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 By: Chad Weber |
“A picture is worth a thousand words” right? We all know how a well placed image can motivate a prospect to take action. While a well placed image can certainly help boost your conversions as well as the readability of the page, there’s a right way, and a wrong way to go about finding compelling imagery for your site.
Many loan officers will grab any picture they see on the web and place it on their website. While this may seem to be the easiest way to dress your site up, it is often the illegal way as well. Just as you’d never swipe a photo or painting from someone else and hang it on your wall, web imagery is often protected by copyright, licensing laws, etc – unless otherwise noted.
So what’s a budding web mortgage marketer to do when it comes time to dress up a blog post or page? Here are some free resources for you:
http://www.sxc.hu
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
http://www.freefoto.com
Each of the above sites allows you to browse through tens, and even hundreds of thousands of images to find something that will fit your site or blog. (Yep, the image I posted came from one of the above sites)
Bookmark or save links to the sites above and use them as needed. Won’t cost you a dime! Make it a great week!
| About the author: |
Chad Weber
Chad Weber is the founder of Loan Officer Marketing Lab. Chad provides loan officers with unique marketing strategies such as: online marketing, realtor referrals, and self-generated leads. |
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By: Chad Weber |
That was the title of the email I sent out to realtors a few years back. Why am I telling you this? Because it really happened, and it got me a lot of closed loans. Here’s what happened:
I was headed to the office around noon, and it was a beautiful day out. So I decided, what the heck, I’ll put the convertible top down. I smiled as my favorite song started playing through the speakers, the top was down, I leaned my arm on the door sill and thought about how perfect of a day this was.
That’s when I saw it… This small bird was sitting on top of the traffic light seeming to monitor all the cars approaching this 4 way street crossing. Suddenly, he leaps up and starts flying in an erratic pattern toward my car. No biggie right? WRONG! I was puzzled that he was now only about 30 – 40 feet from my car and was swooping lower and lower as he approached me head on – Almost like a crazy game of “chicken” – never mind the fact that he was moving, and I wasn’t.
20 feet, 15, 10, 5 and “swoosh” he zips by the top of my car at full speed near enough for me to have reached out and brushed him with my fingertips had I wanted to. I figured that he was either suffering from some bizarre bird-hangover or he was just making his point that he wasn’t intimidated by me and my 2,900 pound hunk of metal. Bold bird huh?
But he wasn’t finished… I turned my head forward again to watch for the light to turn. 3 seconds later I’m being assaulted from behind by this crazy Sparrow from hell! (Actually I’m pretty certain it was a mockingbird) He is hovering in the air about 5 feet from my head screeching like some sort of banshee and zipping down in mock dives!
Maybe he thought I was encroaching on his territory, or maybe he just didn’t appreciate the music I had chosen to listen to on such a beautiful day… I will never know. But just as quickly as he appeared, screeched, and dive bombed, he zipped away again. I craned my neck to see where he went, and just as I thought I caught a glimpse of this feathery devil, I felt a rain drop on my forehead.
No big deal, it’s just rai…. Wait a minute. What the heck? Why is this “rain drop” milky white and dripping down my…. OH NO HE DIDN’T! Apparently this was the parting shot from this bold little bird. If he couldn’t chase me away, he was going to show his disdain for me and my bright yellow car the best way he knew how! Sick…And I never carry napkins in my car either…
So what do you think? Interesting story right? It really happened, and yes, I ended up using my tie as a make-shift napkin that day. Better than driving around with bird droppings on your forehead! So how did this email get me 3 loans in about 2 hours?
At the time of this happening, I was quite active on My Space and with a real estate specific blog. I rushed back to the office after what we from this point forward shall refer to as “the incident” partly to blog about this, and partly because I had a sudden urge to dump my tingling head into a 100 gallon bucket of water and soap!
