Psychology and Mortgage Marketing

Have you ever heard someone refer to sales and marketing as both an art and a science? It’s easy to dismiss such a statement without really diving into the true meaning behind the words. With all the smoke and mirrors and disinformation on the market today, it’s easy to view sales as this mystical beast that can never be conquered.

While it’s true that no one can close 100% of the people 100% of the time; if you contemplate the science behind the sales process, you can most definitely tip the odds strongly in your favor. 

A great place to start is the brain. (This is going to be fun) The sheer amount of data that must be processed each and every second of your day is staggering. Your mind is assaulted with visual input, audio input, touch, smell and so forth.

How big is this item in front of you -  is it a danger? What color is it? What direction is it headed? Is that a baby crying in the distance? Wow I love that song I hear coming from that car as it drives by… It goes on and on. 

In addition to the flood of sensory input entering your brain, the average consumer is also hit with thousands of sales messages every day. Thousands… Billboards, radio ads, Gas station signs, television commercials, spam, banner ads, pop-ups, the list is endless. If you had to consciously consider the relevance of each of those advertisements, how much time would you have left in your day?

Not much! So what happens, is your brain has created a rating system, or filter if you will, that helps place a level of importance on specific activities and input. For example, if you received an email right now that contained the subject line: “This is very important!” would you be concerned? If it was from an unknown person, and likely a piece of spam, you would delete it. 

Now, if a family member called you up, or even sent you an email with the same line, how important would that email be? You would instantly recognize this email as urgent, and open it right away. Let’s stop here for a moment.

In the above scenario, did you even have to think about what course of action you would take? No, you didn’t ponder the situation, and think to yourself “Hmmmm… I wonder if this is important?” No, you simply took action.

This happens because your brain has assigned family as important, and will instantly give priority to anything of concern relating to family. 

So why is this important to a loan officer or real estate agent? Because somewhere buried within each of your prospects is a list of buttons that are also labeled as “important.” Each one of his has specific topics that will cause us to sit up and take notice. Have you ever seen a formerly dull or quiet individual open up and blossom when speaking about something he/she is passionate about?

The key is to stop marketing or selling your services the same way your competitors are. Instead, take a look at a list of core values that your ideal client is likely to have, and build your script, marketing campaign, and follow up messages around these core values.

Chris Hallmark – http://www.loanofficermarketinglab.com/chrish