Loan Officer Success Live

What if the difference between a 60% close rate and an 80%+ close rate isn’t your script… but the way you communicate?

In this episode, Devin Dubuc sits down with Sean Shallis to unpack what Sean calls the Secret Language of Sales the psychology, framing, and communication patterns that help top producers guide conversations without sounding pushy or salesy.

From defining your ideal client to understanding decision-making styles, future pacing, body language, and the power of the right words at the right time, Sean breaks down how elite communicators build trust, lower resistance, and lead people to confident decisions.
You’ll hear:
  • Why “The Secret Language of Sale” lands differently than “NLP”
  • How to identify your ideal client and stop wasting energy on the wrong ones
  • The communication shifts that can dramatically improve your close rate
  • Why tone, pacing, and body language matter more than most people realize
  • How future pacing helps clients feel confident before fear sets in
  • Why the smallest words can have the biggest impact in sales
This conversation is packed with real-world examples, sharp mindset shifts, and practical insight for anyone who wants to communicate more effectively, sell with more confidence, and create a smoother path to yes.

Want to Learn More From Sean? 
Check out his Facebook @ facebook.com/seanshallis
Subscribe to Sean's YouTube Channel @loandoctorpodcast

Creators and Guests

Host
Devin Dubuc
Coach. Dreamer. Dad. Helping you own your worth and go after what sets your soul on fire🔥
Designer
Jennifer Rodriguez
Jennifer Rodriguez is the engine behind LOS.Live and The Mortgage Giants, leading everything from graphic thumbnails and episode descriptions to cross-platform distribution. With years of experience as an Office Manager and Executive Assistant, she brings organization, strategy, and innovation to every production. Mentored by Growth Leader Devin Dubuc for the past six years, Jennifer collaborates on branding and podcast strategies that help loan officers nationwide elevate their business. Known for her positive energy, adaptability, and commitment to growth, she is the trusted voice guests connect with throughout the podcast experience.

What is Loan Officer Success Live?

This isn’t another sales tips podcast.
This is Loan Officer Success Live - where mortgage and real estate pros come to master modern growth without the burnout.

Hosted by Devin Dubuc, Loan Officer Success Live is a deep dive into the psychology, strategy, and systems that build legacy-driven businesses in today’s market. Whether you're a high-performing loan officer, a rising agent, or an entrepreneur scaling fast, you’ll learn how to attract clients, grow income, and lead with brand, not brute force.

Real conversations. Tactical playbooks. No cold-call bro-hype. Just clarity, confidence, and creative firepower.

You don’t need a script. You need a strategy. Welcome to Loan Officer Success Live

Social Media Links:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/loanofficersuccesslive
Facebook: www.facebook.com/loanofficersuccess.live
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@loanofficersuccesslive

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Disclaimer: The information is intended to be viewed for informational purposes only. The content contained herein is not guaranteed or endorsed by the company, or any company mentioned, nor is this content meant to be an offer of credit. The information contained in this video may not be wholly or at all applicable to every situation or jurisdiction. You are strongly encouraged to consult your professional mortgage advisor before acting upon any information in this video. The information provided is for use as a training tool only. The information is not intended, nor should it be relied upon for any other purpose.

You can say it. Welcome back to Loan Officer Success Live. And this is the Coach's Corner powered by Premier Lending. Your host, mortgage leader and business builder, Devin Dubuque, and the coach with the winning playbook, Rick Koenig. Together, they're bringing you real strategies, no fluff insights, and the exact steps to grow your mortgage business. Buckle up because this is Loan Officer Success Live. Only problem with that is we got the wrong intro video and this is not Coach Rick Koenig. This is Sean Shallis. But Coach Rick is better looking than me. I don't know. I don't know about that one, man. We'll have to let the audience make that decision for us. Right. But you know, man, I'm super excited for this one, Sean. I think this has been really almost four years in the making. I think we've known each other now through video for about four years. We got introduced through a similar coaching program. You know, us guys like to level up for some reason. I don't know. It's just, it's in the blood. And yeah, You know, we got to talking the other day on a morning show that you and I are part of, the MLO Live Show, Tuesdays and Thursdays with Scott Hudspeth. And you can get on there at mloliveshow.com. And we were talking about the secret language of sales. And we're not going to say the dirty word. The long version, not the text version. The text version is NFP. The long version is NFP. Neuro-linguistic programming. Exactly. And I think a lot of people get scared by that because they're like, oh, wait, somebody's trying to mind control me, right? So let me ask you a question, right? So when you say the secret language of sales, why do you think that phrase lands better than NLP? What do you think it is? And I think you know the answer. It's a good question. Well, first of all, I'll tell you this. And by the way, I feel blessed that I'm on this with you. Um, you're like an absolute legend and you always have been for me. So, and a great mentor and a coach. So I look at you as much as a peer as I do as a coach and a mentor and, you know, like the, the OG. Same, same here, man. Same here. Um, and you know, it's funny, like, you know, from, and we'll probably get into this where my background is a little bit different than most. It is. I could tell you that I don't care what you call it. Um, it works because like, well, my wife, when I met her, Six months later, I asked her to marry me. And she, at some point about a year and a half later, she goes, you used that NLP crap on me, didn't you? And I go, you know, you, Sean, purple Mohawk, checkered sneakers, high school, Dick Kennedy's t-shirt, you know, skateboard, checkered sneakers, my wife, board certified doctor, Val Victorian, five hundred kids, you know, certified genius, you know. And all I said really was, when is now a good time to marry me? Obviously, you realize what a great opportunity it is. If you pick that sentence apart, it's a little frightening. So yeah, I think if I said to you, hey, Devin, let's have a conversation about neuro-linguistic programming. We're going to go deep on the syntax of language and the inflection of your voice to actually bring people into your circle and then eventually convert them into maybe a lead or a