Why You’re Chasing the Wrong Accounts (and What to Do About It) | Robby MacAskill (Zonda)

Carter (00:00.94)
Hey Robbie, give the people a little intro. Who are you? What do you do now?

Robby MacAskill (00:06.263)
Yeah, my name is Robbie McCaskill. I'm a director of business development for Zonda. So my job at Zonda is I work with our lenders on their overall builder strategy. So things like how to be doing your outreach, how to be getting the door, what loan products to be pitching to them, things like that. I also do a lot of sales presentations and demos and things like that as well.

Carter (00:36.738)
So a lot of builder accounts already have preferred lenders or entrenched relationships. Where is there actually an opening for a lender to break in?

Robby MacAskill (00:46.273)
Yeah, yeah. There are two main opportunities that we help with. Number one is going after backup business with the national builders. So builders like Lenar, D.R. Horton, Ryan Homes. The other is going after like mid-sized production builders who are doing anywhere from like 30 to a thousand homes a year. So on the national builder side, you're obviously going to be going after backups, right?

So a lot of that business is like FHA, VA manual underwrites below 620 credit, the stuff that their in-house lenders can't do. Things like foreign nationals, a lot of those in-houses have overlays where they don't allow foreign nationals to qualify. So that's an opportunity on the backup side. And a lot of it too is like from what I've seen from our current clients who are successful in that space, like I'll use a guy named Phil Crescenzo at NFM is a good example. He closed like,

200 deals this past year with the national builders. A lot of it is just being a problem solver and being really creative about like how to get deals done, whether it's through rapid re scores or just looking further into their pay stubs and tax returns and things like that to make deals happen. So that's the opportunity on the production, like national production builder side.

My favorite though with the midsize production builders, that's where I've seen a lot of our clients have the most success. So again, that's anywhere from like 30 homes a year to like a thousand homes a year. The common theme that I see amongst most of our top producer, our top producing builder LOs is that most of them have at least one of these relationships where they're getting like 10 to 20 loans a month from a single production builder.

cool thing about these builders is that they're mostly only referring end loans. Like lot of them don't need construction to perm deals. So you're not dealing with construction draws. Like it's very simple business for the most part. And they just have a ton of volume, right? If they're doing 50 homes or let's call it 30 homes a month and you're getting a 20 % capture rate, you're still getting, you know, five, six, seven deals a month from them.

Robby MacAskill (03:06.178)
With those mid-sized production builders too, you'd be surprised how many of them don't have loyal lender relationships. Like I always say, it's the most common myth in the industry is that every single builder has a lender that they send 100 % of their business to. With the mid-sized ones, that's just not the case. A lot of them don't have deep enough pockets to be sending huge incentives to their top lenders. A lot of them don't have joint ventures set up or anything like that. So...

The opportunity is really with those midsize builders who don't have a strong preferred lender and your job is to come in and get relationships going with everybody there and try to become that preferred lender.

Carter (03:45.058)
That's insane because yeah, I would not think that. would think they're getting, and if they don't, I would think they're getting hammered with lenders reaching out.

Robby MacAskill (03:52.963)
That's another thing is it's not a very saturated space because most LOs like yourself don't realize that it's an opportunity. So if you call on a realtor, you're likely the fifth or sixth LO to call on them this year versus going out to a sales office at a builder. You might be the first LO to do that at all this year.

Carter (04:05.55)
For sure.

Carter (04:11.096)
How do you know who to reach out to? just any mid-sized builder basically or is there specific signals that you look for?

Robby MacAskill (04:20.8)
Yeah, so we specifically will advise our loan officers to go after the builders who don't have strong capture rates with their lenders. That's a big thing with, that's what we help with at Zonda a lot is just being able to, like let's use Nashville for example, being able to go through the list of every single midsize production builder and identify like,

the 10 or 20 that don't have strong preferred lenders. The biggest signal to go after is like, if they're sending less than 50 % of their business to their top lender, they likely don't have a joint venture. You're probably not gonna be going up against $15,000 incentives that they're sending their lender. A lot of times they're just accepting the pre-approval of whoever's coming in their sales office. yeah, identifying those builders who don't have strong lender relationships, that's the low-hanging fruit that you wanna be going after.

Carter (05:18.324)
And when you say that, this just through data? Like, how do you find that? Is this just data on your guys' platform or something?

