“The next step in our process, Mr. And Mrs. Client, is that now I need to take all of the information you have provided to me and submit it to my underwriting team so that they can fully pre-underwrite your loan before you find a home.  Once we take this step, the underwriter who's going to eventually make the final decision on your loan will become familiar with your situation and fully approve you as a borrower before you even decide on a specific home.  

Once we have a fully underwritten approval in hand, you have a considerable advantage. 

Once you find the perfect home, I will personally call the listing agent, to communicate your loan is completely underwritten and we’ve already contemplated an appraisal gap strategy if necessary.  

Think about it like you are selling a home, and you receive an offer from a buyer who’s completely pre-underwritten, has removed the financing and appraisal contingency, their lender has called to assure that they can close this thing in less than 21 days, and that all they need is title, insurance, and items specific to the property.  

I want to make sure that you have the very best loan strategy so that it’s very hard for a seller to resist your offer.  If that resonates with you, I'd like to go ahead and have your file completely reviewed and approved by my underwriting team.

In doing so, I have to pay my processing team, my underwriters, and disclosure team, which I don't mind doing at all because I know the strategic advantage this will give you. And there's never a cost to you, but I don't get reimbursed for those costs until your loan closes. So, before we proceed, I just want to make sure that my team and I are the best fit for you and your family. Are you comfortable and committed to move forward with us?” 

Prospect: "I'm looking to buy a home and trying to research different lenders. Can you tell me what's your rate?" 

You: "Thanks for calling Mr. Smith. I’d love to help you, and that's a good question. Right now, mortgage rates are available between the low 5% range all the way up to the 8% range, depending on the type of loan, your specific situation, and the fee structure associated with the loan. What do you know about what's happening in the mortgage industry and how interest rates have been fluctuating lately?" 

Prospect: "Kind of. I know rates have gone up."

You: "Yes, indeed, they have gone up since 2020, and they’ve also come down a little lately.  Mortgage rates fluctuate day to day and sometimes hour to hour.  Do you mind if I ask, have you gone through this process before? Have you been fully pre-approved? Or, I guess most importantly, do you know how mortgage rates work and how they work from different lender to different lender?" 

Prospect: "Well, no, not really. Again, I'm just trying to figure out who's got good or low interest rates." 

You: "OK, I got it. That makes sense. Do you mind if I help you understand how interest rates work a little better, because I think if you're really searching for the lowest interest rate, I want to talk to you about the positives and negatives of that strategy. 

Are you open minded to me helping you understand how mortgage interest rates work?"

Prospect: "Yeah, that'd be great."

You: "Mortgage interest rates are set by what's called mortgage-backed securities, and those are traded on Wall Street similarly to how stocks trade, except they trade in the bond market, not the stock market.  Mortgage-backed securities move every day closely in relation to the 10-year Treasury bond. You legitimately could call 10 lenders today and 10 lenders tomorrow, and the best-priced lender today could be the worst tomorrow; you could literally get 10 different answers tomorrow than you got today.  And the reality is there’s approximately 23 factors regarding you, the property you are buying, and your down payment amount that go into pricing in the exact rate you qualify for at any specific moment because rates are literally always fluctuating. 

Have you called other lenders, and have they given you an interest rate?"

Prospect: "Yeah, quite a few." 

You: “I bet you are a lot like me in that you don’t want to overpay for anything, but a cautionary tale here: most of those lenders, unless they've asked you those 23 questions, they're just trying to sell you on the lowest rate possible to hook you in, and then they will maneuver that interest rate later based upon where your actual situation lands. Personally, I don't feel comfortable doing that. I feel like it would be irresponsible of me, and as a fiduciary, I want to give you the exact right numbers. What do you know about how discount or buydown points work and how you can manage your cost versus your interest rate?"

Prospect: "No, I'm not really aware of that." 

