For the past several weeks, I've addressed the planning process and steps involved for creating your marketing strategy for 2006.
See the archive for the past three issues. This week I reflect on what to do if you're forecasting a surplus based on your income goal for next year.
What Does a Surplus Mean?
If you are forecasting a surplus, this means that you have enough existing relationships to produce the number of closings needed to achieve your income goal. So that means you can relax and plan for an easy year, right? Not exactly.
Pat yourself on the back for having relationships. Chances are you're an experienced loan officer and have done an excellent job over the years building your business. Or if you're relatively new in the business, you have been able to overcome some tough obstacles to get yourself established quickly.
But don't rest on laurels! Changes in housing markets, changes in an agent's career path, or even changes in your operations that diminish your ability to render quality service can alter your relationships instantly and reverse your forecast to a shortage.
So what's the fun about a surplus? You get to work in ways that many loan officers never get the chance - piling resources into building retention and loyalty. Retention means that you're capturing 100% market share and loyalty means that agents recommend your services to other agents forming a constant line of prospects at your door.
Relationship Accounting
How often do you purposely meet with each agent to evaluate his or her marketing plan? To actually conduct an analysis so you can uncover marketing opportunities to serve them better? Too often, loan officers assume that if an agent is sending them business then they don't need to do more than render service. And then the competition comes along and steals the agent right from under your nose, leaving you to figure out how you lost such a valuable client.
Although a relationship begins with delivering quality service, it takes relationship accounting to keep it moving forward. Relationship accounting is the process of meeting regularly with agents to discuss their future marketing goals. From these discussions you search for opportunities to better service each agent.
Conduct Surveys
The easiest form of communication to learn about potential opportunities is to survey each agent. Surveys are exceptional because it positions the agent to discuss their favorite topic - themselves. Here's a sample of questions to include on your survey:
- What are you trying to achieve in your marketing?
- What part(s) of it have been successful?
- What obstacles are in your way?
- How can I assist you?
- If I assisted, what results could be expected?
- What's the next step?
By surveying agents you service, you can discover more ways to create dependency. Then make part of your marketing strategy objectives that help the agent become more dependent on your service. The more dependent they become the more you improve loyalty.
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Getting Deeper into Mastering Your Marketing
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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 with successful relationships with agents.
Learn more about both here:
Thanks for support,
Jeff Nelson
Salesachievers
Helping loan officers attract more clients
© 2004, 2005 by Jeff Nelson
All rights reserved
