Interview with a Winner:
Matt Elerding
Chase Home Mortgage, Vancouver , WA
2006 Origination Volume: $75 million
2006 Average Loan Amount: $190,000
Software: ACT
Referral Source Mix: 60% past client referrals, 40% other
In Touch Today: How did you get started in the mortgage business?
Matt Elerding: I just showed up. Seriously, I was buying my first house, and I was meeting with a friend of mine who was in the business. She suggested that I give it a try because she thought I might be good at it. That was nine years ago.
In Touch Today: Were you an immediate success?
Matt Elerding: No, it was tough. There were several times when I was ready to just throw in the towel. I remember one evening in late January 1999 when I’d been in the business for two years. I'd closed one loan the entire month. Based on the draw that I was getting, at the end of that month I was going to owe the company money. I'd worked my tail off, more than a 40-hour workweek, and I had absolutely nothing to show for it. I was just devastated. I was driving home in tears and thinking, "I can't do this. I have got to go get some sort of normal salary job." The following month I had my biggest month ever, and after that everything started clicking into place. It's kind of the snowball effect where if you just stick at it, eventually you never have to worry about where the next phone call is coming from.
In Touch Today: What mistake do you think rookie loan officers most often make?
Matt: They lose sight of the big picture. My philosophy is clichéd, but still so true. I'm all about the fast nickel as opposed to the slow dime. I don't worry about getting paid an extravagant commission on each loan. I actually end up doing several loans for free each month because of some particulars involved in the transaction. And I do many loans at a reduced cost because it's the right thing to do. Call it “racking up the karma points” if you want, but if you have your clients’ best interests at heart, and you make recommendations based on what's going to be best for them, it will pay much larger dividends down the road.
A lot of my friends in the business chide me for not making enough per loan. But if I'm closing 40 loans a month at $1000 a pop as opposed to $2500 a pop, I'm going to close more loans and make more money in the long run because I have all these people out there saying, "Hey, this guy will take care of you." Then they give out my name and number.
Sometimes you have months where several loans fall apart. Maybe one of them is because of the inspection, another one because the person went elsewhere for a better rate, and the third one because the people decided the company wasn't going to relocate them after all. When you lose three loans out of 40, you don't even really feel it. If you lose three loans out of ten, and you were counting on a monster commission of $2500, guess what? That is going to sting a little bit.
In Touch Today: What mistake do you think veteran loan officers most often make?
Matt: It is easy to succumb to complacency from time to time. You get kind of comfortable and you don't keep doing what you need to do, such as write those thank you notes, make those follow-up calls, do what you did to get to the level that you're at. But you have to keep doing all that. Once you’re “there” you can’t just coast. If you get lazy, it will cost you and you will get stream-rolled by your competition who is taking the time to do the ‘little things’ that matter.
In Touch Today: What do you feel separates you from the average loan officer?
Matt: My staggering good looks…(laughs) Actually, I try to inject my personality into each and every transaction. I don't want to want to be over the top; I want it to be genuine. I'm going to try to find ways to exploit the rapport-building part of the relationship. I mean "exploit" in a good way. If I realize that this person likes classical music, then I can get off on a tangent talking about Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin and the rest. Or if I find out that they're from Alaska, where I am also from, we can use that to build a bond. There is always a way to break the ice, and I try to find those areas that we can talk about that aren't directly tied to interest rates, monthly payments, closing costs and all the stuff that everyone has to deal with. I want to find a way to not just be “that mortgage guy.” I want to be "Matt, the guy from Alaska who like classical music, the Seahawks and, by the way, will take care of you with your mortgage.”
I’d advise anyone though that there is a fine line when sharing your personality in the business. You don't want to be this glad-handed, plaid sports jacket with the little elbow patches "What do I need to do to put you in a loan today?" type of dumb-ass. I don't want to be that unctuous sales guy that everyone despises. But I think that making a connection is paramount to the longevity of any business relationship.
In Touch Today: If you had a son or a daughter entering the business, what advice would you give them?
Matt: The same advice that I would give to anybody - take every single person in your life and make sure they're in your database. This includes your American Government teacher from high school, your dentist, your wife's Bunco group, your buddies from college, your golf buddies, everybody. If I have met you, you're in my database. My database currently has 12,500 people, and I guarantee you that every single one of those people know exactly what I do for a living. Now, to a lot of those people I'm “Abi's dad” because I have a daughter, Abi, who is six. And there's a family in my database whose daughter teaches my daughter piano lessons. That’s our only connection. But they also know that I do mortgages because they get my little newsletter every three months. The newsletter is just a nice, quiet reminder to all of them about what I do for a living. I'm a loan officer, and I'm here to generate an income. After that I'm a father, baseball coach, or whatever.
