Mortgage Marketing & Lead Generation Blog

Outlook Tip: Calculating Dates

By JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM

In a previous Outlook tip, Compose Now, Send Later, I talked about using Outlook’s Message Options feature to send an email at a later date.

Here’s another shortcut that I use when:

• scheduling a Message for future delivery,

• setting appointments in Calendar, or
• setting deadlines in Tasks.

Did you know Outlook saves you the hassle of looking up a date? If you want to set a task deadline for 6 weeks from now, for example, all you have to do is type +6w in the due date field. Outlook automatically calculates the dates for you.

Here are some other date shortcuts:

• d: days

• h: hours
• m: minutes
• mo: months
• y: years

So, 90 minutes from now will be entered as +90m.

Hope you find this helpful.

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

Outlook Tip: Compose Now, Send Later

By JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM

Let’s say you have a conference call with one of your real estate referral partners next Wednesday. Prior to the meeting, you want to send her a reminder as well as a note covering items you’d like to discuss.

Since you’ve just set up the meeting, your mind is full of ideas. The most efficient use of your time is to go ahead and write the note while the topic is top of mind.

Microsoft Outlook® allows you to compost your email now, and send it later. Here’s how you do it.

1. Prepare the email.

2. Click on your View Menu, and Select Options.

The Message Options dialog box pops up.

3. Place a check mark next to Do not deliver before: and select the date and time you want the message delivered.

4. Click Send. Outlook® will keep the email in your Outbox, and send it at the scheduled date and time. Of course, Outlook ® must be connected to the Internet when it is time to send the email.

Those of you who have used Microsoft software for any length of time know Microsoft provides many ways to accomplish one task. This is the quickest and easiest way I’ve found to schedule emails.

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

Are you looking for an easy way to upload and share your Powerpoint presentations? AuthorStream may have the answer.

With AuthorStream, you can upload your PowerPoint presentation to share it on blogs, websites, YouTube and even iPods.

Any audio narrations, timings, and animations you added will still be there when you upload the presentation.

Best of all, it is 100% free.

I encourage you to step outside of the box and think of innovative ways to use AuthorStream as a tool to promote your mortgage business.

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant . Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant .

All of the marketing in the world won’t
help you if the Federal Reserve Board makes these
changes to Regulation Z.

Under the proposed rules, it appears that the
broker would have to disclose their entire
compensation to the borrower, including YSP,
before taking an application.
Brokers would have to disclose the
specific dollar
amount of the compensation.

The last day to submit comments is Monday,
April 7, 2008. Unlike most
rulings, this
one does not require a Congressional vote.
The Federal Reserve Board can pass these
changes into law.

The Federal Reserve Board’s goal in making
these changes to Regulation Z, according to their
own press release, is “to protect
consumers from unfair or deceptive home
mortgage lending and advertising practices.”

These changes will require mortgage
brokers, and only mortgage brokers, to
submit additional disclosures.

I am perplexed. If these rules truly
“protect
the consumer,” wouldn’t it make sense to
impose
them straight across the board, so that
everyone offering mortgages would have
to follow the same rules?

How will the
consumer be able to choose the best mortgage
loan if they don’t have all of the information?

Since most originators (whether
employed by a lender, bank or broker) can
make back-end income, wouldn’t it be fairer
to have everyone disclose their YSP?

To send a comment to the Federal Reserve
Board:

• Here are some suggestions
  of points to include in your letter.

• Scroll to the bottom of this
  page on the FRB’s site. You can also
  read other people’s comments.

• Email your comments to regs.comment@federalreserve.gov
  with Docket No. R-1305 in the subject
  line.

For additional information:

• This
  letter, sent by the National Association
  of Mortgage Brokers to the Small Business
  Administration
  gives a point-by-point analysis of the ways
  in which this proposed change affects mortgage
  brokers. http://snipurl.com/namb_sba

• These two comment letters not only explain
  some of the features of the rule in plain
  English,
  they also offer points you can use when you
  send your comments to the Federal Reserve Board.
  They come from the North Carolina Association
  of Mortgage Professionals’ website.
  
  

  http://snipurl.com/regz_ltr1

  http://snipurl.com/regz_ltr2

And lastly, thanks to Eleanor Thorne for bringing this issue to my attention through this post in her blog. A second thanks goes out to D. Bass, Underwriter and Mortgage Trainer, who read this article in my email newsletter and encouraged me to post the information on this blog.

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant . Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

By JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM

Are you looking for ways to boost your productivity as you run your mortgage business? I am going to share one tip.

The tip can be summarized in three words: just one thing.

Before you leave your mortgage office at the end of the day, complete one more task. This task should take 10 minutes or less (5 minutes is ideal). It is important that you only complete one additional task.

Here are a few examples of one more task you could complete.

• Complete a task on your things to do list that will take you 5 minutes or less.

• Make one more phone call.
• Spend an extra 5 minutes filing.

Practice this consistently for 1 month, and I guarantee you will see awesome results.

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

By JC Kadii, MortgageVirtualAssistant.com^SM

When I teach an Outlook skills class, students are always excited to learn how they can use categories to group their data and save time.

