According to former coaching great Lou Holtz there were only two truly important questions to him in recruiting college football players…
Who is making the decision and what do they want?
While getting to the heart of these questions was essential for Coach Holtz in his recruiting of a football player, they are also essential for us in originating a mortgage. The “who” question is usually clear to us. The decision maker may be the Realtor, husband, wife, parents, builder, etc. and many times Loan Officers misinterpret the potential influence or lack thereof of one or more of the other parties involved.
The fact is that most decisions of any kind are ultimately made by one person even though that one person may consult those around them extensively to arrive at the decision. Think of the parties involved in the transaction as a small company and your job is to figure out who is the current CEO and what they want.
For us the answer to what they want is often misinterpreted as the lowest rates. While we all have some customers who are driven only by price, we need to take an important step back and examine the facts.
Fact #1 - Customers who want price above all else will probably not wind up doing business with you anyway. Most of them will inevitably call too many lenders and end up with the biggest scoundrel and highly dissatisfied in the end. Don’t worry about them! Do your best to get the deal and if it doesn’t work out, enter them into your contacts and start marketing to them. Then you can look forward to hearing from them at a later date when they have figured out there is much more to a mortgage transaction than just what appears to be the best deal. You will then enjoy dealing with them a lot more than you did before.
Fact #2 - Most of your customers would not answer the “what do you want” question with the lowest rate. By asking questions, you can find out what really matters to them and while interest rate is always important, it is rarely number one. Your customer’s true wants are usually more along the lines of working with someone whom they feel they can trust, someone who will work in their best interests and not rip them off. Someone who will make the process easy, someone who they don’t have to check up on, someone with a good reputation, someone who will stay in touch with them after the ink is dry on the note. And all of them want to feel like they are doing the right thing and need reassurance. And some of them really just want you to be their ally and friend.
Most customers want a little bit of all of the above and best of all you can provide it... Your job is to figure out what is most important to them and communicate what you can and will do to make it happen!
The questions are simple, yet finding the answers is not. Seeking and finding the “who” and
“what” answers will improve your customer batting average right away!