You: "Okay, for example, you can go and look on a website, and they'll have an interest rate posted, and in the fine print, they might disclose that rate comes with two points, and it assumes a 40% down payment, and it requires an 800 credit score and so on and so forth. But no one ever pays attention to the fine print. They just look at the interest rate, and that's the hook for most mortgage lenders. 

The reason you're likely calling us, either you saw reviews or you referred to us, is because we let you look behind the curtain and help you determine what’s the best interest rate for you, your situation today, but most importantly, for your situation over the next 6 to 12 months ahead.

The reality is, the interest rate you take today, you will almost certainly not have for very long because mortgage rates have already started their cyclical downturn.  How you structure the cost in relation to your interest rate is going to be more important than the interest rate you pay in the interim.

Now, I know this is a lot of information, and I’m not sure if it’s for you, but I would encourage us to go through our process. I can ask some questions, and then in our consultation, I can get very detailed around what interest rate is appropriate for you and why. And then you'll have all the information you need to make a fully educated decision. 

I think you deserve that because if you just keep calling people, asking for interest rates, you're going to get a lot of salespeople and unfortunately, not a lot of consultative advice. Are you open-minded to us starting this process and we can learn as we go?"

*Prospect’s realization at the end of the conversation: "Okay, there's a lot I don't know about this. Asking what's your rate to a bunch of different lenders is essentially not a good strategy because I've just learned that it doesn't make sense, and this guy has taught me something that no other lender has taken the time to do. So I'm going to stick with him a bit longer to really understand what's happening."

“Mrs. Jones, the reality of it is, is that I have an unfair competitive advantage over my competition. I figured out a long time ago that if I was going to do business in the way that all of my competitors do business, I wasn't going to be able to separate myself and add value to people like yourself in a way that I'd like to. 

The reality of it is, is that I only do so many things really well. I'm a student of the financial markets, I know how to educate people on financial decisions, I understand underwriting guidelines, and I'm very, very good at explaining difficult and complex financial structures. 

I also realize that there are certain things that I'm not very good at. I'm not the most patient person in the world. I'm not real good at the paperwork that's required to do a loan. And I decided that what I was going to do was build a team of all-stars around me, people who are exceptional in those other areas that I wasn't as good at. 

Most people that do what I do for a living are trying to be the jack of all trades like I was when I first started, and they're the master of only a few. So when I say I have an unfair competitive advantage, what I mean is this. I've assembled a team of all-stars around me. People like Mary Johnson, my loan processor, who's been a processor for 20 years, and Elise Johns, who used to be an underwriter, who is my transaction coordinator. 

People like that, that I can give those challenging and important tasks that I'm not exceptional at. So the reason that you would want to work with me is because I have this team of people that excels in these areas that I don't excel at. So when you work with me, you're working with my entire team, and you're working within a system that we've designed called the Perfect Loan Process.”

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I just want to make sure that you know that I actually believe that paying up to 3% for a buyer's agent to just simply help you buy your home for 30 days is likely too much. Now, the industry has gotten away with that for a long time because the seller has really built it into the purchase price of their property.

Well, with a lot of these normal happenings changing, I want you to know that, and I think that 3% is likely a little too high.

But for whatever commission you pay our team, I want you to know that you're not just going to get 30 days worth of help in a transaction, you're going to get 30 years worth of proactive advice, guidance, strategy, and our ongoing commitment to helping you and your family not just own a home. But to become extremely successful homeowners in every aspect of real estate or finance.

