Scripting Your Irresistible Offer, the Core Imperative

Your business imperative is to make an offer. Your goal is to create a highly irresistible one. Not so irresistible that it becomes unbelievable but that it is so compelling that it instantly forges a working relationship with your referral partners and borrowers.

Why script? I believe that scripting is the single best method thing that you can do to accelerate your success. You perform the way you practice. You will sell the way that you practice. If you are not practicing to sell, you aren't selling as much as you should. Contrary to the old saying, "Practice makes perfect" in reality, "Practice makes permanent". The purpose of our phone call is to help you script your way to greater success by developing your irresistible offer.

There are four questions every borrower is be asking and you need to script yourself on how you will answer them. Use the four critical questions to develop your core imperative (that is your offer).

These questions are:

1. What are you trying to sell me?

2. Why should I believe you?

3. What's in it for me?

4. How much?

Resources

The bulk of this information was developed from The Irresistible Offer by Mark Joyner. You can order it by clicking here. Buy it with Mark Joyner's The Great Formula: for Creating Maximum Profit with Minimal Effort and you get them shipped for free!

The information in the next section, "How are You Selling" was developed from Beyond Selling Value by Mark Shonka. You can order it by clicking here.

This handout accompanied a FREE conference call hosted by www.MondayMorningSalesCall.com. Please see the web site for information on future calls. The conference was hosted by Mark Collins, eMortgageProfessor. He can be reached at 813-661-9122.

Please go to the Sales Call Feedback found at www.mondaymorningsalescall.com/feedbackcall.htm to let us know how the call went. By completing the survey you will be offered an MP3 file of today's call.

 How are You Selling?

In Beyond Selling Value (click the title and then click Search inside this book to read a great excerpt), Mark Shonka observed four customer perceptions when it comes to working with salespeople:

1. Vendor

2. Problem Solver

3. Business Resource

4. Strategic Resource

Vendors concentrate more on product, event and operations; this results in greater service calls, just meeting specs and lower margins. As one migrates towards the Strategic Resource efforts are more concerned with business results, processes and executive type thinking; this results in creating demand, adding value and thus higher margins.

Vendors react to a loan request by concentrating on product and price. Oftentimes, they let the borrower lead them. Strategic Resource sellers become mission critical to their borrowers and think at an executive type level, such as in strategic planning and review.  

Setting the Stage

Borrowers' Three “Eyes”: Irrational, Impatient and Ignorant.

Irrational – Who else would entrust their financial future to a strangler that they call simply because that individual quotes them the lowest rate. It is far more likely that they chose the biggest liar or the biggest knucklehead to entrust their transaction to!

Impatient – Their expectations are often unfounded. They want their loan officer to do back-flips while paying him or her next to nothing.

Ignorant – They don't have any other purchase model other than price because no one has ever shown them a different model. Isn't it your responsibility to educate the borrower?

Understanding Your Borrower's Initial Need: To Get the Best Deal

Your borrower wants the best deal, period. He or she doesn't think about service when calling. Compare the number of calls you get whose first question is, “What's your rate?” compared to “How's your service?” This mentality subjects the borrower to great peril. One thing you might bring up is this:

“I know that you want the best rate and you deserve it, after all you work hard for your money. Unfortunately, when soliciting mortgage quotes on the Internet or over the phone you can't distinguish the professional from the knucklehead or the liar. Don't you wish you had a phone that would simply hang up whenever someone began to tell you something that wasn't true. How many hang-ups do you think you would get as you called mortgage companies and asked, “What's your rate?”

Next we examine a script that answers the rate question by making the borrower understand more fully what they really need to ask:

“Mr. Smith I can appreciate you wanting to get the best rate. When I shop for something that will cost me a lot a money I want the same thing. However, I have found it helpful to ask four questions that help me narrow my focus to those individuals I have a strong feeling are the type of people I trust and want to be business with.”

1. First - “What are you trying to sell me?” This question goes a long way to pinpointing the professionalism and integrity of the person you are talking to.

2. Second - “Why should I believe you?” In my mind when making a major consumer decision, this question is critical.

3. Third - “What's in it for me?” It's important for you to understand what you get out of choosing to do business with one person versus another.

4. And fourth - “How much?” You deserve to know exactly what the rate and terms are on the mortgage option we select that will most completely satisfy your financial objectives. If you think this model can help you choose your next lender, I would love to answer them and any other questions that you have.”

The Irresistible Offer

From your perspective, you need to have a high return on investment proposal or there's no reason to move on. After determining the ROI offer you create a touchstone that answers two or three of the  big questions. Then you need to create believability to close the sale.

