Picture this:
You log in to your work computer and you open an email you received overnight.
The email is a response to a newsletter you send out monthly to your database. The newsletter is nothing special, just something you signed up for to “hold you over” until you could really build out your email marketing the way you imagine it. In the email, the person who sent it says you spoke with her 6 months ago and you gave her some ideas on how to get her credit score up. She says she’s interested in having you re-run her credit because she thinks she’s where you said she needed to be.
So you re-pull her credit, and wouldn’t you know it? She is ready! You relay the good news to her, verify her income and asset documentation, and send her on her merry way with a pre-qualification letter.
Fast forward a few days, and she’s already found a place she wants to offer on! How’s that possible? You wonder. Then you look at her address and realize that she must have been one of the internet leads you generated in one of the more rural areas of your state. The market isn’t nearly as competitive out there, of course! You also recall to yourself that those who overcome credit challenges are typically the quickest to go under contract because they’re the least picky and most grateful for the opportunity.
You look back at your records and realize that this lead is one that you received 6 months ago. Score! You’ve already been making a good ROI because you partnered with the best mortgage lead generation company in the game (Empower Funnels, duh), but this one is icing on the cake.
This sparks a thought that leads you to take a look at your current pipeline. Wow, a 3 million dollar pipeline… You closed 1.8m last month, your biggest month yet and pretty good considering less than a year ago you were only closing 2-3 loans a month for a whopping 600k monthly average. But as you think about it, you’re only spending $1000 on ads, which your conversion rate tells you should net you 3 deals. So where is this extra business coming from?
You think about the deal that just went under contract. Wait, I received that 6 months ago, it’s not going to close until month 7. You know not to count that as a conversion towards your internet leads because your favorite mortgage marketing guru, Michael McAllister (hey that’s me!) says that conversions should only count within a defined window of time. After all, leads are leads because they’re supposed to be “in the market” right? This isn’t the first deal you’ve got like that. In fact, this is probably the 2nd or 3rd in the last 3 months, and you’ve only been generating leads for 9 months!
Looking closer at your pipeline, you realize that over half of the loans aren’t from your leads at all! So where are they from? Well you’ve got 2 from that agent you sent Mr. Johnson to, another 1 from the agent you sent Ms. Bryant to (and she says she’s got one calling you today), another 2 that were referred from other leads you’ve converted in the past, the one you just added today from the email campaign, another 2 from agents you haven’t worked with before but heard through the grapevine that you’re referring out business to your agent partners, and 1 that you distinctively remember telling you that they saw your impressive amount of 5 star Zillow Reviews (non-existent before the last year) and was interested in meeting with you (of course you locked that in, you’re YOU).
Okay Michael, What the Hell Was That About?
As in everything I write for you guys, of course, there’s a point to this besides getting you to visualize yourself leveraging our kickass lead gen system.
You see, most people do one of two things when they first invest in internet leads. They either underestimate the amount of work it is, and don’t pay any attention to response times or making sure they make a lot of contact attempts, and just wait for the lay-down to fall in their lap OR they do the opposite. They obsess over every lead, treating it like a precious treasure, not wanting to generate too many to where they’ll be “overwhelmed” with the amount of follow up needed. They do everything they can to be the poster child of internet lead conversion so they can “maximize” the dollars they invested.
Here’s the problem with that: There is WAY more money to be made in leveraging the business you get from internet leads than the actual internet lead itself. And when I say leverage, do I just mean the ability to refer it out to agents expecting businesses in return? No, not at all. When I say leverage I mean leveraging the injection of business that the system gives you by providing an amazing experience, building relationships, and taking care of the little things.
Basically, the difference in mindset can be boiled down to this: instead of trying to maximize the value of your leads, maximize the value of your closed transactions.
If your internet lead generation is getting in the way of your ability to call a listing agent for some free publicity, or follow up with your closed deals for referrals and reviews online, or provide a WOW experience for your borrowers from beginning to end, 1 of 2 things is true. You’re either running your business completely wrong, or you’re in a transition period. I understand that there are some times where you may lose support staff, transition companies or systems, or ramp up your marketing. Just don’t catch yourself constantly telling yourself you’re in transition. At some point, you need to take care of your business because that’s the best way to ensure your short and long-term success.
So to wrap it all up, the point is this: The easiest ways to get mortgage business all stem from having a baseline of business to begin with. The only exception to this rule is if you’re looking to scale to the point of running a call center operation with a 100% direct to consumer model. If that’s not your goal though, don’t ever let the focus on maximizing the value of your dollars spent outweigh the focus of maximizing the value of your closed transactions and the relationships you should be building as a result. In the end, you’ll have more business and more than likely more happiness too.
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If you read the first half of this blog post and drooled at the thought of having a business like I described, you’re in the right spot. Empower Funnels builds THE BEST lead generation system on the market for Loan Officers, hands down. Want to know how? We have a new process for introducing prospective clients to our product, and it involves a live 1-on-1 demo with us showing exactly what we do, how we do it, why we’re the best, and some results to boot. If you’re interested in scheduling your live demo, click the link below or the menu option at the top of this page!
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Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you at the top!
Michael McAllister