The moment most loan officers waste every week

A listing agent you’ve never met calls you about a pre-approval letter your buyer just submitted with an offer. Most loan officers treat this as a transactional check-in. Confirm the file, hang up, move on.

Epi Almodovar, a top producer at NMB, treats it as a referral opportunity. And it’s working.

In a recent sit-down with Rob Jayne, Epi broke down the exact sequence he runs every time a new listing agent picks up the phone. The whole system runs on free marketing tools most LOs already have access to but rarely use — and it’s the kind of system NMB builds into the day-to-day for every loan officer on the team.

If you’re an LO who keeps hearing “I already have a lender,” this is the playbook to change that conversation.

The 5-step listing agent conversion sequence

Here’s how Epi turns a one-time phone call into a paired agent relationship. Steal it.

1. Get the business card on the call

“I always request a copy of their business cards so I could put them onto my phone and I send them a copy of mine.”

— Epi Almodovar

Before the call ends, exchange digital business cards. You now have their cell, their email, their brokerage. They have yours. The transaction stays connected.

2. Send the ListReports invite the same day

Epi sends every new listing agent a personalized link to ListReports with a short note framing it as a value-add — not a sales pitch.

“I describe it as: I see that you’re not a subscriber or you’re not using ListReports, and it’s a wonderful tool for free marketing.”

The pitch isn’t “let me sell you on me.” It’s “here’s a free tool that makes your listings look better.” That reframe is the entire game.

3. Share their content every morning

Every morning, Epi opens ListReports, grabs the shareable daily item, and posts it to his social channels with maximum audience reach.

“And then I find that they reshare it. The ones that are already paired, they do it on their own. But it’s just a way to stay connected.”

This is the compounding move. You’re not asking for anything. You’re showing up in their feed and their notifications daily, for free, with content they actually want shared.

4. Auto-share new listings the second they hit

When a paired agent lists a property, Epi gets an alert on his phone. He shares it across social media before the agent’s own marketing kicks in.

“I share on social media as well, and it’s almost like me helping promote their listing to the audience. It allows the opportunity for buyers or realtors to call me about that particular listing.”

You’re effectively running a free co-marketing campaign — and it generates inbound calls from buyers and other agents asking about a property you posted.

5. Let the newsletter do the work in the background

The ListReports newsletter goes out to your paired agents automatically. You did nothing. You’re still adding value while you’re at a closing, on vacation, or sleeping.

“It happens automatically.”

The numbers behind the play

Epi has roughly 20 to 55 actively paired agents. He’s sent the invite to over a thousand.

That ratio matters. This isn’t a high-conversion email funnel. It’s a low-friction, high-volume relationship play where every “yes” is a long-term referral source — and every “no” cost you 90 seconds.

When Rob asked the direct question — have you seen ROI? — Epi didn’t hedge:

“Definitely. I see a return. Absolutely. It creates a phone call from a possible buyer to a possible agent that would like to know about that property. It really just maintains the connection within my network. 100%.”

Why this works (and why most LOs miss it)

Most loan officers chase agent relationships the hard way: coffee meetings, lunches, drop-bys, swag. All of it competes with every other LO doing the same thing.

Epi’s system works because it inverts the dynamic:

• The agent calls you first (about your pre-approval), not the other way around
• You give before you ask (a free marketing tool, daily content shares, listing promotion)
• The system runs without you (alerts, auto-newsletters, shareable daily content)
• Every paired agent compounds (their reshares put you in front of their network)

You’re not selling. You’re being useful at scale. The referrals follow.

The platform behind the playbook

Here’s the part most LOs don’t realize: Epi isn’t paying for ListReports or MBS Highway out of pocket. He doesn’t have to stitch together a tech stack on his own time, vet vendors, or fight his back office for budget approval.

At NMB, the tools are built into the platform. ListReports, the MBS Highway CMA tools, the agent co-marketing infrastructure — it’s all provisioned, supported, and ready to run on day one. Marketing handles the setup. You run the plays.

That’s the difference between trying to build a referral engine and joining a company that’s already wired one in.

If your current shop isn’t giving you tools like this

Ask yourself a few honest questions:

• Are you paying for your own marketing tools out of commission splits?
• Is your marketing team responsive — or are you waiting weeks for a flyer?
• When a listing agent asks what you bring to the table, can you actually answer it?
• Are the top producers in your shop hoarding the good systems, or sharing them?

The LOs who break out of plateaus usually aren’t working harder. They’re working at companies that put the right systems under them. Epi’s playbook is a glimpse of what that looks like in practice.