 Your customers want to see your touchstone first so they are willing to dig further into what you have to offer. They then ask themselves is what I am being told believable. It is only after they believe in you that they come to appreciate your high ROI offer and decide to do business with you.

Imagine if you can the following internal dialog for a customer following your touchstone, “Hey this person is different than the other ten mortgage people I have called. It seems that he is actually interested in what I want.” Then as to believability, “OK this offer sounds good and she sounds credible but sometimes things aren't what they seem. What's the catch?” After analyzing the high ROI offer, “This really makes sense. It seems that I have nothing to lose and lots to gain.”

Mark Joyner says, “The Irresistible Offer is an identity-building offer central to a product, service or company where the believable return on investment is communicated so clearly and efficiently that it's immediately apparent you'd have a be a fool to pass it up.”

Developing Your Unique Selling Proposition

I believe that your USP should consist of two elements :

Let's look at the steps you can take to create mission statement and tagline:

Rosser Reeves in his 1961 masterpiece, Reality in Advertising wrote:

“Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to the reader: “Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.” Your proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique – either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.”

Paraphrasing Mr. Reeves, 'Get your mortgage from me and you will get this specific and unique benefit.'

Creating Your Mission Statement

Here are some suggestions you can use in creating one for yourself:

Developing a Mini-mission statement or Tagline

Here are some guidelines for you to use in creating your mini-mission statement:

Dissecting the Irresistible Offer

The irresistible offer is comprised of three elements:

1. High ROI Offer (return on investment)
2. Touchstone
3. Believability

Where's the Investment?

What's a Touchstone

Your touchstone is the tool that melts away competition, allowing your prospect to concentrate on you alone:

If your offer is strong enough, you don't have to pitch it. If they want it, great. If not, then you just saved yourself a heck of a lot of time and can now feel good about moving along to the next prospect.

Some Great Touchstones (can you see their offer)

Pizza and Mortgage Loans, What's in Common?

Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's said, “The 30-minutes-or-free guarantee was as responsible for our growth as anything.” If it worked for pizza, how about for mortgages? Remember this, the irresistible offer is so powerful that it must be the very core of your business. Before you engage in any other marketing activities, the irresistible offer must be your starting point. Try this:

“I guarantee that your loan will be approved in 30 minutes or I will waive your processing fee!”

Ways to Enhance Believability

The more difficult it is for your customers to accept your touchstone, the harder you have to work to satisfy the concerns of your customers as to your product's believability and your creditability. Think outside the box as to ways to help boost your credibility. Try these:

Never underestimate the power of logic to credit credibility. Providing customers with logical, well laid out answers creates a persuasive communication style that will immensely improve your credibility.

Intensifying Your Offer – Creating the Gotta-Have-It-Now Commodity

If you did things right, your touchstone probably has some type of intensifier built into it already. As long as the customer can easily believe the intensifier it will have a pronounced and measurable effect; if not believable, it will cause instant concern and potentially terminate your sales efforts. Remember the best way to evaluate your touchstone from both your perspective and that of your customer. Here are some ways:

Removing the risk of doing business with you clears the way for prospects to make easier decisions, which are universally more favorable to you. The easiest way to do this is to offer some form of money back guarantee. As I discussed earlier, you could waive your processing fee if you can't go so far as to waive all of your fees. The point is your competitors won't do anything and that raises suspicion concerning their creditability.

Risk Reversal Tactics

You get What You Pay For

Some pricing techniques might help you with risk reversal. Being able to offer useful items at substantial discounts or for free should help. For example, "As part of my first-time home buyer program I offer free access to a program that typically costs $195. I simply give you an access code that you can use to by-pass paying for this valuable information." Your intent here is to contrast the quality of your services from the services your competition offers.

Imagine saying this to someone, "I'm sure that if you call around enough you will be quoted a lower rate. I am not the cheapest, nor am I the most expensive. I provide a quality service for a fair price. I want my borrowers to have a great mortgage for a fair price unlike much of my competition that is simply trying to fit someone into anything that has a great price. That's one of the reasons why our industry has such a bad name. According to a recent article in Realty Times, "The most frustrating part about getting the best interest rate is actually getting a rate quote you can trust. Some of these tricky loan officers will make used car salesmen seem like saints when it comes to quoting an interest rate.""

Remember this, ironically it is the people who typically are willing to spend more for your service that are also less likely to cause you problems! Further if you always price at the bottom of the spectrum, isn't it more likely that your service will be perceived as low end? And as we learned earlier another way to say this is, "The costs you will incur by selecting the wrong mortgage in exchange for discounted service far outweighs the benefits you gain by securing professional mortgage advice to determine your best mortgage option at a fair price."

Thanks for Attending!