customer. Versus saying, hey, Devin, do you want to figure out like every time you show up to an appointment and you take out one hundred and fifty keys, you could just go, OK, I talked to him for a minute and a half before I showed up. And I know it's only going to be one of these ten keys. And once I look around the house and I see the outfit he's wearing, I can get rid of five of them. So there's only five left. Yeah. And increase your closing ratio from sixty. Like mine, when I got really good at it, went from sixty three, sixty five percent. to probably eighty eight percent eighty nine. And the only bear in mind, the only difference between that eighty nine percent and a hundred is one is either the customer is just plain dumb or I'm dumb because I'm still trying to force them to make a decision when they they really shouldn't be making a decision with me or I shouldn't be trying to force them because they're not in my They're not my, what I would call ideal client client to begin with. Okay. Well, let's, let's explore that. So what do you, what do you mean when you say that and how do you define the ideal client for you? So, you know, it's funny when I moved to the mortgage space four years ago, I had the opportunity to rebuild my career. And prior to that, I was a real estate agent for twenty-five years. I would do seventy-five transactions a year with me and three people. And I, I pretty much, did the same amount of business that most people do in a year and a month. And the reason why I was able to do it was because I had really good people around me and I had, I know how to leverage with technology and some stuff like that, you know? And you and I are both kind of like mad scientists behind the scenes with technology. There's some nerd inside of both of us for sure. Without question. It's the only way you can do that. It's the only way you can leverage yourself like that. No question. I can tell you one of the greater, one of the better, what I call shadowing. I don't know if you ever heard of that, where you follow somebody. So early in my career, probably somewhere in between the middle or somewhere like in about the middle of my career, I met a guy named Carlos Gusto in Miami. And Carlos is, was the guy on, um, you know, the rich and famous, he was in the helicopter with Carlton sheets. And he basically, I sold that one. I sold that one. And I sold that one. And he was flying over South beach in Miami. And he was pointing at John Travolta's house. He was pointing up. He was the most prominent real estate. Right. And, and I said to him, I go, how did you get into that specific lane? And he said, Oh, that was easy. I just chose. And I I just swore I only wanted to work with high end people. And I found the guy who specialized in it and I just followed his path. So when I got on the mortgage side, I said to myself, if I'm going to rebuild my, what I call my perfect audience or my perfect ideal client profile that I'm going to work with, what are the ten things that I want? And one of those things was working with people that were either as smart or smarter than me, working with somebody that makes either two hundred fifty thousand or more or has access to two hundred fifty thousand or more. somebody that is coachable and willing to follow direction someone who is practical and someone who is um you know what i'm gonna what i'm gonna call um analytical and or analytical analytical um and drivers and the reason why i mean analytical and drivers and we can dig into that in a second but that means that if i give devin all the information that makes sense and he's practical the numbers the analytical piece line up and i'm actually in rapport with him because i actually make more than you know the same or more than he does and i play in the same sandbox there's no reason why he shouldn't do business with me which means which means it's a layup so i wanted you know when i did real estate i always wanted i didn't want to go to your house until i knew i was sixty percent uh closed before i got there that i had a chance of being my my closing ratio was at sixty percent or more before i even showed up and there's a way to set yourself up for that which is a whole other conversation but i didn't want to show up unless i had the best shot yeah well and i want to ask you a question there because what you're talking about is defining an avatar right like who is your avatar who is it that you want to communicate with who do you want to speak with directly right when where why how There it is. Right. The basic fundamentals of sales. Okay. So, so now you've defined the avatar and you know what you're looking for. Let me, let me give you the opposite of that for a second. I moved when I, in my real estate career at one point, my company was bought by a guy who owns one of the largest boutique privately held real estate brokerages in the Northeast. The guy named Jim Weicker, Weicker Realtors. Right. Okay. And when he, you know, when he, when he bought my company, I worked in a company, I worked in a town called Hoboken, which is on the river of New Jersey and it faces Manhattan. It's literally on the border of Manhattan. It's a mile square. It had three hundred and it had sixteen blocks long. It had fifty five hundred realtors at the time. And there was about six hundred and fifty transactions a year, which meant twelve hundred sides that we're all fighting over. And I would do seventy five, seventy five of those a year, like with my eyes closed. And he came to me and he said, he goes, you know what? I want to, I want you to move your business. I'm now going to move from the urban community to the suburban community because my kids are younger and I'm going to make that transition. It's about forty miles inland. Okay. One of the decisions I made was I didn't want to work with a certain stereo ethnicities. Quite honestly, I didn't want to work with the Middle Eastern community because it was so painful because I did it for I did it for fifteen years. right every deal i had a fight with over like a quarter or fifteen cents and i said you know what i'm gonna not do that business if i don't have to i'm gonna choose a different business to do and when i got to the suburbs the manager said you know you could just move over here about a mile and a half in this community and do four hundred more transactions have access the four hundred more transactions a year and i said you know what that sounds great but that's not me that's not my plot that's not my my ideal client profile And what I realized was really quickly was when you know your numbers, your numbers should help you to define your client profile because if you're working in a space where it takes more effort, it's more friction, you lose more deals or you got to get more to get more. You got to get more opportunities in order to get more deals. At that point, maybe you need to shift gears to where you don't fight as hard. You're swimming downstream. And the people you're dealing with are actually listening. They're coachable. Remember what I said? They're coachable. They're problematic. They're