National Association of Responsible Loan Officers

Are you tired of competing
with loan officers that lie…
Discover How to Build Instant Credibility for You and Your Business and Close More Deals

But first, let’s briefly review what we as loan officers see when we think about ourselves within the mortgage industry.

• You see yourself as a hard working professional.
• You try to give your customers a great deal.
• You are getting rate shopped.

Now, let’s briefly look at what our customers see when they think of loan officers.

Your customers receive almost daily solicitations in the mail for cash-out refinances. From the customers’ perspective, it’s hard for them to believe they have received a great deal from you when they are receiving almost daily solicitations from huge mortgage companies offering seemingly better deals. How do you separate yourself from those companies and ensure your customers call you?

Your customers receive these mailings that offer cash out, that quote better rates, that offer lower payments and great savings—and it becomes really difficult to convince your customers you are better than any of the companies mailing them those letters.

In addition to the barrage of marketing your customers receive, they also see hundreds of news stories like these:

These headlines are in your customers’ minds
when they walk into your office.

When prospects call you on the phone rate shopping, they’re scared they’re going to be the next victims. They are scared the next mortgage fraud story in the newspaper will be about their mortgage. So, as a defense mechanism, they do a lot of work to call around and ask loan officers to quote rates.

Yes, they are rate shopping, and they are scared. So the minute you try to get them to do anything other than rate shop, they think, “Oh, this is one of those slick salesperson types, I bet he’s trying to get me,” and they are gone.

Consumer fear is getting worse, not better. You’ve got to figure out a way to meet your potential customers at their fear and help them overcome it, or else you won’t be able to get their business.

I’m sure you saw this BusinessWeek magazine with the cover screaming, “HOW TOXIC IS YOUR MORTGAGE?” This is a classic example of how loan officers are being depicted by the media, politicians and lenders. Loan officers are easy targets, often portrayed as THE ones victimizing customers.

You need to know what your customer saw just before he picked up the phone to rate shop you. You consider yourself a professional, but your customer sees you the way BusinessWeek portrayed you: “The Pitchman.” Let me explain.

Here is a cute little cartoon image of the homebuyers that appeared in the BusinessWeek article. These are your customers, the people who are rate shopping you and who will leave you for someone else because he promised them an eighth of a point. This is what it says about them in BusinessWeek:

“The homebuyers, average Jane and Joe, eager to own a piece of the American dream. Unsophisticated about exotic mortgages such as option ARM’s. If they need to sell in a hurry, they may find that rather than building equity they’ve buried themselves under a heap of debt.”

You and I both know there is a lot more to the story of Jane and Joe than this. What’s important for you to see is that the consumer is being portrayed as the victim. This teaches your customers that they could become the next victims.

Take a look at the way BusinessWeek portrays you, “The Pitchman.” Here is another “cute little cartoon” with you clutching a mortgage agreement and chasing after average Jane and Joe. The caption reads: “Commission hungry mortgage brokers, part of an independent and unregulated sales force for banks. Untethered to the financial health of buyers. They originate 80 percent of all mortgages and get extra bonuses for selling the most exotic products with the highest penalties.”

No wonder your customers are scared to death when they call you. The media is teaching your customers that you

• Are a commission hungry salesperson.
• Don’t care about their financial health.
• Are unregulated, which implies “out of control.”
• Are looking for extra bonuses for placing customers in the wrong product.

I’m going to tell you how you can change what looks like an unbelievable disaster into something that can benefit you and even generate customers for you.

The 3 huge problems loan officers must overcome:

1. There are too many of us;
2. There’s not enough business; and
3. We have to distinguish ourselves from the thieves preying on consumers.

Let’s look at one development within the industry: the volume of business is going down. Both home purchases and re-fi’s. On the home purchases side, business is off by 20 percent on average, and in a lot of places that percentage is even higher.

The number of loan officers has tripled in five years. And in the last three years alone, we’ve gone from 180,000 loan officers to 450,000 loan officers. That is a huge increase. We have more loan officers now than we ever have, and there is less business, both in the re-fi side and in new home sales.

