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The Mortgage Godfather: How to Get Out of Your Mess! It’s Really Easy!

Nov 21, 2016

What the hell are you doing?

In most cases, I know, for a fact, you’re doing what you’ve been doing for the past few years: Waiting for the phone to ring, fooling yourself, being afraid of everything, sitting on your hands, staring at the phone, extolling the fact that you will, very soon, get off your ass and get to work.

How do you, in your right mind, expect to get business if you are just sitting there waiting for business to turn around and come to you?

Do you think there are people who need you that are going to call you because you have so much to offer?

Do you really believe that every one of your past clients hate you, despise you, think you are a devil, want you dead? Do you think that every real estate broker/salesperson/attorney/financial advisor/insurance broker/builder is going to call you and beg for you to come to their office to take an application and then promise their undying affection for you?

I preach and I preach and I preach … but it seems that most of you just want to keep the insanity definition going on infinitum. And by most of you, I mean the greater majority by far. It is difficult at best to find a salesperson who thinks and then acts in a proactive way. Sure, you’ll go to a seminar and then tell your family that you’re going to spend your last dime on some magic money making program, just to get them off your case. The sad part is that most of you really believe it.

I have been saying and writing the following for many years. I will continue to do it until I either die or have a stroke and cannot talk or write any more.

If you want business, go get it. If you want to be successful, there is business out there to be had.

Ok, enough … enough of the criticism and enough of the hand-wringing over the past!

What you want people like me to do is to tell you how to get out of this mess!

I’m a coach/mentor. I help people realize their true potential. I do it with heart and mind and sense and understanding and aggression and persistence. I have clients who listen and produce numbers that would shock most of you. But I see, every day, that the overwhelming majority of salespeople have every opportunity to make real money and yet they think of ways to not exercise their brains, legs, mouth and feet. If I could just get you in the car, get you to visit someone who can refer business to you, if only.

Here is the method I know, for a fact, works better than any software system, Web site connection, Internet initiative, three-ring binder system, predictable dialer or automatic mailer.

I need to clarify something here. I personally stress, as the first and most necessary step in your success, that you have goals, a plan and a minimum of four marketing initiatives to help you get business. Four marketing initiatives that are working all at the same time. Four ways to generate business, both immediately and in the future. This is your profession isn’t it? You’re in this for the long haul. Right? What I’m about is how to generate leads. I believe I have the most innovative way to generate business that has ever been devised. I believe that I have the most productive way to get people to give you business that you’ve ever thought of. You need to pay attention here, absorb it and then enact it.

There are three things every salesperson must do to be successful.

1. Give away information
Give it away in gobs. Give away everything you’ve ever learned. Of course, it should be mostly about your business, but does not necessarily have to be. What I stress with my clients is that they should be helpful with the people they seek to receive referrals from. They should teach, mentor, advise, inform, add value, instruct and be there! It is often asked of me what it is I’m asking you to say to your client/referral partners. What is it I’m asking that you do that is different than what others do? Such a simple concept that it requires such a simple answer. Teach them how to make money! Teach them what I teach you. Teach them how to put a database together, put out a weekly e-mail, call the database every quarter, co-market, and explain to them how to use free reports to their best advantage.

2. Ask for business
This is tricky, sometimes. But you start out by doing the following. Pick 25 people to go see. Pick the ones who actually do business. Put them in your database. When you go in the first time, tell them you’re not like any other loan officer they ever met. Tell them you’re going to show up at their office every week for four weeks in a row, on the same day, at approximately the same time. Tell them that after the fourth week and beginning the fifth week having then proved that you are trustworthy, you will ask them to begin to do business with you (for the complete script, you need to send me a request). Salespeople fail because they give up too soon.

3. Be persistent
Salespeople give up too soon. More studies show this than any other informative words I could ever give. But most of you don’t get it. Living in a world of instant gratification is nice, but it doesn’t work with long-term business relationships. It is most apparent to me that even if you don’t give away information, don’t ask for business, but you do show up, every week, you’ll eventually get business. But it is getting past the “No” that you must do. Did your mommy and daddy always say “Yes” to you? If they did, they were wrong, but that’s a subject for another paper. You need to get past the answer “No” in order to get to the answer “Yes,” but it won’t happen if you don’t go back it cannot happen if you give up.

Okay … I’ve given away my secrets. All of them in one place, but here is the hard part … you actually need to do these things to be able to make money.

For a very long time, I have been offering the sip of the wine of knowledge. Most of you have sought something else, you’ve been looking for the chalice that it comes in. You’re looking, as all historians know, in the wrong place. The chalice is a myth, but the wine has always been produced. Drink the wine I am offering here. Cats chase their tails, so don’t be a cat. Insanity is, according to Einstein, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Are you insane?



Ralph LoVuolo Sr. has more than 50 years in the mortgage Industry, with the last 30 as a coach. He is past president and founder of the New York Association of Mortgage Brokers, and long-time member of NAMB—The Association of Mortgage Professionals. He can be reached by phone at (917) 576-1230 or e-mail [email protected].



This article originally appeared in the July 2016 print edition of National Mortgage Professional Magazine. 

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