Bill Rice Internet Marketing > mortgage

Bailout Passes-Prepare Your Lead Management and Sales Teams

October 6, 2008 By

Last week was probably the most anti-climactic government goat ropes in history. Replete with drama, chicken littles, and pronouncements of Armageddon; the end of the week brought a passed $700 billion bailout. Now the kicker. After all of this the stock market plunges again, Congress confesses this may only be the first step, and economist say, “I told you so.”

Now, back to important stuff. If you are in the mortgage or real estate industry you have a business to run in all of this mess.

Here are some tips to wade (efficiently) through all this muck and confusion politicians and media are causing:

Flood of Customer Inquiries

The first order, logical effect of the media coverage is a flood of customer inquiries (mortgage leads and debt leads) trying to figure out what the heck is going on. These means that your opportunity to talk to customers about mortgages and financing options will go up.

However, if you want to increase your sales production, instead of just increasing your sales activities you are going to have to work smarter.

Here is the first warning: You may feel like it is a good month, it will feel good to talk to a lot of leads, but if you are only playing for the short-term gain you will be left unfulfilled at the end of the month.

Increase in Unqualified Leads

Most of the increase in leads will be from unqualified borrowers and potential home buyers that are stoked with hope from all the media hype around “bailouts,” “rescues,” and “loosing credit.”

We know that government passing legislation does not all the sudden trigger money falling from helicopters.

So, if you are smart set up a pre-qualification team that quickly follows-up and triages all of your leads. Transfer the qualified prospects into your loan officers and skillfully transition your unqualified leads into a credit repair, smart homeowner, or future borrower lead nurturing marketing program–they will be customers some day.

Educate Your Loan Officers

Get your loan officers ready to turn leads into smarter consumers. Remember, all of these leads over the next several months–qualified and unqualified–are coming with questions. You can try to baffle them with bullshit, push the same verbal gymnastics to induce a close, or you can have an informative conversation.

Believe me if you educate your loan officers to have intelligent and informed conversations you will double your sales. You will close the qualified leads immediately and you will turn unqualified leads into smart, credit fixing, down payment saving future customers.

Ramp Up Your Lead Nurturing

If you build your bailout strategy correctly you will be using the volatility in rates and mortgage programs to stuff your database full of relationships.

A majority of Americans will continue to own homes now and in the future. If you harvest this flood of customer inquiries and questions, putting them into a capable lead nurturing program, you will be creating a long term growth strategy.

Categorize you customers into purchase mortgage, refinance mortgage, credit repair, downpayment savers, and possibly a few other segments. Then design custom email, mail, and call back strategies to inform and educate these customer segments into referrals and future clients.

The great news is that confusion, volatility, and fear create an incredible opportunity to build your business with integrity and really add value to your clients.

Filed Under: Lead Management, Sales Management Tagged With: bailout, mortgage, mortgage leads, mortgage rescue

Have You Designed Your Housing and Economic Recovery Act Marketing Plan?

July 30, 2008 By

The recent Federal Economic Stimulus package and now the more permanent Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 is opening a whole spectrum of new people you can help.

These programs are not simple for consumers to understand, but therein lies the opportunity. Put on your mortgage adviser hat and get to educating.

You should develop marketing campaigns to help struggling home owners and savvy home buyers interested heavily discounted homes, such as foreclosures and short sales.

Make sure you are focused on the burning question–Am I Eligible?

Learning about FHA

The latest Housing and Economic Recovery Act makes permanent some very helpful reforms to FHA lending standards. The following are some key opportunities:

  • Permanent FHA loan limits at the greater of $271,050 or 115% of the local median home price, capped at $625,500
  • Streamlined programs for FHA condos and manufactured home programs
  • FHA foreclosure rescue allowing lenders to do principle reductions and refinance into 30 year fixed mortgages at 90% of the appraised value, with a loan limit of $550,440

How it Applies to the Market You Serve

The new permanent FHA program reforms maintain the local nature of their eligibility requirements. Therefore, you need to make sure that you understand how the provisions apply to your service areas.

The local nature of these FHA eligibility requirements is causing a significant amount of uncertainty and confusion for current home owners and potential home buyers. This becomes your opportunity to help.