Robby MacAskill (05:24.062)
Yeah, yeah. So what Zonda does, we primarily work with builders. We're the largest data provider in the nation for new home construction. like builders like DR Horton and Lenar will use us to identify what land they want to be buying, what to be pricing their units at, things like that. So we collect all that data for builders and we've been doing that for like 30 years now. For lenders,

we do have access to all of that data where like we know exactly every single time that a builder closes a home, we know exactly who the loan officer was, you who the lender was. So we have a page in our platform that just identifies all the builders in your area that don't have a strong lender right now.

Carter (06:07.682)
What are some of the sales strategies you've seen lenders use to start getting more build-up referrals? Are there any specific loan products builders get the most excited about?

Robby MacAskill (06:17.482)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest mistakes I see lenders make is they go directly to like the CEO of the builder or the president of the builder and they'll have a great conversation, it'll be a great like pitch, everything will go really well and then nothing comes as a result of that and the reason is that that president has a lot more to worry about than just making sure their sales reps are using you as a lender.

Carter (06:32.513)
Okay, yeah.

Robby MacAskill (06:47.478)
So the sales reps, the people who are boots on the ground, who are running into issues, trying to close their deals, they're the ones that you wanna be starting that conversation with. So going after that builder sales rep, a lot of times with these mid-size builders, a lot of them will have their own list of loan officers that they like to use the same way that a realtor has, right? So getting in with those sales reps and making sure that they know next time they run into an issue, give me a shot.

I'd love to give it a try with you. So that's the first thing. Also in-person prospecting as opposed to just like making cold calls of these builder sales reps. For example, if I'm gonna be going after like Regent Homes in Nashville, right? They've got like seven or eight different subdivisions that are actively building right now. That's seven or eight sales reps that you can just get in your car, drive out to their sales office, walk in and introduce yourself.

Carter (07:39.853)
Mm-hmm.

Robby MacAskill (07:45.709)
Right? So that's between the LOs who are just trying to cold call and they can spend an entire month or two trying to get on the phone with everybody versus the loan officer who just gets in their car and makes one day trip and meets everybody that they need to meet. That there's a lot more velocity in that second option. And a big thing is just multi-threading, making sure you're on a first name basis with as many people at that builder as you possibly can. Once you meet with Lindsay,

at the Carothers Farm subdivision, you can drive out to the next subdivision and say, hey, I just had a great conversation with Lindsay. We found a couple of ways where I might be able to help you guys close some more deals this year. Here's how, here's what we talked about. Repeat that process seven more times. You have a good chance of one of those conversations leading to a loan. And then now you're on a first name basis with everybody. You can send out the review to everybody and say, hey, Lindsay just sent me a loan. This is why she sent it to me. This is how I closed it. Just wanted to share the good news.

And that's how you kind of get that momentum going within that builder. In terms of loan products, again, you know, that first conversation is usually not, hey, I want to take over your current lender relationship. It's, it's a, I want to help you close a couple more deals this year. And I respect your current relationship. know you have a good relationship with them. But here's how I might be able to help. One is like FHA VA manual underwrites. Like I already said, a lot of those, the banks that they're working with won't be able to do things like that.

Carter (09:08.429)
Mm-hmm.

Robby MacAskill (09:13.07)
A big one that I've seen recently is buy before you sell programs that eliminate home sale contingencies. So programs like Flyhomes or Calc is another company you can partner with to do it. Some companies actually have in-house products like this. Like Anymac has their own in-house buy before you sell. But builders love these, specifically builder sales reps, because a lot of times they lose deals just because the buyer hasn't sold their departing residence yet.

And a builder doesn't want to fully customize a home for eight months if there's a chance that that departing residence doesn't sell and they don't qualify if it doesn't. So being able to walk in and say, hey, how many deals have you lost this year because of home sale contingencies? And if they say, I've lost like three or four this year, you can say, okay, next time that comes up, send it to me, I'll get the deal done for you. Really powerful way to get a quick win from a sales rep like that. And then lastly, I would say forward commitments. have been pretty popular.

over the last year or so, which is just companies like CMG do a good job at offering these and All Western. But you are able to allow the builder to buy down the rate on a chunk of loans so they can advertise 499 % on all of our quick moving homes. And that obviously helps those sales reps get those homes sold. Yeah.

Carter (10:33.942)
Okay.

Carter (11:33.56)
And to switch it up a little bit, at Teradepth, you built outbound strategy in a full sale cycle. What did that experience teach you about prospecting and qualification that people in mortgage or relationship heavy sales usually miss?

Robby MacAskill (11:34.669)
Yeah.

