Staying Afloat in Todays Mortgage Market

As the refinance boom is quickly coming to an end, if not so already in the mortgage industry. It is critical to keep working in order to keep those leads coming your way.

Here are a few ideas to keep your name, products, and services in front of potential customers.

For starters, revisit every refinance you have done over the last few years. Pull out the customers that you put into an interest only, arm, cosi, or similar product.

The terms on types of loans such as these will be coming due shortly, and your customers will be faced with some decision making, here is your chance to make it easy on them.

So start making phone calls and sending out mailers today. Get your name back in front of their face and let them know you are still here and have many products to offer that would fit their needs.

Your next step would be networking. If you are in sales, nothing can be more important than networking. So, if you are not doing it, start. And if you are doing it now, do it more.

No matter how much time you are spending in the office, spend less.

Think about it, how much time do you actually spend selling in a day?

On average, a sales person spends two hours a day selling. Why are they in sales to begin with.

Join networking groups, chambers of commerce, rotary’s, community involvement programs, etc., etc.

And, don’t forget your friends and family, they should be a big part of any sales persons’ referral arsenal.

Never shy away from talking yourself up at family gatherings or bar-b-ques.

There is always somebody in a crowd that needs or knows someone that needs to refinance or purchase a home. So keep the business cards handy.

Also, don’t forget about your past customers. Give them a call to follow up and make sure they are still satisfied. And, while you have them on the phone, let them know you would appreciate any business they could send your way.

How To Think Like A Publicist To Achieve Like A Star

Have you picked out your Oscar’s night outfit? I have. You should. Have you thought about what you will say when you accept your award? I have. You should. At least in your mind, that wonderful playground for imagination. The very place we are going to venture today for great publicity ideas. Razzle, dazzle, sparkle, and shine. Isn’t this how we think all those stars get to the Oscars in the first place? However, it’s less glitter, and more planning that creates the reality. First comes the dream, then the work, then usually a host of disappointments to test the resolve, then a series of small successes, and then….publicity. It is a fairly predictable road, but often as business people we forget to plan our own personal Oscar’s night. We also miss the key ingredient, publicity. Marketing is what gets you in front of your target market to make the sale. Publicity is the spot light that shines on you and solidifies you with mass appeal as the popular expert in your field. You drive marketing to your buyers. Publicity drives the masses of buyers to you.

When your focus has been marketing it’s a little tricky to change your paradigm to publicity. However, the important difference between marketing and publicity is your target audience. You are no longer pitching to buyers of your product or service, now your audience is the media. This means editors and producers. These important people are looking for one thing, the story. A unique story. Something inspirational, motivational, newsworthy, or educational. Period. Nothing else will do. In order to be successful in the media you have to think like a publicist and find your unique story. If you don’t have a story, it’s time to create one. What is unique about you or your business? Sometimes it’s an attitude. Like the employer that regularly asked her employees what they didn’t like about their jobs and then proceeded to shift responsibilities. It may be an event, like a charitable event that raises money for starving children but serves beans and rice at the gala event to demonstrate how it feels to be poor. It may be your wit, your way of thinking, what you care most about, or how you integrate your values into your business. Only, you can find it, but trust me it’s there.

Begin to explore your own unique angles and media curves by keeping notes on your thoughts and attitudes. Scribble, color, or paint it out, it really doesn’t matter as long as you begin to devote time to exploring your “story”. Not your ad, not your price, not your product, but your story.

Once you’ve angled into your own unique media offerings, find the appropriate avenues to make your pitch. Take care though; the media should always be treated with good will and respect. Do not, I repeat, do not go for the hard sell. This is not the time. If you must, save the hard sell for marketing, or better yet, chuck it all together. Do not wheedle, whine, or beg the media. Make your pitch, respect their time, and their decision then work toward building long-term relationships. In the end, you’ll have the kind of names in your pocket to begin dropping at parties, and you will be a star! A star with the mind of a publicist.

7 Keys In Getting Your Prospects To Act

Today I would like to look at the matter of persuasion. How do you get your prospects to take action?

I remember as a door-to-door salesman, my instructor often said that you must understand ‘why people buy’. It has a certain ring to it doesn’t it? If you know why people buy then you can gear your ads towards these ‘psychological buttons’.

Before I go any further, I would just like to mention that this is in no way ‘manipulation’. It’s just common sense that you don’t approach someone about an important decision when they’re angry. Every wise wife knows how to place their husband in that ‘mood’ before they spring their special request on him!

Even kids wait until their parents are in a good mood before they tell them the cost of the special outfit that they MUST have.

Having cleared the air let’s look at these important principles.

1. Scarcity - People go after those opportunities or products that are limited in availability. That’s why you must show in your ad that your offer is for a limited time or in limited quantities. Field tests have shown that limited-quantity ads pull much better than limited-time ads. Procrastination is still a large part of human nature, so there’re always those who would wait until the last minute to act. If the prospect knows that the item is in limited quantity, there’s no way of determining when they’d be all sold out.

