You can’t sell what you don’t know.
This week at the Network, Rich Jefferson brought the heat to remind us that success doesn’t exist without preparation. Watch below!
FREE Business Plan Builder!
See how we coach our people to do more business by building plans for referral partner success!
A lot of loan officers take a shotgun approach to their selling strategy. While “Never say no” may seem like a great rule for capturing opportunities as they arise, it’s actually a recipe for mediocre service and dissatisfied customers.
How do you change your mindset, skip the FOMO, and find your selling super power? One word: preparation.
Wait… How Do I Prepare for Every Loan Program?
This one is simple (or as we like to say… simpl!).
You don’t.
Trying to do this will end up spreading your time and effort thin, giving you insight to many things but mastery of none. Instead, know where your best opportunities for success are and own that market. Become the expert in that program and be the guy (or gal) that all your referral partners come to with questions.
The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. When you take a look at your own business, you will probably see that the things that are working come fairly easily.
So where are you spending the other 80% of your time and effort? Is it going to pay off? The answer may be yes, and the message here is not that everything should come easily. But often as loan officers, we can be hammering a square peg in to a round hole with no vision for what success means. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean that you should do something.
Opportunity Cost
For everything you do, there is an opportunity cost. This goes hand-in-hand with the 80/20 rule.
Think of it this way: You’re working on a difficult loan using a program you’re not an expert in and it takes up half your day. You blow off your time you scheduled to make check-in calls with your referral partners. At the end of the day you’ve fixed the problems with one loan, but missed the opportunity for several new loans because you skipped out on your business development responsibilities.
Was it worth it?
So… Prepare for Success!
Zig Ziglar says “Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.” Preparation means taking the time to determine what is and isn’t worth investing in and knowing when to say no.
I challenge you this week to educate yourself on your opportunities and find the trends in your own business of the simple things that are profitable and the difficult things that are draining your time and money. Then see what steps you can take to prepare for success by realigning your priorities to give you more time to optimize what is working.
Share This!