What’s Going On?

And why that might be the worst question I ever asked!

Nobody refers to the loan officer who needs the business.

On becoming a trusted advisor — and why the agents you most want to work with can smell desperation from across the room.

 I want to tell you about Harry. Harry was a real estate agent I used to visit back when people actually worked from the office — which tells you something about how long I've been doing this.

I popped into his office one Tuesday morning around 10am — part of my regular rounds — and asked the question I apparently asked everyone: "So Harry, what's going on?"

Harry leaned back in his chair, let out a long sigh, and launched into a detailed account of how slow things were. How nothing was moving. How the market was just brutal right now.

He was playing solitaire on his computer.

At 10am. On a Tuesday.

I smiled, made some mild chit chat, commiserated with him — commiserated, really Gina!?!? — and walked back to my car, where I sat for a moment and had an uncomfortable realization. Harry was playing solitaire and wondering why things were slow. And I had just walked into his office with no real purpose, no prepared questions, no specific reason to be there, asked "what's going on" — and then had the nerve to agree that yes, things were indeed slow.

I was making my rounds. I was showing up. I was being visible. And I had absolutely nothing of value to offer that particular person on that particular morning. I wasn't just Harry. I was Harry in a cute outfit who sat down and joined him at the solitaire table.

Showing up without purpose isn't relationship-building. It's just taking up someone else's time — and hoping they don't notice that's what you're doing.

The two traps that keep LOs from becoming trusted advisors

After over a decade of coaching mortgage sales professionals, I see two patterns that consistently keep loan officers from building the kind of agent relationships they actually want.

The first is trying to be everything to everyone. The LO who will work with any agent, in any area, on any deal, at any rate — because they believe that casting the widest possible net is the path to the most business. What it actually does is signal that they have no point of view, no positioning, and no particular reason to be chosen over anyone else. You cannot be a trusted advisor to everyone. Trust is specific. It's built with particular people over particular experiences over time.

The second is showing up from desperation. Not always the obvious kind — the frantic energy of someone who hasn't closed a deal in two months. Sometimes it's subtler. It's the visit with no real purpose. The follow-up that's really just a check-in to see if anything has materialized. The conversation where you're so focused on what you need from this person that you forget to give them any reason to need you.

Top producers — the agents worth working with — feel both of these the moment you walk in the room. They've seen it a hundred times. And they refer to neither.

What a trusted advisor actually looks like

A trusted advisor shows up with a reason. Not a pitch — a reason. A market insight worth sharing. A question about something specific to that agent's business. A resource, an idea, a connection that is genuinely useful to them right now. They make the agent feel like the visit — or the video, or the call, or the email — was for the agent's benefit. Not theirs.

A trusted advisor is also selective. They know who they work best with and why. They have a point of view on their own value — what they do exceptionally well, who they serve most effectively, and what makes the partnership worth pursuing for both people. They're not trying to be chosen by everyone. They're trying to be the only choice for the right people.

That energy — purposeful, confident, genuinely focused on the other person — is what creates the kind of referral relationship that compounds over time. The agent who calls you first. Who sends you their best clients. Who talks about you when you're not in the room.

Back to Harry — and the question I should have asked

Here's what I know now that I didn't know sitting in that parking lot: the difference between an LO who earns trusted advisor status and one who stays in the transactional lane almost always comes down to the quality of the questions they ask — and whether they actually care about the answers.

"What's going on?" invited Harry to complain. It confirmed his story that the market was the problem — and left him right where he was. A trusted advisor doesn't confirm the story. They gently, curiously challenge it — not by judging or trying to convince, but by asking a better question.

Something like: What part of your business right now is entirely within your control — and how much of your time and energy is going there?

Or: When you think about the agents in your market who are still closing consistently right now — what are they doing differently?

Or the one that cuts right to the heart of it: If you set aside everything the market is doing right now and focused only on what you can influence — what's the one move that would have the biggest impact on your business in the next 90 days?

That last question can't be answered by blaming the market. It requires Harry to look inward, find his agency, and make a decision. And that — not the commiserating, not the chit chat, not the purposeless visit — is what a trusted advisor actually does.

Becoming a trusted advisor isn't a tactic. It's a practice — built conversation by conversation, question by question, over time. The agents who refer to you consistently, who call you first, who talk about you when you're not in the room — they got there because of how you made them feel in the moments nobody was watching. Not because of what you pitched. Because of what you asked and how you helped them grow over time.