analytical, which means I can show them the numbers, which I'm good at. Right. Right. So all that now, all of a sudden, when I back into it that way, you can understand why when I moved to the mortgage shop, I knew exactly what I didn't want to do. And I knew exactly who I wanted to target. And I was able to go from and you saw the numbers. I'm sure anybody on here that's in the in the space can look at them. I went home in six months, did six million. I doubled my number the next year. I doubled that number again. And I'm now I'm on track to do probably between forty and fifty nine this year on my and it's your three and a half male be Again, you and I both met around the same time, and you were just getting started in this space. You were coming from the real estate space. So I've witnessed it firsthand, and I literally have watched you grow that market base from afar because we're not with the same mortgage company. You're up north. You're with U.S. Bank, correct, John? That's correct, yeah. And you're licensed in all fifty, but you do primarily business just in New Jersey, right? That's the majority of your business. Thirty percent of what I do is in New Jersey. The rest of it is outside my state. It's actually the polar opposite because my ideal client profile is physicians. So, seventy percent of what I do are doctors. By the way, if you listen to what I described, they fit that stereotype perfectly. They do. And it's a very unique market. What's interesting is What you probably didn't know is the day that I started in the business, two weeks later, I go to the sales meeting and I sit down and the president of sales comes out and goes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the worst blank market market I've ever seen in thirty years. And I looked at my now boss, who was always my mortgage guy for thirty years, and I went, go team. You know, like, okay. And rates went from six percent to eight percent. No question. Well, I remember that time, right? Because I've been in the industry for a little over twenty four years. And, you know, you're talking about twenty twenty two. And I always tell this story. I say, you know, we because we didn't notice it until July. We got fired in January. And we didn't see it until July, right? And we just didn't know. We didn't get the memo, right? So then June, you know, July turns around and we all of a sudden we went from, you know, my team at the time was closing two hundred and fifty plus transactions a year to eighty to forty to thirty to twelve. And then we had to climb back up out of that. So there's no question about it. It was one hundred percent the worst mortgage market. And some people try to contest and say maybe it was the two thousand eight, two thousand nine. I don't think it was. I genuinely think. But if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong. I remember your story and I remember when I first met you and I met you in Florida. Actually, I didn't meet you. I met your wife in Florida and her and your son or your mom. Mother-in-law. Yeah. Mother-in-law in Florida. Yep. And I remember the story is if I correct me if I'm wrong, you changed your avatar. You changed your ideal client profile from doing refis to doing acquisition loans. A hundred percent. Right. So, so, you know, what you did was, you know, there's a, there's an expression of, um, if you ever read the book, think you're real rich by Napoleon Hill. And if you're watching this and you've never read it, you should read it. It's like, it's the OG Bible of sales and, you know, success, personal success. And I, and I think it's on chapter three, cause I've read it about, seventy five times. My mentor said, read this. I said, I said to a guy named Michael Vance, if you Google him, he's the guy who embedded the phrase thinking out of the box. He was Walt Disney's creative director. I said, Mike, what's the one thing you could do you could recommend doing that is like just a constant. He said, read the book Thinking Ruins. And I go, I've read that book. He goes, yeah, but if I tell me what's on, tell me what's in chapter three. And I go, I don't know. He goes, until you can do that on the fly. He goes, read the book every twice a year. He goes, read it once in the beginning of the year or once in the middle of the year. So I read it January and then August twelve, which is my birthday, those two times a year. And I read it. I did that for twenty years straight. And I can now say to you, you know, the personal success for me is on Chapter three. The psychology of the psychology of selling is on Chapter seven, you know. But if you take that book, he talks about three feet from the gold. He talks about the guys during the gold rush. And the guy's buying all the equipment, goes back home, he hits a little piece of gold and he goes back home and he says, hey, Devin, give me some money. Give me all the money from the neighborhood. I'm going to take our money. I'm going to go dig for gold and we're going to make millions. The guy goes back and he finds out that where he was digging, there was only that one piece of gold. Yeah. It's so frustrated that he gives the equipment to the guy he was selling the gold to, like the broker, right, for like a dollar, pennies on the dollar and says, you know what, I'm going back to New Jersey. That's it. I quit. I'm going to go back and make pizzas. Right. And the guy leaves. And the guy who's the broker, who's a smart guy, what he does, he hires a guy who is a geologist. And he goes, hey, you know what? This guy was digging right here. He goes, can you tell me where I should be digging? And the guy goes, yeah. He goes, if you just take that equipment and move it over three feet, you should actually hit where the vein is. It turns out he just got a piece of gold on the corner that had to fall off. He got lucky. He goes, but you can get rich. And the guy moved this stack of equipment over three feet, made millions. And really, Devin, what you did according to what I saw was you just shifted your focus by three feet. Well, you mentioned that, Sean, and that's something that I've seen multiple times in my career because I've had to reinvent our market three to four different times, right? I've always led larger groups, and when things transition and change, some people just throw up their hands and they get out. What I found is if you double down and find a new solution and just attack it and go all in, you're going to find success in anything you do. Uh, if you're doing successful activity and actions, you just have to figure out what that little niche is, make the change and go. You just hit it. You just had a word that I'm going to underline score circle is you just have to find or know the problem is it goes back to. And it's kind of like the, you know, Gary Keller, Gary Keller and I work with him said, you know, what's the one thing you can do that changes everything and makes everything either easier or unnecessary. The problem is most people don't know what the one thing is because they don't know what the sixty nine things a day that they do in any