Best Practices, Part I: Is anyone home?

I doubt few people would disagree that the last couple of years in the lead gen and lead management space, specifically related to mortgage, has been crazy. Ups, downs, sideways; enough to create some early-retirement scenarios. As I look at the state of the current market with sub-prime and numerous bks, I can’t but think of people needing to get back to fundamentals, like contacting leads more efficiently and more often.

Our clients ask us all the time about lead management best practices, they always want to know what the most successful shops are doing with their leads. My response seems to amaze some: it’s not fancy, just get better at making contact with your prospects. It’s not high science, its hard work.

We as a company are at fault as much as anyone for sometimes ignoring these fundamentals. We have wiz-bang features all over the place from custom reporting to fancy pie charts and multi-level distribution every which way 'till Sunday. Those features are great, but only if you’ve mastered the basics of lead management, getting your contact ratio up.

More calls? Yes. More often? Definitely. Better communication styles and methods? Yes, yes. We’ve found, and I think many would agree, that contacting prospects within the first 4 hours triples your chance of winning the relationship. Within 5 minutes, forget about it, you’ll be on the cover of mortgage originator.

Now stop reading this and get back on the phone…