Robby MacAskill (11:51.969)
Yeah, there's two main things that I've learned in my business to business career that I think a lot of LOs don't use. Number one would be, it takes a lot of attempts of outreach to get somebody to respond a lot of times. For us, we've realized that it takes usually four to five outreaches between LinkedIn.

email and calls to get somebody to respond and say, Hey, like I've been interested since your first email, but I haven't had a chance to respond. Thanks for, thanks for the followup kind of thing. so a lot of LOs will just call on a realtor one time or a builder one time and they'll kind of move on if they don't get that, that conversation scheduled. so yeah, just the amount of outreach that it takes to get a meeting booked. And then number two would be multi-threading and, the

Carter (12:35.086)
Okay, yeah.

Robby MacAskill (12:46.454)
General concept with that is like if I get a meeting booked with a company, for example, I was like, when I was at TeraDepth, right, I was selling to oceanographers and stuff like that, which is a whole separate thing that I did for two years. if I got a meeting with like a surveyor, hydrographic surveyor at Oceaneering,

My job then as a salesperson is to spread the word around that company that this meeting is happening with Teradepth. And if you want a chance to learn about Teradepth, like next week, Tuesday is when it's going to be. Right. So, if I booked a meeting with Paul at Oceaneering, my job now is to go find Paul's boss on LinkedIn, his teammates, maybe some other people in his company that might be a decision maker, like a divisional or maybe even the CEO. And just sending a quick email, a note saying, Hey,

I'm meeting with one of your colleagues this week. Here's what we do. Let me know if you're interested in learning about this. And I'd love to share. usually I try to get like four or five additional emails sent out every time I book a meeting. And a lot of times it'll turn that meeting in from being like a single person who's not a decision maker to three non-decision makers and two decision makers on that call, just because I sent out a note beforehand to see who else wanted to learn about it.

And from there too, like once you end the meeting, you want to stay multi-threaded. You don't want to just be talking to the person who booked that meeting. Depending on, know, obviously if I book a meeting with a CEO, I'm not going to go multi-thread to a bunch of other people. I'm going to just stick with the CEO. But sending an email directly to every person who was on that meeting, just saying, hey, thanks for joining. I appreciated this question that you asked.

Carter (14:24.237)
Right.

Robby MacAskill (14:33.856)
let me know how I can help get this thing pushed forward. You'd be surprised how many of those people will help. And a lot of times the champion that you create that actually gets the deal closed is not the person who booked the meeting. It's somebody else who was on that meeting. And you just happen to send that follow-up email and got a direct conversation going with that person. So that's really important for like creating a champion that's gonna push the deal forward for you.

Carter (15:01.122)
That makes sense. And you're saying LOs will have a list of realtors assigned, they'll hit up people once and then not reach out to anybody else at their company for the most part.

Robby MacAskill (15:07.754)
Yeah, and that ties back into what I said about builders too. Like if you just talk to one sales rep, okay, you have one chance of getting a loan. But if you talk to seven of them, now you have a direct relationship with seven people and your chances of success go way up.

Carter (15:22.734)
I saw this on LinkedIn, Zonda hosts a ton of industry events. How much pipeline usually comes from those events? And what do you do before, during, and after an event to turn attendance into real opportunities instead of just talking to somebody and it not going anywhere?

Robby MacAskill (15:26.371)
Mm-hmm.

Robby MacAskill (15:38.486)
Yeah, are you asking about opportunities for me or like if you're a loan officer going to the event?

Carter (15:43.201)
No, well, know for you in your job because I saw you posted something or maybe you reposted it, but I saw Zonda host a ton of stuff. So it's like, there's a bunch of, know, lenders coming in and different people. And so I'm wondering you guys, your company throws a ton of events. So I'm wondering like, what's the purpose? Do you guys get a lot of leads from that or yeah, what's the deal with that?

Robby MacAskill (15:55.319)
Mm-hmm.

Robby MacAskill (16:04.266)
Yeah, yeah. So the events that we throw are actually for our clients. So most of the people that show up to those are going to be builders, like the division president and whoever else at that builder wants to show up to it. But it's Zonda clients that we're putting those events on to provide value to our current clients. That being said, there's a ton of value in

for our loan officers who are signed up for Zonda to be able to go to these events and network and get to know these builders. And we don't really invite anybody who's not a current client of ours to those events. But I can tell you how our loan officers use these. Some of our national clients do a really good job at sending loan officers to every single event that we have to get to know people. So for a pre-event strategy,

Carter (16:43.199)
Okay, okay.

