. So we had somebody who asked a question and I want to give a shout out to Natalia. What's up? Thanks for answering the question in the, in the group. And the question was basically, what is one question or challenge, right, that you are facing or struggling with right now that you would like some assistance? And Natalia shared her challenge and her question was, I had one excellent meeting with a realtor. So far, nothing has happened. How do you keep up and grow the relationship? So that was Natalia's question. And look, I think this is an issue that we have often faced. I know I faced it when I was originating is, you know, have these meetings with agents and then, you know, afterwards what happens, it goes dark, goes quiet, maybe they don't respond. You wonder what to do next. And I think it's important that before you ever have a meeting with a real estate agent that the context is set up properly. And so there's a few best practices that I wanted to walk you through. And so I've got some questions that I asked Natalia that she responded to as well. So I'm going to unpack this kind of like, you know, ask me anything mini coaching session with Natalia in the hopes that you find this useful and valuable for you should you ever be faced with this situation. Okay, so that was only one part of the question. Right. I couldn't really give an effective answer to Natalia without having some more context because every answer, I think, is driven by context. Context, Right. So I went on to ask her about five more quick questions and I'm just going to rattle those off for you quickly and then I'll give you this, the summer summary and answer to basically what my recommendation is. So I Asked them to tell you back. Number one, how did you get the meeting? First and foremost, like, how you get that meeting with a real estate agent impacts the overall, you know, context of the meeting, the dynamic, how well you know each other or not? Was there a referral? So that's question number one is, how did you get the meeting with the real? Number two is, what was the premise or the reason for the meeting? Like, why did the realtor even agree to meet with you? Why did you ask the realtor to meet with you? So what's the expectation of the meeting? Right. That's very important. Number three, she described the meeting as being excellent. What about the meeting leads you to describe the meeting as excellent? Why was it excellent? What's the criteria you put around excellent? Was there. Did you guys have a great conversation? Was it a wonderful meal or coffee? Was there a promise of business to come? Is that why? Or is it just a general feeling of excellent? Right. Because feelings can sometimes not be accurate. Number four, how did the meeting end and were any next steps discussed? See, that's one of the biggest areas I think most originators drop the ball on is they feel good, they had a great meeting, they had a great conversation, and it's just like, oh, this meeting went really well and cool, awesome. But there's no expectations, there's no next steps that are actually formalized and articulated. And that's a very important aspect of moving things forward or not, by the way. Number five, did you look up or do you have a sense of the agent's transaction history? For example, closings, buy side versus sell side? What do their existing lender relationships look like? Okay, so I asked those five additional questions of Natalia and I said, I'll take her replies and I will share my answers for the podcast today. So, number one, how did she get the meeting? They have. They have been Facebook friends for a while and connected. They are connected on Facebook as parents. Natalia, the loan officer, suggested that they meet. She has solid production, both listing and selling. I went on to ask her, but how did the meeting end? Was there a next steps? Right. And she said the meeting ended amicably. She told me that she is not married to any lender and complained about the one who she has recently worked with. She sent me one lead and I'm still working on the lead to just give me a call. This realtor also invited Natalia to the networking group that the realtor attends. And yes, she can look up her transaction history through the mls, which is why she said what she did about the Realtor's production. Now I would definitely prefer a tool like RedR or MMI and that's because there's some additional things you can do in looking up transaction history, loan officer relationships and loyalty that might exist a variety of other things. Are they heavy on the buy side, sell side? Right, all that stuff. I always believe in going in informed versus blind in addition to right. Doing some research online on social media to find out some mutual interests, who they are, get a vibe for who they are, their style, et cetera, all that kind of jazz. Right? Those are just rapport building talking points. Hey podcast family, are you tired of chasing down real estate agents for referrals, making cold calls and feeling like you're just not getting the results you deserve? What if in just 90 days you could double your agent referrals and finally lock in that consistent monthly income you've been striving for? My Agent Classes is the ultimate program designed to help you effortlessly attract, engage and convert real estate agents into top referral partners. We've done the hard work for you. You'll get a full library of turnkey done for you presentations, a marketing automation platform to streamline the entire process. Plug and play marketing email flyers, social media posts, text messages, weekly coaching and accountability calls, plus access to a private community of high performing mortgage pros from all over the country