2. Herding Instinct - Your prospects will better respond to your ad if you can show that people JUST LIKE them are responding. Just recently a high school senior knocked on my door selling magazine subscription for a college scholarship program. She used that number on me - she was sure to let me know that my neighbors had bought subscriptions! We all just want to keep up with our neighbors. Needless to say, I fell for it. Whether I would read the magazine is another story.

I often point this out to my wife and you can try looking for this pattern as well. You would seldom find a satellite dish on a single home on a block. You often find dish receivers in pairs or more. One neighbor gets that service and the other follows. The same goes for gardens and lawns. Nobody wants to be the sore thumb! This is where the use of testimonials comes in. Your testimonials say “See, a lot of people like you are making this decision”. Use lots of testimonials.

3. The desire to pay back a good deed - If someone thinks that you’ve given him or her something of value then there is a strong desire to pay you back the favor. One example is that of AOL that marketed their service by giving away those floppy disks. They literally blanketed the USA with these floppy disks. They still do but now with CDs and 1000 hrs free etc. Do you think that this is working for AOL?

In your marketing efforts you must give something of value FIRST - this builds loyalty and results. Always show the value of what your ‘free’ service is - never just say ‘FREE’. Show the value of the gift then say that it is free. This is important because you want the person to place value on your bonus. (You’ll notice that in all the bonus ebooks that I’ve given through these articles that I first tell you the value of them -and even go out of my way to prove the value sometimes.)

4. Authority - People will listen to you if they see that you have authority on your subject. There was a TV commercial that used this line - “My son-in-law recommended that I take _____ for my heartburn. Why should I listen to him you say? He’s a doctor”. You may think that you do not have authority on what you are advertising. In this case appeal to authority figures - quote from a respected journal, expert … you get the idea.

5. Commitment - If someone has made a PUBLIC commitment to something then they are more likely to follow through. Find some way of getting someone to make a commitment and he or she’s more likely to follow through than if they did not. That’s why any motivational trainer would tell you that it’s important to WRITE your goals down -you are more likely to complete them!

Just today I received a sales letter in the mail for which I had to send for free information. My physical act of commitment was to peel a nice red label marked “free” and place it in a designated spot on the mail back card. Now you know why they make you do this little silly stuff.

Only if weddings worked the same way!

6. Your ‘likability’ - People would respond to your offer if they like you. It’s hard to sell to someone to whom you have no relationship even if it’s just a ‘perceived’ relationship. This is one of the most overlooked areas of marketing on the Internet.

The Internet can seem a little cold sometimes. I’ve found that even after making email contact with my prospect I still have to make voice contact before they sign up for my offers. At the same time the Internet is a wonderful tool to build relationships through emails, message boards, instant messages … the list goes on. It’s a known fact that someone would buy from you if THEY think that YOU like them. Give people value, more than they expect and you have a customer for life!

7. The eternal “what’s in it for me?” principle - As your prospect read your ad this is the question they are seeking an answer to. Make sure that you give them plenty of answers. Appeal to their desire for recognition, wealth, better health, and security -yes all those nice things on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - all the way up to self-actualization. (Check out a Psychology 101 text book if you are not familiar with Maslow -you will glad you did.) But do not forget to appeal to their FEAR of pain and loss.

Field research has shown that people are more responsive to loss than gain. Be sure to show them what they would LOSE if they don’t get your product.

Read through your sales letters again and see if these buttons

Mortgage Marketing in the 21st Century

For loan officers and mortgage brokers, marketing the benefits of your products to your potential customers is very important to the success of your business. It is also important that you keep up with your competition’s marketing concepts.

Marketing can rear its head in many ways. Verbally, through networking. Business cards, mailers, flyers, billboards, radio, television, etc.

The point of the above named marketing methods is to get yourself and your products in front of your potential clients.

In the 21st century, the internet has become a very important and powerful medium in the world of marketing.

So it is very important that you keep up with it, because you better believe that your competition is.

Most mortgage companies, if not all mortgage companies by now, have web sites that you can refer people to, so that they may learn more about your company.

These web sites are great, but it doesn’t tell the consumer anything about you personally. And, more than likely, there is an 800 number leading them in a direction other than yours.

Here is where you might want to consider building your own personal blog about yourself and the services you have to offer. This way, you can direct your potential customers here to learn more about you and your products and services.

One of the many benefits to having a blog is for when you are dealing with a customer that is out of state, and you would never have the opportunity to meet them face to face.

Best of all, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist in order to build a blog. They are free, easy, and fun to build.

The internet provides a lot of great resources for building your own blog. You just register with a blogging site, choose a name for your blog, and they will provide you with the URL, and template.

The entire set up of a blog takes no more than five minutes.

Once finished setting it up, be sure to add a photo of yourself and a brief biography. As well as mortgage material you feel is important to your customers along with a description of your products you believe will be beneficial to their needs.

Than, every day you can add something new about yourself, your products, or the mortgage industry to give your customers a reason to keep returning to your blog day after day.

Once all is in place, be sure to add your blog address to your e-mail and your business card.

End conversations with customers by asking them to visit your blog, it is a great way for them to get to know you better, which is very important when it comes to building relationships.

