Loan Officers: it’s you and Rocket Mortgage, stepping in the ring. It’s time. It’s time to go Toe-to-Toe and determine who’s really the best. Are you ready? Are you prepared? Do you know HOW you’re going engage in this fight? Do you have what it takes, not just to be Competitive, but to actually win this battle?
Unfortunately, (for some), there are a LOT of LO’s that are either A.) Clueless about HOW to Fight this Fight… or B.) Ignoring the Issue Altogether. Neither of these positions are where YOU want to be – and to stay in this place is flat out Reckless and Dangerous… to you, your business, and to those you’re providing for.
Today Jay talks about your need to have a compelling Value Proposition… to have Distinctives in your business. To define the ways that you are Different and Better than your competition. Whether you are a LO or a RE Agent, if you want to THRIVE in the marketplace today, and well into the future, you NEED to be able to clearly articulate the VALUE you bring to each transaction.
Don’t turn a blind eye to this… there are REAL answers, real Solutions, real ways to Counter the obstacles in your way. But it’s going to take effort on your part. You’re going to have to be forward thinking. You can’t get by with ‘same ol same ol’ – you have to embrace the challenge. You’ve got to BELIEVE that you CAN be Different, that you can be Better.
You CAN deliver the type of Value that is NEEDED in the mortgage and RE industries… so much so that your partners and clients can’t even fathom doing business without you.
If this message resonates with you, then what is your answer to this question: “What’s the next step you need to take to develop a Clear and Compelling Value Proposition?”
Full Transcript Below:
Hey, guys. It’s Jay Hughes. Hope you having a great day today.
Today was a coaching day for me, which means it was calls all day long, dealing with private clients, working with private clients and kind of working through their issues. There was something that came up over and over today, which is not unusual, not at all. But a couple of my calls in particular, like this was a critical component, that we spent a lot of time on. It’s an issue I’m very passionate about and you should be able to pick that up right now.
I’m passionate about it because, well, I mean, I care about you. I care about you, your business, and I don’t want you to just survive in this business. I want you to thrive. I want you to thrive. So, this particular message, this video, I’m going to use more terminology that’s designed for loan officers, but real estate agents, don’t tune out. The messages here is for you as well. The principles are identical for you. So listen up, tune your ears in.
So, loan officers, let me ask you how are you different than your competition? How are you different than your competition? Have you been in this business so long and you see it—you see mortgage lending as a commodity and you can’t see it any other way? If that’s where you are, man, I want to—like I said, I want to help you. I want to shake you and wake you up. That’s not going to get it done, going forward. You cannot thrive in mortgage lending if you’re thinking anything like commodity. You have to have distinctive, things that make you different better, ways of providing more value to your clients, referral partners, prospective clients. You have to have that nailed. Because it—for the mortgage folks out there, you have online lenders, rocket mortgage and the like that have clear value propositions. They bring a compelling message to the market: convenience, pricing, everything’s done online which makes it simple. But, look, there are tons of counters to all of that.
I’m a huge believer in the value of a great loan originator with a great team behind them. I mean, there’s too many transactions that have gone sideways. Talk to your real estate agents and ask them. More often than not, when you have a transaction that goes sideways, if there’s problems, is it with a great originator or is it with an online lender where there isn’t even—perhaps there isn’t even a clear point of contact? They’ll make that clear to you. Just knowing that, that isn’t enough. Knowing that information isn’t enough. You have to go out into the marketplace with your own message. We call that, your message there, is a value proposition. You have to have a clear value proposition. How you’re different and how you’re better.
