I am still alive!

I wanted to let you all know that I was blessed to take a little vacation last week, hence not making a single post, which is obviously not typical. I gotta say though it was an excellent break from the norm. I rented an RV from Cruise America (I am sure you have all seen them driving through your local towns) and “cruised” up the California coast to San Fransisco and back. All along the way stopping and camping out for the night. We stopped in San Simeon to check out Hurst Castle and also the great town of Monterey to take the kids to the famous aquarium.

Crazy Family Trip

I am native Californian and have made the trip up to San Fransisco more then a few times taking both the coast and the inland route and each time it reminds me of how amazingly beautiful the state of California is. From the amazing cities to the vast farm lands and vineyards the state has to offer, it was all amazing and relaxing to take in via an RV. Granted the occasional breakdown from the kids kept the blood flowing, it was a great trip.

I will be back in action this week with a few posts and of course will be covering the up and coming LeadsCon East. To those who have emailed me, I will be getting back to you soon!

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Salesforce.com announced today that they have made cash offer of $142 million to purchase Jigsaw.

Saleforce.com, who recently raised cash through taking on $575 million in debt made it clear by bringing aboard a number of M&A specialists that they were going to  use much of the cash to acquire companies. Jigsaw, being the first major acquisition by SalesForce, I think, is a company that provides massive amounts of business contacts by encouraging people to keep their own information up-to-date. Similar to SalesGenie and Hoovers, Jigsaw can be described as a lead generation service for companies and people looking to build lists and contacts in the btob world.

According to the press release:

Salesforce.com to Deliver the Business Contact Data Critical to CRM Success
The process of trying to acquire, complete and cleanse business contact data is far too taxing and inefficient to meet the modern needs of companies in today’s competitive marketplace. Historically, companies have spent vast amounts of time and resources to build a database of complete contact information for their sales organization only to see its quality quickly deteriorate. With the integrated Jigsaw and salesforce.com solution, companies will be able to better acquire and cleanse all business contact data. While Jigsaw will remain open to all CRM systems, current salesforce.com customers will find an integrated experience that includes an automated process for data cleansing. In addition, since Jigsaw products are already integrated with salesforce.com technologies, when Salesforce Chatter becomes generally available later this year, users will be able to receive real-time feeds when data changes or requires cleansing.

I seriously doubt any backlash, but I would assume similar companies that have built applications for SalesForce are probably concerned about the obvious possibilities of favoritism. Nevertheless it is going to be interesting to watch SalesForce.com over the next 12-18 months and what additional acquisitions they make with their newly acquired cash flow and whether or not they will continue to acquire companies that are already functioning applications.

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Just wanted to let you all know that LeadCritic may be down for a few hours this evening while I finally make some very needed back end upgrades.

Thanks for your patience!

See you on the other side.

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IAC falls short of analyst expectations due to LendingTree. IAC net income dropped by 24 cents a share, but excludinga few verticals (LendingTree) IAC actually beat estimates by 2 cents.

LendingTree revenue fell 41 percent to $63 million because of the deteriorating mortgage market and a decline in real- estate values, IAC said. The unit posted an operating loss of $5.6 million.

We can now have a little more insight to last months changes.

Commenting on results, IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said, “With the exception of LendingTree, this was a satisfactory quarter for IAC. Trends at our businesses are good, and particularly so at HSN, where I believe that Mindy Grossman and her team have now become acclimated and are beginning to demonstrate the great retailing smarts that we knew they were capable of.”

This is from CNN Money:

TRANSACTIONS

Q3 2007      Q3 2006     Growth
Revenue  $ in millions
Ticketmaster                              $301.3       $265.5        13%
LendingTree                                 63.0        106.0       -41%
Real Estate                                    13.8         15.9       -13%
ServiceMagic                                24.6         18.5        33%
Intra-sector elimination              (0.1)         -           NM
$402.6       $405.9        -1%
Operating Income Before Amortization
Ticketmaster                            $61.9        $57.0         9%
LendingTree                              (3.2)        18.8         NM
Real Estate                              (3.9)        (6.3)       38%
ServiceMagic                              5.4          6.0       -10%
$60.3        $75.6       -20%
Operating Income (Loss)
Ticketmaster                            $54.0        $50.5         7%
LendingTree                              (5.6)        15.2         NM
Real Estate                              (4.8)        (8.0)       40%
ServiceMagic                              4.6          5.1        -9%
$48.2        $62.7       -23%

Hold on folks the ride is far from over.

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Ed-u-ma-ka-shon – The process of being educated informally,  LOL

Education seems to be the focus in the mortgage space these days.  This is taking place in all areas of the business.  From the lead vendors and lead management software providers down to the real estate agents taking refresher classes, a Surge in education is taking place.

Back in the day lead vendors asked you “How many leads do you need” – “What states are in you” – “What are your filters and criteria”?  I called this working from the bottom up.  Now they ask, “Do you use lead management software” – “What type of lending do you do” – “How quickly do you contact the leads we sell you”, etc.  This is what I call working from the top down.  Understanding how a client operates gives lead vendors the best chance to suggest operational improvements that can keep that client in business and/or buying their leads.