7 Tough Marketing Problems, Resolved

1. How do you explain to customers the hazards of shopping for a loan strictly by rate?
2. How can you avoid losing a deal when a borrower wants to work with you, comes to you with a great referral and yet chooses to go with someone he doesn’t know because he was promised something slightly better? The promise might be only a .125-percent lower interest rate, or $500 less in fees, or a promise of a loan rate and term that might not exist.
3. How do you compete with false advertising, liars and thieves, and how do you convince your customers to trust you?
4. How do you increase your chances of getting responses from a direct mail ad campaign?
5. How do you market yourself apart from the rest of the herd?
6. How do you handle rate shoppers?
7. How do you approach real estate agents you don’t know and win them over quickly?

The Single Biggest Problem Facing Loan Officers Today

Let me tell you a little about my background. While today I’m the executive director of the National Association of Loan Officers, I am also a CPA. I no longer practice public accounting, but I went through the process and passed the CPA exam. It involved two and a half days of testing. I had to study for five months before sitting in a testing room with 300 other people. In the end, only 18 to 20 of us actually passed the exam. This difficult process of becoming licensed makes the public see CPA’s as trusted professionals.

In the nursing profession, only certain nurses are allowed to give shots. A nurse has to reach a certain designation before being qualified to give shots. Having an RN license versus an LPN license allows you to get certain jobs that you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. Nurses with an RN license make more money because they can perform a larger range of tasks. There’s an actual value in being an RN instead of an LPN.

Let me let you in on a little secret that scares CPA’s to death. The actual value of a CPA license to 99 percent of the CPA profession is very small.

The only service CPA’s are allowed to perform that other professionals cannot is auditing companies. That piece of the business is less than 5 percent of the entire revenue of the CPA profession. So anyone off the street could easily do 95 percent of what a CPA can do. There is nothing stopping you from jumping into the business, producing financial statements, doing accounting and preparing tax returns. It doesn’t matter if you are a CPA or not. In fact, thousands of non-CPA’s are doing this work right now.

But if the CPA license doesn’t matter,
why do CPA's make more money than others?

Customers perceive CPA’s as trusted professionals. For instance, let’s say you need to hire someone to get your books done and complete your tax return. After interviewing a non-CPA, he tells you he’ll be happy to do your work for $300.00 a month. Your next stop is at a CPA’s office, and the CPA offers to do your work for $300.00 a month. You’d hire the CPA wouldn’t you? I’ll even guess you’d be willing to pay the CPA more.

This is important. If you receive phone calls from accountants pitching their services for $298, $250 or perhaps even $200, you’ll tell them to stop bothering you and take a hike. You don’t need their accountant services; you have a CPA doing your books.

The CPA has a higher PERCEIVED value. The non-CPA might do a better job. But it’s perception that dominates the marketplace. Perceived value makes the difference between whether you can charge lower fees or higher fees, regardless of whether or not there’s any real benefit there.

So now I’ve trashed the CPA profession, of which I am a member. I spent a lot of money to get my license, and I take 40 hours’ worth of continuing education every year to maintain it. However, I understand that while my license may have a lot of perceived value, it has no actual value.

What do you do to increase your perceived value so you can charge higher fees and get consumers to hire you instead of all of their alternative choices?

How to Get a Customer to Choose You

What is the perceived value of the loan officer profession? How can you maintain your professional status when your customers are told you are “The Pitchman” and while your competitors promise them better deals every day in their mailboxes and over the phone after you pull their credit?

As we have seen with the CPA example, when you establish yourself as a trusted professional, customers will choose you even if you charge a little more. All of a sudden, the phone calls they get don’t matter, and they throw away the mail without opening it. Because they have a professional who handles those matters for them.

They have a member of the National Association of Responsible Loan Officers. NARLO is an association serving exclusively loan officers who are dedicated to improving the perceived value, professionalism and reputation of the industry.

As executive director of NARLO, I encourage you to be a member of FAM and MBA and other associations. They’re all excellent organizations, and you really need to be part of them. They have a lot of terrific people who are doing good work. However, you only have to look at the newspaper clips and magazine stories to realize more has to be done.

NARLO was created by a group of concerned loan officers who got together to form an organization exclusively for loan officers. There are no lenders. There are no $150,000.00 sponsorship programs for lenders to participate in. Therefore, lenders don’t dictate NARLO’s legislative platform. They don’t get to dictate to us what we say and what we do.

