To achieve something new, you have to implement new habits (which is easier said than done for most of us). But overtime, even the little changes add up if you’re consistent. Five habits to integrate into your mortgage business to close more deals as a loan officer this year include setting up your appointments with purpose, being your borrowers’ guide, employing empathy, staying on top of your pipeline with follow ups, and calling new leads ASAP.
Key Takeaways
- Changing your habits can take time
- These five habits optimize your schedule so you can tackle daily tasks while connecting with borrowers and growing your relationships
- The right systems and processes can help you stick to your habits
Are you a loan officer who keeps trying to do it all?
You know you’re a loan officer when your to do list keeps growing no matter how much you accomplished in your day. But you didn’t sign up to be a juggler, and if you keep trying to juggle all the cold calls, emails, meetings, and coffee dates, then you’re eventually going to hit a wall. We see loan officers fall into this trap every month. The ones who keep trying to do everything alone end up experiencing one of two things: A) They get nothing done at all or B) They get mediocre results. And neither scenario is sustainable for a mortgage business.
These five habits can offer guardrails to protect you from burnout and pipeline bloat.
Habit #1: Give Your Appointments Purpose
This might seem obvious to most loan officers, but if you truly want to grow your mortgage business, you need to understand that it’s a numbers game. The more appointments that end up on your schedule, the more connections you can make that eventually turn into actual closed and funded loans.
But the number of connections is only part of the equation. How many leads you have in your pipeline fulfills your quantitative goals, but you also need qualitative goals to ensure that the leads you’re getting are quality. From working with hundreds of LOs over the years, we’ve learned that “inbound leads” typically offer much higher quality conversations and are much easier to convert than “outbound leads.”
And the most effective way to connect with inbound leads is to consistently educate and nurture them through videos and guides to build their confidence and trust before they even schedule an appointment with you. This also helps them understand exactly what to expect, which saves you both a lot of time during the lengthy process of getting a mortgage.
With the right tools, you can automate the scheduling process so leads and prospects book appointments on your calendar without the hassle of coordinating each individual appointment.
Habit #2: Be Your Borrowers’ Guide
Anything you can do to reassure your clients through the homebuying process is a win for you as a loan officer because it deepens the relationship and provides value to your borrowers. If you stay organized and make it easy for your client to either upload or send you their documents, then they become significantly more likely to convert to close.
Let’s face it. Life happens and people get distracted even if they’re serious about owning a home and have the intentions to keep the process moving. We’ve seen firsthand how automated follow-ups can go a long way in speeding up the process between lead and close without sacrificing a relationship with them.
In fact, the less time you can spend on menial tasks, the more time you have to get to know the borrowers’ life circumstances and dreams beyond obtaining a mortgage.
Habit #3: Have Some Empathy
Imagine. A new lead just scheduled their appointment with you, so you get excited and take the time to prepare all the learning and application materials. But then… crickets. They don’t show up. Bummer, right?
The truth is every loan officer has this happen from time to time. And if you haven’t yet, then I have some news for you…it’s going to happen. It can be hard not to take it personally, but hard feelings can get in the way of your mortgage business, so it’s best to extend a little bit of empathy and move forward.
Following up with clients lets them know that you’re still thinking about them and won’t give up on them during a process that is likely already intimidating for them. Nowadays, you can even automate the follow-up process to get people rescheduled completely hassle-free.
Habit #4: Follow Up with the Ones That Ghosted You
It’s common for loan officers to worry about being “too pushy” to follow up with leads that got stuck somewhere in their pipeline. But the truth is that some leads just need an extra nudge to help them remember that home ownership is possible for them and that there’s no better time than the present to move forward with their application.
Remember: If you’re not reaching out to these prospects and clients, someone else will.
Habit #5: Call New Leads ASAP
Studies show it usually takes a business owner, on average, 8-12 touchpoints to get a meaningful response from a prospect. Additionally, decreasing the time between the touchpoints plays the biggest role in building a relationship and getting prospects to convert.
For loan officers, this means you need to actually pick up the phone and call your leads ASAP. What we’ve seen is that the smaller the gap between getting a lead’s contact information and reaching out to them, the greater the chance of them eventually closing a deal with you. And a custom CRM with automations can actually leave your leads personalized voicemails or auto-dial them saving you hours each week.
Habits and Automations
At the end of the day, it’s easy to feel intimidated by something you might not be familiar with, but loan officers have nothing to fear when it comes to automations. The best automations don’t just save you time and money, they help you do more.
Book more appointments, close more deals, and connect with more clients.
That being said, it’s also common for loan officers to try to automate 100% of their process. The problem we’ve seen with this is that it gets rid of all the human interaction that your clients need to feel confident through their home-buying journey. So, what we’ve done at Good Vibe Squad is created a hybrid automation system that takes care of things like scheduling appointments and follow ups but still leaves room for relationship building, too.
The number one thing to remember when it comes to automations is that there are no automations to replace 100% of what you do. They’re there to support you and add to your toolbox so you can get into the habit of shifting your focus away from the tasks that eat up your time every day to focus on more high-level aspects of your mortgage business.
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Think you have the habits of a successful LO and ready to take your mortgage business to the next level? We can help. See why we’re the #1 lender preferred growth partner and an award-winning agency. Give us a call today.
