podcast, the show where we flip the real estate status quo on its head and put loan officers into the driver's seat. We give you all the tools, strategies, resources, and mindset needed to modernize your mortgage business and thrive. My name is Luke Shankula, aka Long Form Luke, and this is the Loans On Demand podcast. going on? Welcome to the Loans On Demand Podcast, the show where we help loan officers flip the status quo on real estate agents and put loan officers in the driver's seat.
And I'm excited because today we have Cindy Ertman. She has been a top 100 loan originator for over a decade, and she's also the founder and CEO of The Defining Difference, a mortgage coaching and training company. And man, this is going to be a good one. I'm super excited. Cindy's got some cool things that she's launching. Obviously, a ton of experience helping loan originators grow their businesses. So I'm so excited. Welcome to the show, Cindy. Thanks, Luke. So great to be here.
Well, give us a little background on who you are. Obviously, I gave the flashy side of it. So give us a little background on who you are, what keeps you in this crazy industry that we're in, especially in times like this. And you know, what's going on in you know, what's going on in your life? Well, I was, you know, honestly fell in as most people to mortgage origination by accident. Someone told me they thought it was a great, you know, career for I I would give it a try.
And I guess it worked out okay. So, you know, had a 30 plus year run as not only an originator, but my partner and I led a $1.2 billion branch here in Southern California for many, many, many years. So we had a big team. I had 32 loan officers and the staff of 65. And I was the top producer for many years. I was in the top 100 originators in the country and, you know, running a branch, ultimately running a region for a national mortgage bank.
I've kind of seen all sides of find this business just gets into your blood. And if it does, there's really nothing that beats it. I found like later in my career, one of the things that I just became so passionate about was, you know, establishing new ways of doing business, building referral partnerships, new ways to market my database. I developed systems and processes to scale my business because to scale, you've got to shift how
you're doing business, right? So I started to build systems and processes around kind of every pillar of what it took to build. I became very focused initially. I wanted to get to a hundred million in production. And then my next thing is I really want to get to making a million dollars a year. Those were two main goals. I did ultimately hit over 200 million in personal production, but that was never my goal. In fact, after that happened, I wasn't sure I ever wanted that to happen again.
sure that's a lot of production to do as a single person. Well, I mean, I'm sure you had a big team that helped you, but that's a ton of production and probably a little bit of stress that goes along with that. A a ton A a ton lot of production of it and is probably stress. a little bit of stress that goes along with that, huh? A lot of it is stress.
But the great thing you is, know, when you build the systems and when you build the right team and, you know, that's what was frustrating for me as a coach in 2020, because a lot of my clients weren't prepared for that market when all of a sudden all the stars of a sudden the first time that happened to me, which was in 2003.
I remember in August of 2003, I had 129 loans in process in one month and this was still hard paper file so like they were stacked like everywhere and sure but like the thing is i was so excited because we had built the right team we had a system in process this we were capable of you know generating eight loans a day is what we were doing. And it took a really well, just hummed machine to be able to make that happen.
And so I got to see the fruits of our labor of building the right team and getting everybody in their lane so we could really operate at very high levels. So, and then when 2020 hit, it was such a recap of watching people go through that and leads are like flying through the door and, you know, it had systems, not no one, but many did not have systems to handle that level of volume.
And I just became aware of how much we need to focus on building the system in the process so that, and the right team. And it's been hard this last couple of years with people losing their teams and not having support any longer. And, you know And how do you rebuild from that? So that's a lot of what we spend our time on as a mortgage coach is helping people like redefine success. How do we expand our reach? How do we create new pillars of our business?
Because to be successful in today's world, we can't wait for the phone to ring. We've got to go make it ring. So it's about getting more intentional about our practices. Yeah, that's huge. I mean, you're right. I mean, you know, you're right. I mean, I saw a lot of people talk about that. I remember even with what we were doing, someone was like, oh, I wish I would have done this. You're like, when would you have done that? Like you literally were working like 15, 18 hour days.
Like when would you have done the thing that you're saying you would have done? Like, sure, like in retrospect, we believe that we should have done X, Y, and Z, but we don't have that foresight a lot of times to see into that. And then on the flip side of that, you know, we saw everybody sort of grow their business, including myself grew pretty well during 2020 and 21. And then, you know, the market turned and 22 was a little harder. And then 23 was really hard. And it was like, Oh crap.
Now what do I do? Do we let people go? Do we, you know, and then all of a sudden you're like, you thought you were never going to have to do this certain thing. And now you're having to do that thing again. And it's like weird, you know, like there's like a lot of those sort of like shifts that have to happen.
So kind of interesting, you brought that up, because, you know, it has been an interesting sort of shift from like one of the craziest high markets ever to like one of the lowest markets ever. It's just been a big swing. So from that perspective, what does that look like in terms of like, when you're talking to people now in this sort of market that maybe grew a team or had big production, like, how are you
getting people not prepared? Because I guess we've already been through like two years of this craziness. But like, how are you sort of helping people get through this Well, I think the beauty of COVID and what came from that is that it did kind of level the playing field is like, people weren't coming to your office anymore, right? Even before COVID, very few people I had some of my clients were actually tracking how many clients actually walked into their branch over the course of a year.
I had several of my own coaching clients shut down their brick and mortar prior to COVID and just going, it's not worth the to this virtually. And I have some very successful clients that run completely virtual businesses. And so, you know, it's been really fun to watch some of my mortgage clients actually start to really expand their reach into other markets.
