A NEW APPROACH TO MARKETING TO BUILD A FIRE
One of my fondest memories of my father was his love of camping. We had a huge green army tent that could sleep our whole family of seven, plus assorted cousins and friends. We camped regularly at several locations in Michigan and Central Florida, where I learned about hiking,
The aforementioned sources are not just low hanging fruit for your business; they are ripe fruit that has fallen off the tree and are just waiting to be picked up. “But don’t I have to call referral partners and book face- to-face meetings to develop relationships that generate referrals?” Honestly, that depends. There are marketing strategies that are appropriate for each stage of business development. If you’re new to the business (or just returning) and have no relationships, pipeline, or database of closed loans, then yes. You need to be banging that phone. But if you’ve already got the “fire burning” with established relationships, a full pipeline, and a growing database, shouldn’t you build on that instead of starting a new fire? “Does marketing to my pipeline and database actually work?” clients often ask. Our client Brandon increased his business by 633% in 12 months, just by marketing to his pipeline. Jay went from five closings to 20 closings per month, just by marketing to his database. “Are those results typical?” Of course not. According to the 80/20 rule, if 100 loan officers close 250 loans in a month, just 20 of them will close 200 (or 10 each). That means that the other 80 “typical” loan officers will close the other 50 between them (or 5/8 of one loan each month). Then again, the typical loan officer doesn’t market to their pipeline or database. They are too busy starting new fires that go out before they get hot. The reason this “inside” marketing works is that when it is done properly, it doesn’t look like marketing. It looks a lot like helping, and it is much easier than starting new relationships from scratch. So, do you want to build your business the hard way or the easy way? If this resonates with you, why not schedule a free strategy call? We’ll help you take an inventory of the business assets you have and map out a blueprint to help you move forward by using what you have to get what you want. Who knows? You may discover that you have a burning fire you didn’t even know about.
canoeing, exploring and, of course, fire building. I really loved it when it was cold and we all sat around the fire to stay warm and enjoy one another’s company. One of our early lessons was pretty straight forward. What do you do if you want more heat? Do you carefully build on the fire you already have, or start a whole new fire from scratch, hoping that the combined heat of them will somehow warm your campsite? The first choice is the obvious answer. Yet, when I interview loan officers across the country to help them map out their success strategies for the next 12 months, an alarming number of them choose the second. What do campfires have to do with the mortgage industry? A fire is certainly an asset to your camping experience. It serves more than one purpose, both providing warmth and acting as a center of activity. You need to expend time, energy, and resources to create it, but once it is going, it’s easy to maintain. Much of the same can be said of the marketing for your mortgage business. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen loan officers walk right past a blazing fire in their marketing in order to try to start a brand new one. I’m frequently on the phone with people who are closing five, eight, 10, 12, or even more loans per month and never reach out to their existing pipeline or their closed loan database for more business.
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