Simple, Help-based Marketing

The local structure of the FHA programs makes for a prime opportunity to launch hyper-local education programs and become the local FHA mortgage and real estate expert. Here are some simple ideas to claim your position as the local FHA guru:

  • Offer brief presentations on the new FHA assistance programs to local civic groups
  • Offer home owner assistance seminars or information to local libraries
  • Post local FHA qualification and eligibility information on your local website or blog
  • Email or direct mail your past prospects and clients an FHA reform alert
  • Offer free FHA qualification and eligibility consultations

These reforms were meant to help people. It is your job to get the word out and educate home owners and home buyer that you have programs to ease their pain.

Filed Under: Lead Generation Tagged With: fha, gse, housing and economic recovery act, Lead Generation, marketing, mortgage

The Mortgage Market is Soiled. You Better Have a Trust Strategy.

July 21, 2008 By

If you are a mortgage broker and you haven’t already figured this one out I will state it bluntly–no one trusts us! Sure there is an enormous amount of finger pointing going on. From Wall Street to Main Street everyone has an opinion on who got us here. Guess what? The customer thinks it was you.

Snapshot of the Florida Mortgage Market

For the purpose of clarity, I am going to focus in on one market–Florida. However, don’t absolve yourself because you are not a mortgage broker in Florida.

The Miami Herald launched an investigative series entitled “Borrowers Betrayed,” written by Jack Dolan, Rob Barry, and Matthew Haggman. These reporters dig in to the nasty underbelly of Florida mortgage originations during the housing and mortgage refinancing boom.

The Miami Herald investigation clearly comes in with an angle on consumer hot buttons: Loan officers with criminal records, identity theft, no background checks, and trails of victims.

The Miami Herald facts are terrifying to your prospective customers:

  • From 2000 to 2007, regulators allowed at least 10,529 people with criminal records to work in the mortgage profession. Of those, 4,065 cleared background checks after committing crimes that state law specifically requires regulators to screen, including fraud, bank robbery, racketeering and extortion.
  • More than half the people who wrote mortgages in Florida during that period were not subject to any criminal background check. Despite repeated pleas from industry leaders to screen them, Florida regulators have refused.
  • Confronted with a growing epidemic of mortgage fraud — Florida now has the highest rate in the nation — the number of license revocations declined over the last five years, leaving borrowers at the mercy of predatory brokers.
  • During the peak of the housing boom, the Office of Financial Regulation ignored a state law enacted in 2006 that compelled it to perform nationwide criminal background checks on applicants. That failure allowed people convicted in other states — and in federal court — to peddle loans in Florida without any scrutiny.
  • Regulators allowed at least 20 brokers to keep their licenses even after committing the one crime that seemed sure to get them banned from the industry: mortgage fraud.


This is how the customer will increasingly come to know you.

Create a Trust Strategy

You could launch into a flawless debate on who else is responsible. However, I suggest a more productive effort–build a strategy. Create a Trust Strategy.

Put your customer at the center of your business. Steps into your client’s experience and emotions: distrust, fear, ignorance, vulnerable, uncertain. Then design a process that systematically wipes out each of those fears.

Building Your Personal Brand

One thing is for certain, criminals don’t go around building a personal and long-term brand. No, they maintain low profiles and bounce from one victim honeypot to the next.

Spend time on building your personal brand. This is easily done both on and off-line. Certainly have your own web page and blog, but also make sure that local businesses and civic groups know you too. Get involved in community activities. This branding building and community involvement will build a lot of good, verifiable context to your name.

Don’t be complacent about personal brand building. Even if you are backed by a big coorporate brand, people buy from people. Give your client complete confidence in your integrity, as well as your company’s.

Establish Authority

It is one thing to be a nice person, but are you competent. This is going to be the next big question in a mortgage customer’s mind. After all there were probably as many good as there were bad people that got folks into bad loans from simple incompetence.

Remember the earlier list of client fears? Education and knowledge sharing is a valuable way to build trust and remove feelings of ignorance and uncertainty for the mortgage transaction. Create a blog, newsletter, or even weekly column in the local newspaper to educate your borrower before and during their mortgage experience.