And it's also interesting because I talked to other people that are like, oh no, you know, I just talked to a woman yesterday and she goes, I moved from North Carolina to Texas and now my North Carolina people don't want to work with me anymore because I'm not physically there. And I said, don't believe that story. That story just isn't true.
You just got to overperform and deliver and stay in touch with them and be intentional about your practices as to how you communicate with them and get on with them and create value for them. And there's so many different ways you can create value from afar. And one of my clients that I've coached her for 10 years, and she moved from San Clemente, California to two hours outside of Denver, lives on a horse ranch in the middle of nowhere.
And she found $125 million last year and kept all of her clients in Southern California from three and a half years ago, built a secondary market in Southern California in Big Bear, and is now starting to grow Colorado, then broke in to build a relationship. She's now in six states with that builder. I mean, her brain doesn't allow her to be in confinement. She believes in possibility and she's created it for herself.
So a lot of it is, I had a conversation with a client yesterday and she's in SoCal and it's a very difficult market here. I mean, it's is in a lot of places, but it's more difficult in a few places in America right now. Seattle's a tough market. We've got a lot of markets right now that are really struggling. And so it's like, we've got to get out of our little niche and we've got to expand our reach.
I mean, I did a training yesterday got looking at the sphere right around us, because our sphere is pretty vast, and we don't tap into it for business. And so, you know, people are looking at, okay, I don't have loyal realtors anymore, or half of them left the business, or they're not doing any business, and they're just stuck, and like kind of frozen. It's like, well, okay, then let's go build a financial planner pillar. And let me teach you how to do that.
I can get you in front of any financial planner with my financial planner script. It works a hundred percent of the time, because it's not about you asking for something. It's about you offering to refer them business and strategy to get in front of them.
And so that's, what's fun about the coaching aspect is to take a lot of things that I did to build relationship, the questions to ask, you know, cause I find if you give people the roadmap, Luke, you actually give them the, here's the script to get the meeting. And I was in a very high end market, you know, in Manhattan beach, California. So it's very affluent. So these are not cheesy scripts. These are like, I was calling really successful people to try to get meetings with them.
And my marketing had to be best in class and I couldn't have mediocre things going out. So, and developing database management strategies and building systems to stay in front of people. I was using an example yesterday because this is what I did, like to build my business to really significant proportions is I talked about what I did did like everywhere I went and not obnoxiously so, but you know, I would walk in to have my teeth cleaned. And of course they'd always say, well, what do you do?
I'm like, well, I run a mortgage company here in Manhattan beach. And they always want to talk about real estate and mortgage, right? Everybody's interested in that. I remember going to my chiropractor and my face is down in the cradle and I look at him and I said, hey, Vince, I go, you must work with all kinds of realtors here in the South Bay. You must work on them constantly. You've been around for a long time. I go, who do you like? And he starts rattling off names of realtors.
I'm like, yeah, I know her. Yeah, I know her. And he gives me the name of this guy, Charlie. I didn't know Charlie. And I said, well, tell me about Charlie. He goes, well, he's newer. He's up and coming. He's having some great success. You should know Charlie. So that afternoon I picked up the phone and called Charlie and said, you'll never guess where I got your name. You know, my head was face down in the cradle at Vince's office.
But within two days, I met this guy for wine and I got a $1.4 million deal from him within a week. And that's just because I asked the question. So I really tapping into our network in a bigger way, mean, I now. Yeah, I mean, it's just on scripts. I think there's a very big aversion by people to scripts. And interestingly enough, I mean, I think scripts are life. And I don't think you read a script word for word verbatim, right? Like that's not the point of a script, right?
The point of a script is to understand frameworks and understand the direction you want to take a conversation, right? And it's like, okay, well, yeah, you're not going to say word for word this on every single call because people are people and we're not selling a $20 widget, right?
We sell $20 widget, we can probably get away with, you know, talking word for word, but scripts allow us to have a roadmap or like, I guess we can call it like a bowling lane where like, you know, you can only go so far either way, but you're always brought back into like, okay, well, we went off track a little bit, but we're gonna get brought back into where we are in the conversation. And the other thing you said is questions.
I think the biggest mistake, this is not just loan officers, this is salespeople in general. I find it on my sales team. It's people believe that the valuable part of a sales conversation is the pitch, is the thing that you do. The truth is it's The valuable not. part of a sales conversation is the is the pitch, thing that you The truth do. is it's not.
The valuable part of a sales conversation is the questions, is understanding their situation, finding out their pain points, and then identifying the solution to their pain points. It might be your thing, it might not be. It sounds like that's the type of scripts that you're talking about in terms of the outreach and those sorts of conversations. Well, the other thing it's like, I think to the point of scripts, yes. Did I ever like memorize them and use them verbatim?
But some of the scripts that I wrote, I didn't need the script. I mean, I said it so many times and you put it in your own words so that it feels comfortable for you, but at least to your point, the roadmap of where we're going here.
So, you know, one of the scripts that I created tremendous success around and everything that I teach, I tested like as an originator, because I wanted to make sure I didn't want to teach something that people didn't get traction on, or that I personally didn't get traction on. But, and, you know, even though some people have done this in their own way, it's something you can do over and over and over again as an originator to gain traction.
