LEADCRITICManage Mortgage Leads Better and Make More Money
Filed Under: featured, Kaleidico, Mortgage & Real Estate, LEAD Management, Technology
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It is funny how often times the simplest, most often overlooked, things are what can make us the most successful. Lead management is one of those things. Sure, some of the details can get complex, but the concept is simple. And lead management software has made the processes a snap to implement.
At the end of the day an effective lead management system is one that solves the much researched problem of efficient supply chain management.
Optimizing your lead management system, whether it is software or manual, is fundamentally a process of keeping a delicate balance of:
- raw materials or inventory (leads),
- manufacturing capacity or through-put (sales capacity–ability, motivation, and willingness to work through the quantity of leads),
- ability to be efficient with the raw material (leads) with limited waste (lack of follow-up or “single call and dump”),
- ability to match the end consumer’s demand (in this context the lender, wholesaler, or investor),
- and the ability to analyze and measure for purposes of improvement
The concept is fairly simple the hard part is implementing without making the process too complex to execute or scaling your process beyond you and a couple of buddies type mortgage operation. Those who figure it out will be the big survivors and winners in this mortgage market.
Copy of presentation: Optimizing Lead Management, by Kaleidico
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Popularity: 4% [?]
9 Comment(s)
2 Trackback(s)
- From Mortgage Lead Management–Keep It Simple Stupid! : Better Closer | Mar 3, 2008
- From Top 100 Tips for Lead Management and Sales Success : Better Closer | Mar 26, 2008
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phil mccanter | Mar 2, 2008 | Reply
A thing that bothers me in the supply chain analogy is that “leads” are real people. They have needs, expectations, and feelings. Unlike other raw materials like oil, steel pork belly or milk, if they have a bad experience (if they feel treated like - well, a commodity or piece of meat - they can act out to damage the very “supply chain” they are part of. Similarly, if they have a great experience they can recommend friends and lower the cost of “raw materials” for the supply chain they have been a part of. So, I think viewing consumers as part of a spply chain has some merit but I don’t think the analogy if all that clean. What are your thoughts, Bill, about how a supply chain involving consumers (who cannot be “owned” - at least until they become a “loanl) is same or different as a supply chain involving inanimate commodities (that can be ownedm)
Bill Rice | Mar 3, 2008 | Reply
Phil,
You are spot on in pointing out that we often treat people as “leads” in this business. Obviously, you are a first time reader of mine, since I make a habit of beating that drum at least once a month–take a look at some of my most recent stuff on customers: http://bettercloser.com/?s=customers.
My point with the supply chain analogy is that thinking through, and truly simplifying the process and making it observable will avoid the “blender” effect we often give customers.
Let me give you a couple of examples of how my process agrees with you:
1. The top conversion improvement in any shop I have been involved with was the prompt call-back, but because we treat them like leads we do things like power dial or auto dial. This process if you have been on the customer side creates a clumsy and awkward connection even with the best rep. Many statistics show that it makes a lot of calls in a short amount of time, but loses more deals.
2. The blender: a lot of processes have customers (leads) being ripped from pipelines either trying to get it called or worse ripped from a called pipeline trying to get it contacted. Again a horrible way to treat a customer.
3. My latest favorite that I recently heard about–throw the “bad” leads into a “shark-tank” and let loan officers scrounge through them to find worthy ones. Meanwhile, grinding their customer experience up in the process.
I agree with you that we have to be careful of the words you use, but a good, simple, clean process is the path to a better customer experience. Getting too clever on processes often puts the customer in the blender.
Chris Johnson | Mar 3, 2008 | Reply
Do you publish a full RSS feed? I am assuming that the partial feeds are an error, because the content is simply too good to be created by someone that wouldn’t do full feeds.
phil mccanter | Mar 3, 2008 | Reply
Thanks Phik. I agree that process equals success in this business. I think I will think of it a “customer acquisition” process rather than a supply chain one, but to your points perhaps that is just semantics.
Somebody should invent a better version of caller I’d that shows the company name, LO name, website info, bbb rating and consumer ratings of the originating incoming call. It should also have a “this is spam” button on your phone, that if pressed by the receiving party, banishes the caller from ever ringing you again.
That may help with some (some not all) some of the poor call center tactics.
Lead Critic | Mar 3, 2008 | Reply
Chris,
The partial feeds are to encourage people to come to the actual site and are not an error.
A Lead Buyer | Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
It would maker it easier to read on a Blackberry if the RSS was full.
Lead Critic | Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
Regarding the RSS feed listing only a part of the article. I do this for SEO reasons too. Blogs are notorious for duplicate content and this cuts it down. This helps the blog rank organically.
A Lead Buyer | Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
sure that makes sense. I was just being selfinsh
Noel Collins | Mar 7, 2008 | Reply
wow…pure junk spam