The consumer advocacy and the consumer awareness programs we do are dedicated to improving the perceived value of loan officers—not the lenders, not the banks. We exist only for the loan officers.

NARLO teaches our members how to transform the BusinessWeek article into a customer generating tool. You can’t ignore it; your customers are seeing it every day. If they don’t read BusinessWeek, they see it in the newspaper, or worse yet, they know someone who has had problems with a mortgage. You must address these negative stories head on, show your customer how you are different from those crooks and distinguish yourself as a professional.

It’s in the back of consumers’ minds. It’s something they’re worried about when they call you to rate shop. That’s why they’re rate shopping. They’re scared. They don’t have a lot of choices, they don’t know where to turn and they don’t know who the trusted source is, who they can depend on to get honest answers. By shining a light on this problem, you’re going to become the trusted source.

NARLO Membership Benefits You in 12 Important Ways

In addition to the increase in perceived value and the importance of NARLO to the loan officer profession, there are a lot of greedy reasons why you should become a member. (After all, BusinessWeek said you are greedy!)

This is what’s in it for you to join the National Association of Responsible Loan Officers:

1. NARLO TODAY Monthly Newsletter - Proven strategies to improve your income
2. Experts Teleseminar Series - In-depth training from our nation’s top mortgage experts
3. Free Subscriptions - Increase your standing as an expert
4. Consumer Education Brochure - Makes you the obvious choice for mortgage loans
5. Membership Logo - Consumers will be able to easily distinguish you as a professional
6. Consumer Protection Program - Additional assurance to your customers that they made the right choice
7. Legal Support & Information - On-demand answers from industry experts
8. Educational Programming - An annual conference and timely educational forums
9. Discount programs - Lower expenses so you can watch as more money goes to the bottom line
10. National Directory - Consumers looking for a trustworthy loan officer will find you
11. Ready-to-send Press Releases - Make you the obvious expert in your community
12. Free Mortgage Business Guides - A roadmap for your success

Let me give you a brief description of your membership benefits.

1. NARLO TODAY Monthly Newsletter
Proven strategies to improve your income

Every month, NARLO provide you in-depth information about how you can be a successful loan officer and establish yourself as a mortgage loan professional. You get the strategies you can use within your business based on what’s going on in today’s market. Plus, you receive a wealth of compliance and legal information. For instance, Don Halpern of Weiner Brodsky Sidman Kider PC (the top mortgage lending legal firm in the country) writes for us every month to give you the essential RESPA information you need to know.

This isn’t one of those 100-page publications that give detailed stories about “this bank bought that bank.” We don’t bother with the story about the 2nd vice president who got promoted to 1st vice president. Or the net branch company that opened a new branch in Tupelo. We cut that stuff out.

In a few easy-to-read pages, you get the essential marketing and compliance advice you need to be a successful mortgage professional. You get insights on what successful loan officers are doing to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. What other members are doing to help their consumers. We give you sample press releases and ads that other members are using. All of this information, digested for you.

2. Experts Teleseminar Series
In-depth training from our nation’s top mortgage experts

Each month, NARLO interviews experts to bring you the best strategies to produce customers for your mortgage business. Learn the insider techniques that generate profitable deals and ensure you provide customers with the best possible products to meet their needs. In addition, there is time within every call for you to ask YOUR questions. This way, you get exactly the answers you need to ensure your success.

Here are some of our past expert interviews along with a few of the special guests coming up in the next few months:

Don Halpern, Esq. - Weiner Brodsky Sidman Kider PC - Critical RESPA Issues Every Loan Officer Should Know, Plus Proposed Changes That Require Your Immediate Preparation
Marc Levenson - Innovative Mortgage Solutions - Learn from a Television News Anchor With 28 Years of Experience How to Get Publicity in Your Community and How to Explain Complicated Mortgage Terms to Your Borrowers
Steven Marshall - Bellevue Mutual Mortgage - Insider Tips and Winning Business Strategies
Brian Sacks - Mortgage Web Success - Essential Internet Marketing Techniques for More Leads With Lower Cost and Effort
Sue Haviland - HavilandReverseMortgage.com - How to Quickly and Easily Explode Your Production With the Fastest Growing Niche to EVER Hit the Mortgage Industry
Mike Migit - MaverickMortgageBroker.com - How I Reinvented My Mortgage Business and Why You Should, Too
Jessika Ondrick - JBK Marketing LLC Inc. - Winning Big in the Mortgage Industry by Building Trust With Your Customer
Brad Cooper - Cooper Financial Solutions - Direct Mail Marketing Systems Any Loan Officer Can Use to Close More Loans
Ken Schreiber - HomeQuest Solutions Inc. - The Automated Marketing System That Isn’t the Internet, Works When You Are Playing and Is as Easy to Use as Your Telephone

