After four grueling months of nonstop political ads, it’s election day. The culmination of carefully planned local and national campaign strategies to win the hearts and minds of Americans. Did they? The final vote tally will tell.

In much the same way reverse mortgage professionals are campaigning to win over skeptical homeowners, family members, and financial professionals to understand and embrace a counterintuitive loan- except this campaign never ends.

Winning people over to accept a misunderstood and mischaracterized loan is about building trust and demonstrating value. Here are a few strategies that may help when campaigning for new borrowers.

1. Be transparent and address concerns head-on. Don’t avoid the negatives- embrace them! Ask prospective borrowers what they’ve heard about reverse mortgages. Where did they hear it? What are their misgivings about the loan? Avoiding objections breeds mistrust. Airing them provides an opportunity to overcome myths and common objections and sets you apart as a true professional.

2. Simplify and educate. Make use of analogies to connect the unfamiliar to the familiar. For example, the reverse mortgage is an FHA loan; something most homeowners are familiar with or have had in the past. Other possible analogy could be seeing mortgage payments as a forced savings plan that can be tapped in the future. 

3. Connect facts with emotion. The best way to appeal to the emotions of a homeowner is to show the real-life positive outcomes a reverse mortgage could provide. Don’t just mention the elimination of a mandatory monthly mortgage payment but how may benefit them. “How do you feel your life would change if you didn’t make $19,000 in mortgage payments each year?”

To appeal to emotions you must first know the facts that shape them. In other words, effective financial fact-finding often reveals financial pressure points, risks, and opportunities. If you don’t know these you cannot ask a homeowner to make a connection to a loan instead of their future. Winning candidates know it’s how you make voters feel that often matters most.

4. Share stories, not arguments. Never debate homeowners. Instead, tell stories of previous borrowers who were once dead-set against a reverse mortgage and how they feel today. The ‘feel-felt-found’ approach validates that it’s okay for one to change their mind.

5. Listen. Many sales professionals mistakenly believe it’s their job to talk- to be a masterful and convincing communicator. Certainly, those skills help but the best salespeople understand that active listening opens more opportunities than carpet bombing a homeowner’s ears with facts, figures, and talking points. Inviting an open conversation puts potential borrowers at ease and allows them to reveal their hopes, dreams, and worries about retirement.

What’s your game plan for your reverse mortgage campaign? What’s your core message? Most importantly, what’s your strategy? Hopefully, these five strategies will help win more hearts and minds in reverse.