Thirteen gifts.
Three closings.
$1.1M in loan volume.
One round of researched gifting, sent in the client’s name to agents who had never closed a loan with her. Here is what came back.
Client and agent details are anonymized. Figures are rounded.
The client and the question
The client is a branch manager at a mortgage lender in a coastal Southeast market. Her referral book already held about 40 agents. The agents she wanted were the ones outside it: strong producers who closed buyer deals every month with other lenders and had never sent her a loan.
The question she put to us was simple. Can a gift open a door that a coffee invite does not?
One gift each, built from research
No basket, no branded mug, no sequence. Thirteen agents, thirteen briefs, one considered piece each.
Research first
We read each agent the way a good friend would: listings, public posts, the dog in every photo, the kitchen they kept showing off, the trips they talked about. That turned thirteen names into thirteen briefs.
One considered piece
Pet sets for the dog people. Enamelware and a tea kettle for the cooks. Leather wine carriers and a valet tray for the hosts. About $230 a gift, boxed, with a handwritten note in the client’s name.
Two waves, then quiet
Wave one went out in late March and early April, wave two in mid April. Everything had landed by mid May. Then nothing else went out. No follow-up sequence, no ask. The client made the calls herself.
How the spring went
Wave one ships
10 gifts, each chosen from the agent’s own life, sent in the client’s name.
Wave two ships
3 gifts to the agents whose research took longer to get right.
All thirteen have landed
Replies come back to the client, not to us. She starts the conversations.
First closing
An FHA purchase, about $310K, with two of the gifted agents on the same deal.
Second closing
An FHA purchase, about $380K.
Third closing
A conventional deal, about $530K.
What came back
Three of the thirteen agents sent her a loan within about three months of the gifts landing, the first of them inside five weeks. One of the three sent two. A fourth agent was already in her book and stayed there. The other nine have not closed with her yet, and most of them are still closing buyer deals every month with other lenders, which is exactly why round two exists.
Total spend for the round was just under $3,000, covering the pieces, the boxes, the notes and the shipping. Sale prices on the three closings ran from about $310K to about $530K: two FHA purchases and one conventional.
What the return looks like
Loan officer compensation varies by lender and by role, so the return on the spend is shown at several rates. Pick the line that matches yours.
| Compensation | Return on $1.1M | Multiple of spend |
|---|---|---|
| 50 bps | about $5,500 | roughly 1.8x |
| 75 bps | about $8,200 | roughly 2.8x |
| 100 bps | about $10,900 | roughly 3.7x |
| 125 bps | about $13,700 | roughly 4.6x |
| 150 bps | about $16,400 | roughly 5.5x |
Break-even on the spend came at under 30 bps. Nothing here counts the next referral from the same thirteen relationships.
What we learned
The gift is the opening, not the close.
It earned the client a reply and a reason to call. The loans followed the calls. A gift that is not followed by a conversation is decoration.
Fit and follow-up beat price.
The spend was nearly flat across the thirteen. What separated the three who closed from the nine who have not was how well the piece fit and how soon the client picked up the phone.
Count closings, not thank-you notes.
We measured against public transaction records rather than replies. A gracious text is nice. A closing with the client as the lender is the number that matters, and it is the only one in this study.
How it was measured
Every closing in this study comes from public transaction records, matched agent by agent, counting only deals where the client was the lender and only deals that began after the gift landed. One deal that was already in flight when a gift arrived was left out. Nothing here rests on self-reporting.
The client and her agents are real. Their names, market, lender and exact figures are withheld by design. Amounts are rounded and dates are given to the month. Prepared by NexYear from the client’s round-one results.
Your book has these thirteen too.
Name the agents who should be sending you loans and are not. We will do the reading, choose the piece, and send it in your name.