And it's just, you know, make a list of the five realtors or the five referral partners that know, like, and trust you. It's very simple. And call those five people and just go, hey, Luke, you know what? I have loved working with you over the years. Like, it's so great to be in partnership with you. And we just know, like, and trust you on such a deep level.
And we really want to expand our business this year in mortgage because obviously it's been a tough couple of years and we really want to expand our reach. And so who do you know? Who's the name of a couple of people that you know that might benefit from what we do? Because we are not looking for quantity. We're looking for a couple of good quality people to expand into our team and build a relationship with. It can be somebody in your office.
It can be somebody that you've done a transaction with in the last year, but I'd love your help to get a couple of names for people that I could reach out to that might benefit from our service. And honestly, when I first tested that loop, the very first time I called a woman who is newer to real estate and I had helped her when she first got started, which is great because if you help them when they get started, then they kind of, they're yours. And I called her first.
She had moved to a Sotheby's office here in Manhattan Beach. And I asked her that question. She goes, oh my gosh. She says, I'm sitting in a pod with three other amazing female realtors. And she goes, Sarah just closed three deals this week. And she goes, yeah, I can introduce you. I said, could I get their names from you and phone numbers? She goes, absolutely. I'll text them to you. Then she calls me back 10 minutes later.
So this is my first test call to see if it me me back 10 minutes later and says, well, why don't we just all meet for lunch and I'll come too. And so I go, that would be amazing. So I met with these four realtors for lunch. My mortgage partner who took over my production and my business 10 years ago, still works with three of those realtors today. And that was just because I made one phone call and said, who do you My was to call five people and get 10 different names.
I called five people and got 18 names. Of course, then you have to call the people, you get the names from got a call. Yeah, yeah. That part. call because now someone that says, hey, I really know, I can trust this person has given you their name.
And so then to be able to call that, let's call it a realtor and say, Hey, look at, I just hung up with Luke and Luke told me that, you know, you're one of his favorite realtors and he knows, likes and trusts you and thinks you're really great at your craft. And we're really looking to expand our referral partner base, but we're really particular about who we work with. We want to work with really great people. And even if we don't work together, I think great leaders need to know great leaders.
And I'd love to grab a cup of coffee and learn more about you and your business. And 90% of the people, Luke said, yes. And I built new partnerships like so quickly. And the great thing is you can do it over and over and over again. And I even do it to this day to the same realtors once a year. I'll be like, hey, I'm going to ask you the question again. Like, who do you know? Who have you done a deal with this last year that my team could
benefit? And so asking that question, and I think even asking your clients when you close a transaction, it's one thing to ask for a referral or, hey, remember, you know, I'm all referral based. But I think it's important to just be I'd love to get a like, couple hey, referral you or, I'm Hey, all remember, referral know, but I think it's important based, to just be like, Hey, I'd love to get a couple of names from you, uh, people that might benefit from my service in the future.
So you're not just asking for a lead right then, but Hey, do you know a CPA or another great realtor or a financial planner or a business person that you think could benefit that? I just love to expand my resources and my connections.. That would mean the world to me. And people always have two names. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I mean, there's a, you said a massive opportunity to tap into your people that you already know to get your referrals.
And I think, again, a lot of times people just don't ask. I mean, salespeople, a lot of times don't ask for the sale. That's, I guess, the hardest parts for people to do because they're worried about rejection. But you know, closed mouths don't get fed. So you got to ask for the business. So I know we talked about sort of different phases in the growth trajectory that you went through. So I'm curious, like, what are the
different stages look like? And how do you sort of, you know, because obviously, what gets you to like 10 million a year is not going to get you to 50 million is not going to get you to 100 million. So like, what are those sort of different transitions look like? Do you have those broken into sort of like segments? Or how do you look at that sort of a growth trajectory? If maybe one of your clients wants to grow like that? Or what different transitions look
like? Do you have those broken into sort of like segments or how do you look at that sort of a growth trajectory if maybe one of your clients wants to grow like that or what does that look like? Yeah, and actually this last couple of years, particularly with the shift in the market and business not being so plentiful, I I created a new online training program because not everybody can afford my high level mastermind and private coaching. You we have a big private coaching practice.
I have 15 coaches that are all boots on the ground, originators and leaders right now that coach privately as well. But I built an online training program and I spent a couple of years creating it by really digging deep as to what I did. And I broke it into seven different pillars. It was called seven steps to seven figure mortgage to seven success. figure And mortgage I really success. went back And I really and okay, went back how and do you okay, start?
how do you start, right? And part of it is getting really clear on what your value is and the value that that brings to your referral partners and your client base because it's hard to convey your value if you are not clear what your value is. Right, 100%. You're 100%. their value is. So I usually will start people doing, we have a called mortgage satisfaction assessment. We will have them go through our quick assessment to assess their business.
And then it gets you clear on kind of where do you need to focus if you're wanting to grow your business? I would say like most of my clients have been in the business for a fair number of years. They've driven themselves to a certain amount of success. And now they want to go to that next level. And those are my favorite clients because you've already done like the hardest foundational work. Right.
But even with those, so many of them are missing like real systems for what happens when the lead comes in the when you tracking that lead? How are you communicating and following up with that lead? What happens if they don't buy a house for a while? Do they just fall off the radar? Do you have technology that triggers you that you need to follow up with the leader? Do you have a system? And then what's your process through the loan?