sharing what's working in today's market. And to top it off, we'll even load you up with 200 producing agents in your local market to help you get started fast. So stop chasing agents and start building meaningful relationships that lead to real, consistent business without the stress of cold calling or feeling undervalued. And don't just take my word for it. Head on over to MortgageMarketing Pro or check the link in the show notes and you can read real success stories from mortgage pros just like you. So if you're finally ready to grow your agent referrals without chasing and have fun doing it, check out MortgageMarketing Pro today. But let me come back front and center to now. My prescription, if you will. Okay, so let's talk about the real challenge that Natalia shared is that she had this quote unquote excellent meeting with a realtor and so far nothing has happened. Well, I guess my first question is what do you expect to happen, right? You said she sent you one lead, this realtor, and yet you can't get that lead to call you back yet. Well, I don't know the total premise of the conversation, but I think that's why it's important to have context around what is the next steps. Like if she shared with you, this realtor shared with you that they are unhappy with the lender that they had just recently worked with. Obviously I'm going to unpack that and why. Tell me about that situation. Tell me about that experience, what was not pleasant about it Because I want to understand and I want to ask that real estate agent, well, if you could change anything about the way that transaction went down with that other lender, what would you change? What would you make different? What would you improve? What would you keep the same? Ideally, if you had a magic wand and you could magically have the ideal mortgage experience and lender partner magically appear in front of you, how would you describe that person? What would be their attributes? What are some of the best practices you'd want to see from them? What would the transaction look like, the follow up, the touch points, et cetera. So I want to unpack that from them and then at some point I'm going to circle back. For example, let's just take this situation of this quote unquote, lead hasn't responded yet to Natalia's outreach referral from this real estate agent. Well, I'd say after two or three attempts, I'm letting the realtor know right away. Hey, right. Sally at ReMax. I really, really appreciate that referral the other day. Just want to let you know I've made three attempts to reach out to that referral and no response yet. What I really want to do is get context on that referral. I think there's a big weakness when it comes to referral handoffs between realtor to lender. The handoff is usually weak and half assed, meaning, oh, here's, here's Bill and Mary. They're looking at buy in. You know, I talked to them three weeks ago or whatever. Here's their information, go ahead and give them a call. Like in a perfect world, I want an introduction, a text thread introduction from the realtor to that potential buyer with me on that thread and I want the realtor introducing me as part of the team. And if the relationship's not there yet, right, then at least I want the handoff because there must be a reason why this realtor already referred this lead over. There's a rare chance that it would be like we've all heard in the past of, hey, let me just throw this lead at you to whatever, let's see what you can do with it. But again, I'm going to put this back on the Loan officer. This isn't throwing Natalia under the bus because I didn't have this conversation live with Natalia. But I'm really curious to know what pre qualifying did you do with the realtor about that referral in the first place? It's like, what did you know about the referral? Who they are, their age. I want to get as much information as I possibly can about that referral from the real estate agent before I call. And as I said, I want the introduction and I want the tee up from the realtor, period. If they're not willing to do that, why, number one. Number two, maybe the relationship isn't there yet between the two of you, right? Or number three, maybe it's a junk lead, right, and they're just trying to do you a solid or whatever, get shake you off their back. I don't know. It seems like Natalia has a good rapport with this realtor and all that kind of stuff. So I'm going to assume that that's not the case. But first and foremost, I'm circling back to that realtor and I'm letting them know, hey, I tried to call this client two, three times. And by the way, how did you outreach? It doesn't say specifically because that wasn't the context of this conversation. So it's a little unfair to Natalia. She's not here to have this conversation with me. Perhaps if you'd like to be featured. By the way, you're listening to this right now and you say, hey, I'd like be featured with, you know, for an ask me anything hot seat coaching call, right? Where we take your challenge issue or whatever it is and unpack it during a conversation with me and you on the podcast. Hey, let me know. DM me. Get on Instagram. DM me. My name, Jeff Zimford. Jump into the Facebook group at Mortgage Marketing Radio. Message me, let me know that you'd like to have a ask me anything live conversation and we can reuse that on the podcast with your permission. Okay, so let me just go through some of the other things here. Again, the premise for meeting, it's like I see the connection, the social connection. That's awesome. I'm going to come back to like, what are the next steps? How did the meeting end? I think is a critical part and what drives how the meeting ended and what that. What are the next steps are