¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome to the 10 Loans a Month podcast, where mortgage brokers become business owners. And now, your host, Scott Peckford.
¶ Introduction and AText for Efficiency
Hey, Broker Nation. Welcome to the Loans Month Podcast, where mortgage brokers become business owners. I'm your host, Scott Peckford. And today I'm going to talk about three... apps that i think every mortgage broker should adopt and put into their business and so there's lots of different services out there and apps and i love these things if they make my job easier if they make it simpler faster and especially if it makes for better client experience
And so I was going to share with you three today. There's way more that I could get into, but I'll just talk about three that I think are universal that would work for the vast majority of people listening to this show. So the first one is actually a really simple one called AText. So that's A-T-E-X-T. And it is basically.
You know how on your phone, you can put like things that remembers to type in later. So like a snippet or a chunk of text, you type in a little short code and then it drops in that whole text. So it's the same thing, but it actually sits on your computer. And so what happens is, is a text runs in the background.
anytime you type in whatever that code is it just replaces that code with the text that's in a text so examples of how you can use it you could have for instance let's say all the lenders servicing information it could be your lawyers or your title company's information it could be
email templates that you use all the time like we answer the same question hundreds of times and so what ends up happening is you can just save your responses and then drop them in with a quick couple clicks and it goes into any program it can run on top of outlook gmail you know anything you're running it's just runs in the background, and it waits for that.
short code to show up and then it replaces it and i do some consulting with brokers that are doing 60 plus million and this guy is 140 million producer and sends tons of emails lives on email and i showed him this and he's like this literally changed my life he created templates for all the different
emails that he sends out and if you have a team you can actually then share those templates with your team so that everybody uses the exact same template and some people have used signatures inside of outlook or in gmail but i find those are not as effective you got to click and scroll
down and find them but if you have a short code you can just type in four or five digits and what i typically do is i use like say a number so like the number two so for instance one of the next apps we're going to talk about is calendly and So when I type in to chat, C-H-A-T, all one word, it actually replaces to chat with my link to book a call with me. So very simple.
I highly recommend you check it out. And I say this is how you can type at 400 words a minute. So it's the first app, a text or equivalent. It was literally like 10 bucks or something. It's ridiculous. Even if you're a brand new mortgage broker, you should do this right from the beginning. So the second app I recommend is Calendly.
¶ Streamline Scheduling with Calendly
It ties into your calendar and allows people to book calls with you when it's convenient for them. And so the way I always describe this to my clients, if you're going to use this, you do have to coach your clients on it because otherwise, especially if they're used to texting and just phoning you at any random time in that first discovery.
Every call, I always coach my clients on, hey, look, so one of the things that we value is communication and we don't like phone tags. So if you're looking to get ahold of me and you call me and I'm on a call, then I phone you back and you're on a call. So in order to avoid all that phone tag.
I have a link that's tied right into my calendar. And if you book a call, then I will be there 100%. And this way we can avoid phone tag and we can provide better experience and clients love it. So the clients love it because then they feel like they're in control and you love it because you're not having to remember, you know, the emails. Hey, do you want to. talk at 10 no there's two work back and forth and back like that's such a waste of emails
The second thing is, is that you can actually block specific times where you're available and when you're not available. So you could be like, hey, I only want to be available evenings on one night a week. So Wednesday evenings or something, that's the only time they have. So if they want to talk to you, otherwise they fit it in. And it's amazing.
the vast majority of your clients will just comply with it if explained properly. And so Calendly is a very simple app that is maybe 10 to 14 bucks a month. And I think that you should implement this as soon as humanly possible because it's so slick and it does reminders.
can add questions to it so when they show up you can have different types of meetings so you can have a discovery call you can have a strategy call you can have a you know a signing appointment you can have different types of meetings you can send those links out so that you can then book the right type of meeting and you can also control when your availability is and you also can't double book.
So for all those reasons, you'd be crazy not to implement something like Calendly or ScheduleOnce. ScheduleOnce is a little bit more complex, I find, to just set up. I find Calendly a little bit simpler. That's just my personal opinion. So the first app is Atex. So type it 400 words a minute. The second is...