Like everybody has a process, but not everybody has a process that's defined. And as you grow, you can start to lean into creating a more extraordinary customer experience. You can add more bells and whistles into your touch point. So the better we got, the more we grew, the more we could drill down on like one of the things that I teach is how to build an annual marketing calendar because marketing is that elusive thing,
right? Like there's so many marketing is so there's social media marketing, there's video marketing, there's database marketing, there's hard mail marketing, there's ads, there's so many different ways to go with marketing. But the reality is a lot of people do very little marketing because they don't have a system or a plan. And I found that if you take 90 minutes once a year to build out your plan for the year and then get it into your calendar, I showed up for myself.
Like I had a plan for when I was going to do lunch and learns or when I was going to have my mastermind group. It was already in the calendar a year in advance. And we just managed to the plan. You know, how often are we going to post on social media? What does that look like? What does that posting schedule look like? Are we going to do motivational Monday? I think if you map out like a simple plan, it just makes everything so much more simple.
like a simple plan, it just makes everything so much more simple. Like I fully believe that if you do not have a fully operational CRM system and database that you know how to use, it should be the number one goal. Everything else should become secondary because my database was responsible from 20 to 30% of my income every And I I have a system. I sent an email. And this is another thing that for me, it's something that I coach my clients around this.
Learn how to be able to write an email to your entire database that with a click of a button... Because when I turned my business over to my partner, I had 4,500 past clients. So I personally, Cindy Ertman wrote an email to my past client database on the first of every month that was in my calendar. I showed up to it. I had my hour of growth every single day. And that's what I did on the first of the month.
And the 15th of the month, I also sent an email to my realtor database and I marketed to about a hundred realtors. I probably only worked with 25 of them, but I marketed to a hundred. That was just a round number. I had a business contacts database for CPAs, financial planners, my dentist, my doctor, my chiropractor, you know, whoever is in your sphere of business. I had a separate database for, and then I had a friends and family database.
And I think people miss the boat because I lost a loan that my sister-in-law did with bank of America because she didn't know I did refinances. And it's like my Christmas card list, right? Like every friend and family member was in my friends and family the Got remind people what we do for a living, but having a system around how you stay in touch with people is big. I'd mix it up between market human interest information, because, you know, you're going to hit people on different levels.
So marketing for me was very, I love marketing. It's my background. So it's my also a to have with your partners because it's about growth. You know, so I have a training that I give my clients around. Here's the 12 questions to ask a realtor in a meeting. And every single time I do these meetings, the thing they end with is, oh my gosh, when can we do this again? Because it's about them and it's about their growth.
And instead of talking about how crappy the market is and how slow everything is, talking about how can we build and grow this thing together. Or instead of saying that I close on time, I answer my phone and, you know, all the standard value propositions that, you know, I would say the majority of loan officers spout out there. So you did touch briefly on that at the beginning of this sort of segment.
But I think that's one of the things we deal with a lot with our loan officer clients do is like, okay, what is your value prop to real estate agents? Like when we're setting appointments for you with real estate agents, like what is the thing that you're going to tell them? A lot of times they say that I'm like, okay, well, you need to come up with something that's different than that. Because what we typically talk about is there's two different types of offers, right?
There's like from a marketing perspective, there's the improvement offer, which is a, I'm marginally better at doing this. I'm marginally better doing this other thing. I'm marginally better doing it. It's like, it's much harder to get someone to move.
But if you can create a new opportunity offer, which is like, hey, I do these things differently and better than everybody else, that's going to make you stand out so much more and make you be able to attract more business and business that maybe has, you know, realtors that maybe already working with someone else that doesn't do X, and Y, Z, right. So one of the things we talked about is obviously being able to give leads and pre approvals to agents.
But I think you should have multiple things that you stand on that are different than at least from the outside appear different, right? Creating unique mechanisms. So I'm just curious, like, is that something that at the beginning they're doing is like, hey, if you don't have a solid value prop, you can spout off in a couple seconds. That is not I do my job, right? Is that something that they're working on right away? Or what's kind of that looking like on your side? interesting.
I have this exercise called discover your why and greatest strengths. on your side. Very interesting. I have this exercise called discover your why and greatest strengths. And I remember presenting it on the mastermind summit stage in Vegas many years ago. So there's 1500 originators there. And one of the guys in the audience was from the Seattle market. And I knew him pretty well. You know, so one of my thing is, what are your three greatest strengths? And he texts me later that day.
And he goes, Cindy, I actually wanted to my room after your session. He goes, I was very sad. I'm like, you're sad. Like that was not the way. He goes, no, I, I don't know my value. And I've been in business for like almost 20 years and I don't even know what my value is, you know? And I said, well, the funny thing is I know your value, you know, like I do, but it's interesting. People really struggle with, you know, what their value proposition really is.
So having people really think about that, but not just, I'll give you an example because this was one of my value propositions, but what I want people to do is go, okay, what are you great at? Whether it be just innately and you're starting out and you don't have all the skills of a great originator yet, but you know, who are you basically? What are you great at naturally? So a lot of people will say, which was one of my strengths as well as communication.
Well, that's great, but most originators are pretty good communicators. So how is that really a differentiator? Right. Right. With the realtor and go, Oh, I'm a great communicator. Well, that's not going to be too exciting. Right. What I did is I thought about how do I use that ability to communicate well as a differentiator? So what I did for myself is I thought, well, we communicate on all these different milestones of the loan. We had a system around that, right? A great LOA.
