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Florida industry appointments update - 11/29/2006

Nov 28, 2006

Technology is useless ... unless applied!Brian L. Pearttechnology, increasing sales, leads Technology will not make sales for you. Technology will not save your business from disaster. Technology is a tool to be used to save time, to improve customer retention and most importantly to grow sales! Let's take database software for example. Whether you use Outlook, ACT!, GoldMine or any number of others, none of them will do anything for your sales unless they are used. They will become powerful sales tools for growing your business every month, making your relationships better, improving your follow up and making you money. Listen to that - making your relationships better and improving your follow up. Wouldn't you agree that follow up and relationships are two key components of a successful loan officer? I use ACT! software as my contact manager and I plan everything right in ACT!. Now, I am not saying ACT! is better then anything else, it is just what I use and am comfortable with. But ACT! makes me a better salesperson. When talking to clients, I put notes in ACT!. I hear a dog bark in the background as I am pre-qualifying a client and ask his dog's name. I make a note of Rover's name in ACT!. I start my next follow-up call with, "Hi John, how is Rover doing?" I now have an edge over every other loan officer vying for that person, and because I follow up when few others do, the chances are dramatically tilted toward me to get that deal and all of the referrals down the road from that loan. Many loan officers and brokers still write notes on pieces of paper. Maybe they even keep a "hots" folder where the hot pre-qualification leads are kept and looked at daily to figure out whether they need to call a lead back that day or not. But this leaves a ton of leads that fall through the gap. Most loan officers have a ton of people that they should be following up with but they don't get around to it because of poor time management. Your database is an awesome tool to stay on top of all of the people that you need to follow up with and to increase your business. Ideally, while you're on a call, you should be in your database making notes. You will either book them for an appointment or schedule the next follow-up call - it should be done right then. You should wake up each day, look in your database and already see 10 to 12 follow-up calls scheduled days before. If you have been in this business for at least three months, you should have a ton of calls to make every day! Now, maybe you are like me and can't type in your database while you are talking on the phone. For those people like me who are technically challenged, you should block 15 minutes at the end of your day or call block and schedule all of those follow-up calls while they are still fresh in your mind. (A call block is a block of time you set aside each day to make all your calls so that you are condensing all of your calls into a one- or two-hour timeframe instead of slowly getting around to them as the day goes on. This technique increases your focus, your intensity and your sales.) If you don't do it then, it will never get done! Tomorrow, when you are in the middle of that closing crisis, the only lead that you will have time to call is the super hot one; but alas, for every one of those, there are three others you are letting slip away. The time to schedule those follow-up calls is right after the call or right after the call block; otherwise, it is gone and so is the money that could have gone with it. But at least by day's end, you should take all of those papers that you are working on and get them into your database. Get them scheduled in so that you don't forget and then clear them off your desk. The battle is rarely won on the first call anymore. Most people feel it is their obligation to call at least a few people or else they are not being smart about their mortgage (consumer advocates having done a great job of selling people on shopping around). But most of the other people they call will never follow up. If you do, you win the day, even if you are not a great salesperson. Most of my conversions happen on the second call, not the first. Technology is a great tool, but we must use it. If you plan your week right in your database and schedule all of your follow-up calls right after the call or the call block, you will stay on top of everything and your database and your income will continue to grow. Schedule it all in; otherwise, you will be looking at a large folder with potential leads that you never got around to calling - that folder is money lost! The size of your database equals the size of your paycheck. Don't lose any more money, use your database and win the day! Brian L. Peart is president and the founder of Nexus Financial Group Inc. and the publisher of the Top Producer training course. He may be reached at (866) 355-1244 or e-mail [email protected].
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