You'll have our team along with our finance team, proactively helping you set goals, manage changes and evolutions in your life, deal with your real estate portfolio, understanding how to manage your equity, understanding how to utilize debt and leverage and our commitment is that you will be much more generationally wealthy over time, because of our ongoing commitment that we have to you as a partner. That is very different than a commission you would pay for somebody who would help you buy a home, and then really not talk to you much other than send you marketing from time to time and wait for you to make your next decision. So please know that when you're comparing real estate professionals, not everybody is the same when it comes to the value you're getting. I would argue that the value you get prior to a transaction from our team and our finance team is incredibly important. The actual transaction itself is probably the least important, although we're going to do a really great job there. But when you're identifying our value versus other real estate agents values during a transaction, oftentimes you'll find mostly an equivalent experience, right? Because it's just customer service contracts, doing things on time. The biggest area and why the majority of our clients choose us is because there's not many, if any real estate professionals who are going to be as committed to helping you proactively, and the next 30 days of a transaction are really going to be where this relationship starts. So I just want you to be clear on that. commissions with our organization. Get you 30 plus years worth of service versus commissions with a standard organization usually get you about 30 days.

Okay team, so now I want to talk with you about the subject matter of nurturing your annuity income, which is your past client database. Database management is relationship management. And it's critically important that you have a plan to stay in touch with your past client database. Now, like I said in Vegas, "Set it and forget it is not what I'm talking about." Yes, Homebot is an incredibly valuable tool, so don't hear that I would not have that as a part of my plan, but if you're just relying on something that just drips on people and doesn't have and maintain and further evolve the personal connection, then you're really missing the entire point of database management. There are people in your past client database that will have a need this year. The question is, will you know that they have the need and maybe more importantly, will they think of you as the person that can fulfill that need?

So you have a document contained within this download, which is the annual financial review with the questions. And I'm not going to go into too much depth on that right now other than to say that what I want you to do is discipline yourself to calling your past client database on an annualized basis and reviewing that document with them. Because this is what's going to help you uncover if they have needs for other financial services, where you can make outbound referrals to accountants, financial planners, life insurance agents, etc. And the more business you refer out, the more you will get in return. So make sure that you are practicing the annual financial review strategy. Now, additionally, I want you to call everybody in your past client database. If you haven't started doing that, I want you to do it now. I want you to discipline yourself to calling two to three people a day, five days a week, over the course of the next six months or however long it takes to get through everybody, and be strategic about it.

Okay? So run a report. Call the people that have higher interest rates first and the people that have lower interest rates second, just so you're kind of prioritizing. But do not, do not, hear me clearly, do not fail to call the people that are at 2 7/8 or 3 1/8 or 3 1/4. And I'll get into why in a second. So the first philosophical thing, as we discussed in Vegas, that I want to revisit and hammer home, is the reason that most originators do not call their past client database to say hello is because they do not know what to say. And the reason that they don't know what to say is because they have the wrong intention behind the phone call. If your intention behind the phone call is to get a deal, you're absolutely right. In many people's cases, there isn't anything to say. But that's not the intention. And I want you to take that pressure off of yourself.

The intention is to connect. The intention is to be top-of-mind consciousness. The intention is to show that you care. So when they do have a need, you are the person that they are going to think of. Now here's what happens. You don't call people; rates stay high. Two or three years go by, and now all of a sudden, there is no relationship anymore. And again, if you just think that the Homebot or the newsletter is going to keep that connection, you're wrong. It's an addition to, but the primary objective is to be personalized and to reach out to them and to show them that you care, so there is loyalty that is being built and so you can be in service to them. So what if there was no intention other than to say hello, to see how they're doing, to show that you care?

That's easy. And that's what I really want you to do. And if the conversation ends right there with just you letting them know you were thinking about them and you were wondering how them and their family are doing, you've won. It's a successful phone call. And here's why. Because when rates do drop, the phone call you make to them with an offer will not be the first phone call you've made to them. Think about this for a minute. If you call them to say hello and see how they're doing, their guard comes down, you're not selling them anything, and they start to view you as an ally and a friend. And when interest rates drop, they're very open to the conversation with you. But if you don't call them for two or three years and then all of a sudden you're competing against their servicer, you're no different than their servicer who's also calling them, or some other mortgage broker that's calling them that's run a report on who has interest rates at certain levels.

