t Out of Your Mess! It’s Really Easy! me to do is to tell you how to get out of this mess! I’m a coach/mentor. I help people realize their true potential. I do it with heart and mind and sense and understanding and aggression and persistence. I have clients who listen and produce numbers that would shock most of you. But I see, every day, that the overwhelming majority of salespeople have every opportunity to make real money and yet they think of ways to not exercise their brains, legs, mouth and feet. If I could just get you in the car, get you to visit someone who can refer business to you, if only. Here is the method I know, for a fact, works better than any software system, Web site connection, Internet initiative, three-ring binder system, predictable dialer or automatic mailer. I need to clarify something here. I personally stress, as the first and most necessary step in your success, that you have goals, a plan and a minimum of four marketing initiatives to help you get business. Four marketing initiatives that are working all at the same time. Four ways to generate business, both immediately and in the future. This is your profession isn’t it? You’re in this for the long haul. Right? What I’m about is how to generate leads. I believe I have the most innovative way to generate business that has ever been devised. I believe that I have the most productive way to get people to give you business that you’ve ever thought of. You need to pay attention here, absorb it and then enact it. There are three things every salesperson must do to be successful.
1. Give away information Give it away in gobs. Give away everything you’ve ever learned. Of course, it should be mostly
about your business, but does not necessarily have to be. What I stress with my clients is that they should be helpful with the people they seek to receive referrals from. They should teach, mentor, advise, inform, add value, instruct and be there! It is often asked of me what it is I’m asking you to say to your client/referral partners. What is it I’m asking that you do that is different than what others do? Such a simple concept that it requires such a simple answer. Teach them how to make money! Teach them what I teach you. Teach them how to put a database together, put out a weekly email, call the database every quarter, co-market, and explain to them how to use free reports to their best advantage.
2. Ask for business This is tricky, sometimes. But you start out by doing the following. Pick 25 people to go see. Pick the ones who actually do business. Put them in your database. When you go in the first time, tell them you’re not like any other loan officer they ever met. Tell them you’re going to show up at their office every week for four weeks in a row, on the same day, at approximately the same time. Tell them that after the fourth week and beginning the fifth week having then proved that you are trustworthy, you will ask them to begin to do business with you (for the complete script, you need to send me a request). Salespeople fail because they give up too soon.
3. Be persistent Salespeople give up too soon. More studies show this than any other informative words I could ever give. But most of you don’t get it. Living in a world of instant gratification is nice, but it doesn’t work with long-term business relationships. It is most
BY RALPH LOVUOLO SR.
“Living in a world of instant gratification is nice, but it doesn’t work with long-term business relationships.” apparent to me that even if you don’t give away information, don’t ask for business, but you do show up, every week, you’ll eventually get business. But it is getting past the “No” that you must do. Did your mommy and daddy always say “Yes” to you? If they did, they were wrong, but that’s a subject for another paper. You need to get past the answer “No” in order to get to the answer “Yes,” but it won’t happen if you don’t go back it cannot happen if you give up. Okay … I’ve given away my secrets. All of them in one place, but here is the hard part
… you actually need to do these things to be able to make money. For a very long time, I have been offering the sip of the wine of knowledge. Most of you have sought something else, you’ve been looking for the chalice that it comes in. You’re looking, as all historians know, in the wrong place. The chalice is a myth, but the wine has always been produced. Drink the wine I am offering here. Cats chase their tails, so don’t be a cat. Insanity is, according to Einstein, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Are you insane?
Ralph LoVuolo Sr. has more than 50 years in the mortgage Industry, with the last 30 as a coach. He is past president and founder of the New York Association of Mortgage Brokers, and long-time member of NAMB— The Association of Mortgage Professionals. He can be reached by phone at (917) 576-1230 or e-mail Ralph@MortgageMotivator.com.