How to Turn Leads into Mortgage Buyers
What’s your conversion rate of leads to successful mortgages? If your success rate is poor, it’s time for a little honest introspection – and even if your success rate is good, there’s always room for improvement.
In either case, consider these five tips to help your mortgage business succeed through better lead management.
1. Assess Lead Quality and Quantity
Where do you get your leads? Are you purchasing leads from a mortgage lead provider? Are they coming from your advertising campaigns or through your website? Are they being generated through in-house research?
You should be prepared to make the best of all leads that come your way – but don’t forget to assess the quality of those leads, whether by contact rate, conversion rate, or other metric. Consider outsourcing leads if your in-house methods are not working well, or vice-versa.
2. Don’t Rely on One Contact Method
An e-mail blitz is simple, but is it effective? That’s unlikely if there is no personal follow-up via phone. Do you read every single e-mail that you receive each day? Probably not, and your customers probably don’t either. You are more likely to succeed if you use a multi-pronged communication approach to engage your potential customers. Once you have permission to contact a potential customer, leverage all the outreach channels that today’s technology has to offer.
Granted, thanks to similar technological advances, a consumer who isn’t interested in speaking with you has more tools at their disposal to avoid you, but this is where a combination of persistence and creativity come into play. Don’t be annoying, stay within compliance, but don’t give up, either.
3. Work as A Team
If your mortgage business is large enough to have separate sales and marketing functions, are they working in tandem or are they getting in each other’s way? Make sure that your efforts are fully coordinated and customer-focused. Leverage software that can help automate marketing and sales for you, so you can spend most of your time closing and processing loans. Effective communication throughout the organization is key.
Communication also starts at the top. Make sure your directions and expectations are clearly understood at all levels, and encourage people to ask questions if they are confused or have concerns about your strategy. Be open-minded – from their perspective, your staff may be able to see something that you are missing.
4. Practice, Practice, Practice
Do you ever check up on the presentation skills of your sales staff? If you find it lacking, offer positive support. Training and practice can take the rough edges off and provide a more polished approach. Scripts can help, but make sure your sales force uses them as templates and not as dry word-for-word pitches. Always assess and share learnings, then adjust processes and sales strategies and techniques accordingly. Never get complacent.
5. Contact Quickly, Contact Often
It’s essential to reach out immediately to make contact with leads – but it’s just as important to be determined and not give up too early. It may take multiple tries via many methods to see a lead through to a successful mortgage. Know how to be persistent without stalking and scaring a borrower. And know how to be patient, because not all customers become borrowers overnight. In some cases, such as new home purchases, the sales cycle can take many months.
Establish your system for following up on leads – how long to wait before follow-up contact, which methods to use, etc. – and stick with that system if it brings you satisfactory results. If not, consider making adjustments. Here’s a hint: You probably need to follow up more often.