Get Endorsed

Renowned expert on influence and persuasion, Robert Cialdini highlights the powerful effect of social proofing in his books and presentations. The principle is simple: “The greater number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.” It is a simple due diligence short cut. If my friends and neighbors trust this person then so will I.

Make sure this principle is in your Trust Strategy. Get testimonials. Nurture public endorsements. Earn the respect of local personalities and influencers. Build referral marketing into your customer loyalty program.

“Climbing the Distrust Mountain”

This advice should have been first because of its power. However, I didn’t want you to miss it. Morgan Brown, of BlownMortgage.com described a process of “Climbing the Distrust Mountain” with mortgage customers. I have linked to it many times, but I will give you the simple technique here.

Trust, in any relationship, is built or destroyed with a series of simple promises. You either fulfill them or you don’t. Promises like:

  • I will call you right back
  • I will check on the status of your appraisal
  • I will give you tips on how to improve your credit
  • I will keep you updated throughout the process
  • If you have any questions call me (and I will answer)

If you want a mortgage customer to trust you after this mortgage mess you have to make a lot of little promises and keep everyone.

What other things should be in your Trust Strategy?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: FL, Florida, Florida Mortgage, Miami, Miami Herald, mortgage, mortgage borrowers, mortgage fraud, mortgage market

Web 2.0 Mortgage Marketing, It’s Social!

June 11, 2008 By

The visionaries behind The Cluetrain Manifesto prophetically summed up our current market opportunity in the first of 95 theses–”Markets are conversations.” The folks you want as customers are increasingly expecting conversations. Your challenge? Figure out how to make an introduction. And I am going to give you the secrets–step-by-step…

Listen First

Since markets are conversations, the nice thing is people (generally) don’t mind you joining the discussion. This give you an enormous opportunity to learn. Take advantage of it.

Listen to other experts, competitors, and practitioners. But, most importantly listen to your customers.

Most miss this opportunity. The powerful thing about listening is that people talk about your products and services and what they want from them. Nowhere is it easier to do market research and survey your customers’ attitudes than on the Web. You just have to tune in.

Looking for the smartest and best in the business at Web 2.0 mortgage marketing? They are the folks watching their prospective customers. Here are the key things you should be learning?

  • Who are they?
  • Who do they talk to?
  • What do they talk about?
  • What words they use?


I highlighted a very important concept above, but let’s not get too far ahead.

Obviously, from the title–Mortgage Marketing–we are all in the mortgage business. Don’t forget your customers are not. They don’t talk to mortgage people. They don’t talk about mortgage, unless forced to. And they don’t know what FHA, subprime, and Fannie Mae are.

Search is your friend, especially the blog search engines. Remember you are looking for conversations. Conversations about homes, buying homes, refinancing homes, mortgages, mortgage brokers, mortgage scams, real estate rip offs (yes, look for hateful conversations too). Here are some good places to start for conversations:


Back to words! This is the number one failure in marketing and a death sentence in Internet marketing. On the Web, words are how customers find us. If you use words that they don’t–you guessed it: No conversation!

These conversations, from blogs, discussion groups, and Twitter, are short and candid. Write them down and use them.

Identify a Niche

You know where they are, who they talk to, and the funny words they use. The next order of business is to find out what they want (not what they need)–another common marketing blunder.

Their conversations will give you valuable information. It will reveal their pain, like their monthly payments going up unexpectedly, a job loss, or may be a divorce that is going to force them to reconsider their current home or loan. Maybe they are just concerned about the stability of their lender or even getting a bargain on a foreclosure.

Once you know what they want and how they ask for it, build your Web 2.0 mortgage marketing platform.

Building a Web 2.0 Social Platform

Web 2.0 mortgage marketing is all about directly engaging your potential customers in conversation, but you need an identity. This is the role of your website or blog. Almost every social application on the Internet associates you with a website. If you don’t have a website people can’t learn more about you–and your efforts are already doomed.

How you design and build you home base is critical to your success. Did I mention it is your identity? This is how people are going to decide if they want your expert mortgage counsel.

I typically suggest a blog. It is simple and versatile. Plus, it is a conversation.