Robby MacAskill (17:01.358)
just sending out a bunch of emails and LinkedIn messages to the people that you wanna be talking to on the builder side and saying, hey, I'm gonna be at Austin Dealmakers, will you be there? If they say no, hey, would you like to come with me? So now you're actually inviting people to come to this event with you. A lot of times it's a good idea to pay for them. Like usually it's like $200 to attend those. Also, you can look at the attendee list prior to the event and...

look them up on LinkedIn, see what they look like. So when you're at the event, you can spot them out in the crowd and go introduce yourself. Things like that are really important. Like just doing your research prior to the event, making sure you know who you wanna be talking to. And then I usually tell my LOs like your goal for this event is have as many meetings scheduled this week, next week, the week after as a result of this event. So like if you have a great conversation with somebody, don't just leave it at that. At the end of that conversation, say, hey,

Carter (17:35.799)
Yeah.

Robby MacAskill (17:55.535)
I'd love to share a little bit about how I might be able to help you close some more deals this year. Could we talk like next Wednesday, I can show you some things that we do that your current lender might not be able to. And the more meetings you have scheduled as a result of the event, the better off you are.

Carter (18:11.21)
And you're saying these events, they're less for Zonda and you and your team to get leads. Really? Okay.

Robby MacAskill (18:18.584)
Correct, it's for sharing insights on the new construction market to our current clients and just helping them be more aware of what's happening in their market. But then, companies like Whirlpool will show up because it is an event for them to get conversations going to try to get leads and things like that. And same with our lenders.

Carter (18:44.194)
What are some of the most important things you've learned about being successful in tech sales over the last four years?

Robby MacAskill (18:51.626)
Yeah, there's been a couple of things that have really moved the needle for me. Have you ever read the Challenger sale?

Carter (18:58.86)
You know, no, I don't think so.

Robby MacAskill (19:00.63)
Okay, definitely recommend it. But one of the concepts in that book is you wanna give a sales presentation so valuable that the prospect would have paid for it. That mindset switch for me was huge to where instead of my goal being I'm gonna try to convince this person to sign up for Zonda, my goal is now I'm just, when I get on this call, I'm gonna teach this person as much as I possibly can about how to be successful at builder business, share what's working with other lenders.

share what builders they might wanna be looking out for in their area. And I know regardless of if it's a good fit, regardless of if they end up buying, I know that they walk off that call saying, well, I'm so glad I took that meeting. That was so worth my time. learned a lot. When you're doing four to five demos a day, it can get really exhausting if you feel like you're wasting people's time.

Just being able to get on those calls knowing like they're gonna get a lot out of this, I'm gonna get a lot out of this. Even if they don't buy, maybe eight months later, they'll come back to me because they appreciated that conversation so much. That's been huge for me. Number two, I would say is time blocking. Just being really cognizant of how you're spending your time. As a salesperson, I think our most valuable asset is our time and how we use it. So...

really making sure you block out time for revenue generating activities every single day. I used to take all my meetings in the morning and then come like 3 p.m. I would be exhausted and I wouldn't have the energy to like create lists for my SDR and to do my own prospecting and to be following up with prospects and things like that.

So now every day I don't take meetings before 11 a.m. So like 830 to 11, I just have my checklist of all my RGAs that I have to do. And then starting at 11, I take my meetings, but I did get two and a half hours of like a lot of prospecting and RGA stuff done. That's been a huge game changer for me. I'm like number one in Zonda in meeting count. And I think it's literally just because of that one change that I made.

Carter (21:01.41)
Well, what is our what is our GA? don't know what that means.

Robby MacAskill (21:04.106)
Sorry, revenue generating activities. So like prospecting, building lists, identifying customers, things like that. I would say the last thing would be if you are fortunate enough to have an SDR doing cold calls for you and things like that, understand how important that person is to your success and how important you are to their success and develop as good of a relationship with them as you possibly can.

Carter (21:06.114)
God, I got it.

Robby MacAskill (21:34.006)
I'm always dumbfounded when I find out, or when like an account executive will tell me that they don't talk to their SDR ever, or maybe they talk to them once a month. It's like, you should be talking to them multiple times a week, like a real sit downs, talking about, okay, who am I going after? What accounts are my priorities this week? What list am I gonna be sending you? What's working right now? What's not working? Like, how can I help? Even just little things like, at the end of the month, if you know that your SDR's quota is 30 meetings.

Reaching out to them saying, how are you doing on quota? If they're only at 25, like spend a couple hours yourself trying to get some meetings generated so you can help them get to their number. Just showing them that you care will obviously result in them caring about your success as well. And just really value that relationship.

Carter (22:25.75)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's pretty useful. Well, I think we got, I'll end it here. I think we got some good stuff.

Robby MacAskill (22:31.331)
Good, awesome, cool. Internet connection, stay solid.

Carter (22:35.415)
It's perfect, yeah.