Also, join your local chamber of commerce, become a member of a commercial mortgage brokers' association and contact your city's economic-development department, to which business-owners often turn when they need financial assistance.

Successful marketing relationships for commercial loan workouts require planning and continual contact with related professionals such as commercial lenders, title-company commercial divisions, contractors, engineers and developers. The broader your network, the easier it is to facilitate a successful transaction.

Teach yourself and others

Read everything you can find related to the loan-modification industry.

Create your own support group of commercial loan executives, attorneys and bankers. These professionals may become your mentors and may even help you find further business opportunities.

You also can use your knowledge to educate other mortgage professionals on how to determine values, cap rates and debt-service-coverage ratios for distressed commercial properties. Doing so, you may end up with new associates and mutually beneficial relationships. Be willing to give back to your business community, and you will receive much more in return.

Be interested

When you are ready to approach distressed-property owners to help them with loan workouts, start meeting them in person. Show sincere interest in their business operations. This will help open your dialogue and develop a common ground of mutual respect.

Remember, business-owners want to prosper. Approach them with the expectation to learn about their business and to help them rectify their upside-down debt-service dilemma. Your genuine desire to solve business-owners' cash-flow issues will speak volumes to your prospects. The more you understand their business and relate to their needs, the more successful you will become in helping them with loan workouts.

Paul Trimakas, program director for CWBlueprint.com, has two decades of commercial banking and marketing experience. CWBlueprint is an educational, Web-based program geared to mentoring and assisting mortgage professionals who are interested in becoming successful commercial loan-modification affiliates. Trimakas has a master's degree in mass communication and lectured at California State University, Northridge. Reach him at info@CWBlueprint.com.

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