A She was responsible for calling out to the listing agent, selling agent, and the buyer. You know, every time there was a milestone, your file just went into processing, you know, appraisal came in at value, your file just went into underwriting, congratulation, your loans approved, all the different stages. And I said, what if we turn that in to a communication system? So I developed the Cindy Ehrman 10 point milestone communication plan. So it's already what I did.
I just shined a much brighter light on it. And so when I go meet with a new realtor, I would say, you know, Luke, one of the things that my realtor partners love about our team is our 10 point milestone communication plan, because we notify you on these 10 points of the loan. And every Tuesday, you will never have to call my team. And I know it's a hot button for a lot of realtors with lack of communication with their lender.
But it's one of the things that has created trust with my team is because we're such great communicators about all the milestones of the loan. We created a hard paper flyer. We had it in our packet that we handed out. The funny thing is, Luke, I started coaching a new client recently, runs a pretty big branch on the East Coast. coaching a new client recently, runs a pretty big branch on the East Coast.
He decided to go after a new builder that he did not think he had a shot to get, but he took my communication plan and built it out for himself and delivered that about three weeks ago to this. And they've been working with the same lender for 20 years. And their number one frustration is his lack of communication. and their number one frustration is his lack of communication. And he won that builder as a backup lender to start because of his dialed in communication plan.
So it became a valuable tool, even though you're a great communicator. So loan originators to really think about their core strength and how does it really benefit and how can you shine a brighter light on that strength? If you're an expert at underwriting guidelines, wonderful. Then speak to why that's valuable for your realtor partners. You know, I'm going to know instantly when I talk to your client who the investor needs to be.
I can get, you know, really difficult loans through the system because I'm an expert at guidelines. So I can open up so many more opportunities to serve your buyers than your competition. Put words to your expertise. And most loan officers don't call themselves experts. Determine what you're an expert at and call yourself And at relationship development. I'm going to build a relationship with a client. I'm going to keep them in your court, Mr. Realtor.
I'm going to shine a big, bright light on you and tell them how amazing you are so we make sure they buy with you and not somebody else. And then I'm going to follow up with your client for the rest of eternity. And I'm going to report back to the status when I call them every single year. So you're up to date on your Yeah.
So that's exactly kind of what I was saying is like, you know, unique mechanisms is kind of what we call it in the marketing world, but is essentially you name a process that you already have just makes it sound sexier, right? It's like, okay, well, I communicate well, every single loan officer says they communicate well. There's not a single loan officer that's like, I suck at communication, realtor, like give me business. Like, that's just not how that works.
And so, yeah, I love that you did that because, you know, one of my buddies, he has a lead guarantee. Hey, if you send me a lead, I'm going to call them seven times in four days, right? Now, obviously, if you have these guarantees, or if you have these things that you do, you actually have to, yes, you have to execute on the things you promise.
Yeah, that's, that's the thing about these guarantees and these processes and things like that, like, like showing up and just building relationships with people over long periods of time, you can kind of stand behind a I'm a good guy or whatever, and you build relationships. But if you really want to build relationships quickly, and be able to get in and like more of like a sales environment where it's like, hey, like a brand new realtor that you want to work with.
Like you can get into those relationships a lot quicker than taking them a coffee for six But look, what you just said is such a perfect example of a great communication value proposition is this guy has a system, right? All those people seven times, like it's a system. And to highlight that for a realtor is a big deal.
I'm going to stay on top of this seven times over the next two weeks i mean whatever that system is but that is a on top well and then he also has a similar thing to what you were talking about in like hey and then you're never going to have to reach out to us we're going to communicate every single whatever i don't remember what day is either monday or tuesday you're going to get an update whether via text via email via phone call whatever is your
preferred method we're going to get in contact with you we're going to tell you exactly what's happening you never have to reach out to me you're going to save x amount of time per file by not having to call me and you know we're always going to practically reach out so again that's two of his i think he's got like eight of them right and they also closed almost 700 loans last year so there's a reason why these things work right it's because you sound
different like we talked about differentiator right and new opportunity because everybody else like let's be honest 90 of loan officers are showing up and they're saying the same thing. And it's hard to stand out from the crowd. You may be an amazing originator. You probably are an amazing originator. But like you said, even with like expertise, I'm an expert, you know, I've got 30 years of experience. Truth is no one really cares if you have 30 years of experience.
Now, what does that mean for them? One of our LO clients said that their realtor came to them and said, Hey, can we run some ads about the fact I used to be an attorney so I can negotiate. I said, that doesn't matter. No one cares. What does that negotiation mean? Can she tangibly prove that her negotiation skills has helped her clients achieve X amount more in listings? Or has she been able to negotiate lower prices for her buyers? Otherwise, it doesn't matter.
No one cares that you were an attorney in your past life. Really, no one cares unless you can tangibly prove what that means for them. The what's in it for me 100%. So amazing, right? To me, it's a huge value bomb because it's something I try to communicate over and over and over again. In marketing, we learn how to create offers and how to create value propositions, how to do that. Unfortunately, in the mortgage industry, you get taught, go talk to realtors. Well, what do I say?