given order are happening on a regular basis. So they don't track their numbers. They don't track their, you know, their activities. And if you don't track your numbers and activities, you wake up one day where somebody pulls the curtain out. In January, like you said, in January, I got fired. If you were tracking the numbers, and I'm sure you do, I know you well enough, but even then, even the best of us, you could be tracking everything and you might not notice it for six months. At least you noticed it six months in and were able to shift gears. Most people go broke. because they never notice it because they don't know the numbers. I'll tell you this. So I didn't know it was coming, right? We took that six months to figure out what the next step was. And I think that's where a lot of people don't prepare. And so what had happened was at that six month mark, it was literally when we were like, okay, this is what we're doing. We now have the plan. Now let's execute. Now the problem is we probably needed to know six months before that so that we could prepare and get everybody ready to make that transition. and i think even more so a lot of times people won't make a move until it's already happened because it gets so uncomfortable they realize they don't have a choice and i think what happens is is when they saw the pipeline drop off even though i'm telling them hey this is happening we got to make a shift they weren't prepared to make that shift because it didn't hurt bad enough right it changes damn people only change when they're either two things one they can see that they can see the money in it tomorrow like instantly, or it's so painful where they're standing. It just, they don't, you know, they have to move. And when I would, when I would build teams and I would go from, you know, when I built my team and I went from doing twenty five units to now fifty units in a year and then fifty units to seventy five, there's different people and different personality types that are going to be on your team. And what happens is people would say, like, I coach teams for KW and match coaching at one point. And people would say to me, Oh my God, but how do I fire this person? They've been with me forever. And I go, you don't. And they, well, what do you mean? Who's going to tell them? I go, they're going to tell themself. And they go, what do you mean? I go, if you change the environment and you commit to it, either people will step up or step out. So true. And I go, and you have to commit to like, like I can tell you, I had just rolled. I just bought the Christie's Great Estates Affiliate. okay i i opened my doors in jersey city i bought the affiliate in and back then you had to have you were only going to do properties over well that was like thirty five percent of the market the day i opened in in september um that was three percent of the market share and i walked in my office and i said to everybody and by that point it already took half a million dollars and built this office and I basically set up a call center in the back of my office and I put all the administrative people in the front, which was completely backwards from every other real estate office. And I said, and I brought my team in and I said, listen, I don't care if it's got a door on it, it's got a roof on it, we're going to sell it. And they're like, well, what about Chris? I go, I don't care if it's a trailer, we might not do it. But outside of that, if it's got a door and a roof on it, we're selling it. And what's interesting is I remember, you remember the fax machine, right? Oh, yeah. I get like the jumbo hub, right? I get the fax comes in and I never saw this report before. Take, hey, look at this. It's a hundred and eighty seven companies in our MLS. And we're number we're number sixty two out of one hundred eighty two companies. That's right. And we're brand new. That's awesome. Right. So next month I call up the I call the real estate office and I go, hey, what does this report come out? She goes, comes out on the fifth of the very month, Sean. So the following month, the fifth, I am literally camped out with my coffee, cleaned up against the waiting up against the machine, waiting for the waiting for the report to come in to see where we rank. The ratings are in. The report comes in. I'm watching page eight, page eight, page eight. I'm like, wait a minute. Last week there was page nine and ten. What the hell? Right. First of all, I look at the report and I go, wow, we're number thirty two behind some of the biggest companies. We got like, you know, whatever. I'm like, holy crap. I call up the real estate. I said to the woman, I go, Hey, wait a minute. I go, I think my fax is broken because I only got eight pages. And I know last week, last month I got twelve. She goes, Well, those are the thirty two companies were broke last month. They're out of business. We're now down to one hundred forty companies. Yeah, that's that's when reality set in. And I knew that I didn't no longer needed three listings to sell one house. I needed ten. So when Jim Weicker came to me and said, How do you how do you manage one hundred and ten listings? As an individual with like three people on a team, I go, Jim, in order to sell one house, I need ten. So in order to keep my goals the same, which was ten deals a month, I needed a hundred listings. What I didn't know, and it goes back to what you were saying, was I didn't look at all the numbers. I didn't realize that not only did I need the listings, but also the prices were cut in half. So my volume was half. So I really if I really had done the math right, I needed twenty listings to make the same amount of money. That's it. You're right. But you were able to pivot when a lot of people didn't. Right. And you went all in and doubled down on that. And, you know, this is where a lot of people stop because it's double the work for the same money. In your case, it was double the work for half the money because the volume had gone down. Right. But you didn't you didn't go out of business. And I think that's where a lot of people get lost in this industry is they get focused on the good years that they've had. And when those years change and they're still having success, it's just not quite on the same level. They forget about where this business has taken them over the long term time. I've done very well here in this space. And it's because I've been able to pivot in every market. And that's the same thing for you, Sean. And I don't get scared when things change. I double down and push harder. when things change, I get excited, actually. You know, it's, it's been a theme in my life. Like when I got out of the army, I was like, my uncle got me a job in the union. I was in the elevator escalator union. And they had those giant electromagnetic switches, like the relays that you see, like Uncle Fester, right? Well, that was in the in the early eighties. And they were changing that to what they would call computers. And they were pretty much like what you bought at Radio Shack, which was they were made with eight eighty circuit boards