Your Sales Process Is Broken! Here’s What Today’s Borrowers Actually Want
Jake Vermillion breaks down why most retail loan officers are losing deals before they even start: rushing borrowers to online applications, skipping discovery conversations, and misaligning their marketing with how they actually sell. This episode is essential for any LO still sending application links on the first call or relying on rate-shopping as their differentiator.
Stop sending application links and start completing the application live on the phone — longer calls kill rate objections and dramatically increase pull-through.
Takeaways you can run this week
- Replace your 'I'll send you a link' habit with a live phone application walk-through. Target 15-22 minutes. Jake's data shows rate drops out of the conversation almost entirely on longer calls — borrowers stop shopping when you build relationship first.
- When a referred borrower calls, within the first 60 seconds name-drop the referral partner enthusiastically ('Joe and I have worked together for years — he only sends me his best clients, and I will move heaven and earth to protect your closing date'). Then CC that agent on your follow-up email immediately after the call.
- Audit your last 10 borrower calls for total talk time. If any are under 10 minutes, rewrite your call opener to include 3 relationship questions pulled directly from the 1003 fields: 'What do you do for a living?' / 'Do you have kids?' / 'How long have you been married?' — turn compliance fields into conversation.
- For buyers worried about affordability, run a blended-rate analysis: calculate total monthly debt payments at current balances (credit cards at 21.9%, auto, student loans) vs. rolling that debt into the mortgage with a lower down payment. Present the net monthly savings — this is the consultant move that separates advisors from order-takers.
- Use AI to build a prospect engagement spreadsheet: list 20-30 target referral partners or potential partners on LinkedIn, log the last date you engaged their content, then reverse-sort by longest gap. Each week, go to the top 5 and leave a specific, thoughtful comment or DM — do not post your own content just to post; go engage theirs instead.
- Audit your website's primary call-to-action. If it's 'Apply Now' or 'Start Your Application,' replace or supplement it with a live chat widget staffed by a trained LWA or BDR who can do a soft pre-qual and warm-transfer to a loan officer — Jake's recommended alternative to form-first funnels for retail shops.
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GET FREE ACCESSThe playbook
- 1. Respond to every inbound lead within minutes, even if just a text: 'I'm in a meeting — I'll call you at [specific time]. Looking forward to it.'
- 2. Open the call by immediately acknowledging the referral source with genuine enthusiasm and positioning yourself as a team.
- 3. Slow down and spend 15-22 minutes on the phone completing the application together — do not send a link.
- 4. Use 1003 fields as relationship-building prompts (employment = 'What do you do?', dependents = 'Do you have kids?') rather than clinical data collection.
- 5. When affordability is the objection, run a blended-rate debt consolidation analysis showing total monthly debt service before and after the mortgage structure.
- 6. Immediately after the call, email the borrower and CC the referring agent — confirm next steps, express excitement, make the agent feel like a partner.
- 7. Market only what actually closes deals in your conversations — identify the last thing you said that made a borrower say 'I'm in,' and turn that into content.
Worth quoting
“Rate immediately drops out of the question every single time. It's almost like an afterthought at the very end of the call.”
“What you need to market is what ultimately converts in a sales conversation — what sells is what markets in our business.”
Best for
LOs who are still sending application links on the first call and wonder why their pull-through rate is low and borrowers keep shopping rates.