Just go talk to realtors. What do I tell them? Just go talk to realtors. And that's just typically the coaching that comes along with, you know, most branch managers. And I don't want to say all branch managers are like that, but it just seems like that's sort of the pervasive experience that most loan officers get is like, Hey, how do I get business? Go talk to more real estate agents. And so they all show up the same way. know, even 20 year veterans in the mortgage business will call me and
go like, what do I say? Like, I don't know what to call them. I mean, I do think you have to have a purpose for the call. I The other thing that I did, and this was just really helpful to think about if I was going to go have a meeting, let's say with a new realtor, potential partner, it's one thing to go have a meeting. Most people, if they meet you live, the meeting goes pretty well, right? They agreed to be there, but then there's the, then what, like how do you build the relationship?
So I would go into every meeting with an intention of what my next step was. And I would convey it at the meeting. I would tell them what our next step was together. And then, you know, I put systems and processes together. So there was a system for me. First of all, I created my connection to referral partner conversion training, which teaches people how to do the first meeting. It's 40 questions to ask a realtor. And there's a psychology behind the questions and how they're asked.
And even if you only have 15 minutes, you can only ask five of the questions, but it's all about them. And it's not about your price, your product, your service, it's you. I mean, I have so many stories, Luke, of relationships that I built. We never talked about me, my company, my pricing, my service. We never had any conversation. I made the whole conversation around asking quality questions about them in a systematic way that helped them open up.
And it's funny because even people that I'm coaching that have, you know, 10 great referral partners, they don't know the answers to these questions because they've never asked their realtor these questions. So that in and of itself is a differentiator. I had a guy last week who's in this seven steps training. He said, I did your connection to conversion training. I took the script. I studied it. I took it to the meeting. I met with this new realtor.
And he said, the guy said to me, oh my gosh, I've been in business 20 years. No one has ever conducted this kind of a meeting with me before. Will you come in and present to my office? And that's the kind of stuff that's exciting because it gives you new tools in your toolbox and it differentiate you in the market that people notice because the way you're showing up and you're making it about them and not about you. It's a very big shift.
And it's not intuitive for people to do that in a meeting. It's interesting because I very much was resistant to the idea of me being a salesperson for years. And for whatever reason, I ended up being good at it. And I think part of it is I'm a little ADHD and I love to understand the why. So I always ask questions that don't really matter. And then I'm kind of going through a lot of sales training over the last probably 5-10 years. I was like, oh, all right. Okay, so that's what I was doing.
And that's why I was pretty good at sales was because I just was very curious. I like to ask questions.
And so one of the things we talk about a lot with originators is like if they're talking to one of the leads that we generate it's like okay well ask second and third and fourth level questions as well a lot of times people will get that surface level answer also like you know why are you looking to buy a home or why are you looking in that area oh we want to move school districts okay cool what type of home are you looking for instead you could ask something like what's so
significant about moving to that school district and then all of a sudden the person's like oh well my kid has down syndrome i don't feel like the school that he's in right now has the support. And so now all of a sudden, you have such a much deeper why for getting this consumer to move forward on moving forward with you. And you go, hey, you know what, at the end, you can say, oh, man, let's get you and your son into this new school district.
Let's go find you and move on it versus like, oh, yeah, let's go move you in a new place. Right. And so many people miss out on that opportunity to ask deeper questions. exactly what my train does. It's like, it goes to that next level. Cause to your point, you ask a question here, you get the top shelf answer that doesn't interest me. What interests me is I call it clarifying questions. I it.
I remember one of my realtors, he didn't want to meet with me and he was newer to our market, but he was starting to get some traction. I was noticing his numbers. And so I kind of begged him to meet with me. I'm like, come on, it's a free lunch. It's one hour of your life. I'll make it valuable for you. And so he finally said, yes, he goes, I'll give you one hour. it at two hours, I had to excuse myself.
But I remember one of the things I asked him because he had moved from Manhattan, New York to Manhattan Beach, California. So those are very different markets. And he was a little rough around the edges for our Manhattan Beach, you know, laid back beach community. But I remember asking him about some of his biggest challenges of breaking into the market. And he said, well, you guys do business completely differently here. Like everything is different. And he goes, I'm a New York communicator.
I'm a very direct communicator. I don't mince around. And I he was a go deeper on that with me. So I asked the next layer question, talk to me about how you've been able to overcome that. What have you had to actually learn and how have you had to shift the way you show up with people? And then he went more from here to like the heart space of how difficult that has been for him. But the cool thing, Luke, is, and I kind of use my connection to conversion quality questions with him.
And when we finished that meeting, it was so profound. I had never mentioned my company, what I do, my experience level, nothing. Now he knew of me. So it's like, I wasn't a stranger. But at the end of the meeting, he goes, you know, Cindy, I wasn't going to mention this at the lunch, but I'm launching my own real estate company in 30 days. I've already got 15 realtors committed to my new company.
And he said, I'd really like to have a conversation with you about being my preferred lender, my in-house lender. We never talked about loans on any level, but we trust day. And I ended up being their preferred lender from one lunch where I never talked about loans or my product or service. So it was then that I started to really realize the power of connection. And I teach that. It's a learnable skill to learn how to connect at a deeper level. And I give people the roadmap.
Here's the questions and here's why you asked that question. And this is what will unfold from it. And it's pretty magical. So it's a different way of building relationship. That's, it's a lot more satisfying for me too. a That's fantastic. And I think the reason why sales has such a negative connotation is because traditionally sales is not what we're talking about.
