The Mortgage Cicerone - The Loan Attraction Coach - Con

How To Make A Big Bite In Providing Added Value For Your Clients

A New Post By The Mortgage Cicerone.
A Guide for Mortgage Professionals.
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Lenderama top dog and fellow Cicerone Bill Rice has over the last eighteen months become one of my favorite reads when it comes to effective marketing advice. His blogs, Lenderama and Better Closer - Improving Your Sales and Marketing are definite must reads for anyone involved in mortgage sales and marketing (Hint: we all are).

On 6/26/08, Bill made a masterful post titled 5 Ways Listening Can Grow Your Business. In it, he provided advice on how to pass on valuable advice to your clients/prospects, while also getting them to take action.

Here's an excerpt:

"Passing on Valuable Information

You telling a customer to pay attention to [add your industry here] is one thing, and often shrills of self-serving. In contrast, a short simple clip from the Web, a though provoking website link, a forwarded industry email summarizing where you want a customer to focus often inspires action.

The two key points you don’t want to miss in passing on valuable information, even when it is from someone else: add a call to action and ask for the deal.

So often I see people forward an email or website article and maybe they editorialize, but they fail to try to make a sale. It can be as simple as:

This economy is scary. Can you believe mortgage rates have dropped again? If you have any questions about this article from Forbes.com give me a call at 734.782.1177. Take a look at your mortgage statement and see if this affects you–It has a lot of my clients.

Four quick sentences that drive them to read the article, call you with questions, and just in case they miss the hint you tell them to double check their own self-interests. Remember this is ad copy!"

I often get get questions from originators on how to professionally provide added value to their customers...this is a great starting place!

Words of wisdom from Bill.

Mortgage Market Tip: Challenging Times Call for Learners

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

"In time of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." -Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983

Have the Courage to Learn

It would be hard to find a person willing to quibble over the premise that we are in times of change. Eric Hoffer, a prolific American social writer, understood there was great opportunity in change. Yet, he argues, the opportunity can only be realized with the confidence and self-esteem to ask questions and learn about the change that surrounds you.

The Paradigm Trap

Often, especially in the case of experienced mortgage brokers, we get trapped into paradigms, methods, and frameworks. Granted there is empirical data to support they worked. But, will they work now? This should be the abiding question in your daily routine.

Look here for various case studies in the perils of paradigm traps.

We Are In Change

We are in the midst of an unprecedented market conditions: gas prices are up, mortgage companies are imploding daily, housing prices are plummeting, people are more and broader connected than ever, the Internet gives the average person more data than Einstein had available in a lifetime, millions of consumer inquiries are generated daily on the Internet and 60% are never answered. What does all this mean?

What Should You Do?

It means things have certainly changed. It means old paradigms may not hold. It means you and your company better be learning. The next time you think about your business, ask a few questions:

• What have you learned about your market in the last 3-6 months?
• How will this business plan leverage that learning?
• Do you have a system for learning?
• What is it? And, how do you synthesize it?

In times of change, have the courage to learn. What did you learn today? What will you do with it?

10 Secrets to Turn Aged Leads into New Clients

A New Post By The Mortgage Cicerone
A Guide for Mortgage Professionals
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Bill Rice (via Twitter) recently pointed us to a fantastic article posted by Troy Wilson titled "10 Secrets to Turn Aged Debt Leads into New Clients." According to Troy:

"Aged leads are simply customers that haven’t been helped. So often we miss this opportunity, believing only fresh sales leads can produce closed deals. Meanwhile, many sales and marketing studies reveal...customer inquiries tend to close at a higher rate 30-60 days after the initial inquiry."

Troy also addresses several methods to professionally harvest a steady flow of quality clients:

1. Use lead management software
2. Create call and email scripts
3. Develop lead nurturing workflow
4. Lead with value, not hard sell
5. Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up
6. Never kill a lead (unless they opt out)

Take the time to read this post and apply the same principles to your aged leads sitting in your data base.

