Coffee for Closers | Leads360 Sales & Marketing Blog 

If you’ve been in or around the military, you’ve probably heard this before.

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.

This has been adopted as an unofficial motto of the US Marines, and many of you may remember hearing Gunny Highway say it in Heartbreak Ridge. The Marines used to be the bastard child of the armed forces. Heck, they were conceived in a bar in Philadelphia one evening, and got Army hand-me-downs. But, they made it work, they improvised, they adapted, and they overcame to become arguably the most feared military force the world has ever seen. I’m starting to hear my friends in the mortgage industry say this more and more often these days. Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. What does this mean to you?

To me it means a lot of things. Specific to this blog, it means finding what works, and doing it until the whole notion of IAO becomes second nature. What worked last year does not work this year, and what works now is a radical departure from what worked last year, to most. What have you done to improvise, adapt, and overcome?

I can tell you what Leads360 has done. We’ve changed our entire model for the most part. We’ve brought on talent from several different aspects of the mortgage industry; those who have run successful shops, those who have worked with lead vendors, and those who have worked on the front lines doing loans. We’ve had to adapt to the current market and overcome monumental obstacles. We’ve done so and continue to do so. Understanding that you are currently doing the same, we’ve prepared a series of Best Practices for you, for 2008. We know what improvisations and adaptions need to be made in order to overcome. Give us a call, shoot us an email, or stop by the office. We want to help you IAO.

This is a guest post from marketing automation expert Jason Kort.

An important aspect of lead nurturing is marketing automation. Lead Management Systems offer basic automated communications but many companies should look to take their nurturing efforts to the next level.
Since not every lead closes on the first contact attempt, integrating a marketing automation platform, such as softvu SoftVu, into a company’s lead management approach can help clients nurture leads with relevant, timely, and engaging multimedia messages to help build competitive differentiation, brand awareness, business credibility, and product understanding.

These messages are all automatically “triggered” by a lead management system like Leads360, by certain actions taken by salespeople, or a time trigger (such as 10 days after product or service inquiry). Some clients set up a series of campaigns that cover up to 36 months of lead nurturing messages. These nurturing campaigns help produce more deals from your leads, significantly increasing ROI.

Keep your sales team focused on high probability leads.

The real value of automating these and other critically important but tedious sales tasks is that your sales people now spend their time working only high-probability, leads who are already open to a conversation or even ready to close.
With top of the line marketing automation you can produce more “hot leads” from your pool of old leads.. So, instead of just skimming the top of the pile, your sales team touches every prospect with regular, relevant communications, knows who to call when, and closes more sales.

How do they know who to call when?

SoftVu’s communications platform sends a view notification the instant your prospect views a message. SoftVu view notifications include details about the message and the viewer so you can respond immediately—a great strategy since your prospect is clearly interested, probably near a phone, and has time to talk. This notification will automatically notify a salesperson through their LMS and in Leads360’s case can even automatically dial the lead through the Leads360 LeadDialer.

And beyond real-time view notifications, the SoftVu system tracks your sends and views and writes all activity back to your LMS, providing clear information you can use to prioritize your calls.

Marketing automation and lead management, a powerful combination

Lead management keeps your salespeople organized and effective, while marketing automation helps reach those prospects that you just can’t get over the phone.
Together a lender can maximize their conversion rates.

The Lead Critic made a very good post earlier this week about sharing data with your lead providers. As a lead management system company, obviously we have a good idea of overall performance. I say overall performance because it would be unfair of me to say lead performance, because a lead is only one ingredient in the mix. More on that some other time…

From 2004 – 2006 I spent my week days selling mortgage leads to loan officers, brokers, and lenders from coast to coast. I sold leads to the mom and pops shop around the corner, and to a handful of the largest direct lenders in the nation. Out of well over 100 clients, only a few of them would share data with me. How many loans have you closed out of the leads I sent you? What is your contact rate? What is your application rate? How about speed to contact, how long does it take you to respond to a lead on average? Getting an answer was like pulling teeth. I think it was a mix of “I don’t want to tell you I’m doing great because you’ll jack my prices up” and “I don’t want to tell you my metrics because I am afraid others are doing way better and I don’t want to hurt my ego.” Whatever the reason, my intention for asking was simple: With your information, I can make my product better.

