Just For Fun:

Not sure if you have seen any of Kevin Nalts videos, but you should check them out. Here is a more recent video about the “Enlightened Stupid Marketer”

I just feel like going off the topic of leads for a post and just give my two cents and appreciation for companies that understand the importance of their corporate culture. And I guess you can easily tie together your culture to the success of your sales team and company overall. We all know the story about Southwest and culture they breed, but an excellent article on corporate culture on the Harvard Business Review website/blog – which Jeff Solomon of Leads360 tipped me off too  through his blog about a year ago and has become my favorite blog to read – covers the affects of a great corporate culture.

The problem is that a culture that invests energy into the employees happiness, health and personal growth does not usually happen on its own, but rather it takes dedication, time and sometimes money to create. That investment, however, returns a huge ROI! Yes, increased sales!

So, in the mix all that is “important” don’t forget to foster an amazing corporate culture. This means possibly asking for help too.

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A company that does not get mentioned here as frequently as they probably should, for what ever reason, released their bi-annual benchmark study last week. I was going to cover it as soon as it came out, but I was actually going to make an effort to try and acquire the study, but did not have any luck, so this post isn’t as timely as I would have liked, but better late then never.

That said, many of you have probably already seen the press release, if not you can download it here, MortgageBot Benchmark Study. First, I love the fact that MortgageBot puts the time and effort into putting a report like this together for their clients. They have the data, so why not share it?

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Guest Post By Adrian Huth, friend and “good guy” in the industry.

Allow me to introduce myself…. I am an individual who has been in the lead generation industry going on 10 years.  I have seen the industry involve from the early days of the mortgage boom to the now recent collapse and repositioning to new verticals gaining increasing value such as loan modification and debt consolidation leads. I have seen the evolution of the search engines and SEO marketing and was there in the beginning of cost per click marketing.  I have witnessed how lead generation and lead quality was affected by the rise of the affiliate networks, display advertising, email marketing and incentivized leads.  I saw first hand how all these different types of marketing caused lead buyers to cancel and how some increased closing ratios.  Even back 4 years ago with all these types of lead generation I began to suspect that people are playing a game of buying and selling leads to each other and that everyone is becoming the enemy of the other.  Lead generation has now evolved into screwing people over and this has now become the de facto business model and state of the industry.

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Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.

I don’t know how many times lead buyers need to see this information, frankly not enough and why I say that because it finally clicked for me too. Maybe it clicks every time I see these types of studies. In fact, I recommend that every Lead Buyer or manager print this white paper up and pin it to your office wall. You should base your companies mantra or mission of this report. Speed is key!

LeadQual put together an excellent white paper that reiterates an older MIT study. It again proves how important it is to call leads within 5 minutes. Stop for a moment, open the white paper here and look at the chart. Notice how your chances of success decrease DRAMATICALLY after the first 5 minutes. People, 5 minutes goes by very fast! Calling leads within 10 minutes will not cut it! Do you even know the average speed to contact is at your company? If not, it should be priority number one to figure out how you are going to find this data and then benchmark it and improve it. I am certain that it is not as fast as you think.

I really liked the chart that showed the success rates by day! It backs up all the times have I had told people to buy leads on the weekend. Weekend leads perform better, period, enough said.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Glenn Houck, Co-Founder of LeadQual on the way to work yesterday and we discussed the white paper and more. If you have buyers struggling with leads, that you don’t think are getting the point, as much as you have told them, have them listen to this call.

Take a listen

I will be head to Costa Rica for a little R&R for 10 days, so there will obviously be a lack of post over the next week.

In the meantime, feel free to check out my blogroll and the websites of my sponsors.

Pink Floyd, The Wall Album, “Is there anybody out there?”

I like to often admit that I live in my own little bubble, however is it just me or has the mortgage industry gone quiet. We all know companies have disapeared, gone out of business or changed verticals, but it seems as though there are less conversations happening.

Maybe the conversations have simply changed. Maybe companies are focused on saving their ass they have left no time for further dialog or education. This, to me, would seem to be the most appropriate time to continue and further the conversations.

So is it just me?

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Boy, I can’t believe the year is almost over!

What a year 2008 it was. The mortgage and real estate industry continued to tank. Many of you changed your business model, entered new verticals and switched companies altogether. More companies went out of business and other opened for business for the first time. Mortgage guidelines tightened, banks stopped lending to each other and more recently rates dropped to all time lows, even just for a second.

The first African American was elected President, many are finding new life in new verticals and many were forced to optimze their businesses that were long over due.

It has been an amazing year no matter how you look at it and 2009 will be equally as amazing.

I want to wish you all a happy Holidays and thank you for being a loyal reader despite our possibly differences in opinion and having to put up with my horrible writing skills. Your participation and opinions have added more to this blog then any one post. So, thank you!

Happy Holidays!!

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Wow…back from a long 8 days.

What is labeled a vacation in my household unfortunately does not involve places like the Bahamas, Disneyland or a far away wonderland, but rather involves Banton Rouge Louisiana and the inlaws. Enough said really.