Let’s say you’re a mortgage originator with 100 contacts you’d like to add to the category “Clients.” It will take a couple of hours for you to open each contact, click the Categories button, select the Clients category, close the Categories box, and save and close the Contact. Sheesh! I get a headache just thinking about it!

Fortunately, there’s an easier way.

• Select the contacts you want to add to a category.
• Right click.
• Select Categories.
• Click the check box next to the category (ex., “Clients”).

In one step, all of the contacts you’ve selected are added to that category.

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . 770-469-7385. Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

By JC Kadii, MortgageVirtualAssistant.com^SM

I use Blogger for a blog I maintain for my Tech Training and Consulting Business.

One of the features I absolutely love is the ability to schedule posts – in other words, you write your posts now, and schedule them for a future date and time. This feature makes it easy to keep your blog content fresh.

Last week, I taught Access and Outlook classes and came away with a lot of tips based on questions students asked me in class. Rather than uploading 10 posts at once, for example, I can create the posts and schedule them to go out once a week for the next 10 weeks.

Here’s how it works.

• Create the post.
• Click the Post Options link.
• Under Post Date and Time, type the date and time you want to publish your post.
• Click Publish Post.

That’s all there is to it.

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . 770-469-7385. Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

By JC Kadii, MortgageVirtualAssistant.com^SM

Savvy mortgage professionals (loan officers, originators, brokers) know the benefits of cultivating repeat and referral business. While it is also smart to market for new business, spending the time to grow your repeat and referral clients makes your mortgage business less susceptible to economic fluctuations.

Great resources (articles, books, websites) on generating repeat and referral business are in abundant supply. They provide concrete steps to getting referrals, and well as strategies for putting your repeat and referral business on auto-pilot.

There is, however, one critical first step to generating repeat and referral business. Without this step, consistently getting repeat and referral business will be like pulling teeth. With this step, clients will continue to come to you during good times and bad.

Here’s the 1st step – take care of your clients. Yes, you will still have to ask for referrals, but doing the best job possible makes it much easier to get clients to say “yes.”

As one future client told me, explaining why he is having his best year, “Every morning I ask myself, what can I do better today?”

In the words of Walt Disney, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.”

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . 770-469-7385. Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

By JC Kadii, MortgageVirtualAssistant.com^SM

In a previous post, (Almost) Automate Your Email Responses with MS Outlook, I provided instructions on using MS Outlook’s Signature Files to create and send standard email messages.

You can also do use MS Outlook Express’ signature feature.

The instructions are slightly different.

Creating a Standard Message using Microsoft Outlook Express Signatures..

1. Create and edit the standard message in Microsoft Word.

2. Save the message as a text file. On the File Menu, click Save As. Under Save as type, select Plain text I usually save the file on my c: drive, as “sig_” and then the file name, (ex., c:sig_directions.txt).
3. In Outlook Express, select Tools Menu.
4. Click the Signatures tab, then New.
5. Click Rename and type the name of the signature file, ex., Directions.
6. Under the Edit Signature section, make sure File is selected. Click Browse.
7. Click to select the name of the file, then Open.
8. Click OK.

Using your Outlook Express Standard Message.

While editing your email message, click on the Insert Menu, then Signature. Select and insert the signature.

This is one of my favorite time-savers of all time. So, make a list of all of your routine email messages and start creating signatures!

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JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . 770-469-7385. Through http://www.close-more-loans.com/, JC leads a team providing top notch administrative, internet marketing, and technology services to mortgage professionals. Mortgage professionals are encouraged to visit the website and sign up for the More Closings email newsletter to receive the report 6 Steps to More Referrals.

By JC Kadii, MortgageVirtualAssistant.com^SM @mortgageva

One of my guiding principles is my belief that time is priceless. So, I am not one for jumping on this or that social media or tech marketing bandwagon, or recommending them to my clients.

In this post, I talked about getting started with twitter and wondered aloud if it would be a waste of my time.

I’ve spent the past few months experimenting with twitter and making a list of ways it can help my clients (mortgage professionals) grow their business.

Here is one idea – leverage twitter to get traffic to your website or blog. If you’ve participated in Active Rain for more than a few months, I am willing to bet that you have valuable content on your blog.

Have you considered posting a description of your blog posts on twitter, and inserting a link to your active rain blog?

Would you like to know a secret that puts this technique on steroids? The blog post or article does not have to be new, just new to your twitter followers.

To get started:

• Look through your blog posts or the articles you have posted on your website.

• Select the really great ones.
• Write brief, catchy descriptions.
• Use a service like http://www.tinyurl.com or http://www.budurl.com to shorten the links to your posts so that you stay within twitter’s 140 character limit.
• Periodically post links to your articles or posts on twitter.

Here’s an example of one that I used:

Are there keys to running a financially successful mortgage business? http://tinyurl.com/5tq4ns

Don’t miss the next post – Subscribe to this blog

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@mortgageva, JC Kadii, Mortgage Virtual Assistant^SM . 770-469-7385.

Attention Mortgage Professionals: Are you concerned social networking may be a waste of time? Partner with a tech-savvy mortgage virtual assistant so that you only spend your time with social media strategies that work.