When you join, you will receive a web link to all of the past calls so you can catch up AND set your calendar for the upcoming calls.

3. Free Subscriptions
Increase your standing as an expert

One of the most important ways to become a responsible loan officer is to seek out high quality resources to learn additional information. NARLO recommends only a small number of publications to our members. These publications have special correspondents that get excellent information, can provide important insights and are valuable to the majority of our members. That’s why we give our members free subscriptions to these publications.

1. BrokerNewswire delivers well researched, relevant information that has quickly vaulted this publication to the top of the mortgage industry. Your NARLO membership includes 2 free months of BrokerNewswire.
2. Mortgage Originator magazine has proven over its long history that it is the premier mortgage industry publication. You receive 3 free months of Mortgage Originator magazine as a gift with your NARLO membership.

These two publications believe loan officers are the future leaders of the mortgage industry. They have eagerly stepped forward to support your association.

4. Consumer Education Brochure
Makes you their obvious choice for mortgage loans

There is nothing else within the mortgage profession that educates consumers on the essential information they need to compare loan officers and choose the best mortgage. Even the HUD brochures are lacking; the first thing they suggest is to shop around for the best mortgage. However, they don’t give the consumer any criteria to help them choose.

Several factors went into designing a consumer brochure that will help you win more deal closings. Here are some of the issues we considered: Makes you look like the obvious expert - This brochure imparts information the borrower has probably never heard before. This information is unique and fresh. This ensures that when you give your prospects this brochure, they will say to themselves, “Hey, I didn’t know that. This guy is smart; I wonder what else he knows that I don’t know?” This rules out all of the conventional wisdom. We wrote this brochure with unique information your prospect probably hasn’t heard from the talking heads on television.

• Gives you additional credibility - We debated whether we should brand this brochure as a NARLO brochure provided by you or whether we should help you brand this brochure as if you wrote and created it. In the end, we thought it would provide more credibility to the information, and to you, if it came from a “third party.” When you give this brochure to a consumer, you are allowing a national industry organization talk to your prospect for you. NARLO is doing the talking, and every word promotes you and your services.
• Choice of topics - While we could have written a 50-page report detailing all of the potential pitfalls of the consumer choosing the wrong loan officer, we focused on six. These six topics were prioritized from the dozens of ideas and choices we had because we wanted to make sure your customer sees the most important reasons for using your services. These six choices address many of the common objections loan officers receive and give you a tool for handling those objections when they arise.
• Code of Ethics - This is a tool for you to distinguish yourself from your competitors. You can display this code and assure your customers that NARLO polices its members—anyone found violating the code is thrown out of the association. NARLO has a strict one-strike, zero-tolerance policy toward loan officers with consumer problems. This protects our members and, more importantly, protects consumers and gives them a trusted source of information—you.

This brochure makes you the expert. When you’re the one educating your customer, it makes you an expert and gives you the credibility. It also separates you from all the other folks out there who are trying to prey on consumers.

5. NARLO Identity Usage
Consumers will be able to easily distinguish you

Imagine your prospect sitting in your lobby, concerned about the mortgage fraud stories they read about when they researched your loan, then they look up and see that you are a member of the National Association of Responsible Loan Officers. How dare they grill you about rates? Several members have reported that their customers refuse to talk with telemarketers after they learn to work with a NARLO member.

As a NARLO member, you are authorized to use the logo and your member designation in your ads, marketing materials and websites, etc. Surveys of both consumers and business owners overwhelming indicate a customer’s preference for purchasing from companies identifying themselves as a member of a major organization. Also, vendors and lenders indicate a similar reassurance when dealing with a member of a recognized organization.

