Ever wonder why buyers choose one loan officer over the other? It's one of those things that used to keep me up at night until I finally discovered the answers. So in the next few articles I want to share with you what I found and how you can use it to immediately increase your commissions and decrease your marketing expenses.
By the way, before we get too deep here let me just point out that decreasing your marketing expenses is sometimes even more profitable than just generating more income. Over the past eight years I have worked with dozens of company owners and top originators in my private coaching groups. Some of the biggest increases in their incomes came from me showing them the ways to cut their marketing expenses! They made their marketing efforts more targeted and accountable and the result was major jumps in their net incomes.
So let's get back to the first reason why buyers don't choose to do business with you - They don't want what you are offering.
So let's start at the very beginning and understand the difference between brand advertising and emotional direct response marketing. In brand type advertising you are called by a sales rep for a media firm and told that the only way you can succeed is by getting your name out there.
They go on to explain that you want to be on your prospect's mind whenever they are thinking about getting a mortgage. I went along with this myself when I was first getting started and embarrassingly for many years after that.
Here is the problem: none of us have the money needed to "really" get our name out there. Think Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds even Bank Of America. All of them have multi-million dollar budgets they use just to get their names out there. We don't.
Next, the problem with brand advertising is that you are paying for eyeballs. Sounds kind of weird, huh? If you take out an ad in your city's biggest newspaper they will charge you based on their subscription numbers. This translates to how many eyeballs will see your ad. The same is for radio (well actually it's ears) and television advertising.
However, 99% of the people reading the ad either don't need a mortgage or may already have a relationship in place. Simply stated you are wasting your money!
So, what should you do? The better way I found was to use emotional direct response marketing. Now you can target only the people who are prospects for your service and send them a message that they will likely respond to.
It also allows you to finally make every marketing campaign, and every penny you spend on it trackable and accountable.
For example, let's say you are doing reverse mortgages. Wouldn't it be better to only market to people who are likely to need the program and fit its criteria? Now you send them marketing campaigns and have response devices in the campaigns that let's you know if your dollars invested are producing results.
In my case, I prefer to send them to a toll free telephone number (
That way they get to hear my message and I can track responses. Now isn't that a better use of your time and money than some big billboard, restaurant placemat or a grocery store shopping cart?
In next week's article I will cover the second reason why a buyer wouldn't choose you, namely They Can't Afford It and How to Overcome That. So stay tuned.
Brian Sacks is the CEO of