So I get back to the office, and I posted the blog exactly as you see the story recounted above. I posted onto MySpace, posted onto a few other select social networks, and then I wrote a short recap and emailed it to my realtor prospects within my auto responder. (This is a list of about 200 – 210 top producing realtors that had double opted in to my email newsletter)
I sent the email out, linked back to the blog post for the “expanded” story, and placed a quick “oh by the way” note at the end of the email. The results? Normally my emails get opened at a rate of about 40 – 45%. This email showed more than 70% had opened within 1 hour of sending the email.
My blog, MySpace page, and others had more than double the number of comments normally received, and my “oh by the way link” had showed more than 27 clicks in that same hour. What was my “oh by the way?” This was a link to a short 4 page email marketing guide I had customized for the real estate industry. Nothing more than a collection of marketing suggestions, ideas, creativity boosters, etc.
By the next morning, I had plenty of emails from agents laughing at the story, inviting me to lunch, and thanking me for the guide.
3 of the agents ended up in a conversation with me on the phone, and I landed a total of 3 loans referred within a 24 hour period… So the lesson of this story? If you want to get 3 loans in 24 hours, you need to get bird poop on your head… Ooops, wrong moral… Sorry about that.
The true moral is that standing out from the crowd, even in a seemingly unrelated fashion can get you noticed. I wasn’t suddenly a better loan officer for having been attacked by hell-bird. Not at all. But I had a funny enough experience to make the right agents laugh, notice my link, and in turn notice me. I’d been there emailing those agents for months up to that point.
It took a bird crapping on my head story to get their attention, but once I did, I closed plenty of loans because of it. 1 of the agents that referred me a loan that day became a regular, and we went on to do plenty of business together.
This is the power of networking, whether it be in person, or online. My MySpace page, my blog, my email list. All of these tools served as my distribution channel. Whether you have a funny story to tell, or a useful article to share, you need to expand your reach. Be friendly, be helpful, be consistent. Now have a great weekend and watch out for those angry birds!
| About the author: |
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Chad Weber
Chad Weber is the founder of Loan Officer Marketing Lab. Chad provides loan officers with unique marketing strategies such as: online marketing, realtor referrals, and self-generated leads. |
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By: Chad Weber |
Are you selling hot air? Odd question I know. I get asked at least 892.7 times per year (Ok, so it’s a made up number to illustrate how often I’m asked this) what is the best way to get business from high performing real estate agents. At this point, I am then treated with examples of how hard this loan officer has tried to get referrals, but ultimately failed.
I empathize with this situation, as I can recall the many doors I’ve had slammed in my face when I first got started in outside sales. It wasn’t fun, and at some point the rejection gets to be a bit much to deal with. I learned early on that I had to change my approach if I wanted this negative reaction to stop… So what’s the key to getting appointments with these heavy hitting agents?
- STOP SELLING HOT AIR -
What is hot air? Imagine you’re buying a car. You drive out to see the vehicle, and the only thing waiting for you is a smiling salesman. He tells you there is no car to see today, but he’s going to tell you all you need to know. He says:
- The car is comfortable
- The car is good looking
- The car handles well
Are you ready to buy yet? No? Why the heck not? Because these 3 statements tell you nothing of importance. How do you know if you’ll find the car comfy? You could be taller than he is, or have a bad back. How does he know if the car is good looking? Looks are subjective! Good handling? What does that mean? Good handling compared to what? A 25 year old Ford Escort, or a Ferrari F430?
No. This is definitely not the ideal way to purchase a car. Why would the salesman even bother trying? In the same way, tens of thousands of loan officers are out there calling up Realtors giving them “hot air” sales pitches that tell them absolutely nothing!:
- I give great service (Never had a loan officer claim otherwise, so what’s the point?)
- I’ve been a loan officer for 15 years (Yea? So? And?)
- I’ll give your client the loans that are best for them (Uh-huh… Sounds good – Where’s the substance?)
- I have fast turnaround time (So does the current loan officer I use. Why is this worth me switching?)
- I have low fee’s (There are cars out there with low price tags as well – Are those the vehicles you want?)
See? Sales talk. When a real estate agent switches to a new loan officer, there has to be a reason, and a darn good one! None of the above is a good enough reason in 99% of the cases. The agent is risking his/her paycheck to try out a new lender, so you better have something good… What is it?What do you bring to the table? What makes you so special?
