Ever hear of the book “the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People?”

It was an international phenomenon.

From countries all around the world, business people soaked up the knowledge of Stephen Covey’s insights and incorporated them into the way they handled business.

But what about a successful mortgage marketer?

What sort of habits fuel them? What does their day look like?

In essence, what are the actions that separate them from the average mortgage originators?

And what can you do to share in that success?

Step #1: A Productive Day Starts at the Beginning

It all starts with productivity.

And you can’t have productivity unless you start the day out on the right note.

One of the most transformative ways to get more done as a mortgage marketer is to accomplish something every single day that you can be proud of.

In fact, many productivity experts recommend writing down your plan for the day and then ranking each task in terms of its importance.

By tackling the most important task first, you’ll be more productive. Why? Because even if your slack off the rest of the day, you’ve still achieved something that’s important for your business.

Whatever your goals are, this system can have a tremendous amount of benefits on the way you handle business.

But you can’t very well do that if you don’t know how to start off a productive day. So here are a few tips for summoning motivation and momentum from the start of the day:

• Start off by accomplishing something right away. One of the most important things to do after sitting down at your desk is to get to work—even if you take a break shortly thereafter. This momentum-builder doesn’t just “prime your engine,” so to speak, but it also accomplishes something from the very start.
• Include marketing of some sort. Something as simple as a Tweet or status update is a great way to reach out to potential clients and enhance your presence online. If you do the opposite and ignore your online presence—well, you’ll get out what you put into it.
• Strike while the iron’s hot. LinkedIn has said that its busiest times are at morning and midday. If you’re sharing some piece of your mortgage marketing with the world, that’s the time to do it. In the morning, people are settling in, reading their email, and checking their social media accounts—that’s the time to get your message out.

The great things about these habits? They’re small changes. They won’t dramatically impact the way you live out the rest of your day at work—but they will change the way you market yourself.

Step #2: Constant Improvement

When you use a phrase like “constant improvement,” some people’s eyes glaze over.

“Constant improvement,” after all,” sounds like a lot of work.

But the phrase as meant here simply means that you should always be looking for an edge in your marketing, particularly online.

Is there something you wanted to test out? New copy for the headline of your website? Perhaps a new strategy for your email list? Good! Now’s the time to incorporate it.

You might even set an email reminder for yourself every day to come up with at least one thing you can improve about the way you handle or market your business.

It might seem like a small habit now, but over time, small changes lead to big results. Even just a 1% degree of difference adds up over time.

Which improvements should you make?

Of course, that’s up to you. But if you ever receive customer feedback through email, you might want to keep it in a separate folder for this exact purpose.

Every day, you can look at that feedback, evaluate it, and determine whether or not it’s valid feedback. Then, you can proceed to make the change—and proceed with the rest of your day.

There’s one caveat here: constant improvement does not mean that you should tinker with what’s working.

But it does mean that you should have a goal and constantly work toward that goal. Even just one “outside-the-box” action every day—such as writing down ideas for a new marketing campaign—will eventually flower into larger plans.

That also means larger results.

Step #3: Networking

A successful mortgage marketer tends to also be a successful networker.

For example, knowing the best agents around can yield you new clients on a regular basis—without you having to do much work at all.

If you can get an agent to refer your clients without you having to do so much as pick up the phone, that can be a major boon to your enterprise.

But it does take some networking to get into this position in the first place.

A successful mortgage marketer doesn’t have to network every day, but it should certainly be a part of your regular routine.

But don’t just network for the sake of networking.

Network with a purpose.

I often advocate that mortgage companies actively look for their “WHALE” agents who can refer them clients on a regular basis. These are agents who talk to a lot of people and do a lot of business—and don’t mind sending a lot of it off to people like you.

You don’t exactly want to network with the person down the street who can’t send you any clients. Not if you’re doing it for your business, anyway.

If, on the other hand, you can go “WHALE” hunting, you can accomplish major things for your business that will make your daily life a lot easier. Here are some things you can incorporate to your daily life to do just that:

• Try reaching out to one agent a day. Do some research. If they have a website, read up on it. Ask yourself if this looks like someone who has clients to send. Then, work on your opening contact—usually an email—until it looks like something worth reading. Even if your goal here is only to get your foot in the door and meet new people for your business, it can be tremendously beneficial.
• Find your unique selling proposition. As you craft an opening to this agent, think about what it is that makes your business unique. What makes you worth networking with, too? What can you do for THEM?

Here’s what your daily networking might look like:

You can make a goal to find new “WHALE” agents.

Then, you can think about what it is that makes you unique—what makes you worth knowing.

Finally, have the conviction and passion to want to help them in their business as well. As your relationship grows, you’ll find that the relationship can be mutually beneficial.

Of course, none of this happens by accident.

It’s only when you make marketing a priority—a consistent priority—and a part of your daily life that you start to see results add up over time.

That’s a glimpse of what a successful mortgage marketer’s day looks like.

It’s not just a day spent hoping things will happen.

It’s a day where you make things happen.

To make something happen today, you might also want to think about signing up for a free trial of leadPops to enhance your marketing.

After all, constant improvement doesn’t just happen by accident.