Let's suppose that you hear that Rick Savoy is working as a commercial real estate loan officer at Mason Bank, and he is closing a lot of commercial loans. The problem is that you don't know his email address, and he seems a little weird about giving it out to some new commercial mortgage broker. Bankers tend to hate unsolicited email and hence his reluctance.
The first thing you should do is to Google his bank. You would search for "Mason Bank". Banks are very, very good at hiding their commercial real estate loan officers so they never make commercial loans (pretty stupid, huh?). Therefore you almost certainly will NOT find Steve the Wonder Loan Officer listed on their website.
Sombody help me!
But what you will find is the URL of the bank. Maybe the URL of the bank is MasonBankTexas. For the sake of simplicity, we'll assume the URL is just MasonBank.com. By the way, I just made up the name of Mason Bank for purposes of writing this commercial loan training lesson, but there actually is a Mason Bank in Texas. Ha-ha!
Really, sombody help me!
Then, in order to find his actual email address address, simply send him an email with a subject line: Three Quick Questions About Your Commercial Loans. Then you address your email to -
or
There seems to be a convention in banking to use either the first letter of his first name, followed by his last name OR the first name dot last name. Ninety-five percent of the time one of these two email addresses will work. You send your email to both email addresses, and the one that does not bounce is his real email address. Voila!
Well, this isn't actually awful.
I keep reminding you guys that you need to reach out to every banker within 15 miles of your office and start soliciting him for his turndowns. Remember, the first place that most borrowers call when looking for a commercial loan is their own bank. And since most bankers are sleepy fellows, the typical commercial real estate loan officer working for a bank turns down five to ten commercial loan requests every week. The loan is too small, too big, too far away, or the wrong type of property. You want those turndowns!
The baby is clearly digging it.
Don't just get one commercial loan officer per bank. Get three, four, or five of them. After all, EACH commercial loan officer turns down five to ten commercial loan applications per month.
If the email address works, ask for his minimum and maximum commercial loans, lending area, and whether or not he makes SBA loans. Always remember that virtually all 6,799 commercial banks in America make the same kind of commwercial loans at pretty much the same interest rate. Bankers are herd animals. Moooo. My kingdom for a capitalistic banker!
Everybody needs to spoon a little.
This brings up another point. If commercial loan officer Suzie Smith summarily turns down your commercial loan request, don't give up on that bank - especially if the bank is located close to the subject property. Try presenting your commercial loan to John Jones at the same bank. Remember, banks are far more likely to approve a commercial loan if the property is located close to one of their branches.
But this is just plain wrong.
