By Todd Duncan

Most loan originators would agree that having a process for creating High Trust and low tension with their clients and in their business is necessary for maximizing their productivity and profitability. It’s amazing, then, to consider how many mortgage professionals run their business without a process.

The High Trust Selling system is a step-by-step process that enables you to maximize trust and minimize tension, and lets you know in advance that the likelihood of someone agreeing to use your services is as high as possible. With High Trust Selling, imagine:

• How many less people you will need to call on

• How good it will feel to hear the word no infrequently or hardly at all

• What it would be like to have a such a good reputation for selling that people come to you instead of you going to them

• What it would be like to wake up every morning and know that, when a borrower phones, you know exactly what to do to get that borrower to go from not using you to using you and raving about you

• What it would be like to watch your monthly income go from $5,000 to $10,000 to $20,000 to $40,000 to $80,000, to even $100,000

• What it would be like to ask prospects for commitments and have them really mean it when they say yes

When you think of the psychology of selling, the word no leads to a negative self esteem while the word yes leads to a positive self esteem. Imagine how much better you will feel about the sales profession, about making the next call, and about your ability to elevate the quality and caliber of your prospects when you hear the word yes the majority of the time.

The fact of the matter is most loan originators doing business today hear the word no often. They hear the word no often because they don’t know how to sell. Most companies do not have a sales training program to equip people for guaranteed success. Most companies believe that the quicker new originators begin working in the field, the sooner new originators will bring in business. But when new originators are not given a process that teaches them how to sell and how to bring in the right kind of business, their failures create high levels of call reluctance and low volumes of business.

High Trust Selling is a process that, if mastered, guarantees that you will hear the word yes more often and the word no less often. Did you become a loan originator to be someone who can profoundly impact the lives of people and make hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in the process? If so, you must master the art of High Trust Selling.

The High Trust Selling Pyramid

High Trust Selling is about easing your clients into long-term relationships. Each letter of the word EASE denotes part of the process of High Trust Selling. Here is a quick summary of the process:

Enroll: In Act 1, The Approach, your focus is on targeting, building value and setting appointments. Your objective in a successful approach, be it with a borrower or prospect, is to secure an appointment so you have the borrower’s or prospect’s full time and attention during the High Trust Interview.

Ask: In Act 2, The Interview, you conduct two levels of interviewing. You elicit borrowers’ and prospects’ core values, which are their intrinsic motivators, and you discover their highest value needs, which are the external needs you and your team must meet. Starting with the interview does not work because if you don’t approach borrowers and prospects correctly beforehand, you may not have their time and attention necessary for eliciting their core values and needs.

Solve: In Act 3, The Solution, you are able to tie together borrowers’ and prospects’ highest value needs and core values, and provide a persuasive, trust-based solution that creates enormous value for them. Starting with a solution will not work because you can’t be certain you are presenting a solution to borrowers and prospects if you don’t learn their needs and values first.

Engage: In Act 4, Action, you ask for the borrowers’ and prospects’ business. Starting at this level will not work because when you start by asking for the business, you have not given borrowers and prospects a reason to say yes. However, when you complete the first three steps of the High Trust Selling process before you engage, there is a high probability that borrowers and prospects will say yes. Even if borrowers and prospects say no after you have gone through the first three steps in the process, the High Trust Selling system shows you how to return to the interview, work up to a new solution and gain a new reaction as you ask for the business again.

Know this: You must have the mindset that it is always a matter of when, not if, a prospect or borrower will do business with you. The when will be determined by the amount of value you add.

Follow-up Questions

• What type of process have you been using in your loan origination business for maximizing trust and minimizing tension?

• How often do you hear the word yes and how often do you hear the word no from borrowers and prospects?

• Which part of the High Trust Selling process, Enroll, Ask, Solve, or Engage, do you normally begin with?

• Can you proclaim with 100% confidence that you know how to sell?

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