In every interpersonal aspect of your mortgage business, it’s essential to build a sense of trust. Having a strong reputation and building a genuine sense of trust with your prospects, clients, past clients, partners, and colleagues is the foundation of a thriving business. At the end of the day, your credibility determines whether your pipeline continues to flow smoothly; and this credibility depends on the kind of professional relationships you’ve formed. This trust takes time to build — it’s not often you can gain someone’s trust overnight. And if you break it, it’s even harder to rebuild. Here are a few ways I recommend working to build trust in your mortgage business:
Authentic marketing
In our digital age, prospects are apt to meet you for the first time online, whether through your website or social-media pages. This means your online presence and marketing need to reflect how you want your business to be perceived. Is your branding in line with the message you want to send? Is it authentic to your own beliefs and business values? Or does it come off more as cold advertising and purely “selling”? If you have any doubts, I’d recommend taking a moment to check in and maybe even revamping your online marketing. If you can reach a point where your online presence is consistent with you and your business, this will give prospects a clear sense of who you are and what to expect. This will help you to attract valuable clients who connect with you and the type of service you deliver.
Genuine first impression
Similar to how you present yourself online, giving a confident and authentic first impression in person is equally important to building trust. These first interactions with people make a strong impression and one that’s usually hard to alter after the fact. Since it takes only seconds for people to determine their first impression of you, it’s important to prioritize how you come off. These first impressions can quickly help build or break trust, so consider things like your handshake, eye contact, confidence, patience, and friendliness.
Offering value
Prospects and clients can tell the difference pretty quickly between someone committed to making a sale and someone committed to helping them make the right decision. You ensure clients that you have their best interests in mind by creating a mutually-beneficial relationship and showing that you care. Make sure that they clearly understand how your services work and the value of working with you. Find out what their problems and concerns are, so you can address them right away. Share relevant content that they may find useful. Demonstrate your willingness to give to the relationship.
Importance of honesty
The foundation of trust is honesty. As a loan officer, being direct and honest in all of your professional relationships is essential to building trust. This is true especially when issues arise. Of course, problems will come up occasionally within the lending process. How you handle them says a lot about your character. LOs should try to face issues directly without avoiding or sugar-coating them and should be direct and honest with clients. This also means not overpromising. When you only promise what you can feasibly deliver on, your clients, partners, and colleagues will trust your word.
Go beyond their expectations
Delivering on promises is a great way to build trust. And delivering more than is expected can strengthen the relationship further. When it comes to customer service, this translates to responding quickly to questions, being available to discuss their needs and concerns, and communicating with them frequently. Adding extra value can quickly bring their experience from satisfactory to stellar.
It takes time to build lasting trust and a credible reputation. When you operate with this goal and commitment in mind, it will guide you in all aspects of your business. How do you work to build trust in your own business? Share with us in the comments.
