I was surfing a message board that I frequent with high perfoming loan officers.  One of them has an opportunity to present to a group of Realtors next week and he was told that he has a whole 3 minutes to do a presentation.  Hmmm, 3 minutes.  The post started by asking what would other loan officers do with this opportunity.  It got me thinking about opportunities that I’ve had like this and how I approached them.  Here was my response: If I had 3 minutes to ‘talk’ to a group of Realtors, I would let them talk first. Ask them what their biggest frustrations are, ask them what they are not getting from their current lender relationships, ask them what they would like to see from a relationship. I would spend 2 minutes finding out what their issues (’pain’) happen to be and then I would spend 1 minute explaining how you can help ease that pain or resolve some of their issues. If you talk to them they won’t listen. If you listen to them and then address their concerns I think you would get a much higher interest level. There are 2 important preparation points here: 1. Be prepared for no one to speak. I’m sure, in the current market, this won’t happen but you should be prepared with stories or pains that other Realtors have shared and then ask them if they are experiencing the same things. You will certainly get a response when you hit some hot buttons. Understand which of those the crowd seems to respond to and focus on those.

If you only had 3 minutes in front of a group of Realtors (or any customer)