The October Push

October is moving along and it’s time to be sure we are executing the plan we have talked about. By now, we should be wrapping up all of our accountant contacts using the “Tax Extension Strategy” and working on those refinances and purchase loans. This is also a good time to record a couple of joint videos!

We also need to continue working the “Refinance Strategies” with all of our closed clients, especially those in FHA loans and those who closed last November through February when rates were at recent high levels. Queue them up and make those calls, e-mail won’t do as well as the call! (Look for the new financial planner strategy inside the website this weekend)

Time has come to connect with our Realtor® referral partners and work on a joint connection with those they have closed in the past five years using the “Forever Home Strategy”. Be sure you also use this during your refinance conversations, nothing like finding a new listing/buyer for your agents!

With October being “Business Planning Month”, it’s time to start putting together your numbers year to date and projected totals for the year so when we do the business planning call, or you attend a live Business Planning 2020 event, you can get the most out of it and project your targets for next year with confidence!

We need to be finalizing all of the Halloween event plans in the next few days and get busy sharing the news with your clients and referral partners!

Last but not least, you need to be sure you have registered on the www.IMTcoaching.com website for you spot on the Crossroads Event Call on October 22^nd 2019. This is a free event, open to everyone associated with real estate sales and finance!

As always, questions and comments: Mike@IMTcoaching.com

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Rate Rollercoaster, The Trend Is Your Friend

If you have been following these blog posts you have seen me urge caution and patience when working within the rate environment. I have spoken about getting information you can verify and share. I have urged you use caution and judgement when talking about rates, and I have wanted you to know the facts and share them with your clients and referral partners.

I wanted to put some things into perspective for you and get an idea why you need to be aware of what is going on. For the sake of this demonstration, I am using the closing numbers from the UMBS 3% 30yr as my example for pricing purposes. Remember, price goes up, rates go down. Prices go down, rates go up! Take a look at the following:

• November 8^th 2018 – 93.90
• April 8^th 2019 – 98.42
• May 20^th 2019 – 99.06
• May 31^st 2019 – 100.40
• July 29^th 2019 – 100.73
• August 5^th 2019 – 101.73
• September 4^th 2019 – 102.25
• September 13^th 2019 – 100.54
• September 24^th 2019 – 101.45
• October 2^nd 2019 – 101.70

While it being quite the wild ride, today we are near the same levels we were at on August 5^th when everyone was euphoric about rates! Yes, we are still a little bit away from the September 4^th high water mark of 102.25, but we are almost 800 bps better than the low of last November! 800 basis points!!!

As I have said before, I believe the trend is lower and that we can reach or go past all-time lows in the not too distant future. I also think this volatility is going to continue along with this trend. Barring a real trade deal with China, or some other major event, you have to follow the information and the sources of that information. I follow MBS Highway pretty closely and a few other independent channels, but you have to find your place you are comfortable trusting, and then position yourself as a resource.

It’s always a good idea to lock your client if they are nervous or a jump in rate could blow out their deal. It’s always good to lock near emotional numbers like rates near either a whole number or half number. 3.99% and 3.49% are much different to your consumer than 4% or 3.5%. It just is the way that goes!

Be sure to have the rate and volatility talk with your customers. Show your clients the difference in payments and pricing. Listen to them when they are talking about payments and rates! Share with them a rate/point relationship!

Experts have verified information, share and educate their clients, and provide the options so that the client is making an informed choice about financing their property!

Be sure to go to the website and register for Crossroads 2019! www.IMTcoaching.com

As always, questions or comments: Mike@IMTcoaching.com

Deja Vu All Over Again

A couple of weeks ago we ran into a buzz saw in the MBS markets. We spoke about the five fake news stories that pushed the bond market lower and drove rates higher. This week we’re following through on solid gains the end of last week, and we hear that there is a possibility that a trade deal with China may happen “sooner than you think”, which sent the stock markets higher and bond prices lower! So pay attention to the markets the next few sessions to see if we keep falling lower, or we recover and start to retrace our steps. I still believe that the longer term trend is lower rates and continued volatility, but you do have to keep your eye on the stories and the trends and keep yourself and your people informed!

I was up in Indiana this week spending some time with a great group of mortgage professionals at Ruoff Mortgage. One of the things I really like about this group is there commitment to the customer experience, and to each other. It’s not often you see the operations team being committed to the sales team, understanding that the sales team is their customer. On the same token, the sales team and those managers watching over the sales team, working hard to do really solid preapprovals and submit really clean files into the operations team. This kind of mutual support helps everything work much more efficiently and helps provide a great experience for everyone involved. As the mortgage and real estate industries allow themselves to be taken over by the large internet and call center based companies. It will be those people, like the people at Ruoff, who work hard to be the true experts in their field and keep the person in the process!

The “Crossroads 2019” event on October 22^nd is now posted on the website homepage. You can just go to www.IMTcoaching.com and register. It’s a free webinar that will be Tuesday, October 22^nd at 1pm eastern. You should be sure not to miss it, and it may just be a good idea for you to invite some of your better Realtor® referral partners to sign in as well. Realtors and lenders are facing the same enemy! Together, we can continue to provide an exceptional experience for those who have real estate and real estate financing needs.

Special shout out to a couple of my newer clients who took the leap of faith and went live on Facebook Live®. For some people, it is really hard to get in front of a camera and speak. To make the choice to overcome those issues and make it happen makes me prouder than anything else I do as a coach! For another new client, his first video coupon resulted in four loan applications in the first 24 hours! As I have said all along, these strategies will work for you if you just try! So congratulations! You guys are the reason I continue to love doing what I do!

Questions or comments: Mike@IMTcoaching.com

“Huge Weekend Opportunity”

Happy July 5^th! With a big holiday on a Wednesday, it isn’t uncommon for people to stretch it out into the weekend. That said, this opens the door for a great deal of real estate activity. Here are a few steps to take in order to maximize your opportunities this weekend!