It’s almost 2008, advertising online is pretty mature, and it is easy to tell what campaigns are producing quality leads, and what campaigns are not. But the only way for a lead provider to know what campaigns to target is to tell them what is working, and what is not. Just so you understand how this works, most lead providers that I know of can target a specific lead back to it’s specific source. Let’s say that a lead provider has 250 campaigns running at any time online. If you send them a list of leads that were pure crap, they can track them back to where they originated. If most of them came from a specific campaign, they can pull the plug on that campaign and end your misery.

Let’s go out on a limb and say that if you do share this information, and the product gets better, your prices DO go up. So what? You’ll be closing more loans, you’ll keep your loan officers happier and more amped to get on the phone with a lead faster, and at the end of the day your life will be easier. So you spend a few bucks extra per lead, it’s not the end of the world. When a lead provider is able to produce better leads, you’re going to win in the end, but if you do not share this information, you’re only going to shoot yourself in the foot chasing not so great leads around. The rewards severely outweigh the risks in this scenario. Do yourself a favor and tell your lead provider how you are doing. If you’ve ever filled out a survey after buying a car, a large TV, or even called one of those “How Am I Driving?” 800 numbers, you’ll know why…

 Benjamin Kuo of socalTECH.com wrote about the upcoming fast pitch event that we were honored to participate in last year.

Tech Coast Angels is now taking applications for their Fast Pitch event coming up in January. For entrepreneurs who aren’t familiar with what a “fast pitch” is, it is a very short, 60 second “elevator pitch” on your company. The idea behind the competition is to pit a number of entrepreneurs — all looking for funding — in a competition to see who can best convince an investor to make an investment in their company. It’s very informative, entertaining, and actually a useful skill to have. Visit socalTECH here.

You can listen to Leads360’s winning pitch from last year here, courtesy of Frank Peters.

Working on pitching your company can be a big drain on your day to day resources that you need to devote to your business.  It is tough to pry yourself away from the daily grind to focus on the big picture, do the research, make the right connections, and have the important conversations.  Yet, we find an enduring value to the big conversations as they continue to give us new insights into how to mold our product and consulting services to better meet the needs of our clients.  There is always room for us to improve the performance of our customers and that means devoting time and energy to new ideas.

We highly recommend competitions like Pitch the Angels because they represent a great chance to explore the big ideas which are integral to your business.  You will have the opportunity to talk through your ideas and be confronted with things you may never have thought of.  Don’t be afraid to pitch!

Photo Courtesy of Winding Road.

A popular discussion topic around the Leads360 building has been prioritization, focus, and the popular Strengths Finder 2.0 book. Many people are taking a closer look at their own abilities and figuring out how to better leverage them for the benefit of our clients–and to make themselves happier and more productive.

The idea of 2.0 is often seen as a focus on being “outside of the box” and rewriting the rules. The recently deceased Business 2.0 Magazine was all about new companies, new ideas, new approaches, new solutions, and embraced a general theme of change. Ironically, but rather predictably, it came to an end by being forced to abandon its mission – by being forced into the old model of business: the corporate conglomerate “efficiency” machine. Mark Glaser of Mediashift writes:

To best understand the final demise of Business 2.0, you need to go back to April 2006 when Time Inc. announced with great fanfare a new Business and Finance Network that combined the sales forces of Fortune, Money, Fortune Small Business and Business 2.0 magazines, along with the CNNMoney.com online portal. The idea was to have a unified group selling all the titles so there would be less overhead costs and a simpler pitch to advertisers from one person instead of four.

But for Business 2.0, the Time Inc. strategy was the kiss of death. The magazine lost its dedicated sales force, and Fortune salespeople were less interested in selling Business 2.0 than Fortune. Worse yet, the people who could have made the new strategy succeed — the magazine publishers atop each publication — were demoted to regional sales staff positions, demoralizing them, according to one former longtime Business 2.0 staffer. (The former employee would only speak to me without attribution because of the sensitivity of the subject.)

