It took a 5 year courtship and many conversations to convince September’s NFM TV’s Top Producer to join NFM, but boy was it worth it. Rob Stettler has been near the top of the production leaderboard from the day he arrived at NFM on November 7th, 2018. Relying on a blue collar approach to getting purchase business and holding on to it, it’s easy to see why he’s among the very best in the industry.

Full Transcript is Below:

– Welcome into our “Top Producer Series” for the month of August, 2020. I’m your host, Greg Sher from NFM TV. This has been long overdue. We’re heading down to Sarasota, Florida to welcome in one of our own Rob Stettler. He’s the guy everybody wants to know about. Who is this Rob Stettler guy who continues to hit the top of the charts. He shut down 39 units, 39 in the month of June. He’s off to a record start this year and Rob joins us now. How you doing Rob?

– I’m doing great. How are you? Thanks for having me.

– I’m doing fine. It’s a pleasure. I should first start off by thanking you for cleaning up a little bit. I see that you’ve got your haircut. You’ve got the food man chew in shape. We’re gonna show a couple of quick pictures of your quarantine do now.

– [Rob] Yep.

– Did you clean up just for us?

– [Rob] Just for you. Just for you. The wife’s very happy, you know.

– Before we get started Rob, it was a long courting process to get you to NFM. You’ve been here well over a year now, but why was the process so difficult to get you into NFM and what’s the experience been like?

– It’s, what was so difficult to getting me in is I was doing well where I was at. Comfortable, and it’s tough, you know, if you’re doing well, there’s really no reason to leave. It turned out definitely in my opinion, the best decision I ever made. Really happy with my decision. I basically was able to get off the roller coaster of production going up down, up down, you know, and things really leveled out because of the back end here. And for a company to be successful, you always have to be bringing in new talent, new people. And if there’s not a good recruiter there bringing people in, your company is going to slowly, you know, drop in volume. And you know, you know that’s not the recipe for a successful company.

– I wanted to get into how we met each other and then we’ll get into how you’re such a fantastic producer. I’m showing the cover of an article here at your last company. You were featured in a local magazine. It talked about your love for horse racing and how it drives you to be a great originator. And I am a big horse racing fan. So, I saw that article, I dug up your cell phone number, texted you, and before you knew it we were talking horses and talking mortgages. So it’s, it definitely had something to do with the courtship for sure.

– Yep. For sure, 100% for sure.

– Rob, you’re a native of Allentown, Pennsylvania. You’ve been in the business since 1993. Wow. You’ve seen quite a few things in your time. How have you managed to survive all the different changes in the mortgage business over so many years? 27 of them?

– Yeah, you’re always going to have change, things like that but you know, you can’t control that. You know, you got to just worry about the things you can control. And I just think, you know, work really hard. Do what you say you’re gonna do. And do that 100% of the time. Not like 90%, 92%, just 100% of the time do what you say you’re gonna do.

– Well, you’re on your way to 100 million this year. It will be the first time you’ve achieved that. That’s certainly a nice mark.

– Yup. Very, very excited about that. Things are yeah, definitely going well.

– And you also managed to be a top 1% producer as recognized by Scotsman’s Guide. What was it like to get that designation? It’s not the first time I know.

– No, no. I think I’ve done that in like the last eight years in a row and I’m really, really excited about that and it sorta, you know, validates everything and it makes you feel, makes you feel like all your work’s worth it, you know. And people recognize you and your achievements, it’s something definitely myself and the team were very proud of.

– So I wanna know what your stable is like, and I’m not talking about your horse stable. I’m talking about your stable of realtors and referral partners. Give us a view into how many relationships you have that you rely on and how you maintain them.

– From sales-side realtors, every Friday I call every buy-side sales-side realtor religiously and give them updates of what’s going on with their files. The sales-side ones, I have sales-side realtors that their own mortgage professional, they can’t reach. Okay. Hey, they got pre-approvals they can’t reach them, they’ll call them in the afternoon, they don’t get calls. And here I am, I’m some guy they never spoke to before on the sales side of the transaction. And I make those calls usually to those partners Friday at five o’clock, six o’clock at night to show them I’m still at work. I’ll call them on Saturdays. And they’re sorta like, “Hey, who are you?” And I’m there like, hey, you know, I’m Rob, I’m just giving you an update on this, on the sales side. I wanna let you know, files in processing and files in underwriting, appraisals back and give them updates. You know, when I do that, like week one, I never asked for business, week two, I never asked for business cause we’re basically gonna be married for 30 to 45 days. So come week three or four, I’m asking them, what do you got? You know, I want some more business. And then at that point, you know, if it’s a realtor, I like, I look them up in the Intelligence Program. I looked to see how much they close. If it’s somebody that I want, you know, I keep them on constant follow up until I land him.

– When you identify the agent as an agent, you want to have a relationship with and you kind of pop the question, you know, will you send me business? Any idea what your success rate is for the agency you want to do business with?

– Very high. Yeah, I think it’s very, like, I think it’s very high, you know. 50% of the time, you know, I wind up getting a deal, even during week three, four, five, six, you know, I’ll get a deal. But if I stay on them, and on them and on them and on them and on them, you know, sorta like you, when you were recruiting me, you know.

– Yeah.

– Yeah. If I just, hey, send me business one time, that doesn’t work. What if they don’t even have a deal at that time, you know, but it’s like, I’ll stay on them, you know, a month after closing, six weeks after closing, eight weeks wear them down. Cause sooner or later, you know, I get my realtor.

– What’s your system like? Are you using some kind of a CRM or are you using a, you chiseling into a tablet like Captain Caveman?

– Do you want to see?

– Yeah, I do wanna see. Come on man, open it up. Wow. Look at that, I had a feeling.

– Tablet.

– I had a feeling.

– You know, you do what you want. But you know, old school stuff, if it works, it works, you know. And I got my tablet, I got the hotness, I got the A team, the B team, the C team, you know. I got 10 realtors that I want, okay. They’re on my A list. They get called every week, even after the deal’s closed, okay, so on the sales side, until I get them. The B’s, I call them like every other week, C’s I’ll call them once a month, you know. And once in a while, one of my C’s will step up to a B a B will step up to an A, and I rotate them, you know. And I just go down that list every Friday, 100% of the time and I make those calls. Friday or Saturday.

– Well I’d be remiss and never forgiven if I did not bring up your partner in crime, David McLaughlin. I know you guys attack business together. Talk about that relationship. You kinda have a partner in the branch and how you keep that running smoothly.

– Yeah. Well, Dave and I we were roommates back in college, back at Temple, you know, so we’re going back, yeah too long, 25, you know, 25, 30 years ago. And yeah it’s really nice. It works well. Dave will leave the office and he likes to beat down the doors. He likes to cold call. I don’t. You know, we’ve got different methods and it works well.

– Rob Stettler, top producer extraordinaire, we’re so happy you’re here at NFM. We really appreciate you being our featured top producer for the month of August, 2020 continued success. And we’ll talk soon.

– Thank you very much.

– I’m Greg Sher from NFM TV. You’ve been watching the “Top Producer Series” for the month of August. We’ll see you next time.