The Last Word : You Are Terminated!

Friday, 13 February 2009 16:47

Articles - The Last Word

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Starting today you are no longer permitted to complain about your business, your originations, your income or your competition.

I often send many new tips, suggestions, and recommendations to originators who require action.  In other words, a “Things to Do List”.  This “Things to Do List” is your call to action and is a requirement if you are to remain a player in today’s reverse mortgage space and not a casualty of today’s economy.

I haven’t given up on you, that is why I am providing you with a list of actions of the Top 10 items to help see what is required of you to take immediate action.  I know full well, 99% of you will do a couple of them; another 75% probably won’t do any.  If you are in the latter, report to your local bicycle repair shop and don’t forget to wear the new work hat, with the following “I Will Never Complain About Business Again,” so the rest of us will know who you are and can give you a motivational kick to get moving. 

I find it amazing a lot of people just keep wishing for a change to happen without doing or investing anything different to make their businesses or income improve.  I sincerely hope this does not pertain to you!  Yet, it does describe of lot of folks and they are the ones you can’t help. 

Anyway, I wanted to reach out to you with my Top 10 Action items that will require action on your part to make change happen:

1. Brainstorm – Do you really know your senior clients?  Many of you think you do, but do you really know what is on their minds?  Create a focus group.   Call 4-5 seniors together.  Buy them a nice lunch, and then penetrate their minds.  Listen for their pain and get into their world.  Get them talking and just listen. You will be amazed at your results and what is the true reality of their world.  Use this information to transform your paradigm. 
2. Create Experiences - You need to go beyond the reverse mortgage product.  Stop being like everyone else.  Create an experience your senior will never forget.  The experience must be so powerful they will let the world know about you.  When you leave after your consultation, you want them to say, WOW! You want them to tell their friends and family!
3. Connection - You want to make a connection with your client.  Do you have a local personality your market can identify with?  I am sure there is community leader or a sports personality your local seniors love.  Call that personality and invite them to become your spokesman.   Include them in your promotional efforts and get them to buy into your good deeds and shout your name to senior prospects.
4. Become Cynical - I don’t mean become cynical in a bad way.  Jot down all the bad stuff and what you have read and heard about the industry.  Next, take the bad stuff and turn it around into good stuff.  Don’t be like the elephant in the room.  Confronting the bad stuff makes you the go to guy!  Honesty will build relationships far more than any amount of money you can spend.
5. Build Relationships- Find people who have the same beliefs and aspirations as you.  You want to associate with professionals, civic leaders, and others in the community who aspire to your beliefs, desires, and commitment to the senior community.
6. Be Creative - This is the part where the creative juices need to flow.  Be on the lookout and cutting edge of something new and exciting for your senior clients.  It doesn’t always have to be product, as a matter of fact; a service or a value added perk is more important and meaningful. (i.e. Birthday card)
7. Get involved - You need to present choices to your client.  The direction of those choices is relevant to your information gathering and your ability to build your client relationship.  When you develop a sincere relationship and understand the needs of your senior client, you are able to determine what is best for them, not you.
8. Improve Contact - This is the tough one and probably the one that most fail to recognize as a priority.  Why, because follow-up requires hard work.  Frequency and repetitive contact with your senior prospects must be ingrained in your daily actions.  A one, two, three and strike out will get you absolutely nowhere.  The real success comes with consistency of contact and the persistence of follow through.
9. Information Development – What is it your senior client really wants to know?  They want information far reaching beyond a reverse mortgage and all its attributes.  Your seniors want information that affects their lives.  Provide information that gives them hope, a secure feeling, and sense of worth.  Provide reports of interest and make sure you include at least one report in every correspondence with your client.
10. Be Apple – Be innovative,  do something; create something that only your senior clients can relate to and connect with you and you only.   Gather around your brain trust, bounce off ideas, run scenarios no matter how ridiculous they may sound.  Take those ideas and use them as your building blocks.  Revisit the ideas until you make something happen.

We just completed a loan closing on a reverse mortgage.  During the rescission period our senior called us and said she had just received a foreclosure notice.  You could hear the quiver in her voice and her anxiousness as she coped with the possibility of losing her home.  Once she heard the good news that her home would not be foreclosed upon, but could stay in her home and live a comfortable retirement, you could feel the release of stress by her sigh. Aren’t we lucky to make a difference in the lives of our senior clients?

Today the world is a pretty scary place and who knows when it will end,.  Unlike many, you have the choice to decide if you want to swim, tread water or drown.    I hope you are a swimmer and survivor.   Most of you I speak with are survivors and that’s good because our seniors need your professionalism and compassion.  Erosions in their home values, stock portfolios, 401K’s, IRA, and other investment account have devastated many.

To get the word out to your senior prospects requires action.  Your actions can change the lives of seniors. 

Please take time to review the Top 10 Action items, but most all, make a commitment today to take make those actions a reality.

Wishing you Success in 2009 and Beyond….