“They took all these people who were publishers, which is as high as you can get without going to corporate,” the source said. “They took all these people and basically bumped them down to fancy regional sales managers. The very people who would have implemented the plan and made it successful had just been demoted…The salespeople were told, ‘You’re going to sell Fortune and Money and Business 2.0 and Fortune Small Business, and do package deals with CNNMoney.com.’ Which is a good idea in theory, but in practice it didn’t work out.

“The Fortune salespeople just didn’t give a f—- about selling Business 2.0. The Money people didn’t really know Fortune and the Fortune people didn’t know Money. I don’t know how much they saved, but they lost more money than they saved. It was all pressure from Time Warner to show earnings growth at Time Inc….So a year later, Business 2.0 wasn’t getting any ads. The plan had been disastrous.” Read the rest of the article here.

Business 2.0’s strength was being different, being more sensitive to new trends, smaller companies, and looking to the stars of the future, instead of celebrating the stars of the present. Time Inc. did not respect the strength of Business 2.0 and did not enable it to succeed. Business 2.0 provides a great parable: no matter how good your product is, you must have the right vision–and the ability and commitment to follow it.

I see 2.0 as a commitment to seeing “inside the box” as clearly as we look outside of it.

At Leads360 our core competency is making our clients successful. Our success or failure will be determined by our ability to be faithful to our strengths… 2.0.

We all have goals. Personally, I want to win the lottery one day. Every time there is a huge lottery payout won by someone whom I don’t deem deserving of it, I sit back and think “Man, if that were me who won that…” and go off into a day dream. True, a goal of mine is to win it, but I will never achieve that goal.

Why?

Well, because I don’t play the lottery.

How can I win the lottery if I never play it?

This post is about setting realistic goals that help you achieve your end goal. In order to close a deal, you need to lay out a goal path that will allow you to do so as efficiently as possible. You need to play the lottery if you want to win it. And you need to set systematic goals in order to close a deal. The shotgun approach is for amateurs, and the days of the one call close are over. It takes a goal oriented process, a series of milestones relevant to your sales cycle, to close a deal.

At Leads360, on the Sales 2.0 floor we’ve taken a step back from the old way of selling, interwoven the new “selling for success” [of our clients] method, and put together a process of mapping out goals and milestones in order to close good deals…not just any deals. And it works, our clients are successful, so we are as well.

Hey folks, we just wanted to pass along the message as many others do. To our readers, thank you for stopping by. To our clients, thank you for allowing us the pleasure of doing business with you. To everyone else, enjoy the holiday, reflect on what you have to be thankful for, and stay safe!

Courtesy of Lead Critic, we heard that our good friends at DoublePositive have announced that they have taken an additional $4M in funding to continue to grow their business. We know that our customers have been satisfied with DoublePositive’s approach and we know that they will continue to thrive, despite the current market conditions. Congratulations!

You sell to live, but you also live to sell. You are the kind of person who plans to stay in the mortgage industry even though things right now are…well…challenging. While your former co-workers have elected to take the easy way out, you have decided to be steadfast and continue doing what you love.

Now before we go any further, let’s take a step back and come to a realization: Your title is Senior Mortgage Consultant, Real Estate Lending Professional, Home Loan Consultant, etc. When you wake up in the morning, you’re a Sales Professional. When you go to sleep at night, you’re a Sales Professional. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you should feel proud, and tell them that you are a Sales Professional. It seems like sales $@%# is a four letter word, and right now, it seems like ‘mortgage anything’ is even worse. Before you can take control over your present and future, you need to be comfortable with the fact that you are a salesman, or saleswoman. There’s nothing wrong with that.

So with that in mind, you need to understand how certain traits of a good salesperson will help you sell, and live in a down market. There are many key traits to a typical Type-A sales professional. If you do not currently possess them, you need to align yourself with a mentor who does, and pick them up. Some of them are as follows:

- Dogged persistence: so you’ve called a good lead or referral three or four times with no response…so what, they have a life too, don’t stop calling them until you have identified that there is no opportunity for business, and this does not mean that you called three times in one day, and never got a hold of the prospect.