A value proposition is comprised of a few different things. I wanted to name two, at least, quickly today. You need to think about the principles the values, the things that are kind of the cornerstone of your business, the things that you’re anchored on, it’s the reason why you get out of bed in the morning, it’s defining culture for you and your team, all the things that you care about. Those are distinctive, those are things that make you different than other lenders in your office than other street originators that you compete against every day as well as the likes of online lenders, rocket mortgage. You have to know those. You have to think about those and define those, because if you’re just doing it to collect a paycheck, you’re not going to be in this business very long. Or, you’re certainly not going to do a lot of repeat business. It’s got to be—your business needs to transcend you. It’s bigger than you. God has designed us to be passionate about things that are bigger than ourselves. Okay? So that’s number one, that propositions you got to think about you, you got to think about the core aspects of your business. The why. Why are you doing what you’re doing and then beat that drum out of the marketplace. This is what we care about and you demonstrate that both in word, but also in deed. If you value serving clients, that’s what you’re really, really passionate about, then that’s going to come out both in word but also in how you practice that aspect of your business. You have to make sure that your team has bought into that. It’s not just about we’re trying to close five million this month. I mean, that would be great but why? Why are we trying to do that? Because you have to have that nailed so that everyone’s rowing together. The purpose has to be bigger than just you, bigger than just the individual egos on the team. It’s got to be bigger than that. So, that’s number one. In order to have a clear value proposition, you’ve got to define these key characteristics that you really care about. The distinctive with your team.
The other aspect of a value proposition in my mind, at least the next most important, is what I would say is expertise. What is the expertise that you bring to the marketplace? Because if you’re coming in with the attitude, if you bring to the marketplace an attitude that, “Well, yeah. I mean, I’m a loan originator. I can help anyone, anywhere, anytime with any product. I can provide relatively competitive pricing. I’m here to help you.” That is not a compelling value proposition. Those that are the most successful pick-a-lane to own the space that they are, not just comfortable in, but they’re at their absolute best in that particular space.
For loan officers, it doesn’t have to be product specific. It could be VA loans, it could be FHA loans, it could be first-time homebuyer. But it doesn’t have to be product specific. It can be related to geography, so a particular zip code or a particularly area of town, might be condo, might be a deluxe market. There’s all kinds of things that you can, both you have to become an expert in, you have to embrace that you’re an expert in this, and then you have to go out to the world. You have to go out to your marketplace with this message. Back to the earlier point, here’s the things that we really, really care about. This is what we are about, me, my team or group. We’re passionate about x, y, z, and then you couple that together with the expertise piece that “I’m an expert in this business. I own this space.” That’s not necessarily the wording that you would use, because you want to still come across as humble, in my opinion. So, we’re not saying an expert who is overconfident and annoyingly so, not at all, but you do have to. You have to go to the market with a message that articulates it like “I own this space and because I care about you. I want to serve you. I’m the best person to help you do that.”
The combination of those two things brings value to the marketplace. Now, it’s not a commodity anymore. It’s not a commodity, so you can’t just—if you’re a borrower, you can’t just price. You versus rocket mortgage, that’s apples to oranges. That’s what you want it to be. You do not want to go and just simply be price versus rocket mortgage. You’re going to lose. You can’t win the ad-spend game with rocket mortgage. So, you’re left with the options of either giving up completely, you’re going to be out of the business, you’re left with ignoring what’s going on around you and doing the same old thing. Maybe you’re not intentionally going to be getting out of the business, but you will be by default. Because you’re not going to be able to survive as more and more of the world is moving online e-commerce. Amazon is only going to get bigger, not smaller, right? So, rocket mortgage is not going away. You have to have a compelling message to compete against. And then once you have it, then it’s not a matter of competing. Now it’s a matter of thriving and really getting after it.
So a little bit of a rant. I’m sorry for that, a little bit, I’m not that sorry. But I hope that energizes some of you just to stop and to think and go, “Yeah, you know what, I need to get away. I need to unplug. I need to think about my business for 2019 and how am I different, how are we better.” If I’ve got a loan officer assistant or two, “Am I articulating my message, our message as a group enough to them? Do they understand the distinctive? Do they know why it’s important to pick up the phone on the first ring?” or whatever. There’s a million things that you can be passionate about to demonstrate to your customers, your clients, your referral partners, how you’re different and what you’re passionate about.
So, I hope you’ll take a few minutes today or sometimes this week and stop and do that. Again, real estate agents, I hope you stayed in with this all the way to the end, because everything that I talked about today in the terms of using language design for loan officers, it’s just as applicable for you. How are you an expert? In what way can you bring value that’s different than those you’re competing against? Okay. So think about that today and I can guarantee I’ll be talking about this more in the future. If you have questions, shoot me an e-mail or you can add your comments below and we’ll talk to you soon. Have a great day. Bye.