I believe that it’s fun to win.

In this session, I’m going to share with you a way to help your lenders win more and better deals.

If you’re already bringing in nice deals and you’re fairly happy, you’re going to love this episode. I’m going to show you that, with that base, your lenders can bring in so much more and at better pricing.

On the other hand, if you are frustrated that you have a few lenders who are doing all the deals while the others don’t seem to catch on and replicate their results, you’re going to find out how to get your average performers playing in the big leagues.

And if you are frustrated because it’s just not working at all the way you want it to, watch all of this episode. I’m going to show you a system that we’ve used in hundreds of banks to crack the concrete barrier of mediocre or suboptimal performance to create epic results fast.

When you embark on a sales breakthrough in lending, there are usually three big, ugly challenges that seem to show up.

First, it’s time to do away with sales training “attempts” where everyone just pretends that they’re interested and that they’ll do the work. You need immediate behavioral changes. Let’s face it. Heads are nodding. Nobody is disagreeing… but you’re not seeing them creating the immediate results that should happen if they’re actually doing what they should. Passive-aggressive behavior is becoming normalized as part of your culture.

Second, a few of your lenders catch on and start to get some traction. But because so many others don’t, there is no shift of culture—you just have a few outliers and therefore achieve nothing sustainable or profound.

Third, your senior lender tries to keep the party going but meets so much resistance—game playing, people “forgetting to get their sales funnel right,” people “too busy” to do their calls—that eventually he gets “schooled” about how things are going to be and loses enthusiasm to be great. It’s not his fault. It’s a system problem.

Every bank has hit some of these barriers to a real, sustainable breakthrough.

I’m now going to show you three steps that will help you help your teams start to win nice deals at premium pricing in just a few weeks so that they can feel the joy of profound success.

Step 1: Instead of sales approaches that are “numbers games,” your lenders need to know exactly whom to call on. They are after the targeted few who have exactly the right firmographics and psychographics, so you get home runs with the right people who are likely to fall in love with you and bring all their business.

Step 2: In contrast to typical sales training, it’s not time to cold call. What most lenders don’t understand is that a prospect has not yet seen evidence of them caring about their success. Without built-up “reputational equity” to lead with, your lenders get treated like vendors—rejected at worst, or treated like commodity vendors at best. Your chance of getting a deal is low, and there is no way that a lender can get 100 basis points more than competitors even if they do get the deal.

Step 3: Forget about the “shoot from the hip” approaches and create an exact plan of how to warm prospects, how to initiate conversations, and how to demonstrate your Level 4 Unique Selling Proposition (USP)—the differentiating value that makes you worth switching to and doing so at premium pricing. Of course, you need a sales “system” that they all follow—one that is proven to get A+ credits at significant premium pricing.

Just three steps. First, target the few that you really want and will likely want you. Second, create a system that gets the prospect winking back and starting to dance before you ask them to get married. And third, make sure every lender, without exception, follows the same proven sales system that is explicitly designed to attract the very best credits at premium pricing.

Following these steps will get your lenders hooked on how fun it is to win and win and win. Bringing in all of your top, most desirable prospects at premium pricing is so much more fun than potentially closing those who were only considering you because of “rate matching games.” Once lenders know what it feels like to win, they’re hooked!

In the next session, I’m going to cover how you can get team selling in place to help you achieve an over 90% close rate on your Top 100 most desirable prospects while you get all their business.