In the car buying scenario above, what would make you purchase? Seeing the car first hand might help, as would a test drive and the opportunity to sit in the car, try out the stereo, the seats, the performance… In other words, you want proof this car is going to be to your liking!
Can you see from the realtors perspective just a tad now? In my 90 day crusade to land 40 realtors in 90 days for my office, I did a few things differently than most.
1 – I brought printed “Testimonial Cards” from realtors who were using my services now – Phone numbers and all (Social proof with the permission of the agents of course)
2 – I had a website setup just for the local realty community (Would send the agents over to spend hours downloading the tutorials and info I provided – They loved it. Established my credibility)
3 – My script was very different from the “traditional” approach. The first words out of my mouth? “I know you probably get tons of phon calls from loan officers begging you for business these days but…” See what just happened? I began the call by addressing the most frequent objection first! I took the objection right out of their mouth and addressed it.
This one little change to my scriptkicked things into overtime for me. So why not give this topic some thought today? What makes you so special? What are you willing to bring to the table? It’ll only make you into a better loan officer. (With bigger paychecks of course)
| About the author: |
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Chad Weber
Chad Weber is the founder of Loan Officer Marketing Lab. Chad provides loan officers with unique marketing strategies such as: online marketing, realtor referrals, and self-generated leads. |
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By: Chad Weber |
Even though this post is showing up on Tuesday morning, I began typing this early Monday as I checked my calendar for “big deal” events for the week. Now before you go shaking your head wondering why I created another new catch phrase, let me explain what a big deal event is, and why it’s so important to your income.Take a look at this list:
- Check email
- Check voicemail
- Answer existing client questions
- Process a loan
- Put out fires
- Check rate changes
- Lock a loan
- Browse lenders
- Chat with co-workers
- Surf the web
- Attend a closing
Here’s a serious question for you: How much of your week would you estimate is covered by the listed tasks? Most loan officers would have to answer that this is their week? Toss in the occasional cold call, or reply to a new prospect phone call and you’re looking at 98 – 99% of most originators careers. Sure, there’s a few more items or tasks you can toss in to round out the list, but we’ve covered most.
So my question to you is this. If you were to emulate this list of tasks, would you expect a large income? Is there anything listed within these tasks that will make for an exceptional career? I’d have to go with “no” on this one. Why?
Because these are all ordinary tasks that will result in ordinary incomes. Unfortunately, more than 80% of all loan officers are currently falling at, or below the ordinary income level these days. As much as the market may be frustrating these days, most of these loan officers have put themselves in this position by filling their days with ordinary tasks, while crossing their fingers and hoping for an extraordinary outcome.
If you find yourself in a similar position, or if the pipeline starts to slip a bit, one only need look at what the daily routine looks like to find the answer. Ask yourself: “What 1 extraordinary prospecting activity do I engage in every day to bring in more business?” It doesn’t take a massive effort.
But the reality of the situation is that most loan officers tell themselves they are too busy to prospect today, or have too much on their plate to go get referrals etc. When pressed for more information, guess what we usually learn? That this level of “busy” almost always finds time to respond to personal emails, make personal phone calls, surf the web, chat with co-workers, and also finds time for low payoff paper pushing. The mystery is this: Why would you push aside the very activities that will make you more money to make room for low payoff processing work?
Sure, the paperwork, and processing and answering of questions are all necessary. But so is your income, right? If you want extraordinary results for the week, take a look at what you’re filling your day with. Can you fit 45 minutes of scheduling appointments with high profile realtors into each day? How about some online marketing or phone prospecting? Anything that can bring in more business that is being neglected by most of your peers will qualify as extraordinary. When you do the things others are unwilling to do – Good things happen. Make it a great week!
| About the author: |
|
Chad Weber
Chad Weber is the founder of Loan Officer Marketing Lab. Chad provides loan officers with unique marketing strategies such as: online marketing, realtor referrals, and self-generated leads. |
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