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Tips, Tools & Tricks of the Trade
Doug Smith

Doug Smith, founder of Douglas Smith & Associates, is a 24-year industry veteran. His career spans the areas of loan origination, sales training, management development, marketing, personal coaching and corporate sales. Doug’s columns appear in Mortgage Originator, Mortgage Planner, The Mortgage Record and Mortgage Broker magazines. He publishes a monthly newsletter, Power Selling, and authored Climbing the Ladder of Success. For more information, visit http://www.dougsmithonline.com/

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Slow down your sales calls and enjoy the ride

Selling mortgages, or anything for that matter, is really about following four easy steps:

  1. Establish a comfortable rapport with a customer
  2. Explore the customer’s needs or situation
  3. Present a good solution
  4. Ask the customer for action

When you are on a sales call with a prospect or client (a real estate agent, a builder, broker, CPA, attorney, etc.) this is the process you follow. Skip one step and the process falls apart.

While most good mortgage professionals acknowledge and use a process like this, many move through it too quickly. Case in point: I teach a two-day course, called Performance Selling, to hundreds of mortgage salespeople throughout the year. Once the participant learns this process and the skills that go along with it, we practice. The role play reveals that most people mover far too rapidly through these steps. (Many accomplish all four steps in under three minutes!) The result is a hurried sales call, little interaction, and a fast exit.

It’s true that we don’t have a lot of time when we are face-to-face with a customer. Usually we can expect only about ten to fifteen minutes of their attention. Feeling this urgency, we tend to rush our dialogue and our presentation. The fact is we don’t have to! Ten or fifteen minutes is a lot of time. (As an experiment, stop right now, look at your watch, and sit silently for fifteen full minutes. It’s an eternity!)

The lesson here is simple: slow down. Take your time. Pace your conversation. Enjoy the opportunity you have to be in front of this customer. Here is a sample of what that pace might look like:

  • Opening, welcome, ice-breaking and rapport building: 2 minutes.
  • Questions, needs exploration, and open discussion of what they want: 5 minutes.
  • Presenting ideas, solutions, loan programs and new information: 3 minutes.
  • Answering questions, objections and concerns: 2 minutes.
  • Asking about actions, possible opportunities and next steps: 2 minutes.
  • Closing the call and stating follow up action: 1 minute.

That’s 15 minutes, no more, no less. There is no need to rush or jump ahead. Approach the sales call like a casual conversation with a new friend you’ve just met. Get to know this person. Find out what they want or how you can help them. Ask more questions. Avoid the propensity to push ahead to a sales pitch or wordy loan program presentation. When you do present your ideas and solutions, slow down so they can follow you and clearly understand what you are saying. Ask if they have any questions, listen to their concerns and provide tangible responses to their needs. In the end, move the opportunity forward by suggesting next steps or requesting a chance to help them.

Over the next few weeks, secretly time your sales calls to see how long you are taking. If you are in and out in five minutes, that’s too fast! Slow down and enjoy the conversation.

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