Gaining commitment (with the big three)

Jake Vermillion	Welcome to Up-Market Sales Success, a series designed to help busy loan officers just like you make the most of high-volume markets. My name is Jake, I'm a member of the Mortgage Champions team, and we are incredibly excited to bring this powerful offering to you. Let's dive into the topic at hand, Gaining commitment (with the. big three), with Dale Vermillion. Hi Dale!
Dale Vermillion	Hi Jake!
Jake Vermillion	In this installment, we want to explore how to gain commitment with the big three: credit, docs, and decision-makers. Which means unpacking when, how, and why, to pull credit and collect documentation as well as the importance of involving all stakeholders in the decision-making process. As you can see, that's a lot to bite off; but, I think it will be immensely valuable to those listening—especially when streamlining your sales process during high-volume markets. Dale, let's start with credit. What are the benefits of pulling credit? How can loan officers get permission to do so? And when should they make the ask?
Dale Vermillion	So Jake, there's three key principles that we never want to forget when it comes to credit reports. And these principles are this: First off, it starts with timing. You never ask too soon. Look, the mistake that I see too many times is we're not even three minutes into a call and we're starting to ask that borrower to pull their credit report and ask them for their social. You haven't established credibility and relationship enough yet to do that. So number one, make sure you've established credibility and relationship before you ask. Number two, tone. You've got to have the right tone. What is the right tone? It is confident. It is assumptive. You're not making it big deal out of this. So, instead of saying things like, "So, Mr. Jones, I'm going to need to get your credit report. Would that be okay?" Nobody's going to say yes to that. "Hey Mr. Jones, want to go ahead and I'll pull your credit reports. We can go ahead and get your information together and show you how to put together a plan to really change your life?" See that's a different tone of confidence and assumption. And then the last thing is benefits. You've got to create benefits. Why would they want to have their credit pulled? Well, the answer is because by pulling their credit, you actually can first off complete the first of the three primary things that are needed to get them approved—that's verifying their credit, verifying their income, and verifying their assets. You're hitting the first one out of the gate, and it allows you to go through with them to help really understand their situation and build a great plan for them to make a loan.
Jake Vermillion	What about documentation? With technology, it's easier than ever to let borrowers upload documentation, attach banking and investment accounts, etc., all on their own time. But is that the best approach? If not, when, how and why should a loan officer collect borrower documentation?
Dale Vermillion	It absolutely is the best approach. You're crazy. If you're not using today's technologies to take advantage of every opportunity to simplify the process for your borrowers. So, here's the key: number one, you better try to get docs. Now, the RESPA regulations are very clear about this, that you cannot require a borrower to give you documentation to provide a loan estimate. However, they can provide it to you voluntarily. And so what that means is you cannot require it, but you can recommend it—and you absolutely should! Why? It's beneficial to the borrower, not to mention the fact that it front-loads the thing that drags down the process on the back side more than any other single factor, and that's collecting income documentation. If you get it on the front side, now what happens is you're getting them moving through the process faster. So, the benefits to your borrower are powerful. It's going to mean a more meaningful offer. It's going to mean a stronger approval. It's going to mean you can close faster. And by doing that, for you the benefit is it shows the ultimate commitment. If you don't have docs, you don't have a sale in most cases. Because once they give you their docs, they're tied to you both emotionally and in a physical sense because they've given you the physical documentation, you're in a much better position to win that deal.
Jake Vermillion	Those listening might not typically connect, pulling credit with collecting documentation, with involving stakeholders, but all these are key milestones in gaining borrower commitment. So Dale, walk us through how even a relatively-complete file can quickly be undermined by an uncommitted stakeholder and how loan officers can protect against that by proactively involving stakeholders in the decision-making process.
Dale Vermillion	This is one of the biggest mistakes that I've commonly seen in my career and it's so important for us not to make this mistake. Look, if it's a joint application, that means there's two people involved in that decision-making process and we need to speak to both of them—bottom line. Not only for the benefit of them, but for the benefit of us, and for the benefit of doing it right. Look, if I make a presentation to one without the other, I'm creating my own stall. The stall is going to be, "Sounds great. I need to talk to my spouse," or, "I need to talk to my co-applicant." We don't want to create that scenario because you can't close your sale. But look, here's the other side of that, it's just the right thing to do, because if I'm the joint applicant or you're the joint applicant we're on the other end of that phone is the customer and the loan officer's trying to get a decision from our spouse without us. We're going to feel as though we're not viewed with the same light. That's not the way you want to build or start a relationship. So, look, you got to make sure you understand who's in that decision-making process. Ask the question, "When making a major financial decision, like a mortgage, how does that process work?" Let them lay it out for you and they're going to tell you how it works. And once you determine that there's more than just that person involved in that process, you need to get that other person involved because what that does is it eliminates that stall, but it also really shows your professionalism and it gets you to connect with all of the people involved in that application and really sow that deal up the right way. We call it the big three for a reason, because they're big and there's three of them. You gotta make sure you do their credit right. You gotta make sure you get some form of documentation for commitment. And you gotta make sure you've got everybody who's in that deal involved because any one of those three can kill your deal quick. If you focus on accomplishing these three, you're going to close a lot more deals at the end of the day.
Jake Vermillion	Don't forget to complete today's Skill Challenge by working with a borrower to collect documentation up-front, and then let us know how the process went by clicking the feedback link in the show description. Coming up next, Submitting complete files (for faster processing and underwriting).