Interview with a Winner:
Dylan Kramer
Starpointe Mortgage, Oak Brook, IL
2004 Origination Volume: $30 million
2005 Origination Volume: $32 million
Average Loan Amount: $215,000
Software: Calyx Point, Mortgage Coach, ACT and Mortgage Quest
Referral Source Mix: 60% past clients, 10% Realtor, 20% financial planners, 10% consumer direct marketing
Boni Lonnsburry: How did you get started in the mortgage business?
Dylan Kramer: I kind of fell into the business. After college, I had been working at a series of jobs that had nothing to do with building a career. A relative in the radio business actually referred me to a mortgage company that was hiring for their call center in 1993. I got a chance to do a lot of deals in a hurry, which worked out really well.
Boni Lonnsburry: Were you an immediate success there?
Dylan Kramer: No. Not at all!
Boni: How did you learn to be successful?
Dylan: I spent a couple of years in the call center environment and got a chance to do a lot of transactions. I really learned the guidelines and how put a loan together. I eventually broke away from that environment and went to work for a company where I was responsible for generating my own business. I had some financial planner contacts, which I had developed through the call center, so I was able to lean on them to generate business. I floundered around calling on other financial planners for a year or two before I became really serious about it. At that point, I became a student of the business and read everything that I could. I got better with guidelines and did a lot of training on marketing. In 2000, I hired a business coach and that made a big difference as well.
Boni: How did you get started with financial planners?
Dylan: Completely by accident, really. As a matter of fact, if the financial planner I had been talking to hadn’t hit me over the head with it, I wouldn’t have gotten into it at all. In the mid 90’s the call center was featuring a no closing cost refinance. I ended up working with a client who was a financial planner. He basically said, “This is a great idea; I love this no closing cost. I’m sure my clients would benefit from it!” And I said, “That’s great! Can you come in and sign the paperwork?” Then he said, “No, I mean my clients.” And I replied, “Yeah. Great about your clients. What about you?”
He finally said, “Look, I can probably send you 20 people. Would you be interested in talking about that instead of my loan?” And I replied, “You’re probably right. That’s a good idea.”
So I met him, did some transactions for his clients, and met a couple of other people who worked in his office. There was so much opportunity that I felt I could break away from the call center shop. The call center was providing me leads, but I was finding enough leads on my own and could earn a higher commission split by leaving the call center. Once I left, I leaned on the financial planners pretty hard.
Boni: When you look at other loan officers out there, especially the rookie loan officers, what mistakes do you see them making?
Dylan: I think the biggest mistake is over thinking everything. Sometimes there’s just too much thinking. At some point, you just have to accept the fact that you’re new to this business (or any business) and ride the learning curve. Figure it out as you go along. Especially with the counsel and the advice of the people who are there to help you —sales managers, veteran loan officers and other mentors.
Boni: What about veteran loan officers? Do you think they make different mistakes?
Dylan: I do. They don’t make the time to do the things that they know will work. I have a guy on my team (who will remain nameless) whom I was constantly reminding to send a quarterly rate watch for Mortgage Coach, do some sort of client appreciation event or send out a marketing letter to keep him in front of his clients. He managed to put me off on it for most of 2005! And finally, about the end of October, he sent out a newsletter and he generated four transactions!
Boni: Wow!
Dylan: He came into my office and said, “You know, I should’ve done this months ago. I can’t believe I was sitting on all of this.” I told him that I couldn’t believe it either because he knew it works!
There’s no great tremendous rocket science in this business. We all know the things that work after spending two, three, or five years. You just have to do it.
Boni: How do you keep in touch with your past clients?
Dylan: We have a one year maintenance program for all our closed loans. We start out by giving them a 30 day follow up call. We then make sure that they get signed up for a quarterly Rate Watch. They also get a weekly email newsletter from us in addition to a monthly snail-mail piece that normally is intended to refer them to financial planners, attorneys, tax preparers and other professionals that they may need in their changing financial situation. We try to send the message that we want to help them through our advice and our network rather than just always selling or trying to get them to refinance. We try to position ourselves as trusted advisors through our ongoing advice about their overall personal financial plan.
Boni: What do you think differentiates you from the other loan officers out there?
Dylan: I think that when clients deal with me to get a loan, they come to trust me – for a very specific reason. We try not to sell loans. I know that sounds a little counterintuitive, but what we really try to do is engage our clients in a conversation that empowers them to chose their next mortgage from the various options that are specific to their situation. We take the time to talk to them about these. A couple of them may fit, but ultimately the client makes the choice.
Let’s say a client is really committed to a five year stay in the property. We run the numbers and we present them. We’ll use Mortgage Coach for this. We’ll present them with a total cost analysis illustrating perhaps an interest only and a five year ARM. If the client is a first time buyer and certain they are not going to be here longer than five years, then they shouldn’t be overpaying for interest rate protection. The client knows his/her goals. I think that empowerment of the client to make the decision, rather than be sold a five-one ARM that amortizes and inverses an adjustable, just because it’s my opinion, is important. I think that helps build trust for the client and helps build our relationship, beyond the closing, as a trusted advisor.
Boni: If you had a son or a daughter who was entering this business, what would you tell them?
Dylan: Know your product guidelines.
Boni: That’s it?
Dylan: Know your products. The biggest tool for success is to know your guidelines. Then you can provide solutions for people who have situations or causes, rather than just be bounced around by whatever the market presents. You can always market yourself as a solutions provider to financial planners. You can buy a good client relations base. I think that the fundamental thing that you have to have to be successful in this business, and I would tell it to my kids especially, is to know your guidelines.
Boni: What was your most successful marketing campaign?
