eBuzz Articles

25 Oct, 2007
Smart Technology for Working Leads

CRM systems simply provide us with lists of people, but the true value of a workflow system is that it allows you to stay in touch with leads you otherwise would have abandoned. Research finds that as many as 40 percent to 60 percent of your disqualified leads become qualified in the following six to 12 months.

Most of us spend a tremendous amount of time pursuing new leads; in fact, we are diligent about continuing to generate new leads from all sorts of channels. But the irony of this strategy is that in our determination to chase these potential new customers -- those we have never contacted before -- we are discarding our best leads: those who were not qualified when first contacted, those who chose a different lender and those whom we simply have been unable to reach. So, all along what we've been viewing as our worst leads are actually our best leads? What kind of nonsense is that?

Actually, it makes great sense. The leads we are most likely to convert are those with which we've established some degree of a relationship.

We've talked with them, they've replied to our e-mail, they may even have told us they're going elsewhere; but they know who we are and we know them. The difficulty has been that the technology and techniques originators conventionally use make it difficult for us to continue that relationship once the prospect diverges from the straight line we've drawn arbitrarily from application to commitment.

Customer relationship management (CRM ) systems simply provide us with lists of people, with accompanying notes, but it's up to us to figure out what to do with those lists. They're a database of ideas about people to target, an analytical framework.

Similarly, so-called sales-force automation allows us manually to set up alerts as reminders to call people back, but it's still up to us to work those calls into our volume. Our gut tells us, "Don't bother with the hard-to-reach leads; here's a long list of fresh leads, so let's pursue those instead."

If we work only by our gut, however, we're likely to end up with indigestion.

The latest technology for attacking leads establishes a workflow for contacting prospects -- both past and current. Systems with workflow automatically analyze the behavior of your organization's loan officers and the responses received from individual prospects, and then determine when and how to handle that lead.

If, for example, a salesperson has tried 10 times in four days to reach a particular lead, the system may automatically transfer that contact to a different team member with a specific skill or a better record of gaining responses from a specific category of leads. Or it may automatically send the lead to the sales manager for action.

Unlike CRM systems, workflow-based technology automates the alert process and tells originators what they need to do next with a prospect, based on that prospect's status. It achieves this by setting up rules for interaction with prospects.

The system understands what the next step should be for any one lead. It may even add in a sales-coaching engine, which, based on the history of the lead, will offer recommendations on times to try to contact the person again or the method of contact to use. Workflow software is an intelligent system that understands the context of the lead.

How does it operate in practice? Let's say you've determined that it's most productive in your first day of contacting a lead to try to reach that person four times to find out when he or she is ready to take your call, and then call once every 48 hours after that. It's a massive task to set up that kind of schedule for every lead when you have to do it yourself from a CRM list.

Workflow technology, however, automates this process of initial contact and all contact thereafter through the whole life cycle of the prospect. The system will bring each lead up on your screen at exactly the time you should make that call. It can be set to display the home phone number early in the morning for the first call, a work number for the contact during the day, a cell phone number during the evening commute and the home number again in the early evening.

The true value of a workflow system, however, is that it allows you to stay in touch with leads you otherwise would have abandoned. Research finds that as many as 40 percent to 60 percent of your disqualified leads become qualified in the following six to 12 months. Typically, they reapply with a different lender, and you never talk with them again.

But with workflow, you can establish a rule that tells the system to pull out previously disqualified leads in six months and feed them back to you. It compels the loan officer to recall these individuals with whom he or she previously had established a level of rapport.

Another advantage of workflow systems is the "beat the competition" rule. You may have been competing for a prospect's business, but lost that account to another lender. However, during the 10-day transition period between the completion of the application and the mortgage company's completion of the paperwork, borrowers are often disappointed by their chosen lender or have been misled on pricing or fees.

This is a time of concern and often confusion for borrowers, and it is important for you, as a mortgage professional, to reconnect with prospects and make sure their mortgage and financial needs are being met. A workflow rule can pop up their names and drive your original loan officer to call these individuals again to demonstrate the loan officer's true desire to be the client's mortgage professional for life.

Several companies report they are converting upward of 20 percent of individuals at this stage. These customers are beginning to receive negative communications about lost documents or experience frustration over delays, and they are ready to build trust with someone who cares.

The point of all this is that you have a higher probability of converting a lost deal than a fresh lead, because you've already built some measure of empathy with the customer who otherwise feels isolated.

Further, the workflow process increases your return on investment. Most of your leads come through the Internet, and those are leads that you have purchased. If you disqualify them and never contact them again, you've lost 100 percent of your investment. With workflow technology, however, automated alerts enable loan officers to schedule checkups during the processing period, to pay attention to the customer and add these people into the routine call volume.

Not only does workflow help you gain new customers, but it also allows you to retain more of your own customers during the processing period. You will be sending them e-mails -- timed and distributed automatically by the workflow system -- to describe what is happening at that point with their application, listing next steps and assuring them everything is OK. Likewise, you will be making reassuring calls to them.

Finally, CRM systems, like netlink's Sales Force and CRM Solution, allow you to scale your business effectively. With the simple lists involved with CRM, as volume grows, more hard-to-find contacts fall off the edges. Application preserves all the prospects and helps you find the best time, method and approach for reaching them.

Other systems provide costly software that puts the burden on you and your loan officers to figure out who to contact and when. New technology puts the complexity of "leadership" contact in the software and lets loan officers do what they do best: build relationships.

The true value of a workflow system like netlink's CRM Application is that it allows you to stay in touch with leads you otherwise would have abandoned.