As a business consultant helping loan officers with their sales and marketing, as well as a local insurance agent, I work with loan officers, borrowers, and homeowners. Accordingly, I truly understand how stressful the real estate/mortgage industry can be. I know, that as a loan officer, on one hand you have to originate leads and on the other you have to find loan programs that not only meet your borrowers’ needs and wants, but also those they can qualify for based on their credit, DTI, LTV, and so forth. That can be a lot of pressure. On top of it, even after submitting a strong package, the underwriter can condition for additional items, the rate can change, and closings may not go as expected. All it takes is for one hiccup to create great obstacles, frustrated borrowers, and loan fall-outs. For example, what happens when your rate increases prior to the lock or after its expiration? Or what if the borrowers’ debt increases? Or how about if the underwriter calculates the income lower than you/processor initially calculated? The slightest increase in DTI can potentially disqualify the loan.
So what can you do? How can you originate and close more loans?
The answer is pretty simple: Identify your audience, demonstrate your expertise and value, and place your borrowers in stronger financial situations.
Identify your Audience
Marketing 101, choose your target audience. If you’re the type of loan officer that says “I can help everyone,” while that may be true, the fact is, it’s diluting your marketing efforts. Rather, choose a narrower audience such as new home buyers or refinance customers. At least for campaign purposes focus on one group. You can narrow this down even further. In terms of refinance customers, you can target borrowers who are rate-sensitive, have bad credit, desire cash-out, wish to combine their first and seconds, are veterans, etc. Likewise, home buyers may include first-time buyers with little to no down-payment, move-up buyers, investors, jumbo buyers, etc. The goal is to narrow down to your exact audience and identify what single message they want to hear. Then you should create and tailor such a marketing message to them.
Demonstrate your expertise and value
In terms of a “marketing message,” the objective is to demonstrate your credibility, expertise, and value to this particular audience via the channels that reach them. Therefore, first establish what solution you plan to provide for this audience. For example, are they borrowers with bad credit looking to refinance? If so, you can provide tips on how one can improve their credit. Similarly you can show how one can pull cash-out to pay off debt and improve their credit, and subsequently refinance into a lower rate. Or let’s say your audience is comprised of first-time home buyers. If that’s the case, then you can provide resources to grants/down payment assistance programs, create awareness about high loan programs permitting higher LTVs, and/or sharing tips on how one can save for a down payment. It’s all about providing value and demonstrating your expertise.
Leverage your industry partners (i.e. Insurance Agents) to help provide your clients value and grow your business
As you’ve most likely seen, the lending/real estate industry can have lots of opportunities for cross-promoting and co-networking. For instance, let’s say your audience requires additional cash flow to pay down debt to improve their credit or save for a down payment; as an insurance agent, I can help. Here at Oak Insurance Solutions, we offer a range of insurance programs (i.e. homeowners, life, property, auto, business, workers comp, group health, and more). Therefore, we can help loan officers help their clients…
- Reduce their insurance payments and subsequently increase their cash flow to pay off debt and/or start saving for a down payment.
- Take advantage of such assets as their life insurance policies to expedite paying off debt and acquiring a down payment.
- Reduce their Debt-To-Income ratio by reducing the second “I” in “PITI”. To help you qualify more borrowers and obtain more approvals, we can reduce your borrowers’ insurance payments (while meeting the minimum insurance requirements) and subsequently reduce your borrowers’ total monthly mortgage payment. Not only does this help for qualifying purposes, but since your borrowers’ total mortgage payment will be lower than expected, you will also look extra good to your borrower, thus encouraging more referrals.
In short, we know how important it is to close your loans and originate more, therefore, we not only are another local insurance agency, but rather, want to show you how we can be your partner. As a loan officer, by sharing such things as mentioned above, you can demonstrate your expertise. You can further communicate such value to your audience by:
- Sharing these tips via social media channels your audience uses.
- Providing search engine optimized content on your website based on the words/phrases your audience searches for.
- Remaining top of mind with consistent email campaigns.
- Networking offline.
- Taking advantage of sending out mailers with other cross-promotional partners to cut costs or using programs such as EDDM.
Originating and closing more loans is not achieved overnight. In time though, such suggestions as identifying your audience, offering them value, leveraging your insurance agent to help expand and expedite results, as well as communicating a message that places them in a better financial situation via the channels that best reach them…can build you a well-known brand and a growing pipeline of borrowers.
As a preferred, local insurance agent, we’re more than just an “insurance agency.” We want to be your solution to help you originate and close more loans. We want to be your partner and help you, help your borrowers improve their financial situations. We want to help you reduce your borrowers’ financing risk in order to prevent any loan obstacles that can arise. We want to help demonstrate your expertise, credibility, and value to your leads so when they are ready to commit, they already trust and know you’re the one for the job.
Allow us to prove to you, how we can be of value. Do you have any loans in your pipeline in need of homeowners insurance? Call, text, or send us an email, whatever is easier for you!
CALL) 626.775.7850
TEXT) 626.818.8987
EMAIL ME HERE
Thank you in advance,
