A method built for undercover agents is reshaping how he builds his book of business
In a time when mortgage brokers have been working through challenging market conditions, finding new referral partners who can help find deals to close becomes more important than ever.
Without the stream of refinances coming through the door due to elevated mortgage rates, purchase deals become a critical source of income for brokers. This makes building strong referral relationships one of the top priorities.
Most failed referral relationships follow the same pattern. An originator meets a realtor or CPA, the conversation goes well, and the other person even commits to sending business their way. Then nothing happens.
One executive says the lack of action backing up that promise has nothing to do with not wanting to send deals to a particular broker.
DJ Christofferson (pictured top), executive partner at NEXA Lending and co-founder of Dodoche, said the real problem is that referral partners forget about the broker they just made a connection with. That’s why he turned to a technique used by spies to help build stronger referral partners.
"There's a methodology that, whether you're the CIA or FBI, I know it sounds really crazy, is how you can recreate the environment and develop a relationship," Christofferson told Mortgage Professional America, describing that familiar pattern. “It's exactly the same thing that the FBI does for their undercover agents to go deep within organizations, or the CIA to recruit assets."
The four-part formula
Christofferson said the framework he teaches, which he is bringing to an upcoming breakout session at the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME) Fuse conference, did not originate with him.
"There are four components to developing relationships, and I didn't invent these things," he said. "This came from an FBI agent named Jack Schafer. He wrote about it in one of his books called The Like Switch. The four things are proximity, frequency, duration, and intensity."
He said the first two components are the easiest to put into practice right away, using social media as an example.
"One of the easiest ways for me to create proximity is to like your post or comment on your post, because almost every person goes back and checks to see who liked it, who commented on it," he said. "The more we are around somebody, and we see somebody, we automatically start to feel more comfortable with them. That's the frequency component of it."
Technology, he said, has made staying visible easier than at any point in his career. But just being visible doesn’t mean you’re building a strong relationship.
"It's incredibly easy to constantly be seen, but the key is it can't just be in the context of give me a deal, give me a deal, give me a deal," he said. "It's stuff we do intuitively with our friends that we just now need to recreate with everybody else."
He is direct with people about how powerful the framework can be, including its potential for misuse.
"I always warn people, and I'm just being blunt with you, don't use this for nefarious purposes, because it certainly can do it," he said. "But if you do it right, they have no idea what you're doing, because it's literally how every great relationship is built."
He said the effect holds up so well that even telling someone exactly what he's doing usually isn't enough to stop it from working.
"If I were to start deploying these things on you, you would have a very hard time resisting what I'm doing because it comes across so naturally," he said. "It's like a magic trick. That's why I say it can be used for nefarious purposes. So don't do it, of course."
He said discovering the approach reshaped how he understood years of relationships that never turned into business.
"I would have great meetings with realtors, and they would even say, ‘I'm going to send business to you.’ And then the business didn't show up," he said. "It's not that they were lying. It's just that I'm out of sight, out of mind, and they just forgot about me. That's just human nature."
Navigating a slower market
Christofferson said the current environment raises the stakes on relationship-building rather than lowering them.
"You're going to have to create more relationships now to get the business you want, just simply because there's less of it out there," he said. "But the beautiful thing is, as you develop these relationships now, when things get a little bit easier, and the market loosens up, you will have exponential growth of your business."
Asked what his AIME membership has meant to his career, Christofferson circled back to the same theme that runs through his breakout session.
"There are so many great people, high producers, and the willingness of them to share what's worked for them and how they overcome is incredible," he said. "Any loan officer, no matter where they're at in their career, has easy access to that information that we didn't have when I was trying to build my business. The people and the relationships are invaluable."
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