Here are a few suggestions on where to get a blog:


The other consideration to this platform is your name (identity), which in the Web world is a domain name. Take some time in figuring out the right name. It doesn’t have to be your company name, and probably shouldn’t be.

Here are some creative guidelines:

  • Consider your list of words your customers use
  • Consider the niche you have selected
  • Short is better
  • Register only .com, .org, .net


With your social identity and home in place it is time to fill it with credibility.

Content in King

Web copy is the current king of Internet marketing and lead generation. You need to not only know how to write, but what to write. Again, go back to your list of words your customers use. Take each one and design your Web site to talk about each of these key words.

Here are some good resources on writing good copy for your website or blog:


Your written words are critical because they are the language of Google and other search engines. However, don’t miss the growing importance of other media types, like audio and video. These richer media types help to make a more personal conversation. Consider adding in podcast, short audio messages, as well as video into your social platform.

Here are some resources for developing out your audio and video content:


Content builds credibility and trust, the two critical components in any sales. Make sure your mortgage marketing plan understands the impact of content to a simpler sale.

Develop Amplifier Relationships

Okay, we have a platform and lots of valuable content. But, who knew? The Internet is a big place. You, alone, screaming into an already buzzing conference hall filled with good conversations is not going to get you noticed.

You need amplifiers. People who find you interesting and are willing to tell others. Hopefully, some of these already have a big audience.

This, like the conventional offline Rolodex, is the role of social networks. Connecting with people who have audiences is the quickest way to get into the conversation.

Great places to build a social network of amplifiers:


These are all great tools and people on the Web love to share, but no one likes someone how takes advantage of a relationship. Be respectful and add value first. Even in little ways.

Distribution Makes a Kingdom

Being a king is only interesting if you command a kingdom.

In the Internet world that is an audience of potential buyers that respond to your recommendations and/or you have a networks of amplifiers that brings this ability.

Creating that kingdom is a process of distributing your name, your value, and your content.

The most effective way of executing that distribution is built into a lot of the principles I have already introduced:


Add to these inherent distribution channels some well placed personal emails and you will have a kingdom in no time.

Assembling the Web 2.0 Toolbox

You have the road map. A mortgage marketing plan that should have you flowing leads in no time, but what are some tools you should have on hand to run your new mortgage marketing empire?

Here are some of the basics:


The key to building your mortgage marketing platform is trying, testing, tweaking and re-testing. These tools allow you to produce and try a variety of approaches to your social market.

Filed Under: Lead Generation Tagged With: blogging, blogs, cluetrain, generating mortgage business, Lead Generation, marketing, mortgage, web 2.0

Big Success is about Stocking Your Private Fishing Hole

April 30, 2008 By

I remember growing up and my Dad always talking about his secret to fishing success. He would say, “Billy, the biggest and the best fishing is in these little private ponds.” He was on to something…

Then, in 1999 Seth Godin wrote his seminal book “Permission Marketing” that touched off so many other innovative marketing mind altering quick-reads. But, the key concept that may apply more today than ever before gets lost in the subtitle: “Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers.” This is really the difference isn’t it?

This concept, my friends, is the secret to BIG success.

How Mortgage Brokers Get it Wrong

Often I see sales professionals hop from one hot commodity to the next. You sell mortgages when they are flying off the shelf, then cars, or insurance. You tell yourself, “it doesn’t matter I can sell anything.” Yet, what you really know inside is: I can’t sell anything, I don’t know how to create value, instead I am trying to follow the easy money. Unfortunately, the money probably isn’t really that easy, the pay certainly is not significant, and you find yourself on a treadmill that will definitely drive you mad.

Stop the madness, step off the treadmill, and change your perspective. Stop thinking about making $100,000 and start thinking about stocking a private fishing hole, a pond filled with customers.

How to Start Stocking the Pond

Now that you know you need a stocked pond, how do you start?

If you have been in the business for a while you probably have some fish to seed the pond. Dust off those old files in the corner and get them into your lead managements system (software makes it easier and more scalable, but even index cards can get you started).

