Why Most Mortgage Pitches Fail (and How to Get Past the Croc Brain)
If your borrower’s eyes glaze over the moment you start talking basis points, you didn’t lose the deal—you lost the brainstem. We design our pitches with the neocortex, because that’s where logic, language, and all our beautiful loan knowledge lives. But every message is received in reverse order—first by the primitive “croc brain,” then the social midbrain, and only then by the rational neocortex. The croc brain has three default labels for incoming information: boring, dangerous, or too complicated. If it stamps your pitch with any of those, your logic never gets a hearing. That’s why a rate matrix can feel like a threat and a long email reads like an attack: the croc brain is just trying to keep its owner safe.
The fix isn’t more data; it’s better framing. Start by promising simplicity and brevity: “I’ll give you the big idea in three minutes and show one visual.” Then tell a quick story that puts the client—not your product—at the center. Reveal one genuinely novel angle (the “pleasant surprise”) that contrasts the status quo with a better path. Offer a prize—access to your time, insight, or process—rather than begging for theirs. Nail a single hook point they can repeat to a spouse or agent (“We protect your payment like it’s our own”). Finally, make the next step painfully clear.
Mortgage example: a first-time buyer doesn’t need amortization theory. They need two clear paths—“stay renting at $2,400/m vs. own at $2,050/m with tax benefits”—plus one crisp visual that shows the difference. If your message is simple, non-threatening, novel, and easy to choose, the croc brain forwards it to the neocortex. Attention earned; logic welcomed. Keep remembering that you aren’t trying to win an argument—you’re trying to win the filter that decides whether the argument ever gets heard.