and they took out cabinets that were four feet by two feet by ten feet high and put a cabinet in that was probably two feet wide by six feet high and thirty six inches deep, you know, and all the old guys on the union said, I don't want nothing to do with that kid. Well, I raised my hand. I was like, you could teach me whatever you want. You know that in the short ten years or twelve years i was in that industry i became a trouble i was the youngest troubleshooter in the business i was the highest paid um maintenance man within five or six years and my uncle was like out of two thousand people in our union what the hell who did you sleep with i go if anybody i had to sleep with you and i didn't want to do that so you know the only other way was to go find a different approach which is what you said and by the way that was everybody else was afraid of that change i got in the mortgage space i mean like you know short sales yep how do you get really good at doing short how's sean how'd you become the short sale expert oh easy i had ten houses on my own i sold seven i got caught with three and i had to short sell my own three three of my own houses versus doing bankruptcy so you get really good at it yeah then all of a sudden i did three or four hundred short sales because i knew how to do it so i believe that change creates opportunity as long as you embrace it. That's it. If you if you like, I'm going through this right now where I'm built, I built out a website for the Knights of Columbus. And you can only imagine trying to explain that this is the consumer side. Here is the membership portal, the what? Right? Trying to explain the average, the average age in a room is sixty, seventy years old or seventy years old. So I think If you learn anything from this today, embrace change. And do it faster before anybody else. Let me tell you something, John. The way I look at it is... you embrace it. Let's say that adversity is a brick wall. Yeah. You figure out how the hell you run through that fucker. Cause let me tell you something. I'm not letting a brick wall get in my way. Right. I'm going to do what it takes to get to the other side of that because I'm not going to lose. It doesn't matter. Right. And, and that's, that's the mentality that you have to take. And let me tell you something. When you do that, you find a way to win. You find it. It's in there somewhere and you can't give up. You just got to push yourself through it. So the, the, let's circle back to neuro-linguistic programming right that's i was about to i'm glad you brought that up you just said hey it's a brick wall most people hear brick wall and they think like okay game over lay down play that you know get in the box and wait as my my coach used to say yeah um and i'll you know there's there's you can use neuro-linguistic programming to either So let me define it first, right? Neuro, the brain. Linguistics, language. Programming, creating a series of language that gets a same response or similar response each time. Program, right? Neuro-linguistic programming, right? So I'm going to get inside your head. I'm going to use some really sophisticated language and speech patterns to get you to make a decision. Good or bad, it is what it is, right? By the way, people have been doing it for thousands of years. Guys like, you know, some of the greatest speakers on the planet, Bill Clinton, you know, you know, Gandhi, by the way, Gandhi did it. Never said a word. He moved, moved the entire country. Didn't say anything. He did it with verbal, with visual cues. That's right. So we'll circle back to what you were saying about the word, the word, the wall, right? So you could either use neuro holistic programming to program your somebody else. To make a decision, hey, you know, Devin, obviously you realize what a great opportunity it is to work with me. When is now a good time to make the decision to sign the contract? Right? So I just told you that, hey, you trust me, you like me, and I know you want to make a decision to sign the contract. Because you really only hear six percent of the words I'm saying. What's interesting is you could use that same technology to program yourself. And if you've seen Tony Robbins, who I worked with years ago, He teaches you how to use neurolinguistic programming or NLP to program yourself. That's right. Create your self-talk and your self-talk. And I would, I would say the wall, I'm going to plow through the wall. Right. When I met, I met a guy named Stu Middleman, who if you Google him, he's a pretty interesting guy. He was the first guy to run across the United States, like back-to-back marathons. Yeah. And he studied like these people in Guyana and all these other people to go do this. And when I hired him to coach me, this is, probably twenty years ago it's more of twenty five years ago I hired him to coach me I paid him five hundred bucks a month to talk to him on the phone because he was in California he goes okay record your gate and I go my what he goes you know running on the treadmill now bear in mind back then you had to go get somebody with a VCR reported stick this tape in the in the in the FedEx ship it across the country two weeks later the guy said okay I got the tape right so we get on our first coaching call do you know that he would interrupt me for the first three coaching calls, which is to the tune of fifteen hundred bucks and said, until we straighten out your language patterns, we're not going to talk anymore. And I go, OK, well, what do you mean? He goes, well, you keep saying the word problem. If you talk to me now, I don't use the word problem. I use the word challenge because a problem is a wall. You can't go through it. A challenge is like a rock in the middle of the river where the water can flow around it. That's right. Right. So I mean, you know, so when you talk about when we talk about You know, sales language, for lack of a better word, we're going to use that now. We'll use that from here forward so we don't scare people away if we didn't already. You know, using that to program yourself. Hey, I think you would agree with me. There is, you know, ninety nine point nine percent of what happens in your life is controlled by one thing and one thing only. It's the person inside the skin. You know, it's that it's the five inches between your ears. Right. Like I say, golf, my kids say, why that? Why do you love golf? It's the only game that the ball doesn't move and it takes place in the five inch span between my ears. Yeah. So, you know, like if we can, I think if you can help somebody to first learn that only fifty percent of what you say is in the conversation is is only six percent of what of of a statement is actually heard. According to Harvard, they only hear six percent as the words, the actual syntax. Thirty eight to forty percent is is I'm sorry, they have thirty eight to forty percent is actually the tone at which you say that and the rate or speed at which you say that how quickly or how slowly you talk. You're from the South. If I talked to you twenty five years ago before I was trained, I