In this particular case, she didn’t initially trust my answer, because three other people had told her it couldn’t be done. And so I sent an email to my head underwriter. He got in touch with Fannie Mae. They sent him the guidelines. I showed them to her. So I actually prove to my clients that I’m credible because what I’m saying is coming straight from the agency or whoever it is that needs to tell us something.
I use to call myself a guideline guru. In fact, I taught one time in a national mortgage conference. My niche was and is knowing guidelines. I think that’s a big piece of it that I do. I know where to go look for them and I can show people and prove to them that we can do what somebody else might have said that wasn’t accurate.
Jeremy: One of the challenges that a lot of loan officers here face is balancing, selling with marketing. And obviously you know marketing ability is important. What advice would you suggest to others as far as marketing their business?
Sue: Consistency. You have to be consistent in your marketing. We may be a little bit unique here. In our region we have somebody who is six an a half hours away from me. I call it my magic marketing. I send her a client’s name, address, phone number, email address and they … who referred them to me and she markets to them on my behalf. So like six months or to a year and some case’s depending on the situation is. They’re continually getting something that looks as if it’s coming from me. All my marketing is done by somebody else on my behalf.
So I think that’s a huge thing is that it’s consistent, ongoing. We keep a database and I get calls from people two years later. “Hey, you know I talked to you back in two thousand thirteen.” And when that comes back I know where I need to look it up see who they are what we need to talk about and who referred them to me. And then I refer them back to the referring person and that gives me credibility a whole lot with the realtors cause their people big … Cause they don’t remember that client from two years ago. So I think consistency with marketing is huge.
Jeremy: Yes, absolutely. I mean so many loan officer’s you know they kind of sporadically do marketing and then they call a previous client who says, “Oh my gosh, I forgot to call you because someone reached out at the right time.”
Sue: I’m the average age of a loan officer. I am 54. So one of the things I use because I love technology and I hate technology. I’m a touchy feeling kind of person. I keep a spreadsheet in Google Docs.
My loan partner has access to it. We can access it anywhere. And we put in every name in there and we color code it. If they have credit issues. If they’re probably a dead deal. If we sent a “prequel”. If they did an application but they haven’t. We have all these different color codes, and we refer to it consistently. And everyday we’re calling people on that and going back months or years.
My area it starts to slow down a little bit. Like I said, we’re in a resort area. So the summer is banging. The spring is banging. Winter not so much. Fall it’s still good. But when we have some down time we go back through our Google Docs lead tracker and just start calling people. So I guess beyond consistency, organization in your marketing is critical.
Jeremy: Right. And what do you think separates the top loan officers from others?
Sue: Knowledge and consistency. I know I keep saying it. I know I’m consistent in using the word consistency. But, I just think that’s a huge thing. You’ve got to be.
Be available to your clients you know. Make those follow up calls. Make the marketing pieces that you need to send out. I think being available is a huge thing for top producing ones. Loan officers that actually work on their business and not just in their business.
I think the other thing is the knowledge piece you know. I’m … I use to think I was the best guru about guideline’s that I knew. But turns out we have somebody else in our company who’s even better. And what he and I do is we’re always … When we get new updates from Fannie Mae, Fanny Back whoever.
So I think that’s the difference. A lot of loan officers, if something appears to be a little bit difficult they’ll just drop it and forget it. And you know it may just be that one client you think you’re disappointing but that one client may be in contact there’s two realtors involved. There’s at least one seller involved, if not the seller of that office they’re buying. A lot of people you just drop the ball. So I think that the fact that you have the knowledge and you are consistent in how you market and serve makes a huge difference.
Jeremy: Thank you so much for your time, Sue. How can people learn more about you and get in touch with you?
Sue: Thank you, Jeremy. People can visit my website www.sue-botelho.com or call my office directly at (850) 362-6901.