You receive your own separate NARLO consumer website, with your contact information prominently displayed. You don’t have to worry about sending consumers to the NARLO website only to find they chose a different NARLO member. Your own web page locks them into doing business with you, their responsible loan officer.

6. Consumer Protection Program
Additional assurance to your customers that they made the correct choice

NARLO provides consumers a dispute resolution program when they work with our member. If a consumer contacts us, we will obtain all of the paperwork, ascertain the nature of the dispute and then send it to our member for comment. Based on the member’s response, we’ll work with the loan officer and consumer to quickly resolve the dispute.

This program helps you in several important ways:

• Gives your borrowers recourse so they can negotiate amicable solutions to their complaints without having to go to the banking commission or their attorney general.
• Educates your customers from an independent, third party.
• Consumers looking for someone participating in this program will find you in NARLO’s consumer directory.

This program is a powerful benefit for NARLO members to obtain new customers and to resolve disputes before they escalate into a regulatory problem.

7. Referral to Elite Team of Leading Experts
On-demand answers from industry experts

Do you need a resource to answer your processor management questions? A crackerjack lawyer? A great marketing expert who knows your business and you inside and out?

And suppose you come up with a marketing process you want to promote to other loan officers—whom do you call? We have a team in place and will be aggressively adding carefully screened experts as we go. You tell us your needs via email, and we’ll refer you to the best sources we know, or we’ll directly provide the answers you need, as appropriate, from our staff.

8. Educational Programming
An annual conference and timely educational forums

The National Association of Responsible Loan Officers compiles dozens of member profiles for our newsletter. In addition, the Member of the Month contests generate hundreds of great ideas to show and tell. While we do have a number of great national speakers at our annual conference and other meetings, most of our educational programming is provided by real loan officers revealing the strategies they use to attract borrowers and close more loans.

This education is not available anywhere else, and it’s open only to members of NARLO.

9. Discount Programs
Here is a small sampling of discounts already arranged for IMA members:

Affordable Group Health Insurance
A growing number of people in the United States are uninsured. In 2005, almost 44 million Americans had no health insurance. If you don’t get insurance from your employer, without a group program it’s too expensive to purchase on your own. Your NARLO membership takes care of that problem for you.
Office Machines From Pitney Bowes
Mass mail outs can consume a lot of time—hand stamping, sealing, labeling and sorting by employees often result in error-filled mailings and are a drain on staff. Pitney Bowes can save you time and money on mailings.
Supplemental Insurance From AFLAC
If you’re sick or injured, you may not be earning money and you probably have extra uncovered out-of-pocket expenses. How do you pay the rent, the car payment, the cable bill and the extra expenses? Aflac helps by providing cash benefit payments that can be put toward lost earning power, daily living obligations, deductibles and treatment related travel.

… More discounts are added every month!

10. National Directory
Consumers looking for a trustworthy loan officer will find you

All of our consumer awareness publicity is designed to tell consumers across the country that if they need to find a loan, they will find a responsible loan officer they can trust by using NARLO’s online membership directory. The directory targets all 50 states and is designed so consumers can find you easily.

One deal from the NARLO member directory pays your membership dues for 12 years!

11. Ready-to-send Press Releases
Make you the obvious expert in your community

NARLO provides all of our members with ready-to-send press releases as a membership benefit. This is a great way to generate free publicity and obtain loans that you couldn’t have from any other source. Using a sample release doesn’t require a lot of thought or effort. You simply put your name in the space that says “name,” put your city in the space that says “city” and then send it to the places we ask you to send it to.

All of the following news clippings are from a couple of short weeks in July. All free, loan generating publicity.

