In last week's issue, I discussed forecasting. It's an important tool that helps you look at your future objectively.
If you forecast your production based on relationships you have now and compare it with your income goal for next year, you can easily determine if you have a shortage or surplus. Click here to read the article in its entirety.
Knowing if you have a shortage or surplus determines the specific plans you implement to execute your marketing strategy. If you've been keeping up with me over the past several weeks, you've computed your income goal for next year and estimated a production forecast. In today's article, I'll discuss what to do if your comparison of your forecast against your income goal demonstrates a shortage.
Forecasting a Shortage
A shortage is determined when your total number of closings from your forecast is less than the total number of closings needed to achieve your income goal. In marketing terms, a shortage means you need more relationships to make up the difference.
Don't accept that as bad or poor necessarily. If you've increased your income goal over previous years, it's not unusual to need more new relationships to support it. With shortages your focus next year is about finding strangers (lead generation) and converting them into friends (client acquisition).
Finding Strangers
Everything has a starting point. This is it in the relationship building process. The goal is to uncover real estate agents who are initially interested in your services. That's worth repeating...uncover agents initially interested.
A common mistake a loan officer makes is attempting to convert strangers into clients. Relationship building requires patience, which you've probably figured out by now. Agents who don't know you are strangers and will not immediately do business with you.
Your objective is to secure permission from agents who meet your criteria for doing business together. Think of it as a value exchange. Agents expect to get something of value from you in exchange for giving you permission to market your services to them.
And when you've gained permission, you've developed the greatest asset in your business - a permission-based database. With it in hand, you go to work on converting stranger into friends, which is where the process of client acquisition begins.
Converting Strangers into Friends
The second major process in relationship building is client acquisition. Whereas, lead generation is about quantity, client acquisition is about quality.
Client acquisition is the successful result of converting strangers into friends and friends into clients. It's achieved through an ongoing exchange of information shared between you and the prospect. Every exchange develops familiarity and fosters a greater sense of trust, eventually to the point that it materializes in the exchange of business.
Determine Your Marketing Objectives
If a shortage was the result of comparing your forecast and income goal, you're ready to establish your objectives as part of your marketing strategy. You'll have between 3 or 4 total objectives.
- Financial Objective - This is your income goal written as an objective.
- Market Share Objective (shortage) - Write 2 or 3 objectives that address capturing more clients.
If your forecast shows surplus, your objectives focus on servicing existing relationships, which I'll address in next week's article.
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If you had permission to send messages to a prospect, would you have anything to communicate?
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When it comes to all the effort to secure permission from them, there's nothing worse than creating an appetite for what you have and then having them go elsewhere to eat.
If you already own my program, Become an Agent Magnet, you realize the gigantic opportunity to easily convert agents into clients that become a lifetime of business. In my program, you learn how to create a position that's unique and different from competitors and most importantly focuses on solving a specific problem for agents.
It's from a unique position that you can advocate messages regularly, messages that concentrate on solving their problems. Agents exposed to these messages constantly respect your expertise and are likely to seek your help more quickly because of trust and familiarity.
Each week I try to give as much information as I can given the space available. But if you're serious about taking your marketing to the next level, you need to take the next step.
If you want to...
- develop a powerful marketing message,
- create a perception of expertise that agents clamor for,
- develop campaigns that keep your pipeline overflowing,
- build relationships that are loyal for a lifetime,
- establish yourself as a guru in your community,
- get more referrals consistently,
- make marketing less of a struggle and burden...
...Then the Become an Agent Magnet Program has what you're looking for - detailed, how-to action plans on growing your business by securing relationships with agents.
Learn more about it here:
Thanks for support,
Jeff Nelson
Salesachievers
Helping loan officers attract more clients
© 2004, 2005 by Jeff Nelson
All rights reserved