• Get out and be visible!
• Leave documented material at offices!
• Tell those that are there that you are available to help them if their regular person is unavailable to serve your people!
• Call from the parking lots before you leave!
• Get to as many Open Houses as you can!

Many people are off or are taking off, that goes for realtors and mortgage people as well. Get out and get in front of your market, let them know you are working!

Have something in writing in an envelope with each agents name on it to leave at their office so there is something physical for you to direct them too! Talk about the back to school count down and how many days there are left for you to accept a loan application and close before the kids go back to school!

I expect that most of the agents you are trying to get in front of won’t be in the office; it doesn’t matter. It only matters that you were in the office, had some information about an opportunity strategy in an envelope, with their name on it, so you can leave it for them to pick up later! It’s also important that the few other people in the office see that you were there! Let them know you can help them too should they be ready to look or move to make an offer on a property!

Calling from the parking lot before you go to your next stop is critical! Making that call and talking to that person to let them know you were at their office is a really big deal. Even if you get voice mail, leave a nice message about missing them and that you are available should they need you.

Last but not least is to hit every open house you can find and follow through with the open house strategy! Talk to everyone! Pick a key feature of the house or the property so you can write a note to the seller applying for the job of being their next loan officer or to offer a second opinion on their next transaction!

This weekend is a huge opportunity to make new relationships, solidify old relationships, and to generate a few opportunities to do a few deals you never would have seen if you just sat home!

Get up, get out, and connect!

Questions or comments: Mike@IMTcoaching.com

“Wacky Wednesdays”

It’s time to share something that I often do with my clients who have appeared to plateau or get “stuck” in the same activities over and over again. I call it “Wacky Wednesdays”.

We are at the midway point of the year and heading into the summer season. As always, now is a good time to compare our first half numbers to our business plan and see how we are progressing. For those who are on or ahead of projections and enjoying the rhythm of your business, keep doing what you are doing and enjoy the results of a good plan coming together.

For those of you who are short of your projections or not really happy with your business flow, now is the time for a little fun and a few changes. First, take a look at where and why your numbers aren’t matching up. Address each shortfall with logic and with an idea of what you can do to correct that situation if possible. Often it’s just a matter of having a conversation with the referral partner, or looking at the message or how you are following up with the plan.

Schedule time to address all of the issues! If you don’t schedule a task, it won’t get done!

After you have made all the system corrections and had all of the conversations, it’s time for “Wacky Wednesday”! This is a very simple process.

• Go into imtcoaching.com website and scroll through the “Coaches Playbook” and “Power Partnership” video clips and find a strategy or two you would like to incorporate into your business.
• Have a discussion with your referral partners or your team to share the strategy and gain support and interest.
• Schedule an hour or two on Wednesday morning or afternoon to prepare, implement, and use the strategy to create new opportunities.

It’s really just that simple. Just use the tools and schedule your time. It becomes more fun when you have your team and your referral partners to work with and help make a minor change in your work week that could have a major impact on your results!

It has been my experience that it isn’t the big changes in your business that produce the most significant results; it’s the tiny little things that often create the biggest impact. So if you’re not where you want to be, or you aren’t feeling that the business is fun anymore, then you have nothing to lose and everything to gain but committing one or two hours on Wednesday to have some fun, work with your people, and create some new opportunities!

Questions or comments: Mike@IMTcoaching.com

Click here to register for my upcoming free seminar event – CROSSROADS

“Mid-year Check-up”

We began this conversation last week and I wanted to follow up with some of the comments and feedback I got from that post. Many of you had no issues with going back to the business plan and reviewing the numbers, but there were a few questions about “gestation period” and I wanted to address it quickly. When I talk about the gestation period of you loans, I am referring to the period of time from pre-approval to contract, or pre-approval to closing. Either one gives you an idea of the time consumed by the process, and gives you an idea of how many pre-approvals you need in your queue at any given time so you are going to close the number of loans you project to close. Example: If you want to close 8 loans a month, and your gestation period is 90 days, you will need to keep 24 active pre-approvals or more in your queue. If your gestation period is 120 days, you will need to keep 32. Keeping track is critical. You can read more about this in the May 17, 2018 blog post.

I was happy to see a significant number of you who are tracking at or ahead of your targets! Great job, and keep doing what you are doing because it is working! However, there were a few of you who wrote to say that you were behind the numbers and asked for some help getting caught up. So here are a few simple steps to getting back on the numbers.

• Review your numbers every week! Visits, contact, credit pulls, pre-approvals, contracts, and additions to the database.
• Drill down on your schedule. Are you prospecting a minimum of two hours every day following your business plan?
• Who and what are not living up to your projections and find out why? Correct it, complete it, repeat it, or delete it!
• Check the math. Your ratios from contact to closing may be off and need to be recalculated.
• Why not Wednesday! Pick something out of the “Coaches Playbook” and do it on Wednesday. Take two hours and implement one new strategy you haven’t used and see what happens. Be committed to working the plan for at least eight to twelve weeks!
• Review all your pre-approvals you have issued this year and see where they all are. You might have lost track of them, or they might have lost track of you. Some might just be sitting on the sidelines waiting for rates to go back to 3%! Share the cost of waiting with them. Buy now and refinance later if rates do go back, because they may not!
• WORK the summer while others are on vacation! Opportunities are always available; the summer makes it simple because frustration factors and pressure to timelines go way up! Be the solution!

If you have a specific issue or challenge, please let me know and we are happy to work with you on a strategy or a solution for your specific challenge!

Questions or comments: Mike@IMTcoaching.com

You will not want to miss this upcoming event!  Don’t miss CROSSROADS….