The War Is Won Before It's Begun

In his great military treatise, The Art of War, Chinese general Sun Tzu laid the plans for victory in any battle. Whether you’re a real estate investor, a top salesperson or anyone who goes to work for a living, we are all on a missions field. To be ready for that mission on a daily basis, there is a certain amount of preparation that must take place in order to be successful. In addition to being a full time real estate investor, I also consult in the mortgage business as well. To that end, I continually work with each member of my team in the area of preparation. Every phone call that is made is part of the overall sale that occurs in every deal. To look at it any other way would lead to the possibility that you are taken by surprise at any moment. Let’s face it, there are thousands upon thousands of mortgage reps, loan officers and real estate investors who are vying for the same business as yourself. That’s not to say that there is not plenty of business to go around but it is to say that you can be replaced very quickly if you’re not doing your job at the highest level possible.

The amount of work that goes into the preparation for a phone call far exceeds the amount of work that the actual call itself may contain. Case in point, one of my mortgage trainees recently came to me with a deal and told me that we had two options for the client. One of the options he perceived to be a fairly strong one supporting the fact that the client should continue along the path of doing a refinance with us and the other option was that the client was looking into doing an equity line of credit with his own bank, meaning that the trainee would be losing the deal if the borrower chose the second option with his own bank. My loan officer saw the situation as a black and white proposition, one in which he could be a winner or a loser. However, after I asked him just a few questions about the deal, I saw a much different picture. Not only was there an opportunity for us to present the client with a total of five very different scenarios, but also there was an opportunity for us as a mortgage company to be involved with all five creating a winning situation for us and the borrower regardless of what avenue he decided to go. Rather than bore you with the details of the deal, I would rather examine some of the questions that I asked the young loan officer in order to shed some light on the investigative thought process. Being that the deal was a refinance involving cash back to the borrower, I asked exactly what the cash was being used for to which the trainee said that it was capital to help build the borrower’s business. I asked what was the borrower going to buy with this capital and the trainee did not know exactly what equipment or supplies it was going to pay for. That told me immediately that the he hadn’t gotten into enough detail with the borrower about his business. You need to know the details of what it is that your client actually does rather than just a superficial knowledge of his occupation.

Secondly, I asked how long the borrower was going to be living at this location, to which the trainee said that he would be in the home less than three years. I asked him why the main option that we had for the borrower was a 30 year fixed mortgage when the homeowner was out of the house in a few years anyway. We could easily present an option with an adjustable rate much lower if that were the case. Finally, I inquired if it would be possible for the borrower to close on our mortgage and in addition, also get the equity line of credit from his own bank in a separate transaction later down the road. The trainee said that yes, there was the ability for the borrower to do both if he wanted. The bottom line is that we were able to uncover a handful of new options in fifteen minutes of really examining the deal that before he had not uncovered. When the borrower was presented with this new outlook on the deal and it was no longer an either/or situation, he decided to do business with us because he saw a different picture. In every battle, just like in every deal, there are always multiple angles from which to approach. The question is what angle are you watching the war from? For more information on how you can create better options for your business, contact info@maybachrealestate.com for information on our mentoring programs.