Refinance Guides

You only get one chance to make a first impression. If you aren’t using your first contact to really connect with your audience, you may as well forget it. Unfortunately, too many loan officers are trying to capture the attention of real estate agents, but for all their efforts, they might as well be speaking another language.

What do you think an agent considers the most important problem or service that you could offer? Do you think it is customer service, competitive rates, referrals or leads, qualifying home buyers, etc? If you answered yes, you may not have spent much time around agents.

Like most of us, real estate agents are interested in the things that affect them directly - listings, sales, commissions, referrals, open houses, and marketing. Finding the most competitive rate on a loan doesn’t mean a thing to them. They want to talk about their business, real estate - not mortgages.

Focus on the Problem

If you want to capture the attention of agents you need to focus on the problems that are important to them. There are a lot of people that offer mortgages - real estate agents don’t need mortgages, and if they did there are a line of candidates waiting outside their office. What they need is someone who understands their problems - that’s where you come in.

Maybe you think you can solve their problems. So, you put together a marketing piece that gives them a solution to their problem, right? Well, no - to really have impact in your message you need to describe the problem, not the solution. Agents are more likely to “tune in” to your message when you describe a problem.

Competent and Caring Builds Curiosity

Problem-based marketing communicates two things to the real estate agent - that you are competent (you understand the problem), and you are caring (you want to help). Agents are used to a lot of empty promises from loan officers - but your message doesn’t promise anything, it simply communicates your understanding and your potential to help.

Your message will generate curiosity on the agent’s part - they will naturally want to know more about what you offer, what your solution to the problem is. And that curiosity will lead to moving the relationship forward, one step at a time. The more options you have for one-on-one interactions, the more familiarity and trust you develop. These two ingredients are essential to creating the kind of reciprocal relationship you want.

How else can you speak the language of real estate agents? Start with advertising channels associated with agents. Use channels that allow agents to discover you. Think about where do they network, what magazines, publications and newsletters appeal to them, which conferences and workshops do they attend. Again, this is just one more method to stand out from your field of competition.

With a little time and patience, you can build bilingual skills that attract agents. In your marketing efforts, what you say and how you say it can make all the difference to your business.

Jeff Nelson helps loan officers increase loan originations by attracting quality relationships with real estate agents from the development of customized relationship-building strategies.

Click here to get a free copy of the Marketing Planning Guide, a 20-page workbook designed to help you outline a strategy to become an Agent Magnet.

Visit us at http://www.loan-officer-marketing.com

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