- Hunter mentality: you see an opportunity, and you capitalize on that opportunity. You cannot rely on someone else to do all of the gruntwork for you and deliver the picture perfect prospect. Find your business, it is out there, but you need to open your eyes and absorb.

- Cannot be backed into a corner: know your products, and know what kind of questions, comments, and concerns are typical with each kind of borrower. The last thing that your prospect who is preparing to make the largest financial committment in their life wants to hear is “Ummm, hrm…uhhhh….well lemme…..hold on…………ummmm……I don’t know.” One trait of a good salesperson is being able to admit that you do not know the answer, but you will make every effort to get that information to the prospect as expeditiously as possible. So, know your information…and if you don’t know it, don’t pretend you do. Be honest.

- You are refined and organized: these are vital. Disorganization promotes lost opportunity. Of course, the first thing that you want to do is call us and talk to us about a Lead Management System. Cut the fat. Get a process in place and stick to it. Don’t clutter your workspace, make a schedule to check and return emails and phone calls, and only set appointments and meetings that you have to be at. Everything is good in moderation, but don’t overwhelm yourself.

- Understand your value proposition: and communicate it accordingly. Why will Mr. and Mrs. Smith have the best and easiest transaction with you and your organization? What will you do to make their situation better? Make them understand that.

- Know your competition: this goes with the previous. But don’t ever trash them. And if you cannot do anything for your prospect, refer them over. I know, this sounds crazy, but your prospects will respect you, and will think of you in the future. Here at Leads360, we do our best to qualify a prospect before we sell them a Lead Management System. If the prospect is qualified, bring it on! If they are not qualified, we will refer them off to our competition if we think that there may be a synergy there. Of course we want everyone’s business, but we are not greedy and find it to be more advantageous to the prospect and ourself if we keep their best interest in mind. On the flipside, our knowledge of the competition allows us to steer fence sitters in our direction more often than not. See where I am going here?

- Network!: www.linkedin.com, www.facebook.com, www.myspace.com, www.wannanetwork.com, these are all great places to network if you do it correctly. Carry your business cards with you when you go to a bar, a restaurant, the mechanic, Disneyland, etc. But don’t be pushy. Be suave, and make friends and acquaintences. The referrals will start coming in. Go on Realtor caravan’s, go to local NAR meetings, bring Realtors cookies, print up flyers for them to use on open houses, offer to sit their open houses for them, etc.

These are just a few traits of an effective salesperson who will see success in this and every market. We’ve all got to live with the fact that it isn’t as easy to close a loan as it was a couple of years back. But we all have to eat, right? The above are some ingredients that need to go into the meal to make it delicious. Sure you may be able to make it without them, but you know what happens when you sway from the recipe…you never know what you’re going to end up with, and when it comes to getting a paycheck…predictability can be a nice thing.

More to come. Stay tuned to the blog and tell your friends.

- Morelli

Our own Lead Guru has written a great post about the hidden opportunity in bad leads, over at Lead Critic.

Purchased internet leads have a bad phone number percentage that ranges from 8% to 22%. Do you just return these leads without trying to salvage a deal? NO, NO, NO. Email that borrower assuming they entered in the phone number incorrectly intentionally.

Read the whole post here.

We devote a lot of our time and resources to helping our customers get to leads faster and more efficiently than their competition. In other words, day in and day out, we help our customers do the same thing that everyone else is doing, but we help them do it faster, better, and smarter. Lead Guru brings up a good point. There is often an equal or greater opportunity in knowing what your competition is NOT doing. Leads with bad phone numbers are likely to be ignored or given lower priority than those with valid phone numbers. Thus, for any lead that is sold to multiple brokers, a lead with a bad phone number may result in a higher chance of closing a deal. As Americans increasingly spend more time online, B2C sales must adjust their workflow to reach their customers in the way that they would like to be reached.