This is the type of sales I prefer is understanding their situation and prescribing a solution to their problem versus, hey, you know what, I'm going to cookie cut everybody. I'm going to put pressure on them. I'm going to be that greasy salesperson that's going to shame people into buying that, you know, oh, well, you shouldn't rent anymore. Like there's better ways of doing that. That makes the decision kind of be
their decision, right? Yes, obviously, you can say manipulate, but to a certain extent, you have guided the conversation to that outcome. But when they make the decision, they're much less likely to have buyer's remorse, right? And that's what tends to happen with the sort of like high pressure sales conversations that is kind of the I don't know what you call the old school. I mean, I don't know.
I mean, because I just know that I gone through the Grant Cardone type of trainings and I'm like, eh, that's not my thing. Oh yeah. You want to pray about it? Okay. Well let's pray right now. Like, nah, I can do that. I agree. You're no nah, I can with us. I agree. I And there's still some of it out there and it works to a certain extent. Right. But I do believe that it creates different outcomes.
And, and I think the way that you're training people is huge because I think that allows for more longevity, relationship building, future transactions, lifetime value for that particular client over time. You know, like that's how you actually build real relationships is understanding their situation. I also think that it's kind of malpractice not to run a mortgage practice this way, because like a lot of people just say, all right, well, let's throw you in a 30 year fixed FHA.
We don't know anything about their future. What are they going gonna do in the future? What if they wanna buy investment properties? What if they wanna do? We don't know. Like we have no idea because we didn't ask those questions because I don't know. We just figured they'll just go in a 30-year fixed FHA conventional, whatever. Like I just think that there was some opportunities for loan officers to show up in a better way to be an advisor, but also a salesperson at the same time.
And I think those two things go hand in hand. So kind of like to wrap things up, if there was like one strategy in this market, obviously, we're not tough market, you're doing a lot of coaching with clients, what are the strategies that are working? Or what's like one in particular that you would recommend someone go out there today to go get business? Well, I just believe so wholeheartedly in our database. And I think there's so much gold in our past client database.
And I just think a lot of people don't nurture past clients as they One that people aren't talking about right now, I'm talking about it with a lot of my clients was talking to a national leader the other day. And he said their number one product right now that they're closing loans is cash out refis because they've done a great job of training their loan officers as to how to actually go after them. And, you know, Barry Habib is one of my closest friends and has been for 25 years.
And Barry and I talk about this a lot with his whole, you know, debt consolidation program that he's got through MBS Highway. But the reality is no one is going to call us because they have debt and they need to consolidate that. So unless we're asking the question. So one of the things that I train my people on is I created a call script that asks all the right questions.
If you're calling your past clients, and I really encourage people, very few people pick up the phone and actually call them. I called 20 a week. I called 10 on Tuesday and I called 10 on Thursday. And that was just part of my follow-up system.
But if you've got the script where you've got the questions in front of you and to bring up the conversation around debt and just say, hey, one of the reasons that even though no one wants to refi off their 3% rate, but we're finding that not only is equity at an all-time high in America today, but debt is also at an all-time high. And what people aren't talking about is debt. And a lot of people lost jobs during COVID.
A lot of people have racked credit card debt and car payments and student loans. And we've been able to, in some cases, save people a tremendous amount of money in their monthly cashflow. So even if you're taking a 7% rate, if it's saving you $1,500 a month, flow. So even if you're taking a 7% rate, if saving you $1,500 a month, it really is life changing for people.
So just want to mention that in case that were to be a circumstance that either you or anybody else knows, but start to plant the seeds of all the different reasons people refinance to actually purchase another property, you know, to diversify their assets, to buy a second home. I mean, but if we start planting the seeds, which is what I did consistently. And I would always ask, like, now that you've been in your home for a while, how long do you anticipate staying in your current property?
Just that one question. I created so many opportunities. I remember a really favorite client of mine said to me, well, you know, Sam, we thought we were going to be here for at least five years, but we just had an accident maybe. And now we're kind of short a bedroom. And now we're thinking we maybe only can stay here for another year because we're pretty tight. And I said, well, Jack, I said, why would you wait a year if you're tight? The market's hot right now.
What could it hurt to just go look to see what's on the market? And so I really encouraged him to call his realtor. She was a friend of mine. I secretly called the realtor and said, I just hey, planted the seed in Jack's him to call his She realtor. was a friend of I secretly mine. called the realtor and said, Hey, I just planted the seed in Jack's mind to call you. I think you should look at what his house is worth. And he was an escrow within two weeks on a new house.
But I created that opportunity because I asked the question and encouraged him like, if you're already tight and you're short a bedroom, why wouldn't you just go look right now? But I And that realtor loved me forever for asking that question. Yeah, I'm sure. And that's huge. I mean, being able to create business for your realtors is one of the biggest, I think, pieces of value that loan originators tend to overlook or say they don't get access to those type of people.
And to be honest, I think that's an excuse to not market to the consumer, to not work your database, to not do those things that do create business that can be reciprocated to your partners. Real quick, just to kind of touch a little bit on tactical, you said 20 a week. Is this 20 conversations or 20 just total contacts like calls? I called 10 past clients on Tuesday and 10 past clients. It wasn't people that needed or wanted to refinance. It was literally started with anybody.