Here is a quick list of what you get
as a NARLO Member:

1. NARLO TODAY Monthly Newsletter - Proven strategies to improve your income
2. Experts Teleseminar Series - In-depth training from our nation’s top mortgage experts
3. Free Subscriptions - Increase your standing as an expert
4. Consumer Education Brochure - Makes you the obvious choice for mortgage loans
5. Membership Logo - Consumers will be able to easily distinguish you as a professional
6. Consumer Protection Program - Additional assurance to your customers that they made the right choice
7. Legal Support & Information - On-demand answers from industry experts
8. Educational Programming - An annual conference and timely educational forums
9. Discount programs - Lower expenses so you can watch as more money goes to the bottom line
10. National Directory - Consumers looking for a trustworthy loan officer will find you
11. Ready-to-send Press Releases - Make you the obvious expert in your community
12. Free Mortgage Business Guides - A roadmap for your success

As you can imagine, funding a national association is resource intensive. Luckily, we have a team of committed volunteers that stand ready to contribute their time when necessary. Although our efforts to promote ethical loan officers alone are worth an annual investment of $5,000 or even $25,000 from each of us, we understand that small businesses cannot afford that investment.

It Seems Incredible That NARLO
Offers So Much for Just $49.97

NARLO membership dues are $49.97 a month. You can access all of the benefits and fund the nation’s only aggressive public information program for loan officers. Distinguish yourself from the rogues and thieves preying on the public. Ensure that your customers know you are different.

We are putting our money where our month is, take NARLO for a test drive, cancel your membership at any time, there is no financial commitment required from you. With NARLO you are not required to pay for a full year of membership in advance. You can simply pay one month at a time, conveniently billed to your credit card, and cancel at any time you feel your membership isn’t paying for itself with increased credibility and lead generating strategies.

But that’s not all …

Join today, and we’ll send you two
profit building guides absolutely FREE

The bait and switch loan officers run from publicity and exposure; they don’t want anyone to shine the light on them and their activities. That’s why it is important for you to get on TV to tell your story about the benefits responsible loan officers bring to families throughout our country.

Getting on TV sounds terribly difficult, and it can be intimidating to show up at a television station and give an interview. However, the credibility and influx of leads you receive from this exposure are extremely valuable to your business. With our publication How to Handle a Live TV Interview & Look Like a Pro, you will learn just how easy it is to get on TV and give an interview that inspires people to call you!

Everyone wants to do business with people they see on TV. When the leads start calling you, they are 100-percent ready to do business with you. The television interview will make you the leading loan expert in your area.

• Learn how to get TV exposure for free instead of paying thousands of dollars for airtime.
• This program is written in concise, easy-to-understand language that walks you through every step of the interview process.
• This unique preparation process will help you get ready for any interview in only minutes.
• Mistakes in a TV interview can cost you thousands of dollars in marketing costs to correct the problems. This program will show you how to prevent problems in the first place.

By itself, this publication, How to Handle a Live TV Interview & Look Like a Pro, sells for $97.00. It is yours free for joining NARLO today.

Although Brian Sacks started out as a real estate agent about 20 years ago, he became a loan officer after one year. After several years he quit the business because he was burned out and wasn’t making a lot of money.

He came back to the business after six months and decided that if he was going to be successful there was a lot about how he conducted his business that needed to change. Immediately. According to Brian, his need to make those changes probably stemmed from the fact that his first manager was an alcoholic who used to come in every day around 10:30 a.m., take an hour for lunch and leave promptly at 3:00 p.m. He gave Brian a rate sheet and said, “Go meet people and bring in business.” That was the extent of Brian’s “training.” Naturally, he made just about every mistake possible—but he learned from those mistakes, and he’s willing to share them with you. Today, he knows how to avoid mistakes and make the most money as a loan officer.

Brian’s “Thirty-Five Ways to Competition-Proof Your Business” will let you learn from Brian’s mistakes and create a roadmap for your success. This report normally sells for $49. It is yours for FREE, simply for joining NARLO today.

In today’s competitive, regulated environment, can you afford not to join? You have nothing to lose.

With NARLO, You Can’t Lose

NARLO’s policy, for all of our members, is that you must be completely satisfied, in fact, elated with what you get. So here’s our clear and simple guarantee:

If you’d like to take advantage of this inexpensive offer, act immediately. For there’s no telling how long we can keep making it. And it may not come to your attention again.

Why not return the membership application invoice today before it slips your mind? We’ll rush you the Free Profit Building Reports and member recognition materials the moment we hear from you.

P.S. Enough is enough. We must stand together to defend responsible loan officers throughout America. Stand with me and join the National Association of Responsible Loan Officers today. You’ll receive huge benefits and more customers, and you’ll help fund the industry’s only proactive public information campaign. Join right now while this is on your mind.