I must premise this by saying that a vacation anywhere is a vacation taken. I know very philosophical, but aside from staying at the inlaws for 8 days, in Baton Rouge, where there is little to do was actually fairly refreshing. Of course the shrimp poboy sandwiches and visits to Tony’s Seafood  didn’t hurt either. Which if you are ever have an urge for cajun food they also make some excellent products that can be purchased here or at your local store. (Sorry for the plug, but it is worth it). It is always nice simply to get away somewhere, although I am hoping next time will be the Bahamas, Disneyland or I would even settle for Sea World down the street.

Nonetheless, I am back from a long week and am looking forward to getting back in to the mix. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and you can look forward to more posts in the coming days.

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I know I wrote a piece not too long ago about how we needed the bail-out plan and that the government was being reckless by not approving it.  I have to admit, I am having second thoughts.

I recently had an interesting YouTube video sent my way.  If you haven’t seen it already, check it out here.  This video features Peter Schiff, who according to Wikipedia is the president of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc. a brokerage firm.  I know over the years, the CNBC’s, MSNBC’s and the like have always had him on their shows to represent the “Bear,” point of view; to the point where he earned the nickname, “Dr. Doom.”  Well, it turns out that in 2006 he called the financial mess that we are in now as if he was Nostradamus incarnate.

He spoke in an interview on CNBC in August 2006 (!) about an impending recession in 2007 or 2008 and that it will not last for quarters, but for years.  “The problem,” he said of the US economy is that, “there is too much consumption and borrowing and not enough production and savings.”  So, the American consumer will eventually stop borrowing and consuming and start rebuilding savings, especially when home equity values — which in 2006 he was already calling as artificially inflated — “evaporated.”  He continued to say that you can’t have an economy based on consumption correct the imbalance without a recession.  The recession should not be resisted, it should be embraced because the disease is the debt/finance consumption and the cure is to return to saving and producing, which in his opinion is essentially a recession.

So, are we perpetuating the problem with all of the economic bail out and stimulus bills?  I know I was absolutely for the stimulus plan for the financial sector.  But do we need to continue bailing out companies or will the system right itself when the economy, as Schiff intimates, corrects itself by consumers saving and producing once again?  As he says, “Medicine tastes bad, but you gotta swallow it.”If you have the time, watch the video in its entirety (it is almost 10 minutes long).  It is incredibly interesting to see Dr. Doom be constantly painted as the Chicken Little, (my favorite being by Ben Stein from Ferris Bueller fame saying the financial stocks are the great value and Merril Lynch is a steal at $66.  I hope he didn’t have too much of that stock). Point being, I now think I may have been wrong about the stimulus.  Its interesting considering the market is now rebounding after the bail out of Citi. Rates finally took a nice dip today.  I don’t claim to know why, could be a combination of easing tensions as a result of the Citi bailout as well as news that the government will be buying troubled loans from Fanny/Freddie.  But I think Schiff’s point is extremely powerful.

It is like the fable of the man building the house on sand rather than rock.  If we are not allowing our economy to re-build off of a solid foundation of production and savings – the two most basic concepts of fiscal solvency – then ultimately that foundation will be whisked away when the next wave hits the economy.  What is more, because home values will still not be based on anything real, only fictitious value driven by increased borrowing thereby driving home values back up, I think we may just be setting ourselves up for more and bigger falls.

What are your thoughts?

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Some time back, there was a conversation born from another post as to whether or not companies are really selling Internet leads in real-time.  I have to admit that the suggestion that companies are not, caught me by surprise.  The suggestion was that lead providers – and I am talking about the legitimate ones, not the bottom-of-the-barrel lead aggregators – are actually selling leads that were not generated in real time.  I think that this is nonsense.

There are exceptions to this rule.  For example, I know from some of my clients who participate, one major lead provider has a legacy program that is either called, or is simply referred to as the, “Lender of Last Resort,” program.  In this, lenders can act as a “safety net,” and leads that would otherwise go unmatched would be sent to these lenders of last resort at the end of the day, or even maybe the following day .  But in this example, the participating lenders know what they are getting, I have to believe, and are paying a significantly reduced price for these leads.  But other than that this, as well as other aged lead opportunities that other reputable lead companies provide, it is my belief that the lead companies are genuinely selling leads in real time.  I would love to hear from some representatives of the lead companies chime in on this to validate my position.

One concern was that companies allegedly stopped sending a time/date stamp as one of the data components with a lead.  I did a little investigating on behalf of my company and learned that while we do send that data, many of the lead management systems don’t capture and pass this data (if I am wrong, please jump in and correct me.  I’ll give the lead management companies a special invitation to do so since they are all always so shy about touting your wares [a little sarcasm]).  My suspicion for this is that in years past, there were some issues with the lead management systems delivering leads in real-time.