Dylan: It’s my client retention plan. We’re committed in terms of time, energy and resources to an ongoing, integrated client retention campaign that we’ve built over a couple of years. We use it regularly and consistently, and it’s our most successful model.
Boni: Let me ask you about your consumer direct marketing. What do you do for that?
Dylan: Again, because we’re familiar with the guidelines and we want to be solutions providers, we market no money down programs or loans through ugly yellow signs. You may have seen these signs. They’re three feet by two feet and we literally hand-write on them “No money down programs available to purchase this home!” or “Are you interested in buying? No money down! Don’t hesitate to give us a call!”
It’s kind of guerilla marketing – a grassroots-type of thing where we’ll put 20 signs out on a Friday afternoon and take the calls over the weekend, Monday and Tuesday before the signs come down. We try to work with clients who’ve been told by someone else “Nah, you’re going to have to wait to buy.” We might put them into an FHA using a down payment assistance program. We may put them in some sort of credit management so that they can improve their credit over six months or a year and then become buyers. We really want to engage clients who are challenged because we find that those clients appreciate our efforts in a way that helps generate referrals to more clients than your average, run-of-the-mill, 720 credit score commodity-type shopping client would. And so we find additional residual value in those clients using that consumer direct strategy.
Boni: Are you already working with a Realtor who’s listing the home that you put the sign at? How do you pick the homes?
Dylan: Some of them, yes. Our Realtors will have us put the signs on the home and sometimes we just put the signs on the side of the road in neighborhoods that we want to work in, or if we know the community has those types of buyers. So there’s some demographic work there.
The great thing about it is that it allows us to open new Realtor relationships or give back to our existing Realtor relationships because we’re generating leads directly. So as a loan officer, we’re not just asking them to send us transactions. We bring transactions to the table. It’s very empowering as a loan officer to make a phone call to a Realtor and say, “I’ve got a pre-qualified buyer who’s interested in purchasing a home in your area. Are you growing your business? Would you be interested in sitting down with me to learn a little bit more about how I’m growing mine?”
Boni: So when you say that you sometimes target new Realtors that way, you just decide which Realtors you want to work with and call them up and say, “I have a lead for you”?
Dylan: Yes, absolutely. And we’ll use some sources to identify the Realtors. There are several ways you can identify who’s really a player in their market. You can obviously pull information off the multiple listing service if you have access to it, which we do. But you don’t want to start giving leads away to somebody who is going to close two transactions and double their annual volume.
The other way is to watch the advertising. You’re driving around; you see who has listings or billboards. That’s always a favorite of mine. If someone has two or three listings in a geographic area, and we decide that we want to engage that person, we bring the qualified lead to the table and then we say, “How about putting our sign in front of your three listings right in that same neighborhood?”
Boni: Yes, great idea.
Dylan: It’s a great cross-promotion and it’s a real way to work with your Realtors in a way that generates new business for everybody.
Boni: Who or what was the biggest contributor to your success?
Dylan: The “what” was my decision to hire a coach, and the “who” is Ron Quintero, who I hired to coach me on my business back in 2000. We did some work on creating – my client retention system, that’s really where the roots of this program came from in terms of gathering some details and working with Ron to really develop an integrated email marketing campaign to my past clients as well as other pillars of my business.
I’ve been an advocate of coaching since I got involved with him. I think it has tremendous value, and a coach can hold you accountable. A coach can make you stay focused, and a coach can also provide information that you might not discover otherwise, kind of serve as a filter because there’s a lot of information out there about how to grow and develop in the business.
Boni: If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your current business?
Dylan: You know, I would probably accelerate the pace of my assistants. I could get more done if I could get them to move more quickly. I have two assistants. One is my in-office assistant and the other is more of my outside liaison, working on the ugly yellow signs and on my Realtor relationships. If we could accelerate some of the things that they’re doing, we could grow the business more quickly. It always seems like there’s more training that needs to be done for them.
Boni: And what are your current goals?
Dylan: I would like to develop another two or three pillars on my business and move into a $45 to $50 million production level. I think that is really the next step for me. To do that, we’re probably looking at bringing on another team member in order to coordinate those efforts and expand the business from there.
The other thing that I’d like to do over the next couple of years is continue to add to my personal real estate portfolio. I think that is one thing that the mortgage business allows –financial opportunities to invest in real estate that might be more favorable than for a member of the general public.
Boni: When you say that you’d like to develop other pillars of business, what would those be? Do you have any idea?
Dylan: I’d really like to execute a “For Sale by Owner” strategy effectively. We’ve been dabbling with that for awhile, and I think that’s something you probably need somebody on your team full-time to execute well. We’d also like to put together a pillar that’s strictly driven by the multiple listing service. I also think that there’s a lot of opportunity in listings that are expired, withdrawn, or taken off the market for one reason or another. When people put a “For Sale” sign on their house they’re basically saying, “I’ve decided I want to get my hands on my equity.” They may or may not need to sell, but if they don’t sell, the question’s still out there. “Hey, you decided you wanted to access your equity and you didn’t. Maybe we can help you by providing a mortgage solution.” I’d like to develop some strategies to go in that direction too because I think that as rates rise, those type of solutions will be big winners.
Boni: Is there anything else you’d like to say to other originators out there who aspire to the kind of success you’ve created?
Dylan: The blueprint is out there. We all know the tools and the systems that you need to apply to be successful. But there’s no magic script that makes people fall over and decide that they want to work with you over anyone else. Ultimately you can get yourself the tools and the equipment necessary to be successful, but that success is your own. You have to create it. So don’t worry about not having the perfect script, or the perfect solution, or the perfect technique. Get in up to your elbows, work on it as hard as you can and tweak it as you go along to make it yours.