Monthly Archives: January 2009

Principles

How are Mortgage Professionals Like Doctors and Why It Matters to Your Profession?

Leave a comment

I was reading the results of a consumer report survey that said 78% of respondents said that lenders need to be reined in. This surprised me. Sure those lending professionals who were unethical should be reigned in (and many are in front page headlines) but that’s not 78%. Could it be that those few unethical lending professionals made a bad name for all? Could it be that people are just looking for a skapegoat for their financial problems? I’m sure there’s some truth to both of these reasons but I suspect there’s something more fundamental going on that I read about in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink.”

In Section five of the book entitled “Listening to Doctors” Gladwell talks about various studies on the incidences of malpractice among doctors.  The studies show that the risk of being sued for malpractice has little to do with the number of mistakes you make. In fact there he found something completely different.

He found the element that corresponded most to the risk of doctors being sued was: how the patients were treated on a personal level by their doctor.  Did they have a relationship with their doctor?  Was he snotty with them?  Negative?  Condescending?

One study Gladwell mentions provides some interesting pointers to you, no matter what your profession. Doctors who spent even a few minutes longer in consultations with patients, who gave orienting comments explaining the process, who were active listeners and who had a sense of humor/tried to be funny were much much much less likely to be sued for malpractice even though they made just as many mistakes as other doctors (who WERE sued).

Gladwell brings out instances where patients went to lawyers and said “I want to sue my specialist”. After reviewing the case the lawyer would say actually it wasn’t the specialist that was at fault it’s your primary doctor. The patient would insist on suing the wrong doctor, despite the evidence, just because they felt like they were not treated well.

Gladwell points out that it is all about your tone of voice with your clients, are you dominant or concerned?  That one aspect (tone of voice) makes all the difference in the world.

So…how are you treating your clients these days? How long does it take you to return a client’s phone call? When was the last time you sat down with a client to actually explain your opinion letter to them?

 

Goal

You Will Only Get What You Want, If You Ask For It

Leave a comment

You can’t always get what you wantgetwhat1280x1024.jpg
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need

Rolling Stones

The simple rule “you will only get what you want if you ask for it” is very powerful in two ways.

1) People won’t know what you want unless you ask. That’s why it’s important to have a goal. What do you really want? Now go ask for it. You just might get it. Example: Ask for that girl’s number.

2) Be more forceful when you ask for what you want. Sometimes you just need to be more confident or clear when you ask for what you want. This works well when dealing with bureaucracies. The rep on the phone may not have the power to get you what you want but his manager might. If not try that manager above. Example: I used this today to get my loan rate lock-in extended and I was dealing with a big bank.

I’ve heard many stories of how this works well for credit card late fees also. A classmate in graduate school said he used this successfully five times in the previous year. Then finally one of the companies caught on and said they can no longer waive the late fee because he used it numerous times. Three levels of management later and he got it waived again! But this time he promised the manager, it was the “last time”.

photo credit: geishaboy500