You've left yourself prone to competition because you did not nurture the relationship. Now here's the real money script and, ultimately, where you want to be going. And I'm going to go ahead and lay it out in a role-play-type format, and then I'll make some comments at the end to make sure you understand the importance of it. So it goes something like this.

Okay, team. So as I talked about in my presentation, a part of your database nurturing campaign, staying in touch with your past clients needs to involve various mediums, right? So I used to send out a newsletter, as I mentioned, on a quarterly basis that had a personal tone to it, two personal handwritten note cards a day, 10 a week, 520 a year. I mentioned that. Yes, you should use something like Homebot to drip timely market information on them, on the value of their property. I think that's an incredibly valuable tool. But there's a medium that very few use that is so incredibly powerful, and I brought this medium to the mortgage industry back in 1995 at a Todd Duncan seminar. So I go way back literally 30 years with the utilization of this, which is voice broadcasting technology. Now, I want to speak to the pros and cons of voice broadcasting technology for a minute before I give you the scripts.

So the ability to leave one non-salutated generic message and send it out to everybody in your past client database in the course of a couple of hours at very little cost with your energy, your excitement, your tonality, and your voice inflection is incredibly powerful. Now, the downside, of course, is that generic non-salutated part of the message. So I never had a problem with it because if you start off with some enthusiasm, they don't even realize that you didn't use their first name. But the message needs to be generic. You can't reference, as an example, "I hope you and your kids are doing well," because if somebody is getting this message and they don't have kids, then of course they're going to be like, "Well, this clearly wasn't for me." Now, I like to send these voice broadcasts out at random times of the year, but somewhat strategic.

So I used to always say, everybody sends out a holiday card, and it costs them, I don't know, over a couple of bucks with postage and everything. To me, that's not as effective as sending out a voice broadcast, which is at a fraction of the cost and has greater impact. So the times of the year that I used to send out my voice broadcasts were after the first of the year, around the 4th of July weekend, and then at Thanksgiving. And you could do it during Valentine's Day; you could do it during Labor Day weekend; whatever it is that you choose, mix it up and explore this tool. And there are a lot of different companies out there, like I said like Slydial, and other companies that you can use for this purpose.

Okay, so let me give you some sample scripts.

Okay, team, so remember what I said at the event in Vegas, when it comes to securing your future income, that income that you've already worked hard for, it's very important that you continue to nurture and deepen the relationship. So it is very difficult for them to not be loyal to you. And loyalty is something that you earn, and a part of that process is to be disciplined and to stay connected.

So I'd like you to have your pre-approved buyers in your phone, or if you have your CRM as an app in your phone, that's even better. And I'd like you to discipline yourself on a consistent basis. I want you to touch base with each of these pre-approved buyers no less frequently than about once every four months with a quick voice memo. So you're driving to work, you grab your phone when you're at a stoplight, or when you leave in your driveway, you pick the two people that you're going to call, and you just leave them a quick voice memo. And there are a lot of different options as to what you can leave, get creative, have fun. But remember, it's not about business. It's about personal. It's about transcending the relationship from a business relationship to a friendship.

Okay, team, I want to talk to you now about the critical importance of teaching your referral partners how to refer you, which is always a conversation that most originators have a difficult time broaching with the referral source. Now, when I say referral source, I'm talking about realtors, CPAs, financial planners, insurance agents, divorce attorneys; it doesn't matter. All of them need to know how to refer you the way you want to be referred. Now, why is this important? Well, it's important because the way that they introduce you will have a dramatic impact on your conversion ratio from lead to client to ultimately paycheck. Have you ever asked yourself the question, why is it that one real estate agent seems to have leads that are much better and stronger, and more convertible than another? Now the thing is that it could be in part because of the source of the lead, right?