¶ Automate Client Outreach with Phone Burner
calendly eliminate phone tag forever and then the last app that i recommend is something called phone burner so this is basically an auto dialer and there's lots of different auto dialers out there i've used phone burner and i like it what an auto dialer is if you don't know what that is is essentially you upload a list of phone numbers into it and it starts dialing for you you don't have to even hit dial and the truth is that if you're calling past clients or you're calling a database seven
percent of the time you're going to end up hitting voicemail and so you're like crap i got to sit there listen to the voicemail leave a message call the next person and what we've found is what's more effective is is that if you have software that's doing the dialing for you the voicemail comes on you can click a button
drop a pre-recorded voicemail so it could just be like hey it's got back for so here's the thing with voicemail because it's so personal you don't have to say their name right so let's say i'm calling
anniversary call for clients could be like hey scott backford calling just checking in see how things are going it's your you know mortgage anniversary give me a shout back when you get a chance and here's a tip for you and if you don't hear back from you i'll try you again next week if you want people to call you back add that little phrase
the very end will get callbacks because people are like, crap, he's going to keep phoning me. So anyways, you pre-record these voicemails and then you can drop them onto your... clients and then the other 30 of the time you actually talk so one of the cool things you can do with this is you can drop the voicemails you can have different voicemails for different types of calls
And it's going to auto dial. So as soon as you hang up, you can literally be leaving voicemail on two phone lines while talking to a third person, which as you can imagine, the speed that you can make through calls is amazing. Now, what I like about foam burner versus other auto dialers is.
phone burner only dials one number at a time and then it dials the next some auto dialers and because people who are in this business they know that only one in three people pick up they'll actually dial three numbers at once and then whoever picks up you'll hear that There'll be a pause and then a click. I don't like that. I wouldn't use an auto dialer that has that because it feels extremely impersonal when you get a phone call and it's like.
You're really important to me, but there's this huge click and delay. So phone burner allows you to make those calls one at a time, but it does it way faster. I compare this to having like, you know, back in the day, my grandfather was a carpenter and he built lots of houses.
and he used hammer and nails and he was very good at it so that's like your phone and now this auto dialer is like an air nailer you know if you've ever watched somebody with an air nailer that walks along and they can literally put up you know a wall so fast because they're just like bing bing bing bing they're shooting nails through that other
cool thing you do phone burner. So that's cool. If you use it yourself, you can actually get your assistant to call for you. And 70% of the time when the voicemail pops up, it's actually going to be you your voice on the voicemail. So clients think you're calling the other 30% of the time you can actually have
the assistant give them a script to call. And I know like one of our coaches, Stevie D, he has his assistant make his birthday calls. So the birthday calls are done by his assistant. 70% of the time people think, Oh, Steve's amazing. He left me a birthday voicemail. The other 30% of the time.
It's assistant making the calls for them so that they happen consistently. Because as you know, when you think about these things, these are things we all know we should do. And like, yeah, I'll do it. But I forget, I get busy. I got too many things on my plate. So get someone else to do it. Set up a system.
¶ Essential Apps Recap and Program Details
and use technology to help them get it done in like an hour instead of like spending a whole day at it. And then once they sit down and start making the calls, the software just starts hammering the call. So as a quick recap, three apps, I think any mortgage broker. should set up are a text you can type super fast all your templates can be in there typing at 400 words a minute it makes you very effective the second is calendly which avoids phone tag will let you to control your calendar avoids
email tag back and forth trying to schedule something and then the last is phone burner which will be an auto dialer that can speed up your calls for you there's a bunch more that i love but these three i think are universal that would work for the vast majority of you listening should set up if not all of these
Certainly the first two should be absolutely done like this week. So hopefully that's helpful for you. If you're listening to this, hey, we've got something called 10 Loans a Month Academy. We have some amazing coaches that all have a different superpower. And we're currently full, but if you go to 10loansamonth.com, you can get on the wait list to find it when we're opening that up again. The way our program works is it's very small groups of coaching with an amazing coach.
And so if you go there, we'll let you know when it's open again. And then we'll send you to an info session. You can find out about the coaches, all how the programs work and everything. The actual program itself has been a lot of fun. And we've got some great results and feedback from us. So check out 10loansamonth.com. And thanks again.
checking out this episode. On the next episode, I'm not 100% certain what my topic is going to be, but don't worry. It'll be something that's useful for you. So check out the next episode. And please, if you wouldn't mind, take a minute, leave a review, share this with a mortgage broker friend. We'd love... getting the word out, you know, sharing what works, help you grow your business so you can actually be a business owner and not a slave to your business. Thanks again for checking this out.
This is an I Love Mortgage Brokering production.
