Lead360 just officially announced the implementation of the Pull Method. You can view Jeff Solomons (Leads360 founder) comments on Icosales/Bill Rice’s blog concerning the pull methodology here.
In the press release Jeff Solomon states:
“If a company has a salesperson that excels at closing leads of a certain age, gender or geographic location, the program allows that salesperson to pull the appropriate leads first,” Solomon said. “By boosting each team member’s comfort level, as well as the ease of communication between the salesperson and the lead, the result is a more consistent and disciplined sales process.”
Definitely a great idea however this would be considered a direct violation of the Fair Housing Act, Sections 805 and 806, oops!
We’ve found that we can sometimes explain complex features with simple explanations.
Of course we wouldn’t advise our clients to violate any laws in using our software, but I’m grateful for you covering our press release anyway.
The bigger question is how does our “pull distribution” stack up to that of our competitor Icosales?
Jeff,
I am curious of the same. Being that I am not a customer of either solution I would not be able to answer that question. Although have demoed each product at one time or another.
How do you think it stacks up and what differences can you point out to morinsight readers that would help separate Leads360 from other solutions.
We’ve always felt that software alone is not a solution, it is only a tool; my partner Charles has a good post on his blog about it.
Leads360′s focus has always been two-fold: building highly configurable lead management software; and enabling our customers to succeed with service and support. Software is an arms race, someone will always have features you don’t; but training, customer service, best practices, reliability, trust, these things require an investment. Lead providers and our competitors too will agree that if you’re a mortgage company buying or generating leads online, you need a way to track and manage those leads. I think we’ve demonstrated that if you want great software to do that and you want a pit crew who is invested in your success, Leads360 is the company you go with.
Jeff,
That sound nice and very politicaly correct however you asked the question:
“The bigger question is how does our “pull distribution” stack up to that of our competitor Icosales?” and specifically, I was curious too. Can you explain your Pull system and how it works or would you be willing to show me a demo so that I can give an opinion on how they compare?
First, I think the well rounded, full service, and experienced software and service provider approach to the customer is a given starting point in this business. We roll up our sleeves everyday to give back what we have learned and continue to learn after years of experience running mortgage sales teams, mortgage companies, software firms, and being some of the largest lead buyers in the market at our past endeavors.
Now obviously, I have not seen Leads360′s new system, but I will take a stab at answering your question based on customer feedback in comparing the two systems–specifically the pull system.
To the best of my understanding the Leads360 implementation of pull is probably better described as a “cherry picking” system. Meaning that leads are aggregated into a centralized pool or queue and the user has the ability to “preview” into that pool for leads she thinks are attractive or appropriate to her skills or past success. We have been told that this pooling occurs after a lead has been sitting unstatused or unworked for a period of time, after it was previously pushed to a loan officer.
My first thought, before I described our process, is two-fold. One, once the lead is put into the pull system you lose all control over how that lead is potentially managed or if it gets pulled at all (a real problem if LOs perceive this as a second-chance, aged lead pool). Second, I think the real power of the pull comes from how it creates “high velocity sales teams” (I appreciate Jeff’s reference to my favorite term for icoSales’ value proposition in their press release–Google it some time), but I think this is lost if a LO has to spend time previewing numerous leads in order to “pull” one.
Therefore, I think the core difference is that our lead management system is built on an architectural concept of lead workflows, which dynamically change based on the actions LOs take on each and every lead. This is very powerful and creates enormous flexibility because you can determine uniquely, based on your market, leads, and experience what those dynamic changes are in your specific instant–do you want an alert, LO sales coaching, transfer of lead to new LO, team, or even organization, do you want an email drip campaign to kick in, or stop, etc. I won’t expound on that here–I just started a series on it on the Better Closer Blog.
Now, the pull part comes in. Whenever a LO needs a lead, at that spit second, the system uses what it knows and what you have told it to give the LO the right lead based on what you want to happen to leads in your system. No wasting time making lead selection decisions. This pick-up will allow you to get through 100s of leads everyday in the most sales productive way.
Bottom line though in all of this is that the mortgage market and the lead market need innovation. The fortunate part is you have two smart companies trying to bring the best to the market. In the end the mortgage and the lead generation market will benefit from this competition.