Time To Harvest

August 30, 2002
(revised 9/3/02)

By DAVE CZACH

In good or bad economic times, loan officers still seek the elusive “pre-qualified” leads. You may get a ton of leads from purchasing detailed lists or placing standard-written mortgage ads. But both of those methods are missing a critical component.

When buying leads, you are missing the important element called desire. If you acquire a list with parameters of high equity, low debt, minimum credit score of 700 and three or more children, you may offer to refinance their home to begin a dollar-cost-averaging strategy for their children’s future. However, they did not contact you first. Therefore, this creates a greater sales challenge.

Which requires multiple contacts by phone, mail or even in person in order to simply get a signed loan application.

If you place the standard mortgage ad, the absent ingredient is focus. For example, an ad like: “Purchase – Refinance your home today. All credit considered,” reaches an extremely broad audience. Which means you get an enormous amount of tire kickers wasting your time. Wouldn’t you rather have someone else spend their valuable time with tire kickers? You can.

Put your targeted marketing on automatic pilot with only two indispensable tools. By using voicemail email services,” you spend more time making money and less time as a free consultant.

Here’s how it works.

Place a topic-specific, compelling ad offering a much-needed free report. You list only your new voicemail and email address (no web site needed). When someone calls the toll-free number, your automatic assistant grabs the telephone number from the caller, captures the caller’s information and notifies you by email, fax or pager.

Voila! You now have a targeted prospect’s name, address and telephone number. Simply mail their free report with your pre-approval form. Then send a new report and pre-approval form every week. Plus engage in follow-up calls only to offer “consulting” (see Tom Hopkins book How To Master The Art of Selling for fantastic leading questions which results in sales). But how is this a targeted lead?

By placing specific ads in proper media, you virtually control who replies to your ads. For example, you could place this ad in your local FSBO or Homes magazine: “Top 10 Ways To Sell Your House Faster.” You could place this ad in your local “shopping rag” or alternative newspaper: “Credit Problems? 5 Steps To A Guaranteed Mortgage Approval.” You could place this ad in your local Senior Newspaper (check your local library): “Over 61? Put your house to work. Get paid monthly.” (sells reverse mortgages.) All three of these ads “speak” directly to your target audience. If you don’t have these reports, a quick trip to your local library or Google.com will provide all the information you need to write your own reports.

Now here’s the double-whammy. If the person reading the ad responds by email, your powerful email system captures their email address, sends the dynamic report instantly plus a new report every week automatically. You just login to upload the free reports and set the intervals to trigger the automatic follow-up reports. While you’re in the administration section, you can also send a separate email announcement to your entire database, download the email addresses and insert your ad in each report. You could even visit InfoSpace.com and use their reverse email lookup to learn the person’s name and address.

Once these effective systems are in place, you simply place your ads frequently, check your leads daily and focus on serving clients who have the desire to close their loan now. Web sites offering products such as “email on steroids” include GetResponse.com, aWeber.com and FreeAutoBot.com. Products like “voicemail on steroids” can be found at uReach.com and J2.com.