The Forever Follow-Up: How to Turn a Recruit’s No Into a Yes

A loan officer tells you they're happy where they are, and most leaders take that as the end of the conversation. But most people show up one time and disappear. If someone knew who you are and you show up every month forever and bring them value, you're in the conversation. Where a lot of people say game over, this is where we say game on.

We surveyed mortgage market leaders about how they follow up, and the answers explain why so many recruits go cold. We asked how many people do you follow up with regularly. The average was 7.3 people. Every nine to 12 months. 97% say I'm just checking in. That's a waste of time.

Here's the recruiting follow up system I teach instead, and it's simple enough to run forever.

1. Get the minimal yes

Can I at least send you my contact information so that in the event something changes we're connected? Ask it even when a recruit turns down the meeting, because it earns a small yes before you hang up. That's the get out of jail free card. We believe that they're a great fit, but we do know they're cold. We want to have a great fit cold pipeline. We want to have a process where they're getting into our great fit cold process, and we're going to bring them value every single month forever.

2. Show up with value every 30 days

I call this our forever follow-up because forever we're going to bring them value. Contact info gets sent. Okay, within 72 hours, now we would send value one. Okay, and then every month forever, we would send something of value. The first piece goes out fast because the recruit barely knows you yet. If you wait 30 days to bring them value, they're going to be confused because they're not going to remember who you are. When you show up one time a month, the word I always use is extravagant value. Extravagant means beyond reasonable. Like, I can't believe you gave that to me. Once a month until they leave the industry, they say stop sending me awesome stuff, or you leave the business yourself.

3. Kill just checking in

The friend zone is a dangerous place to be when you're dating. And this is dating. How you stay out of the friend zone is you bring a ridiculous amount of value to somebody. That value has to feel like it was made for one person, and a generic drip campaign never does. I haven't met the person yet that was dripping, that was winning. All my messaging has to feel as though it's being sent to an audience of one. If not, it's spam, and they'll act accordingly, which is that I'll get blocked. My number one message ever responded to, hands down, thought of you.

4. Find value when you have nothing to say

Typically, most people don't send something of value because they don't have the thing of value. You don't have to be the thing of value. Journalists go uncover the story. Share what's working on your own team, a market update, or an article that made you think of them. We're going to start showing up and saying, I thought of you because I recently had an idea I share within my team that's winning and people are growing their business around it. I wanted to share that with you. Build each piece on the last one so the relationship climbs instead of starting over every month. It's the same idea, just ascending on the idea.

5. Ask about every six months

Most people just ask, they're nonstop askers. If at all possible, I would never ask for something from someone before I brought them value. After months of value, a short and honest ask lands well. Every six months, I know you well enough to know that if you ever were to make a move, I'd want to have you on my team. Until then, I want to continue bringing you value as though you were already on my team.

Make it a Friday habit

Everybody here should have time blocked at least one time per month on their calendar where I always call it follow up Friday. So on a Friday, have an hour blocked where you take your one idea and you give that idea away to everyone that's in your dream 100 list. When you send a thing of value, you notate it. That's the whole tracking system: a list, one hour a month, and a note of what you sent. Two-thirds of all your hires will come through your forever follow-up. Sustainability is the idea that you got a good enough system. You can do this forever.