Even the Lead Management Software companies have taken strides in this area.  Several months back Leads360.com formed a consulting division within the company appropriately called Professional Services.  This new division visits client locations to learn about each business and then offers operational best practices that can include additional training, workflow improvements and adjustments and invitations to one of the client roundtables held at their corporate office in
Los Angeles.

Others do something similar.  Bill Rice of Kaleidico has always taken an active role teaching and sharing ideals and is a firm believer in educating the clients and loan officers.  In addition, blogs have taken on the role of training and educating.  Lead Critic and this blog in particular has led the way teaching mortgage best practices, shared experiences etc for quite some time.

Consulting is nothing new.  Other business verticals have done it for years, international consulting, etc.  I wonder will this trend in our space continue or will it last only as long as the downturn in the market lasts. 

As some of you know I am located in the “worlds finest city”, San Diego, however the worlds finest city is ablaze and smoke and fire seem to be everywhere.

My family and I are amongst the 300,000+ that have been forced out of there house because of the mandatory evacuations. Don’t worry though, our house and neighborhood was just missed by the fast moving blaze and all should be okay. I just hope we can get back in to our house soon!

Thank goodness we have a number of good friends that have offered to take us in, but it is always difficult with little ones to be away from home.

We actually tried to book a hotel room, but 3 hours of the major evacuations, every hotel room in San Diego was booked. Many people unfortunately are not as lucky to have a great group of friends and are forced to stay at Qualcomm stadium. Unlike Katrina, the atmosphere and amount of help and resources that are being provided for the stranded people is overwhelming. Yes, they are even receiving massage’s and unlimited amounts of pizza and hot dogs, but don’t let that fool you. Having to watch a football or baseball game at the Q is difficult enough let alone sleeping there over night.

Anyway just wanted to drop you a quick note and show a few pictures with you.

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Ok so this Irish-Mexican just got back from the MBA conference in Boston. WOW.

This was my first time visiting
Boston and I wanted to get the most out of it.

My comrade in arms and I took the Sunday night redeye out of LAX and landed early Monday morning in Boston. Our goal was to meet & greet and ID what the 2007 MBA offered.

I knew that Bono and Branson were keynote speakers and wondered what ideas a rock star or daredevil would offer the mortgage industry. It seems I have forgotten the last four years of mortgage lending were dominated by rock star LO’s and daredevil lenders offering programs never heard of, how apropos, heheheh.

This was my first MBA visit so I was unsure of what to expect. While my options were open to attending the sessions and keynote speeches I found the good stuff was in the exhibits. Several attendees mentioned this was the lowest level of attendance since MBA Canada after 9/11. Too bad, many great companies focused on nurturing the client cycle and keeping us in business.

One session I attended was “Second General Session: Mortgage Industry Executives Outlook.” This session was comprised of four major lenders offering their insight and outlook on things to come. Get further information from MBA on the speakers. VP’s of origination from Chase, JP, Freddie, and Fannie told us that things are not good. For the most part all agreed that until Q4 of 2009 or beyond the devaluation of the housing market and liquidity sensitivity will continue to reign in any possible positive outlook for the mortgage space. Nothing new there, huh?

Notable vendors included pricing engines, LOS alternatives, third party marketing specialists, and language specialists. I spent time visiting the booths sponsored by competitors of Calyx or Ecompass. Their sales pitch stated the prior focused on 5-10 man shops while they worked with 200+ man shops. The idea behind these newer players was the focus on complete service. Optimal Blue touted lead management, vendor management, and pricing engines in a single application. Could they be competitors to Lead Management Software companies? LLE provides communications solutions in any language. This can be ideal for small to medium shop that wants a foreign language division but cannot dedicate resources for it – think Spanish speaking lending in the Southwest. What about reverse mortgages? If you Google reverse mortgage leads, you end up with NR Leads out of
San Diego. Not necessarily someone I recommend you buy leads from – Try Lender Lead Solutions out of
Melville NY. They combine a media driven lead with correspondent lending.

Well that is all for now.

Same time, same channel next week. Guru out!

By popular demand the forum is back and better than before, minus all the good info that was in there, sorry. I still feel bad about that. Either way, it is open for registration.

Everyone sign up and be active. I am going to need all of your help to get the thing going again. So post questions, comments, gossip and anything else that pertains to the industry.

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Hello LeadCritic readers,

If you have tried to access the forum recently you will know that it is not available. I am currently trying to update the forum to reduce the amount of spam. You may not notice it, but I spend about 15 minutes a night deleting spam and I finally said enough is enough. I am updating the forum and hopefully everything will go smoothly and it should be back up within 24hrs.

Thank you for your patients.

Last week Good Morning America produced a piece on the subject of working on the weekends. The piece highlights Marc Diana, CEO of LeadPoint and his family.

HERE IT IS

The interesting part of the video is at the 2:10 minute mark. Marc tells is wife that “sooner than later he will be able to spend more time” with her and their son. Marc then looks at the interviewer with raised eyebrows and says “6 months away”. That statement obviously raises a few questions. What, 6 months away is going to allow him to spend more time with his wife and new son? Vacation, Holiday break, an expiration of an employment contract or a LeadPoint liquidation?

LeadPoint has always had an exit plan that included a possible acquisition, could this now be in the works?

Maybe we will find out in 6 months.

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