I think it's critical that these loan officers, especially ones just starting out, take the time to plug everyone into a database. Early in my career I called Sitka, Alaska, the hometown where I grew up, and I asked for a phone book to be sent to me. Sitka is only made up of about 8500 people. I went through the phone book with a highlighter and noted every single name of somebody that I knew, or that knew me, or that knew of me, or maybe knew my parents. I highlighted about 2500 names and I put them in the database. For the last nine years they've been getting a newsletter.
In the nine years that I've been sending out newsletters, I’ve only been asked to remove someone’s name from the list four or maybe five times. It gets sent out only four times a year. No big deal. But I think that's the biggest, best piece of advice I can give. I really think people forget the importance of having those names in the database and getting a nice head start because those people serve as your own personal sales force.
In Touch Today: What has been your most successful marketing campaign?
Matt: You know what works for me? I have to be careful here because I don't want to get myself in any hot water, but I put together classical music CDs. They are compilations of my favorite classical pieces. I don't mean like current music where I get into any copyright infringement, but Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and all the rest of my favorite composers. I give these to people free of charge and I send it out with a nice little letter saying, "Hey, thanks for a great year, enjoy some music compliments of me."
It’s just a nice way of thanking people and giving them something – it's not like some cheesy little gift box with cheese and crackers or something. We get this stuff at Christmas and I'm like, "What is this shit?" It makes no sense to me. And flowers die. I love wine, but it gets consumed. So I felt that a CD, although not everyone likes classical music, is going to be put on their CD shelf and my name and cell phone number are on the binding of the CD. My name and number are always going to be in their home. It gives some more of the human side of the personality touch to your marketing efforts.
In Touch Today: Who or what has been the biggest contributor to your success?
Matt: David Jaffe is a loan officer with Chase. I've basically modeled my business after his as far as using the ACT database, the handwritten thank you notes and that sort of thing.
In Touch Today: If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your current business?
Matt: I think I would change my time management. I've tried time blocking and other different approaches. But this business unfortunately is very reactionary, and it's hard to force-fit your appointments and phone calls because when issues come up, need to be dealt with. My biggest challenge is making sure that everything gets done. People get called back and all the little intricacies of the business get addressed in a reasonable amount of time. I've got four assistants now and we still find ourselves struggling to keep our heads above water.
I've said for a long time that I would never complain about being too busy. I'm sometimes tempted, but I'll never complain. It is very difficult though because I've got phone calls from weeks ago that just never got returned, and that's unforgivable because I know that when I call somebody they had better call me back. Everybody’s time is important and it's frustrating for me that people might think, "Jeez, he doesn't care." It's not that I don't care, it's just that I don't have time.
In Touch Today: What are your current goals?
Matt: I want so spend more time with my kids, Gage and Abi. Abi is six and Gage is ten. I want as much time with my kids while they're kids, so the delegation of tasks has become one of my priorities, one of my top goals. I used to work till 11:00 o'clock every night and do as many loans as I could. While the money was good, my kids weren't getting any younger. So now I realize that I'm going to the best I can be but ultimately, at the end of the day, I want to go home and spend time with the wife and kids, regardless of the monetary consequences.
In Touch Today: Is there anything else you’d like to say to other originators who aspire to the kind of success that you've created?
Matt: I think that you need to remember the importance of the level of intimacy that exists in this business. We're not selling widgets from Home Depot. We're not selling washers and dryers. The mortgages we provide our clients are tied to their house, and the house is where your family is. It's where memories happen. It's where birthdays are celebrated and love is made. All the things that represent the sanctity of life are in the home, and as the mortgage lender, you are a significant part of that. There is this forced intimacy for 30 days when you're working with your clients. Think about it: you know their social security number, you know their birthday, you know how much money they have and you know how much debt they have. You know if they've had a bankruptcy, a divorce. It's the business equivalent of ‘going all the way’.
I think people lose sight of the fact that this is a very intimate business and it needs to be treated as such. You can't have this cavalier approach like "I'm just a loan officer.” This process is important for each and every client, whether the loan amount is $35,000 or $350,000. Do as much as you can to give them that personal attention and make them feel like their loan is as important as any other loan. Truth be told, it is.