The first contact of the Pre-Qualification process is almost at a close. However, we don’t want to hang up the phone without the borrower buying something from us. This is especially true if you have spent the time with your client to overcome the first objection, you explained the difference between a pre-qualification and pre-approval, and you established a strong rapport with the client by building emotion, talking about employment and income, their retirement goals, and went over their current financial situation.
In general, this entire process has taken a good 20-30 minutes. Closing the call, or closing the interview, is quite simple if you have taken good notes throughout your conversation with the client(s). You are going to repeat everything that they have told you thus far back to them. This will show them that you have been paying attention and that you care about helping their unique situation.
You have two different methods to closing the first session with your client. You can do an assumptive close, or you can do an alternative close (both of which operate off of the assumption principle). I, personally, love to use the alternative close because you are acting as if your client has already decided to fund with you. Here is an example:
“Mr. _____, I will send this letter out to you by this evening via U.S. Mail. I will also be emailing it to you at the same time so you are able to have a hard copy on letter-head as well as have a PDF copy on your computer. I will also forward the letter to the Realtor so he/she has a copy. Typically, after sending the pre-qualification letter, I do ask for my clients to send me financial statements. Is it easier for you to e-mail those, or is it easier to fax them?”
With that ending statement, I have completely removed the option for a simple “yes” or “no”, and I am obtaining a commitment from the client by having them send me financial statements. Essentially, though, you can ask for anything that will show a borrower’s commitment to you (pay stubs, bank statements, 401k statements, etc).
Following the commitment to send the financial documents, we need to get the pre-qualification programs to them as soon as possible. We have already pre-empted this by our follow-through comment which reiterated everything that they have mentioned throughout the conversation. Personally, I use Loan-Magic in order to professionally present the material to the client. FYI, David Bartels does promote this product, and I fully support the use of it. However, if you have another way of getting the programs in front of the client, go for it.
The key to presenting the programs is to show that you have every program available that they might be interested in seeing, and there is absolutely no way they would need to shop around for a different package. This, of course, is just how I have done it in the past and have been successful. If you have other ways to accomplish this, I would love to hear them!
After you answer any questions about the mortgage programs that you have presented to the client, make sure that you schedule a follow up call for the next day. We will take off from that point in the next Pre-Qualification 2.0 update.
As a side note, I have added the Mortgage Pricing section to my blog. If you would like to get e-mail updates on the current markets for the day, Click Here.