If you are new to the business, or even trying to jump start things purchasing mortgage leads may be a good start. Even pond owners buy fingerlings to get their stock their ponds started. However, don’t attempt this until you have prepared your business to work pay per lead business.

Lead Nurturing

Once you have your “feeder fish” past clients and/or purchased mortgage leads you need to start your lead nurturing programs. If you are buying leads, certainly begin by immediately contacting and addressing immediate needs. If you a seeding your customer pond with past clients then make sure you reconnect in a valuable way. Send them a brief update on their mortgage or general state of the market.

Once you have started that initial connection begin to understand how they want to be feed. A key element to this is lead tracking, seeing how your customers react to different approaches and methods. Do they react better to an email newsletter, a blog, regular mortgage check-ups, Twitter? Then design the programs, may be multiple programs, to keep those loyal clients in your private pond.

Keep Stocking the Pond

Once you begin to grow that loyal customer base don’t forget to continue stocking the pond. You will always have natural attrition to your network of customer. That is why it is best to have constructed a system, a mortgage lead management process that can continually fuel your current sales, referrals, and new adds to your stock pond.

Examples of Working Pond Stocking

Lead Generation – LendingTree
Mortgage Industry – Quizzle
Network Marketing (MLM) – Quixtar
Individual – Jason Nation

How do you stock your favorite customer fishing hole?

Filed Under: Lead Generation, Lead Management Tagged With: lead tracking, mortgage, mortgage lead management, mortgage leads, pay per lead

GTD Sometimes Just Means Getting Started

April 2, 2008 By

I will officially confess my affinity for productivity porn. I have read David Allen’s Getting Things Done and enjoy the pearls at 43Folders and LifeHacker. I have even been known to fill a few moleskins in my day. Luckily, I appear to be in good company with Marc Andreessen, whose modified GTD is closer to my own processes.

But!

Far too often we get bogged down in the preparation to be productive. Or, sometimes even worse, the tracking of that productivity.

This has long been a frustration of mine. The business world is littered with consultants, pundits, critics, analyst, and my personal favorite–silver bullet business books. Each can be incrementally valuable, but most times they are simply a distraction to simply getting started.

My recurring itch for this topic was flared today by back-to-back posts at LeadCritic on reports and metrics. You can see where I am going with this if you have ever crossed my banter on this topic in the past, on LeadCritic:

As you will see in the whitepaper, I am a big advocate of instituting metrics in a framework designed for action. My approach starts with a few high-level defined objectives. They should be broad in scope, but specifically targeted at the top line (bottomline, expense, metrics ALWAYS get you looking at your feet and those kids ALWAYS lose).

and my own Better Closer, back in 2006:

Although metrics and analytics are critical to the continual improvement of any business process, it does not ensure what you have learned will get implemented. This can be a critical disconnect in high velocity business process.

Sales is hard. It is a constant roller coaster of successes and failures. Customer contact and engagement is the biggest enemy and fear of even the best sales person.

The last thing a good sales force needs is to be bogged in opportunities to delay that next engagement. Reports and metrics often become that convenient distraction. Slicing and dicing reports to look for that perfect set of leads to try is wasted production. Lead management, by definition, should be maximizing your opportunities–automatically. Reports and metrics should be incidental to performance and indicative of production. More simply, reports and metrics don’t convert they only indicate if you did.

The single best thing you can do for your sales process is reposition the function of reporting.

Metrics and reports do not define or create a process. They should not be the front-end of lead management. They should be the passive observation of trends and behaviors. Indicators and triggers for adjustment.

This is captured perfectly by this story; from a guy that truly gets how you make analytics matter, Jamie McDonald:

At lunch one day with the CEO of the business, I saw him pull a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. It was his one page dashboard. His four key metrics:

  • number of visits to the park in the previous day (volume measure for his business)
  • avg. wait time at the rides
  • avg. spend per park visitor
  • hotel occupancy rate and average daily rate

In my mind, more complex than this often begs the question, “do you know what business you are in?”

Growing your business or your revenue is rarely about focusing on efficiency (reports and metrics), but rather your ability to repeatedly execute getting started.

Filed Under: Lead Generation, Lead Management, Social Selling Tagged With: leadcritic, leads, metrics, mortgage, sparkroom
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