Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.
This morning on the way to work I had the pleasure of catching up with Kaleidico’s founder Bill Rice. We covered a number of topics from his acquisition of Lenderama, building online communities, managing leads today compared to 4 years ago in the mortgage lead buying prime, referral programs and finally the fate of the loan modification industry and low mortgage rates.

Take a listen and let me know what you think.

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If you didn’t know already it is LMS week here at LeadCritic where I cover everything “Lead Management”. I wish I put that much thought into, but I don’t. In any case it seems that the press releases from a few LMS companies have fallen in succession and have covered comparable topics. Yesterday, I covered the launch of Debt Soft in the Leads360 platform and today Kaleidico launched their Icosales 5.0.

According to their press release, they have taken the strategy of making Icosales usable by any sales staff rather then targeting a few specific verticals.

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Bill Rice the founder of Kaleidico a Lead Management Software company has joined the MortgageLoan.com team. According to his LinkedIn profile he is now holding the role of Vice President of Content and Managing Editor at the lead generation company.

MortgageLoan.com which holds many high ranking organic search results for numerous mortgage related terms and who is major contributor to the LeadPoint exchange looks to be making a move to boost their already robust library of content. The concentration on content should be a no brainer for most, however most mortgage related keywords are very competitive and without 100′s of pages of content updated daily and the increased volume of inbound links via widgets and good content, they can be very hard to achieve.

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The forward thinking Bill Rice took another bite out of the web 2.0 apple and launches a Kaleidico YouTube Channel.

Why is this notable? Because I enjoy seeing companies take new avenues to generate customers and Kaleidico is always on the forefront of implementing new social marketing concepts. Bill Rice started blogging about lead buying before I even new what a blog was. He also was the first I knew of that efficiently used twitter for personal use and also to manage leads.

Whether or not every strategy will work to generate a business lead it will continue to educate an industry that is desperate need for a teacher.

The YouTube channel will be interesting to watch evolve. Currently there are 6 short, 2 minutes or less videos discussing different sales strategies along with 2 power point presentations.

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Kaleidico announced today the creation of a new widget, the State Concentration Lead Widget. I think this is worth mentioning for a number of reason.

It doesn’t matter if you are buying mortgage leads, insurance leads or debt leads, if you are buying in multiple states you are probably performing better some states rather then others. Now, I know this new widget has nothing to do with lead conversions, but rather takes a specific  state and divides the number of leads for that state by the total amount of leads coming into the Icosales LMS, but it brings forth a great topic to discuss. Do you know which states you are seeing the most conversions in?

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Today, SalesTwit from Kaleidico launched its invite only beta. I had a chance to sign up and give it a try and wanted to share a little bit about my experience with you.

First, a little background may be needed for some of you. Kaleidico, the makers of Icosales lead management system recently announced at LeadsCon that they had built a lead management system based on the Twitter platform. What is Twitter? Twitter is a messaging platform that splits the differences between email and instant messaging. It has become quite popular amongst the instant messaging and blogging crowd. Twitter allows you to either follow what others have to say and also post small snippets or tweets about your daily activities or thoughts.

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(Full disclosure…I am employed by Zipsearch! although did not participate in the writing or conception of the related press release, but because of my position was able to receive the news first. )

LeadCritic Exclusive:

Kaleidico takes action on the requests of a number of lead providers at the LeadsCon convention. This request can actually be traced back almost a year and probably further. One of the biggest requests from lead generators and publishers is the request for feedback and it again was a big topic on the LMS panel at LeadsCon this last week.

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LeadCon is now over and what a great event it was. I want to recap the Lead Management session that I moderated on Friday. It turned out to be just what I expected and that was a highly energized discussion of features, analytics and transparency. The members of the panel included Raj Parekh of LeadROI, Jeff Solomon of Leads360, Rick Doyle of Lead Mailbox and Bill Rice of Kaliedico. It was bound to be exciting with these four highly competitive companies. They are all nice to each other in person, but behind closed doors its another story.

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A press release came across the wire from Lead Management Software (LMS) company Kaleidico today. The release announced the introduction of what they call Icosales “Personal Edition”.

Kaleidico’ icoSales PE was designed for sales organizations with less than 5 agents, but who want to maximize their sales leads and databases. The icoSales PE will bring enterprise level command and control of valuable sales leads to the smallest businesses, with elegant simplicity.

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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. Read the full story

The Internet sales environment, which most of us are increasingly operating within, is demanding a redesign of our salesforce. This redesign is going to focus in on key new expectations of Internet consumers:

• Immediacy
• Responsiveness
• Follow up/through

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It’s definitely that time of year again. The NFL is drawing close to an end and my baseball stats sheets and forecasters are arriving in the mail–that’s right Fantasy Baseball is in the air!

This time of year gets me all excited about stats and predicative indicators. So, this weeks best practices post and whitepaper is in tribute to Michael Lewis’ ode to Fantasy Baseball–”Moneyball.” I am about to show you what ROI, %contact, %app, AttAR, AttCR, and many more quintessential key metrics and indicators can do to optimize your loan production. Read the full story

Are you feeling the market constricting around your neck? Is it harder and harder to find borrowers you can actually help? Have you shaken down every real estate agent in the tri-county area and found their pockets empty too?

Welcome to the crowd, but don’t panic.

The first step is to admit you have a problem. Stop saying, “I get all my business from referrals” and believing it. Take control of your success. Build a marketing plan to get fresh referrals, Internet referrals, and create a business that is bigger than you!

That’s right we are building a bigger vision here.

STOP! Before you run out and slap down a couple grand on a random lead provider, a recipe for 0% conversion and some pissed off loan officers or worse owner/manager, get a plan.

Here is the 10 step plan I used back in my lead buying days.

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Welcome to 2008! Time to reassess all your assumptions and set blockbusting goals for the New Year. I am guessing, if you are visiting Lead Critic to start your year, that smarter lead buying and higher lead conversion rates are centerpieces to these new goals.

I thought I might lend a hand by taking a deep dive into what makes an Internet lead and why you should buy them. Read the full story

Many of you spend a fair amount of your life online these days. You use email daily at work and with friends and family. You are probably doing a good bit of this year’s Christmas shopping online. And, you have probably, long ago, discontinued your local newspaper (that never ended up on the porch anyway) for your favorite Internet news, weather, and sports website.

So, why are most of us in the mortgage business so stubborn to believe that our future clients are online too? Why are we resistant to believe we can convert leads (referrals) from the Internet?

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Over the weekend it came across the wire that the website/Blog/Forum Broker WatchDog would be implementing Icosales into their interface.

Prior to implementation of icoSales, Broker Watchdog users posted leads for exchange on the website’s forum. For example, if a broker had a customer who needed an FHA loan and the broker did not specialize in FHA loans, he could post the lead to the forum where another broker could access it and work with the customer. Broker Watchdog members are now able to manage leads posted on the forum and determine completion of the sales process, an option that was not available prior to icoSales.

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I am hearing hints of a possible new product launch from Kaleidico in the near future.

I recently spoke with Bill Rice to catch up on industry news and he continued to hint at a new product, but was not being specific. You know how I am, I will dig and dig until I get something but this time I came away with nothing. This was on is Twitter profile too. He also mentioned that it was in beta right now and is being used by clients. I am telling you all this because I am fairly excited to see what they are about to launch or release, but who knows maybe he is just blowing smoke. He did mention that LeadCritic would be the first to know about it which was nice and thanks Bill for keeping us in mind.

So with that said if anyone one knows whats going on or has any info let us know. Until then I guess we will have to wait and see.

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