would have scared the hell out of you and you would have been like, oh, my God, that city slicker kid, because I talked at one hundred miles an hour. but now when i talk to somebody from south i talk a lot slower very purposefully right the other piece of that puzzle is i want to steal something real quick before you move on sean you did something back there and if somebody's listening in they may not have caught it but he started the statement off by saying i think you agree with me and then he gave me what he wanted me to agree with him on and if you watched me I'm shaking my head, agreeing with everything that Sean's telling me, right? And if you did the same thing, that's what he's talking about when he's talking about NLP or the secret language of sales. By the way, fifty five percent of it is your body language. And here's what's interesting. It's called cold reading. That's like a whole nother layer. But as I'm watching your head bob up and down, I'm watching the bill your hat do this. If I see it start going side to side, if you're listening to this in your car, you're not watching it. And I say, Hey, before I get started, you obviously realize, and you're, you're shaking your head the other way. I'm going to pause. I'm going to recalibrate. I'm going to put a different, believe it or not. I'm going to take out my gun. Like when I was in the military, I was, uh, I was, uh, like in the special forces, I used to carry this thing called the grenade launcher. It was, uh, it was an M-sixteen or an AR-fifteen on top. And it had a grenades thing on the bottom. So if I'm shooting at you with bullets and all of a sudden you start shaking your head the other way, I may actually put a grenade in there and shoot a grenade at you instead. because you're you're not hearing what I'm saying. So, you know, visual cues are like paramount, first of all. Yeah. But if you and by the way. I say it all the time, one of the one of the greatest secrets to sales is when you first start, get a mirror, put the mirror in your office and talk into the mirror or talk on your computer on like a Zoom with you where you can see your your face because people can hear you smile over the phone. They can. And if you're not smiling, they're not smiling. You create rapport that way. Well, our buddy Scott says this all the time, and I think it's a great way to start every conversation off with, which is leave people better than where you found them. Absolutely. And if you walk into the conversation with that as the mentality, you're going to be smiling already because you're going to go, man, how do I make this person feel better than where I left them? There's only one way to do it. You have to ask questions without using the words I or me. You have to shift the focus away from you and on them. And the only way you can do that, and by the way, it's a ridiculously hard exercise. My mentor had me do it for years, is have conversations without using the words I or me. By the way, you can't say anything. You can't even reply to somebody unless they ask you a question. Or you can ask them a question about them and say, how's your day? Or what do you do? Well, you just said something you alerted me and I know we're getting close to wrap up time. So I'm going to bring this out because I want to get back to, you know, some of the meat and potatoes of what we're talking about today. You talked about in our initial call before we jumped on here, figuring somebody out in three questions. And I think that's a great way to finish this off. You know, so what are you listening for? And what are those three questions sound like? You know, you want to talk to them about a recent acquisition or a purchase if you're in the sales business. And really what you're trying to do is figure out what I'm going to call sales strategy. And by the way, it's not something written down. It's actually programmed into them from when they were child. And if you deal with, like I said in the beginning, if you dealt with the Middle Eastern community, they're trained from childhood. you know without negotiating you know negotiating is like a sport it's it's fun you know and if you're not you're just not having fun you know but the i'll i'll give you i'm going to give you two definitive things you need to watch and look for and then i'll make it and i'll make it really simple people are you know amiable meaning they're happy-go-lucky they're drivers analyticals or expressives Devin is an expressive, but he's also a driver analytical. He's an expressive and then what I would call analytical, meaning that I only know that because I've talked to him, but I could just look and see red hat, all the stuff going on in the background. If you look behind me, dark blue, black, gray, right? Analytical, right? So once you figure out which one of those that person is, analytical, driver, expressive, amiable. By the way, you can just look at them in most cases. If they show up in a yellow shirt, expressive. And then you want to find out, are they moving away from paying or towards pleasure? You know, my house is too small. I only have two bedrooms. I need three. You know, I really don't care. I don't need to be in the house. Whenever we get there, usually that's the kid who's on a trust fund. Or usually those people, they're only about fifteen percent of the population. So don't worry about those. Usually you might even want to just not even work with them because they're a whole nother breed. And then there's internal decision maker, external. We talked about this when you said, hey, I always start out by saying, Sean, you already know. The problem is if he says to me, I already know and I'm an external decision maker and I take in information from everybody in the neighborhood and I don't care what I know because I don't feel I'm not comfortable in my own skin. So I solicit everybody else's opinion to make a decision. And here's a good example that they go buy a car. Hey, Devin, when you bought that car, did you go there by yourself? Did you go with the family? Oh, no, I took my sister, my brother and my cousin. OK, great. Ding, ding, ding. External decision maker. Hey, Devin, did you know exactly the car you wanted to buy before you got there? Oh, absolutely. I knew exactly the car. I knew the color. Internal decision maker. They don't care. They've been doing their research. They've been doing it by themselves on their computer. Right. Hey, Devin, why are you buying a new car? Well, my other car is falling apart. Moving away from pain or towards pleasure? Moving away from pain. Right. What's important about the car you drive? Well, you know, I mean, you know, it doesn't really matter. Right. Not an expressive. Expressive wants a bright color. Right? The analytical or the driver, they just want a freaking car. Just give me the keys. I want to get in the car and I want to go. I don't care about the sales pitch. Just give me the keys. Right? So when you start asking questions and I say, you know, have you bought a house before? Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did. Well, yeah, I brought the whole family. My wife and I made the decision. Okay, you didn't buy it before you got married. And when you made that decision, is there any other decision makers involved? Well, yeah, my mom and my dad were, you know, okay, well, are you getting, here's like a mortgage thing, right? Hey, are you getting a gift? Yes, I am. Are they part of the decision to buy the home? Well, yes, matter of fact, they are. So maybe we should get them on the call with us so that when we figure out the numbers, we make sure everybody's on the same page. Why would I do that? Because they're writing the check. And obviously, if they're an external decision maker and they value their parents' opinion, just sell that person too at the same time. That way you lose less deals. A hundred percent. Well, you're bringing in all the decision makers. And in addition to that, you're giving them a comfort level with you because you actually have the foresight to say, Hey, I want to bring you in on this. Cause what happens a lot of the times when there are additional players that aren't involved is we don't bring them in and they have somebody else that they know. And the next thing you know, the client ends up going another direction because the decision makers, who were actually not the people that were on the phone, made the decision that they weren't involved because you didn't involve me. And now they're going to bring that business to somebody else who isn't involving them. And that's another layer, which is in our own ghosting program, you'll learn it's called future pacing. That's it. Devin, obviously we just got, you know, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. Obviously, you know, Mrs. DeBea, do you have any questions? Nope. Devin, you got any questions? Nope. Tommy Jones, do you have any questions? Nope. Okay. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page because obviously you guys realize as soon as you leave this call, each one of you is going to run into somebody that knows somebody that's in the business. And obviously what you're going to tell them is we already got a great guy. He already knows what we're all thinking and he's going to help us through the process. And bear in mind, I want you to solicit their opinion. and bring it back to me because I just want to make sure we're not missing something. So walk them back through that, John. Walk that back through because I know what you just did. But frame that backwards, right? What did you just do there? So basically what I did is I got you all to agree. First of all, I made it. I'm pushing on the fact that if you show up with your parents or somebody else, You're an external decision maker, first of all, and that means that those two people are valuable to your decision, and you're not going to make a decision without them. You may listen to somebody without them, but you're not going to make the final decision without them. That's right. And what I just did was I doubled down on that, and I pushed on it because I know the answers to the test. So I'm going to make sure I get extra credit on that one and push on it. Then I'm going to say to you, hey, I'm future pacing. I'm telling them what's going to happen. You're going to get solicited by somebody else. If they're not, they're not trying hard enough. right and now i'm saying hey listen you're we're all on the same page we're all in agreement that you know that's going to happen uh-huh uh-huh okay great so i'm not hiding anything under the curtain i'm not trying to get a credit card from them saying give me your credit card so i can hold you hostage and then i'm even making it okay for them to solicit that information but if you listen to what i said i go just be sure and when i say just be sure i do two things i pause so that you hear air gap. Your brain stops. Their brain is going to stop and go, oh, wait, he's going to say something important because he stopped. And I'm going to say, be sure, just make sure I raise my voice. Just make sure it's an embedded command. I'm telling you, I'm commanding you, make sure. Don't make a decision without me. And then make sure that whatever they give you, whatever the information is, bring it back to me. So now what I'm doing is I'm making it okay for you to talk to them. It's not like you're sneaking up on them and not like you're sneaking up on me. You're not doing anything wrong. I'm telling you, it's okay to talk to them. And I'm telling you, bring that information back to me. Why do I want them to bring it back to me is because we're going to make the decision together. I'm going to say, Devin, you know, this is great, but the reality is our numbers are actually better or the same. And what's interesting is they don't even realize that you still have two other people that they have to actually bring to this equation. Did you talk to your mom and your dad about this? Well, no, not yet. Okay, great. Would you like us to get on a conference call with them? When's a good time for us to do that? Because obviously you don't want to make that decision on your own, right? Of course not. And what I'm doing is future pacing is all about setting yourself up for success by illustrating what's going to happen in the future. And then how you're going to be, how your unique value proposition answers what's going to happen in the future. So it's almost like you've got a crystal ball. And here's the best part. When I tell people, when I hang up the phone with a borrower and I say, Devin, did you make the offer yet? No, we're doing it tonight. Okay, great. And right before they have the phone, I'll say, oh, wait, I almost forgot. Devin, I'm going to put my realtor hat on for a second, okay? And I lower my voice and I say, okay, and I pause. And now all of a sudden they listen and they actually got to listen a little harder. I'm reeling them in. And I say, Devin, you remember when you got married? Right. Remember when you got divorced and really your stomach was bothering, you're walking down the aisle and you're sweating. You got all that going on. Right. Listen, I got to tell you, getting married, getting divorced, having kids. Right. Public speaking. And the last one is getting a mortgage. They're the most stressful things on the planet, according to Harvard. Right. And I'm not a smart guy, but Harvard is. I'm going to tell you that tomorrow morning you're going to wake up and it's going to be just like when you got married. This time is going to be just like that time. And when you wake up tomorrow and you feel nauseous, Don't worry about it. It's what they call bar removes. And by the way, I'm the mortgage guy. But if you wake up in the morning and you're writing a check for five hundred thousand dollars to buy a house for a million five and it's all the money you have in the bank and you don't feel stick to your stomach. First of all, cancel the offer. Call a therapist because there is something physically, mentally, emotionally wrong with you. By the way, that's my that's my clothes. So what happens? You wake up in the morning, you're sick as a dog. And you're like, holy