So if you have a real estate agent who's seasoned and has great influence and is a terrific networker and has great referral sources themselves, maybe the clients that they're giving to you are more ready to engage and work with you in a committed and loyal way versus if they're getting their leads from some consumer direct marketing strategy or door knocking or something like that. So it's important, however, to teach them how to refer you because oftentimes, the reason that the conversion ratio from one referral source to another is greatly different is the way that they're setting you up. Now for the purposes of this example, I want to focus on real estate agents because it's probably your primary referral source. So the easiest way to get a real estate agent to refer someone to you is to simply tell the truth. And I'm going to give you the script right now. Because I think that you'll find this to be a truthful script.

Okay team, so I didn't go into the level of depth that I would've liked to have gone into as it relates to developing relationships with referral partners. It is a broad subject. Within the Loan Atlas itself, I think I have over three hours of content on the subject matter because it's so deep, and rich, and important.

So I want to set a little bit of that up for you here. We've provided you with a list of interview questions that you might want to ask on your first appointment with a potential referral partner. Now, notice the term interview questions. Okay, so I want you to stop thinking from the perspective of pursuing a prospective referral partner. And I want you to start thinking of this from a perspective of I'm interviewing them for the opportunity to work with me. It was at the time that I made that transition in mindset and stopped looking at it like I needed to chase, and convince, and sell, and close, and instead, I'm evaluating, assessing, and determining if this is a mutually good fit, that everything changed for me.

And it starts with asking questions. So in that first appointment, and believe me, over the years now of being a coach for a very long time, and a coach to some of the greatest loan originators in the country, I've seen this common denominator between me and them show up too many times, where the loan originators that have a ton of agents are the ones that took the same approach that I did when I was an originator, which is, in the first appointment, they refuse to talk about them.

Hear me clearly on this. And again, within the Loan Atlas, there's a ton of training on this. So if you're a Loan Atlas member, just make sure you go watch all these videos. But this first appointment is not about you needing to convince them of anything. It's not about you talking about yourself. It's about you lowering their guard. I want you to think of any prospective referral partner as a very attractive man or woman that is constantly being hit on by people who have an attraction to them.

When you're constantly being hit on, which is the case of a top-producing real estate agent, as an example, you're going to have your guard go up. You're going to develop all of your scripting to govern and protect your time, and rightfully so. You're going to have all the excuses as to why you have to hand out three business cards, or you don't have time to get together and chat, or you already have a lender that you're loyal to or all of these types of things. You have to have those excuses built in.

And they're used to being the recipient of the full-court press. "My customer service systems are fantastic. I have a broad variety of products." They've heard it all. Enough, enough with that. And don't ask them about who their current lender is either, because you know what? I don't care. I took that approach of, I don't really care who they're working with. Whoever they're working with is not as good as me, so I'm not going to even fixate the conversation on that subject matter of who they're working with.

I would simply ask for 20 to 25 minutes, 30 minutes max. I'd go in with a yellow legal pad or a journal, and I would just get to know them and ask them how long they've been in the business for. You've got the whole list of questions here. I'm not going to go through all of them. This is just an overview of that list of questions. I'd pick three or four questions and I'd engage in conversation with them, and I'd get to know them. And I'd take down some notes from time to time, and I'd let them talk, and I'd ask follow-up questions.

And before you know it, we're not talking about real estate anymore. We're talking about their grandkids. We're talking about where they went on vacation last summer. We're talking about how they love to play pickleball, or they're a USC football fan, or whatever the case may be.

And you can energetically feel their guard start to come down. This is a very different dialogue than they expected. They expected you to sell your services to them, and instead, you're actually listening to them. You're connecting with them; you're seeing them. And guess what? We all love to talk about ourselves, and we all love to be seen. That's your objective, and your goal here, is to see them and to hear them.

And what would happen was, 20, 25 minutes into the conversation, I'd take a look at my watch, and I'd say …

The purpose of this audio file is to allow you to hear how Tim vocalizes the TC Baton Pass to Processor Success Script so you can listen to the words in action. An audio can provide a better example of how a script should be presented to a client by allowing you to hear the tone and cadence.