Here’s the hard truth: No one cares if you’re “different.” Real estate agents aren’t looking for quirky—they’re looking for effective. They don’t need more fluff. They need more value. And if you want to dominate in this market, it’s time to stop chasing what makes you stand out and start dialing into what makes you valuable to the people you want to serve.

Your competitive advantage isn’t found in your branding colors, your interest rates, or your social media memes. It’s in your alignment. Alignment with your agents’ goals. Their pain points. Their pressures.

Want to create a competitive advantage? Here’s the formula: Stop selling and start solving.

Most loan officers enter meetings with the goal of impressing. That’s the wrong strategy. Impressive doesn’t win relationships. Relevant does. Strategic does. If you walk into a meeting with an agent and start rattling off how fast your team closes, how great your service is, or how low your rates are, you’ve already lost. You sound like everyone else. And when you sound like everyone else, you get treated like everyone else.

Let me ask you a question: Do you know the real reason most agents don’t call you back after that coffee meeting?

It’s not because they didn’t like you.

It’s because you didn’t meet a specific need they have. They didn’t find you useful enough.

If you want to win, you need to know what agents are actually struggling with—and position yourself as the person who helps them win more business. Period.

That means doing the prep work. That means asking yourself:

• What level of agent do I want to work with?
  
  
• What do they care about more than anything else in their business right now?
  
  
• What do they wish their current lender was doing—but isn’t?
  
  

If you don’t know those answers, you’re showing up to a game without a playbook. You’re pitching features. Top producers pitch outcomes.

Here’s the shift: Become the originator who talks about how they help agents close more, convert more, and retain more.

That’s what creates demand.

You’re not the hero in the story. They are. Your job is to be the one who makes them look like a rockstar to their clients. When you can clearly communicate how you do that—on the first meeting—you don’t need to “follow up and check in.” You’ll already be positioned as the lender they need.

Don’t compete on noise. Compete on relevance.

And remember: Agents don’t need a loan officer who’s “different.” They need a loan officer who helps them win.