Can You Believe Notaries Actually Do This???

*Full transcription below

Hi everybody, this is Bill Soroka, founder of NotaryCoach.com and the Sign & Thrive Community.

I am alive and well in Helena, Montana right now! I'm up here for the Remote Online Notarization Symposium (RON), sponsored by the Secretary of State.

I'm super excited! It's been a long, awesome week and I probably would not say no to a nap right now. But there's too much to do.

First of all, I'm super excited because I get giveaway two Kattee Crazy-Horse bags off of Amazon. You know, these are my favorite bags I use for my notary business. Plus I've slid a brand new HP laptop computer into each one of these. I've got webcams for the remote online notarization (the HD webcams from Logictech), plus a few other things (books and favorite journals and that kind of stuff). I love giving away free stuff. So if you happen to be in Montana and you're going to be here amongst the 150 or so notaries that are here for that, you are going to be entered in, just for being here tomorrow.

But that's not what I'm here to talk to you about today.

Today I'm here to talk to you because I want to talk about the subject: "Can you believe notaries actually do this?" And this is the top five complaints that I received in my business about my notaries. Thankfully, not as much anymore, cause we really crafted an awesome team and really the students that have come out of Sign & Thrive, You guys have just really elevated the industry and I really appreciate that, and love having you on the team. But still, you know, there's a lot of notaries who came before us and a lot of the signing agencies are signing company owners. I've talked to escrow officers, attorneys that have hired us, financial planners that have hired us and I got some feedback and kind of whittled it down to the top five biggest complaints that people have about a mobile notary and loan signing agent.

In fact, actually let's call it six. I'm gonna give you a bonus number six. I'm actually gonna make this number one because this is the huge one you probably hear me talking about this all the time. And that is:

Bonus #6: Finding a notary that will actually answer their phone

With 4.5 million notaries in the country you still can't find one when you need one sometimes. So one of the biggest complaints is this! And you'll hear this from customers all the time and you. If you're watching this live or if you're part of Sign & Thrive, or just even on the YouTube community you can probably relate because you'll get people who are so grateful that you actually answered the phone, because they have been in a desperate situation, and they're like, "oh my gosh, you answered the phone." So obviously, this is one of the best ways that you can overcome these complaints: just answering the phone and being a compassionate and professional person.

If you can't, find a workaround. You obviously can't answer the phone all the time. We have personal lives, we have life outside of business hours. We have functions to perform in our business that don't always allow for answering the phone. So start getting your brain thinking about how you can answer even without answering. Think about automation. We have technology now that makes that possible. Whether it's via text message, phone, voicemail, a voicemail message that just expresses that you are interested in doing business. "Please Leave me a message and I'll get right back to you." Something along those lines. And something with some sort of action step, maybe even on your website that just lets people know you are in business to serve and that you're interested in serving.

All right, let's get into the top five though.

Number One: The Notary was late.

So I hear this all the time in my loan signing business, you'll probably hear it all the time too. Not Everybody has the same respect for time that we might, so some notaries show up late, and they don't communicate about it.

So how you overcome this? If you are ever going to be late and you will, that is the nature of this business... If you're going to be late, communicate! As soon as you're going to be late, let them know. Even if I get a feeling five or six hours before my appointment, that traffic's weird, or appointments are just running slow, then I will communicate that in advance. That helps people plan their day. If you wait until 5:58 PM to tell somebody you are going to be late for a 6:00 PM appointment, and you're going to be 30 minutes late, they are going to be upset and rightfully so. So try to give them as much notice as possible so they can feed their kids. Maybe they can run to the store real quick, get back, whatever it might be.

Number Two: The Notary was not dressed professionally.

In fact, a lot of the feedback I hear about is their Notary was dressed slovenly, like they just rolled out of bed or rolled off the couch in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and decided they were going to be a notary that day.

You can overcome that by dressing for success. You know, we all don't have to dress up in a Tuxedo or anything. All you have to do is dress in some business, professional, business-casual, depending on your environment, have some slacks, polo shirt if you're a guy, have a nice dress or shorts or pants suit, whatever it might be. Something that represents professionalism. Because guess what, you are representing your business, and this can be for both general notary work or for loan signings.

Number Three (and this is a huge one): The notary didn't know what they were doing.

And there have been so many notaries before us that didn't honor the business by continuing their education. So how you overcome that as you get the training that you need, number one, stick with it. Forever be the student. You will never know everything there is to know about this business. So you should always be continuing your education and become the go to expert in your state. You know, there's a lot of amazing notaries in individual states that share information and knowledge and then there's some that don't, of course. We don't have to worry about them. Focus on the notaries that are sharing information and model them become equals with them. They will give you resources, study those resources, study the laws, study the state code, the Secretary of state directives, all of that. And don't put too much pressure on yourself to know everything about everything right away. That sometimes takes years to do, but set that as your point where you're going. You are going to be the expert for your state.

Number Four: The client didn't feel heard.

They had complaints, they had issues, they had misunderstandings about the way things are going and the notary rushed them, entice them to sign. You know, we hear this a lot where the notary says, don't worry, you have a three day right to cancel. And you know, I always advocate that you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever use the right to cancel, to entice somebody to sign. That's not our role or responsibility. So if you, if you give the attention to the people and hear them, empathize, can be a compassionate ear even for just a couple minutes. If they need a little bit of a vent, that can change the entire process and whoever you're representing, whether it be an escrow company or whether it be yourself, you can be that compassionate ear that people need.

And finally,

Number Five: The Notary did not return the documents in a timely fashion.

And this is a huge one that I run into a lot in loan signings, and that has been across the board in all 50 states, actually. I worked for one signing company that refused to even do signings in one state because they couldn't find a notary that would place a priority on returning documents. This is an important! This is an important part of our role. If documents need to be returned in a timely manner. If you, if you're trying to batch everything like you still, you only want to go to a FedEx once or ups once per day. If it makes sense, that would be fine. But if you're doing seven, eight, nine o'clock signings in, you're waiting until 9:00 PM to drop off some of those documents. There might be a lapse in customer service. So you want to apply some logic in there and if you can swing by. Go a couple of miles out of your way to drop the doc documents and make sure they hit the 10:00 AM pickup, whatever it might be. So you can go above and beyond for your clients. So they're not calling you wondering where the documents are because you sat on them for 12 or 13 hours.

Those are little extra things that you can do to help raise the bar for your business and for the industry as a whole.

Guys, thank you so much. And if you're in Montana, I'm looking forward to meeting you!

xxx - Bill

Links:
Kattee Crazy-Horse Bag: https://www.amazon.com/Kattee-Leather-Briefcase-Shoulder-Business/dp/B00BMJSJG0?ref_=ast_sto_dp.