driven by? What was the general context of the meeting, the conversation? Was it all social or were there some aspects of business where you identified some areas of opportunity? It sounds like there's an opportunity with the lender situation from that Realtor because they said they're not happy with the current situation. Okay, great. You already heard me talk through some questions about how to unpack that next. What I want to do is to find out more about their business. I want to ask this realtor, hey, here we are. Q4, 2024, what are your goals for the end of this year? How about through 2025, what are your plans? Right. I want to better understand what are they trying to achieve, and I want to listen for ways that I can help them through ideas, strategies, suggestions, different things like that. Right? Because I want to plan a next meeting. I want to plan a next meeting with a clear agenda that addresses that real estate agent's current challenges and opportunities, and especially any that they mentioned during the meeting. For instance, oh, I want to add 10 transactions. Oh, I want to get more listing, get more buyers. Oh, I want to specialize in this niche. Oh, I want to get better at social media. Oh, I want to improve my presence online. I want to get more organic leads, et cetera. Now, how do you get this information? Well, you've got to get good at your needs analysis, get good at asking questions, be really curious, actually care, actually care about how you can impact a real estate agent's business by asking simply relevant questions that they're struggling with and that they need help with. Shout out to my friend Wally Elleberry, who said at one point in his career, he decided to become the best Realtor he could without ever selling a home. What does that mean? It means Wally invested in the knowledge and gaining the information and the knowledge and the training and the resources so that he could provide that to his real estate agents when he did have a needs analysis interview and they said, hey, here's my biggest problems. For frustrations and challenges, Wally had a bag, a toolbox of solutions that he could share with them. Because that's called being a partner, not being a vendor. A vendor can close a loan, a vendor can follow up on a referral, Right? And all that stuff that's not really unique and different. Your customer experience, your service level, sure, that can be unique and different, but really what's unique and different is when you help somebody solve problems and that creates loyalty, that creates connection, that creates partnership, and that creates somebody willing to advocate for you, by the way. So maybe a good question to ask is, are you delivering value at the level that compels real estate agents to actually advocate for you versus do the minimum when it comes to referring You. Right, so those are some of my initial thoughts. Let me just review one more quick time here. In terms of the challenges, right? The premise of the meeting, you've got to set the premise for the meeting, how you get the meeting that obviously sets the context. And hopefully on a future podcast recording like this, we'll have a different context of somebody who was not connected via social, via parents, et cetera, and things like that. But maybe it was a more direct outreach or something like that. You know, again, once the meeting described as excellent, how do you know it was excellent? What's your criteria for a good meeting with real estate agents? As I said before, how did the meeting end? What are the next steps? Do you have a specific plan? Do you close with saying, hey, I want to. I want to thank you for sharing some of your challenges and goals with me for your business in the upcoming new year. And I think I've got two or three ideas that might be able to help you overcome some of those challenges and help you reach your goals. I'd love to get back together and two weeks and actually go over some of those ideas and see what you think. Would you be open to that? They say, sure. You get out your phone, they get out their phone and you schedule that next meeting two weeks from that day, right then and there. Don't leave the scene without having that meeting scheduled. You guys with me on that? Okay, cool. And of course, have you looked up the agent or transaction, their production level and things like that? You've got to be informed, right? You can't go in blind and just wing it and hope that it works out. I think that's one of the reasons why many originators are frustrated so often is they don't actually prepare for this meeting effectively enough to maximize their time with the real estate agent. So that said, if you would like to be featured as a hot seat on the podcast, take your question. I'll even bring you on the recording here and you and I can have a live conversation. Or you can just submit it into the podcast, Facebook page or DM me on Instagram. I hope you got some value from here today. Wherever you're watching or listening to this, leave some comments below and I'd love to see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. Bye for now. Okay, that's it for today's episode. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes. Your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to cold call again, instead building real lasting relationships with top producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations, marketing automation, weekly coaching. It's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun. So if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income, visit MortgageMarketing Pro or check the link in the show notes. And while you're there, don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.