Building a blog is very easy and very fun. And it can really be beneficial to you when it comes to building your book of business.

So give it a shot, you won’t regret it.

How To Make Prospecting And Selling Easy!

Most people starting a business forget about the most important part. They spend loads of time picking just the right product or service to sell. They’ll carefully weight the best kinds of office equipment to buy. They’ll even fuss endlessly over their workplace decor.

But none of that holds a candle to what is most assuredly the core of any new business: you can’t succeed until you master prospecting and selling!

“But I’m really good at what I do. Won’t word just get out and people will find me and want to buy?” you say.

Don’t bet on it. We live in a busy, crowded world where thousands of businesses are shouting their marketing messages. If you don’t get in there and promote — and promote WELL — your customer base will resemble a trickle more than an avalanche.

Here are several proven methods for finding lots of new prospects and turning them into customers. Then I’ll show you an exceptionally EASY way to do all this on a shoestring.

1) Get a web site, get it listed on search engines, and let your site grab prospects 24/7. By now you’ve surely seen scads of small businesses doing this. For those who do it right, the Net can pull in lots of new customers with very little effort. But remember, it’s not as easy as some make it look. Your site has to be good, your copy has to be right, and you must be visible in search engines to make the magic happen.

2) Sell over the telephone. I love email, and face-to-face meetings will always have their place, but good ol’ telephone conversations are a top-notch selling strategy. Prospects feel like they’ve made a personal connection with you when you give them information over the phone.

3) Finally, method number 3 is the one to use if you don’t want to or don’t know how to build your own professional web site, or can’t bear the idea of talking to hundreds of strangers on the phone.

Frankly, this 3rd method has become the only method I truly recommend to small businesses and individuals: OUTSOURCING. These days, you can OUTSOURCE all your online promotion and selling to companies that specialize in doing the work for you.

In the past, that would have meant spending tens of thousands per month to hire an outside selling team. Today, with online and telephone automation reaching new heights, you can have all the advertising, phone calls, and closing done for you by the pros for about what it costs to get a decent home office computer set-up.

Don’t hesitate, do it! Getting a really good marketing, prospecting, and selling machine working for you is essential to your success!

Sell Your Successes: 3 Techniques That Can Lower Your Marketing Costs & Energize Your Business

I attended a seminar the other day at a local trade show and one thing that they mentioned almost in passing that inspired me was the critical concept of “selling your successes”.

Hmmm… “Sell your successes” &ndash What could that mean?

Simply put, when you walk the talk, talk the walk. Adjust your marketing and sales conversations and materials to reflect how your product or services helped someone achieve what they wanted.

Now how do you do this? Well here are 3 techniques that when applied effectively can lower your marketing costs & energize your business.

1. Let ‘Testimonials’ Pave the Way

To best illustrate this technique, let me share with you a line that I use often that goes something like this: “If I tell you that I’m great at what I do, at best you’ll take it with a grain of salt, but if an unbiased third-party tells you that I’m great at what I do, you’ll tend to believe them. In other words, people tend to give more credence to what someone else says about you rather than what you say about yourself.

So use every opportunity to gain testimonials about you, your team, your product, your service, or your business in general. Collecting and effectively using testimonials should become a key marketing strategy for your business.

2. Using ‘Stories’ to Get Your Point Across

Storytelling has been around since the beginning of mankind and when used properly can illustrate your point better than almost any other way. Stories have the power to capture and engage the listener in a softened manner &ndash not the hard selling approach that people typically run away from. Stories also have the unique ability to take complex ideas and make them easy to understand &ndash without a dissertation on the subject.

My best advice here is to model other great storytellers. Take one of my favorites for instance, Mark Victor Hansen. Just look at his Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books. Essentially each chapter is a story effectively illustrating a point that touches, moves, and inspires its readers.

So you may be tempted to say, well that’s easy for him, but I’m no Mark Victor Hansen. Now maybe you potentially are or aren’t, however my point is, that this is a very learnable skill, people aren’t born with it. They develop it by continually practicing and honing it.

3. Sharing ‘Case Studies’ to Illustrate what’s Possible

Case studies are a sure-fire way to give your prospect a mental picture of what’s possible for their business should they engage you help. These are particularly great for those prospects who need to see it themselves in order to believe it. Case studies illustrate tangible solutions &ndash they tend to instill a deeper level of confidence in your prospect that you can get it done for them. Essentially, you have a track record of success to draw upon.

Now when using any or all of the 3 techniques just discussed, remember that just like telling a joke, timing and delivery are critical to their success. For example placing a testimonial in your sales letter in just the right spot where you are looking to establish credibility is key to getting your prospect to keep reading.

These techniques can also play a critical role in humanizing your business and its offerings &ndash placing real people behind your messages. For example, instead of pounding a prospect with every possible service you offer and the features and benefits of each, try using a short story to simplify a complicated solution that you implemented for a similar customer. Or how about using a relevant case study in a sales presentation illustrating how your service helped a client with similar needs to the prospect you’re presenting to.

Try integrating these techniques into your everyday marketing and realize the positive residual effects they can bring.