Specifically, I had numerous first hand experiences with a certain LMS (and I won’t throw them under the bus here because I know they have fixed this issue), where there were sometimes as much as 15 minutes between when we delivered the lead into the LMS and when the clients actually received the lead.  So, my guess is that because of this inefficiency in the past, maybe this data was not captured or provided on the LMS’s end.  But I would still maintain that the credible lead companies capture and send this information.

I would challenge you, the lead buyer, to verify that you are getting this information from your lead providers.  If you are not, find out if it is the result of the lead provider not sending the information, or the LMS not capturing the information.

The reason why you need to know this is because when your LO comes up to you and claims, “I just called this ‘real-time’ lead as soon as I got it but I was the 93^rd person (a little more sarcasm) to speak to the consumer,” you will now be able to address the facts.   The facts are, if the lead is time/date stamped then you can show this information to the LO.  If you don’t trust the time/date stamp, then you can take it up with your lead provider.  But odds are it is a real-time lead and the consumer simply did what most consumers do and that is go to multiple sites and fill out multiple forms and then complain as if they had no idea that they would get multiple calls per inquiry that they made.

So, I am not saying that re-selling doesn’t happen, but I do believe it to be the exception and not the rule.  What are your thoughts?

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I just received the following letter from BlogRush, which was a company that created a widget that was supposed to help drive traffic to your blog or website by posting the titles of your posts on other sites that had the same widget and it reiterates that fact that not all ideas will turn out like Facebook.

The days of thinking of a good idea and building it without taking into count how and if it will make money and it then being valued has a billion dollar company, are few and far between.

I would suggest that you insure your idea can produce a revenue before building out of the goodness of your heart.

Just a thought, though.

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So how is everyone doing? Are things great or what?! In all seriousness, at the risk of making a ridiculous understatement, this is a pretty tumultuous time in this country. There have been a couple of requests (thanks Booty Juice) for a post about the proposed $700 billion bail out, so I thought I would take a stab at it. A preliminary agreement was reached by the White House, the Treasury, and the House and Senate this weekend on the infusion of $700 billion via Henry Paulson and the Treasury Department. There have been some pretty strong words used to describe the Paulson proposal, socialism being among the most acute and divisive. Now, I think Leadcritic has remained successfully apolitical, even in this hotly contested campaign year, and I don’t want to change that now. I will also preface this post with the fact that I consider myself to be one of the more fiscally conservative people I know. I am not a fan in the least of taxes or government intervention in a free market economy. That said, we, as a country, need to ask ourselves what will the price be if the government does not provide this $700 billion?

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Just when you thought your team may be under minding your success you read this and think again.

“CEO murdered by mob of sacked Indian workers“

Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, a manufacturer of car parts that has its headquarters in Italy, died of severe head wounds on Monday after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said.

“I locked my door from inside and prayed they would not break in. See, my hands are trembling even three hours later,” one Italian consultant told reporters.

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In lieu of one of the biggest financial crisis in years my pillow case is looking better and better as a financial investment.

CNNMoney covers the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy , which will be the biggest in history and the Merrill Lynch buy out by Bank of America.

What are your thoughts on the issue?

Wow, I just realized that LeadCritic, the blog, had its first birthday a few days ago and just yesterday I posted my 300th article. It seems like it was years ago that the blog started, but to my surprise it was only a year ago. It is also quite shocking to think that I wrote 300, this post makes 301 articles. For someone who never really enjoyed writing this is shocking.

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Growing up I was the youngest child of 4. Being the youngest and especially of 4 I think my parents were slightly more lenient towards me than may older siblings. I was a good kid but never truly excelled in school because I didn’t apply myself until my college years. Through my high school years I received a lecture from my dad about setting goals. He would say, “Mike, you need to set goals for yourself. Without goals you will have no direction in life”. It finally clicked for me about 6 years ago, he was right.

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I have been feeling the Holiday spirit lately and in the spirit of the Holidays I have put together my own top 5 list of funny Holiday related photos.
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2008 is going to be a great year and I can’t wait to get started!

My goal for LeadCritic in 2008 is continue build quality content for Lead Buyers and Sellers. You may have noticed the poll on the right f this page asking “What topics do most enjoy reading on LeadCritic”. With this poll I wanted to find out what content you most enjoyed so that I can focus LeadCritic posts on those subjects.

To do this I will be presenting a few quest writers on LeadCritic that will go over Lead Buying 101 and more.

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There has been some interesting things happening behind closed doors for LeadCritic recently and I wanted to share some of it with you.

As some of you know I have been out of the mortgage industry for about 4 months now working as an Internet Marketing Manager for a big start up here in Southern California. I have never really left the industry, obviously you know this with the increased activity on this blog. I have never lost contact with any of my industry friends or contacts and have still tried to help lead buyers out with advice and tips either through the blog or the ton of emails I get. I have always believed that we as an industry should help each other by talking about the good providers and definitely the bad ones. My hope was that in some small way it would help clean the industry up. Has it actually done that, probably not, but I can be confident that lead providers that I have had success with and that I knew were generating leads the right way gained a few more sales from my recommendations.

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