When you get up to go to work tomorrow, what are you going to feel like? While you’re driving to work tomorrow what will you be thinking about and what emotions are you going to be feeling? Here’s what I’m willing to bet you. Most of you, the greater majority to be exact, well maybe even more than that, will feel a combination of a sense of panic, worry, wonder, envy, fear and caring.

Well, I’ll tell you what I believe.
I believe it because I observe you and have observed you for over 45 years.  You have no sense of your goals, your plans and what to do with yourself every day of your life. You really, for the most part, don’t set yourself up to win, you allow yourself to fail, or at least be mediocre. At best.

It has been my immense pleasure to spend my life in one business, one dream, and one sense of who I am. This has been my profession. I have often told the story that when I went to my 20th class High school reunion, where about 45 of my fellow graduates were in attendance, having come from a very small private school, I felt just as professional as the men who were doctors, lawyers, college Professors, priests and Car salesmen. I was and am a professional in the mortgage business.

I have worked every day of my life to improve my knowledge in this wonderful industry, and what am I surrounded by, turkeys, turkeys who wander into work every day, check their emails, voice mails, look over the days rate sheets, palaver with the person in the cubicle next to them about the next football game or where they’re going to go on Friday if they have the money.

Don’t you want to be a professional?
Don’t you want to eliminate from your life the quiet desperation that the philosophers say most of us live with every day? Don’t you want to be in control of your life, your income, your future, your family, your existence?

You can you know. But all of those things can only be yours if you change and do it quickly. I wrote recently about the perfect storm that has come upon the mortgage industry over the past few months. I wrote of just a couple of ways that can help you navigate out of the storm. But there is something bigger, something so immense that most of us can’t even comprehend it.

I’ve been doing training for over 20 years now. Mostly on a small scale. But it is time to take off the gloves and let my hair down.

I read all the wonderful things that most of my peers write. I see all the websites with all the information that is available to help you all make a life for yourself filled with riches beyond belief. So why don’t you have those riches, why oh why are you so desperate every day to figure out where your next deal is coming from? I’ll tell you again. You won’t change. You won’t take control. You just want to roll with what’s going on in your life because change and taking control is too hard.

Well I guarantee you this, if you don’t take control, don’t set up a plan don’t take your life by the horns, you’re going to continue to be miserable.

If I could be in front of most of you right now, I’d grab you by the shoulders and shake you silly. You know why. Cause your success is right in front of you, right there for the taking, as available to every one of you as it is to the one’s who have already achieved success.

So about 40 years ago, I was working as a new Loan officer.
I worked in an urban setting where sales prices were about $15,000. Per unit. If I did a deal over $25,000, it was a home run. There was this guy, a real estate salesman who worked in an office that I called on. He was most unremarkable, in appearance, dress, brainpower, and sociability. But one day, when I went to visit the real estate office that he worked at he told me he was going to open his own office, be his own boss. Little did I know what had gone on behind the scenes. He had been studying. He had decided to change he had decided to make something of himself and he knew that he had to change the way he acted in order to be able to achieve the dreams he had.

He asked me to visit with him the new office he was about to open, and I did so gladly, hoping that any help I would give would eventually be rewarded by him giving me his prospective buyers. I found out on that visit that he had been studying how to set up an office; he had spent time studying how to be a manager by studying management books. He was ready to change. He was positioned to be the man he wanted to be. And he eventually did it. We did, for a few years, at least until I moved out of the area, a lot of business together. I was thrilled at his success.

He made a plan, took his life in his hands decided not to palaver with the guy in the next cubicle anymore and become a success.

Why do I tell this?
Because you can be that person, you can change the way you do things every day, but why don’t you? Why don’t you just decide to be what you want to be? What is stopping you? What are you afraid of? Success? Is that what you’re afraid of? Is that why you won’t take control of your life? I don’t buy that for a minute.

Here is what I do believe. You are doing what you do because you like it. You’re comfortable, you feel that if you take yourself out of your comfort zone, you might not be able to get to where you want to be. You’re afraid, because someone in your life told you that you should not rock the boat, not try too hard, not put yourself out. Well thank God for those that don’t listen to that crap.

So what about you? What about your tomorrow/ what are you destined to do? What will you do to take a step in the direction of your dreams, or will you just dream, but not really dream, just fantasize. Just make believe.

Realize your dreams
Your dreams can only be realized if you take some steps in a different direction than you’ve been walking. Well, maybe you’ve been crawling.  You need to get organized, establish a set of goals, and put together a plan, then actually work on the plan, creatively as if you mean it; as if you were putting together a group to go out this coming Friday. Meet you at the club about 8? Great who’s coming? Does anyone need a ride?

Right here is the first solid steps for you:

• What are your goals?
• How much business do you want to do in the next 12 months?
• How much money do you want to make in the next twelve months.
• What are you going to do with the money. What the heck are you working for? What dreams can you actually make happen if you had the money?

Write this down
Write down on a piece of paper exactly what I’m about to tell you to do. Do it just like I’m telling you, and if you put it off, you really don’t want to change. Do it NOW!

• Make a list of the next twelve months, one under the other next to each month
• write how many loan applications you will take that month
• next to that write down how many closings you will have
• Next to that make an average of how much you make per deal and multiply it by the number of closings you will have
• total the final column and see if it adds up to the amount of money you say you want to make

If the numbers don’t add up
You need to adjust the number of loans you will write or the number of closings or the amount of commission you will earn. I hope you have noticed that I have not once written any of the following words, anywhere; expect to, hope to, want to, might, maybe.  The goals you write down must be real they must be attainable, they must be a bit beyond reasonable. But more than anything they must be written down.

Marketing Initiatives
Next you need to come up with a minimum of FOUR different marketing initiatives that will get you the number of loan applications you will write, close, and get paid on! Here are some samples:

• Apartment complex marketing. For this refer to last month’s column.
• Data base marketing. Call every person in your database every quarter.
• Realtor partnering
• Affinity marketing
• A weekly email to every person you know.
• Call bank and credit mortgage officers to ask them to give you the loans they can’t do.
• Develop relationships with builders.
• Develop relationships with financial planners, CPA’s, insurance brokers.
• Teach at real estate schools.

Ok, I’m about done.
What you need to do now is actually write out a detailed plan of how you are going to actually put into play the minimum of 4 marketing initiatives that you’ve chosen. A detailed plan got it! Detailed. How many, specifically how often, specifically who, specifically when? Specifically Why? Who are they? Detailed.  Specifically what are you going to say when you write, call email them.

Any good marketing plan has as a basis the idea that you will do it over and over and over until you die. DIE! If you get lost in the details ask someone who knows how to do this sort of thing to help you. Details. A plan. Got it?

Statistics show that:

• 44% of all salespeople quit after the 1st call (mailing)
• 22% after the 2nd
• 14% after the 3rd
• 12% after the 4th
• ONLY 8% persist to the 5th call back

Further statistics show that:

• 60% Of All Buyers’ Say No 5 Times Before They Buy.

So it is imperative that I become part of the 8% that persevere.

Most salespeople fail because they give up too soon
I’m betting that this is falling on deaf ears. I’m betting that you don’t really want to change. Want to bet me? I’m betting that tomorrow will be the same as today. Make me wrong, go ahead. Fuggedaboudit.

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