Mortgage Lead System: Creating a Lead Generation System

Are you working your mortgage business backwards? Are you reading your daily rate sheets, qualification matrices, and mortgage news in dismay? Are you waiting (praying) someone that meets those qualifications stumbles through your door or accidentally calls your phone number? Ever thought about creating a mortgage lead system?

What is a System?

What is a system, a lead system? This is really the first question. A system is fundamentally an organizing and integrating of various things or entities into a coherent whole. A mortgage lead system is really no different. This concept, of creating a coherent whole, is often lost in our mortgage business.

We have a few leads Realtors, a few leads from your CPA, a couple referrals from Mom's bridge club, all the guys a Rotary Club come to you, there is an ad in the yellow pages (who knows if that gets you anything), you have a website (oops, I wonder if my phone number is on there?), and from time to time I buy some Internet leads, triggers, or a list.

What a mess. The sentence was even painful to write. But, that is the average mortgage brokers marketing program. No wonder we run through fits of panics, destitution, and jubilation. We have constructed a lead lottery, not a lead system. Who knows when or if we will ever win the jackpot.

Mortgage Business Inventory

In building any viable system you need to know what you have to work with. In the mortgage business that means: What are my products? Who are my loan officers? What is our unique selling proposition?

There is a lot of discussion about lead quality. Good leads and bad leads. However, in my experience, bad leads are often the result of attracting, generating, or buying leads that don't fit. Don't fit your product matrix, don't it your personality, don't fit the culture of your business. Don't buy Internet leads if you are not good on the phone. Don't plan to get referrals from Realtors and the Rotary club is you don't know how to slap backs, do drinks, and show up to a few of the Mayor's kid's baseball games. Don't advertise "no credit, no problem," if you don't know how to work hard money deals.

Create a lead system that fits you.

Defining Your Key Differentiators

What Niche Market are You Going to Dominate?

This is my favorite exercise when I build a marketing plan with a new client.

What market are you going to own? This is my leading question.

Invariably I get one of two responses: (1) I am going to be the mortgage experts and satisfy every customer, or (2) I am too small to own any market. To the first response, unless you are Quicken Loans, have 20 years worth of extensive full spectrum lending, and are licensed in 50 States it is going to be very difficult to make the "mortgage experts" tag line stick. Yet, the second response is equally selling yourself short.

There is some aspect of your business, your location, or your products that makes you important and unique to a customer. Own that! That is your market to create 100% market share. You may not be the mortgage experts, but you could be: Flat Rock, MI home town mortgage advisor; Fort Hood, TX (or better 1st Cav's) VA mortgage expert; or Palmdale, CA FHA loan limit mortgage refinance consultant; or Cleveland, OH foreclosure and short-sell real estate investment advisor.

Think about it. What market can you own?

Create the Value System

Now that you know what you are and what you market you are going to dominate it is time to build the value system. A system that starts from how they find you to how they grow to love you for life. Here is a frame work to build your mortgage lead system on--it is your unique value system. It will, with a little work, and some tweaking bring your leads for life:

Who am I? How do I simply describe my business, myself, and my value to you? Make it a sentence and break it into keywords
Define your ideal client
Put yourself in your ideal client's shoes. Where do they hang out and how/where do they buy?
Make sure your message is there. Make sure the message is easy to find and simple to identify with
Build your initial interactions on education. Give value first
Start your first contact with needs listening, not with your pitch
Ensure understanding with every interaction. "Do you understand? Does this make sense before we more forward?"
Follow-up after closing, especially after closing
Continue to education and present value on a regular basis

Building a strong foundation of understanding your business, understanding who you can help, and how you deliver that better than anyone is a mortgage lead system. Follow these steps and design a value system that grows.

Deploy the Campaign

Now that you know what you have to offer and how to provide it with value first let's build and deploy the campaign. Any campaign is based on attracting attention and then constantly building trust and credibility. There are a multitude of techniques in creating a lead producing campaign, but the critical components include:

Compelling Offer
Lead Capture
Lead Management
Building Value and Trust to a Sale

The compelling offer, even if free, is the crucial first step. You must give the customer some reason to see the solution to their problem(s) in the offer.

Once you have their attention, make sure you capture them so you can actually deliver the content or education that sought. This usually requires capturing an email or encouraging a phone call.

Though critically important a list of emails, phone numbers, or even calls does not make a sale. You need to structure a series of lead nurturing campaigns and content that drives them through the sales funnel. Lead management software or process are fundamental tools to campaigns and increase success.

Finally, don't forget to pack each step of the process with value. And, even more important--enforce trust. This means making and fulfilling little promises all along the way. Meeting expectations is always the quickest route to a sale.

Enjoy Your Lead System

A campaign well developed, careful deployed, and occasionally tuned is a timeless lead generation system. A lead system that will have you setting comfortable adding people to answer the phones.