Closing Too Fast
by Dave King
Home Mortgage Expert, CTX Mortgage Company
We have all heard it before. That really forward statement from a salesperson we just met that instantly makes us feel uneasy and begin looking for a fast escape. A classic example of this is the car salesman who uses the ancient “we want to earn your business” line. For most of us, that one immediately puts us on the defensive and changes our focus from that of leisurely looking at cars to nervously looking for the nearest exit.
That type of selling approach may work in the car business: a heavily commoditized market in which repeat business is rare and rarely considered in the selling process. It does not fly in the mortgage business though. It does not work with your borrowers, and it is even worse with referral sources.
Asking for business before asking about a customer’s needs is sales malpractice. Worse yet, it will ruin almost every sales opportunity you have.
Referral sources are invaluable in our business and they are never won over with sales pitches that come in the first few minutes of the relationship. Who wants to consider doing business with someone who asks for their business before they ask question one about them or how they may fit in?
If a title rep or appraiser approached you with the “we want to earn your business” line, before even asking anything about your business, how many seconds would you hesitate before throwing away their card? Most likely you would discard it immediately, so please make sure that you aren’t doing the same thing!
Asking for business is one of the pillars of sales, but asking at the right time is the real art!
Trying to close customers too soon is a common pitfall of most salespeople. Many times it is from lack of proper training, other times poor execution, but there is one underlying reason that we salespeople all have a tendency to close too soon.
The reason is not that we are pushy, impatient, uncaring, unclean or uninformed. The reason we salespeople tend to close too fast is because that is the way most of us like to buy.
Salespeople are buyers all the way. Once they find what they need, they simply buy it. They don’t need long sales pitches, and they won’t drive across town or call ten people to save a few dollars. Does this sound familiar to you?
For most of us, selling to another salesperson is usually easier and more fun because we are conditioned to buy first and maybe ask questions later. That is how most of us like to shop. We are there to buy, not browse. Your customers, however, usually have a lot more browser in them than we do. So close every opportunity you get -- just be careful to remember that what you consider an opportunity may not be an opportunity just yet in the eyes of your customer!
Dave King has been with CTX Mortgage since 1991 and has been a Mortgage Loan Officer since 1985. He has closed in excess of $600 million in first mortgage loans throughout his career.
He is also a recognized industry author. Since 2002, he has written “Loan Officer Insights,” a daily training and motivation column for the thousands of nationwide employees of CTX Mortgage.
He was named to Mortgage Originator Magazine’s top 200 Loan Officers in the United States in 2000 and 2001, and named to the top 50 FHA/VA Loan Officers in 2001, 2002, and 2003.
Dave graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and Real Estate from Colorado State University in 1985. He has a strong desire to educate his customers and others in order to promote their financial literacy and knowledge.
He is also a board member of JumpStart Colorado, an organization dedicated to promoting financial education in our schools. Recently Colorado Governor Bill Owens selected Dave for a three-year term on the Council of Advisors on Consumer Credit.