As mortgage broker or loan officer, you got into this industry for a reason.
There is a degree of independence in your day-to-day work and you get to put your own personal spin on the service you deliver as well as in your marketing efforts.
You have both the analytical and communication skills necessary to be in the business.
Expansion
You’ve acquired valuable skills in order to be successful in this industry, the infrastructure is set up, and a great flow of clientele, but you know you can help more people.
What happens when you grow your business and become a powerful industry leader? As you’ve built up a vast knowledge of the industry, scaling will put you in the best position for not only your professional goals, but also for your customers.
You will be able to find the best lending products and lending institutions that fits the need of the borrower with the most favorable terms.
It becomes easier for you to produce complete transparency of fees charged and income made to produce your loans, which leads to client trust.
Independence
As you grow and become independent, you won’t have the overhead of several levels of management, corporate staff, and advertising for an entire company that doesn’t benefit you fully.
It’s your operation, you make the decisions.
What better position could you be in to educate your prospects.
You educate those with misconceptions, and your prospects get the best mortgage option in accordance with your industry knowledge.
You are the guide.
But sometimes, it won’t be easy. The amount you earn per year is limited only by the volume of loans you settle per month.
The mortgage business is a great business to get into if you can go a few years without making more than $30-40,000 per year.
In the first year, many brokers or loan officers don’t make money the first half of the year.
The way you are remunerated as an independent can be quite complicated and vary significantly.
It takes some patience, but as you market yourself effectively on how you are uniquely qualified to help each client get their best mortgage, you’ll see gains.
The Referral Business
Once you get established, realtors will start referring you to other realtors. It takes a few years until you have a good number of agents referring business to you.
After a few decades, clients will start to return in a steady stream.
If you as mortgage broker can save one or two loans for a realtor every year, these realtors will send referrals.
Remember, you send deals because they are qualified. You will have qualified this person before he sends them to a realtor. This is an advantage.
When you get a referral from a realtor, you are hoping someone qualifies. When you give a referral to a realtor, they are somewhat prequalified.
This value proposition positions you as a partner instead of a vender.
Referral Partners
Because realtors control most of the buyers, you’ll have to learn to cultivate productive working relationships with them.
This can be a frustrating undertaking, but it is an essential component of a mortgage broker’s business development strategy.
Real estate agents tend to have a somewhat short memory when it comes to financing sources for their buyers.
They tend to refer those deals to the last loan officer they remember.
You want that person to be you, so it’s important to call agents often to keep yourself top-of-mind.
People-Based Advertising
Only acquiring prospects through realtors can cause dependency and it can take as long as ten years to become an established broker as you are fostering these referral partnerships.
What if that process can be sped up?
A Referral partner doesn’t have to be the only source of gaining new prospects.
People-based advertising offers an extra stream of potential customers while still enjoying partnerships with realtors.
Experienced programatic media buyers who utilize behavioral tracking technology will to dial in your marketing efforts and make sure that these efforts are profitable.
It’s difficult to measure the return on investment when it comes to realtor partners because it’s intermittent.
People-based advertising is something that can be measured and scaled.
As an independent mortgage broker, this will help you get enough people in your pipeline to close the amount of loans you want.
And it’s always nice to remember that everyone wants you to close. The buyers, sellers, agents, your team, your lender, insurance agent, the underwriter, your family.. everyone.
