Tony Gallegos aka The Mortgage Cicerone's RSS Feed
 |
Passion Is The Right Thing For Both You and Clients! |
“You can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough other people to get what they want!” -
- Zig Ziglar
The response received from last years post “Is Your Attitude Killing or Driving Your Business,” has been both positive and overwhelming. After reading the many emails received regarding this post, I knew a follow-up post was needed; a sequel of sorts.
While it’s evident attitude plays a critical role in your real estate or mortgage career, the next question is:
What are you going to do once you have an attitude congruent with success?
The answer lies in focusing on the activities you are most passionate and long-term provide you the greatest return on your investment (ROI).
Interestingly enough, the three most valuable assets a person possesses are their:
- PASSION(s)
- REPUTATION and
- TIME
How you allocate and focus on these assets will be the key determinant in your long term sustainability and success.
Most people are surprised when I don’t include money, knowledge, technology, loan programs, formal education or connections as one of the two most important assets. Yet, after careful consideration and thought, I’ve found along with the appropriate success attitudes, a persons passions, personal/professional reputation and time are the most important factors in leveraging a successful real estate or mortgage origination career.
What do passion, reputation and time management have to do with focusing on activities?
Everything, if you are planning on building a sustainable and enriching career as either a mortgage planner or Realtor. Additionally, your passions, reputation and time constraints must be paramount when developing the action steps in your business plan.
In the post “Developing Your Mortgage Business Plan,” Mike Baker provides further insight into both the mechanics and importance of developing a business plan. In it, he goes on to explain:
“Any vision can be achieved if it’s thought out in advance, and broken down into bite-sized pieces. You must have a vision first, and then you can break it down into workable parts. Those workable parts will then be the map that guides you toward your goals.”
The bite-sized pieces described above are the actions necessary to fulfill the vision!
In addition, every super-star mortgage planner I’ve ever met has a written business plan. They know what goals they are focused on and how they plan on accomplishing them.
Now ask yourself the following questions. Have you:
- Selected the referral source targets you plan to focus on?
- Written down the activities you plan to do each day/week/month or quarter that provide the greatest ROI in both accomplishing your goals?
- Selected goals that are in alignment with both ethical and professional standards (in addition, does it pass the gut check)?
Remember, if you do not go back and accomplish each of these you have no right to advertise. Save your money and your energy and start building your business the right way. It is the ONLY WAY off the proverbial roller coaster and treadmill.
To close, the true litmus test that verifies whether or not your actions are focused on your clients needs is accomplished by asking yourself a simple question – What percentage of your business is referral based?
If you’re doing it right, your percentage of referral business will increase as your business develops. If you take any new originator (less than one year in the business), they may have a range of 30% to 50% referral business compared to the superstar originators who have between 80% to 100% referral business. If you’re not spending thousands of dollars per month advertising and marketing your loan programs such as sub-prime lenders who have an inside/in-house phone-sales force, then your focus on developing relationships with these referral based clients is critical to your success. In addition, this holds even for in-house loan officers. Developing a high-touch campaign and keeping in touch with past clients could double or triple your business with referrals.
“Customers don’t make up stories about your business. It is you who creates them – the customer simply retells them. How the story is told and what the content is, is up to you.”
— Jeffrey Gitomer
Written by:
Tony Gallegos aka The Mortgage CiceroneSaturday, November 7th, 2009
November 7th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Groovy baby. Austin Powers himself couldn’t have said it any better. At Top of Mind, we’ve had our fair share of salespeople come and go. The common thread with all the failures, in my opinion, was #1 on your list. And you either have passion or you don’t. Nobody can teach it to you. You can’t fake it. These are the things we take for granted, ya know? When we read one of these Gitomer or Ziglar books, we hear it over and over again… it seems cliche’. When someone truly believes, there’s an aura that surrounds them. This aura gives us confidence as buyers. For me, the big example is Mac vs. PC and their amazing ad campaign. People look at Apple as the company with passion… the innovators. They continue to chomp away market share from Microsoft. They sell at a significant premium. Your post just goes to show that it’s the intangibles that often differentiate us, and you can only find those from within. Awesome post.
November 8th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Tony – you hit the nail right on the head! Passion is the fuel and vision is the match that lights the fire of action! I love it!
November 8th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Tony,
110% correct!!!!
The passion is what draws success towards you.
THANK YOU for a GREAT reminder.