And my assistant would literally put the names on my desk and I would just call. And on I called 10 realtors that and trusted me. Mondays, knew, like, That was my touch base. I had a list of 20. I And my I didn't call 40. I the core is great. mean, And a lot of people call 40. That's awesome. But I'm more of the mindset of go deeper with fewer and build relationships. So I would take my list of 20 and I would call 10 on Monday and the other 10. So they were getting two live calls.
My top 20 would get two live calls from me monthly. And those calls were more like tell touch-based, me what's going on in the market. Did you have any open houses this weekend? Where are you finding challenges? What are you doing to market your business? I would always have a question and I would ask them. And sometimes I had a hard time getting them off the phone because they liked talking to me.
And then on Wednesdays, I had a list of 20 referral partners that I wanted to build a relationship with. And I built a lot of systems around how to get them to a meeting. So I'd call 10 with the intention of getting a meeting. So, I mean, I had real systems around what I did. And then on Fridays, I used to write 10, you know, basically thank you notes or notes of gratitude for, I might send one to an underwriter. I might send one to a realtor.
If I was doing it today, I do 10 one minute videos just to say appreciation to people. I would like to thank you notes, but I think it's having a system makes it so much easier for you to show up for yourself. But the one thing is if you are not like, I hate the word, you know, time blocking, because most people just won't do it. And it sounds so ominous. I called it my growth hour because I wanted to grow. And I knew that in any market, I had to commit one hour a day minimum to my own growth.
And I put a sign on the outside that said, do not disturb from 10 to 11. Every single day I showed up. And that's when I made my calls. I did my reach out. I scheduled meetings. I got uncomfortable. I got some no's, but I got a lot of yeses along the way as well. And then I created systems for follow-up. So if you have a system, it makes it so much easier. I had a system for connecting with listing agents and building partnership with them.
Because, you know, we all want to have a relationship with them. But if you don't have a system, then it's harder to make that happen. And so created systems for all the different kind of pillars for our lead generation. How do you stay in touch with the leads? We have systems around that. We have tracking in my coaching program. So how to track your leads and how to track your customer experience and how to ask for referrals and how to build partnership.
And so yeah, if anybody wants any more information regarding our coaching, we have private coaching. We have a high level mastermind group that I lead personally. I've got my new online training program, seven steps to seven figure mortgage success, which is you can get started for three 97 is three payments of three 97. And that thing will give you soup to nuts, everything you need to build a seven figure business.
And I lead a live training call every month to support the people in that program. Love it. And so you can just go to Cindy Ertman.com and just go to mortgage coaching. And there's a pop up there for my new seven steps. And there's a great download on my site too with kind of a checklist for 2024 that might be helpful too. There's some free resources if you go to the resource tab. Awesome, awesome. And I was just about to get into where can people connect with you? So that's perfect.
Go to the website. It says cindyertmint.com, I believe is what you said. Is there any other places that people can connect with you? Get some more content? I don't know if you do social. I mean, absolutely. My YouTube channel, we're doing more and more with YouTube and trying to build and grow that. I post my trainings that I do onto YouTube, definitely on Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn too, because I think LinkedIn is a highly disregarded sometimes resource for people.
And I think LinkedIn, I've spent a lot more time personally on LinkedIn lately. It's funny because when Facebook first launched, I was on the faculty of Loan Toolbox when that company was around. And I was the national guinea pig for Loan Toolbox to learn how to use Facebook like the first week it launched. So Facebook is still my jam because I know how to use it backwards and forwards because I'm literally the guinea pig. But I do think that we have to have a social presence today.
It doesn't have to be overkill. I train a lot of people how to do social media in 15 minutes a day, but we've got to have a presence. It is a relevancy factor. The first thing I do when I talk to a new client is I go to their social platforms. I look them up. I see if their name, their photo, what they do for a living is on their header. It's amazing how many people don't even say what they do. agents. love to help anybody that needs help. It's a challenging season, I is.
originator in America needs some kind of coaching right now to give them new tools in the tool chest to expand your reach because there are people doing it and having great success. One of my clients funded 18 million last month because she's expanded her reach and it's to see what's possible. to see what's possible. Yeah. There's business being done out there and you're right.
I mean, yeah, it's harder market and most people are down, but there is still money to be had and there's still deals to be closed. And if you do things like you've always done, maybe there isn't deals to be had, but there is ways that you can change the way you do business, do more. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, is we're in a market where you got to do a little bit more than you had to do in especially 2020 and 2021.
But you just got to do 4x the amount of work and 4x the amount of outreach and stuff like that to get a similar result. So thank you so much for your time today, Cindy. It's been a pleasure. I think we've dropped, well, I'll say you've dropped bomb after bomb after bomb. It's been awesome. Yeah, it's been super awesome. So my biggest takeaways from this is, I mean, a lot of what we talked about is systemizing the
way you do business, right? I mean, from the value proposition to the outreach to all of that. So that was like a big takeaway. And then also showing up differently from everybody else. So that was huge. I think there is a lot of opportunity in this market to show up and be different. And I think that is really the thing, right? Really the key in this market is to get traction. You have to be different.
And most people are walking around seeing the same stuff and wondering why they're not getting traction. So again, go back, listen to this podcast again, because there was a ton of opportunities to learn. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today, Cindy. And if you are listening to this podcast and you are looking for some help to get in front of more realtors, get in front of more consumers, go to flip the status quo.com. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day.
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