Capitalizing on Every Loan to Create Referrals

Today's Business & Life Tip, is part two of the subject matter of marketing to your clients while you’re working with them and the importance and critical nature of seizing that opportunity when you have a captive audience for 45 to 60 days.

I think one of the things that I want to share something that Greg Frost, way back maybe 20 years or so ago shared, that I thought was such a profound statement which was, “That every single transaction you do has the opportunity to generate business from six or seven or eight additional people.” You’ve got agents on both sides, you’ve got accountants involved, you’ve got insurance agents, you’ve got the seller on the transaction, certainly the buyer, etc – it’s a formidable list.

The story that I told you in the last video about the four seasons, really was symbolic of them knowing what it was that we needed. They knew our profile, right. Husband and wife, two young children, coming to a beach resort. They had it all dialed in, it was like they knew exactly what we needed.

The first thing that I really want you to be doing is, I want you as a team to be taking note. If a realtor or a client, or an accountant, or a financial planner or insurance agent asks you for something – take note of that. Because what they’re really saying to you is your system doesn’t provide me with what I need. Now make the modifications and adjustments that, here’s an example: I was once asked by an accountant for a final HUD on a client that I had closed a purchase transaction for six months prior because he was preparing their tax returns in late March, that was my clue. We should be providing every CPA on every transaction with a copy of the final HUD so they never have to ask for that. I actually picked up an outstanding CPA as a result of doing that strategy way back in the day and I still use them. Here we are 15 years later as my accountant, and he was good for about 20 referrals every single year. 

What are some of the other things that we did to predict the needs of our clients to create an addictive experience?

When our clients would come into the office, we knew that in many cases they might be hungry or thirsty. So we created a very professional looking laminated beverage menu, we stock our refrigerator with a variety of different drink options, we bought a cappuccino machine, we had hot tea, we had sparkling water, flat water, iced coffee, juices, the whole nine yards and we would present it to them in a very professional way. What can we get for you today? as if they just walked into a restaurant.

When we had clients that would come in with children, we had a full array of things to occupy that child in our conference room, videos that were appropriate for kids five, six, seven-year-old range, coloring books, games, and toys, etc. So, if a client came in and had their child because they couldn’t get a sitter, it would be really nice for us to give the experience of a little bit of serenity for forty-five minutes to talk about their financial decisions while we occupy their kids.

Other things that we would do, is that we would really roll out the red carpet for our client when they walk in. We had a board in the lobby of our office that would welcome whoever we had appointments with that today. So today is Tuesday, February 14th and first-rate financial welcomes Bill and Mary Jones, and Steve & Cheryl Jackson, etc. So when you walked in, you really felt like “Wow, they really are here to take good care of me.”

So, what are the things that you have built into your service platform that can predict the needs of your customers?

One other thing as an example is that, whenever I would have a real estate agent call me or a client call me and ask me for a status on a loan – that would be the one thing you would really push my button with my team and t didn’t happen very often, they were outstanding what they did. But that was my one rule which is, they should never be thinking about, “I wonder what’s going on, on that loan?” What that says to me, is that were not proactively reporting to them before they can even think about what status might be.

I really want you to get into this rhythm with your team. Maybe you guys watch this video together. This is what the perfect loan process really is all about if you go to our website and watch the 25-minute video on the perfect loan process with your team, that might be a really good thing and then you can download the perfect loan process from the Performance Experts website as well and you could kind of walk through together and see one of the different touch points that Tim’s team executed at a very high level to provide this type of experience like I said, that I received at the hotel that one day in Hawaii.

I hope you find this business and life tip to be helpful for you and I’m wishing you all the success talk to you soon.