shit, that guy knew exactly what he was talking about. Oh, my God. I'm going to call Sean. just builds confidence it builds confidence because you've told them what the reaction is going to be you've told them what's going to happen after they leave the call with you you've told them what the future is going to look like and you've given them a command as to what to do when that happens and the command but yeah the command leads them back to you i programmed their you know like a dog yeah you know knock on the dog and the dog comes over looking for a biscuit But we're conditioned our entire lives. I used this analogy the other day. We go to the doctor's office, right? Okay, sign in. We already know that because it's an instruction. Hey, the doctor will be with you in a moment. Just sit right there, and we're going to sit right there. Okay, doctor's here. Go back to the room. Go back to the room. We already know it's going to be a nurse, right? Doctor comes in. They give you their diagnosis. Three minutes later. Yep. Hey, okay, so here's what we're going to do. Yeah, we're going to get you your prescription. That's going to be called in at such and such pharmacy. Check out with Denise on your way out the door, right? We walk out the door. What you're doing is the exact same thing. You're telling them what's going to happen in the future. So when it does happen, they already know. The only reason we know all those sequences of the doctor is because we've all been through it. What Sean's saying is you're painting the picture for them While you're having the conversation is what's next to come. But the command is always to come back to Sean, who's going to give them the next instruction. So the way that one of my coaches explained it to me was, he goes, did you ever go to Disney? I go, yeah. He goes, did you ever go to the haunted house there? I go, yeah. He goes, did your friends tell you about like the guy who when you walk in and as soon as you make the right, there's going to be a ghost there. It's going to make you jump out of your skin. And like, have you ever been on a roller coaster that goes straight up and not go back down on the other side. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, it's coming. Here's the difference between, you know, getting a mortgage. There's about thirty five to forty people involved in the transaction. If you're not a little scatterbrained, I don't care if you're splitting atoms or, you know, or surgery, you're doing surgery unless you've been doing the real estate business and the mortgage business as long as I have, you know, More than likely, there's going to be a nuance in there that you haven't come across. But the good news is you have a great team of experts. You have me and Devin behind you. And you know what? You don't have to worry. We're going to actually tell you before the actual scary stuff happens to look for it. And matter of fact, you know, I say to people all the time, my goal is really only one thing. I have a really simple, simple job. It's my what I call my hundred percent zero promise. Hundred percent no obligation and zero excuses. that I'm going to get you to a smooth and flawless closing on time, every time, no matter what. And I go, you know, if I don't, okay, great. You know what? But I can tell you that that is my promise to myself that I'm going to do the best for, you know, for Devin. And I can tell you the last piece of the puzzle and the last, the most important, powerful word that we're going to work on together is called no. If I can't do it, it's the smallest, it's the smallest, most powerful word in English language. And if I can't get you what you want in the time you want, I'm just going to say, no, I can't do it. I'm going to send you to Devin or somebody else who can do it. I go, it's not worth it to me to lose our relationship together that we've spent this time putting together over a transaction. It's not going to change the way my kids eat or drink. They'll get a hamburger. They'll still get the cheeseburger and I'll still get a Diet Coke. We're going to be fine. But I want to make sure you're comfortable in your decision. All we need to do now is simply finish the application. Can I have your credit card, by the way? There it is. And there's the command. Hey guys, I hope you're really paying close attention and taking notes here. And if you're not, check Sean out on his podcast. You can find that on YouTube at the Lone Doctor Podcast. Sean's at YouTube at the Lone Doctor Podcast. I would imagine it's probably on the podcast network there too, right? By the way, there is somebody who took the Lone Doctor Podcast and actually created the Lone Doctor Podcast too, I guess. Um, make sure it's got my smiling face. Sean Chalice. Yeah. Sean Chalice. And it's got some kind of like wise ass remarks on it. That would be mine. Yeah. That's, that's our guy. So that's, and you can find Sean on Facebook too, at Sean Chalice. Just go over there. Make sure that you follow Sean as well. like his page make a comment over there right that way we can keep bringing great content out there you know for for you know people out there like sean that are helping educate and providing clarity uh for sales but also for consumers right um and then again over at instagram at lone doctor podcast you can find them on instagram lone doctor podcast so if you're on any of those platforms right now Do us a big favor. Go over there and follow Sean. Like one of his posts. Comment. And I know Sean will get back to you because Sean's a great guy like that. He gets back to his audience. So, Sean, we're going to close out with the lightning round. Yeah. Myth or fact? If you talk less, you close more. If you talk less, close more. Fact. Myth or fact? What's more powerful? The right question or the right framework? Right framework. One word or phrase you've removed from your vocabulary because it kills deals. Time. Time kills deals. Always. All right, guys. Delays in time. Because you don't need to make a decision doesn't mean that you shouldn't. Time kills deals. Great stuff, brother. Well, again, Sean, thank you so much for joining us over here on the show. And as we said, if you want to find Sean, go find him. He's out there. Lone Doctor Podcast. The upstate northerner, Sean Chalice, with the witty comments and the quick talk, right? Man, this guy is great at what he does. I've been following him for four years. You should follow him too. And I think we're going to wrap today guys. So we went a little over on time, but I think this was a good one. I think we covered some really great topics. So again, Sean brother, thank you so much. You're also a mentor of mine and I'm sure I'll see you maybe tomorrow on the morning show. We will see you on the next one and keep leveling up. Thanks for stopping by. You've been watching Loan Officer Success Live, where real strategies meet real success. Don't forget to subscribe now and share it with your teammates and keep leveling up because your next breakthrough starts here. If this fired you up, don't just watch success. Go out there and build it.