10 Secrets to Turn Aged Debt Leads into New Clients by Troy Wilson

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Use Twitter to Test Headlines

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

Twitter is a great way to test your headlines and short copy effectiveness. Hundreds of followers and a 140 characters maximum makes for a powerful marketing test environment. Twitter is a quick and efficient way to see if your headlines convert into clicks.

Article Library

Start with a good repository of articles. You should create a significant number of articles in a variety of topics. Good article diversity and quantity will ensure you have a ready-made test bed for a variety of projects.

This article library can be an article directory (eZineArticles), one or more blogs, or your website copy portfolio. Using your own blog or website gives you the added benefit of driving prospective business traffic too.

Since Twitter users, like most social networkers, don’t like constant self-promotion I suggest you routinely test using others websites, blogs, or articles as well as your own. The other authors will love the traffic, may link back to you, preserves your credibility, and it still achieves your conversion testing.

Tracking Conversions

Don’t forget the primary objective–tracking conversions. If you are using your own website or blog this is pretty simple–look at your blog stats or Google analytics. However, what about Tweets that you point at websites you don’t own?

In the past there was little opportunity to collect measurable results from these tests. You could use Summize to track keyword discussion and possibly track re-tweets. Unfortunately, this only measures buzz and typically has more to do with the destination content, not the headline. It doesn’t give you the core metric–do people click because of my copy?

Enter bit.ly Tweetburner, a new tiny URL technology that lets you track source and traffic through your shortened URL. So, now simply shorten and attach a unique bit.ly Tweetburner URL to each of your headline or short copy tests. Then you can track sources and volume of click-throughs.

Respect Your Audience

The quickest way to damage this excellent focus group is to abuse it. So, here are a few cautionary etiquette suggestions to keep yourself from poisoning the water:

• Promote others, as well as yourself, with your headline tests
• Stagger test headlines over various days
• Make sure the destination content is interesting
• Do not link your headline tests to sales letters or landing pages
• Participate in the community too (ask questions and participate)

Happy Testing!

Does Your Social Network Generate Leads? It Should

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

We’re all buzzing about social media and social networks. Is it just a waste of time or can it produce a reasonable ROI? Stop talking and do the math. Does your social network generate leads that convert into business? It should. It might even become a personal asset.

Is Your Social Network Important?

It is becoming obvious that social networks are important. Chris Brogan talks about the vital importance of your network and even ventures to state that companies (employers) will value your person networks. And, because there is real dollar value in a network Jeremiah Owyang cautions us that social media has risk and reward.

Still need to be convinced it is important?

Why Build a Social Network?

Chances are you have already have some foundation of a social network. However, building a social network that adds value to your community and produces business opportunity for you should must incorporate some strategic thinking.

A value-based social network should accomplish three primary objectives:

• Increase the efficiency and frequency of your communication
• Facilitate you consistently adding value to your network
• Generate and/or spot business opportunity

Unfortunately, social networks often degenerate into ego arms races. Creating or growing your network in this fashion creates an overwhelming and useless mess. This approach simply creates a high noise to signal ratio, which destroys any hope of value.

What Services Do I Use?

New social networks and supporting applications pop up daily. Getting distracted by every venue for your network can be paralyzing. Organizing these solutions into categories, based on your objectives, quickly sorts them.

• Contact database: Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Mac Address Book
• Reputation and identity: LinkedIN, Plaxo, Personal Blog
• News and opportunity: FriendFeed, Twitter
• Communication and nurturing: Twitter, FriendFeed, Personal Blog
• Metrics: TweetBurner, Bit.ly

Each of these services allows for the simple importing and connecting to contacts in any of the major address book applications. I highly recommend you begin organizing your network there, import, and then continue to sync back to that as a master contact database.

How to Nurture a Social Network

Getting your network to generate leads and business opportunities is perfectly correlated to your lead nurturing strategy. Or, as Tim Sanderssays refresh your network for better performance.

Nurturing a social network is significantly different than nurturing a sales prospect database. You are not creating a drip email campaign. This type of activity will quickly erode your network. Lead nurturing and network building in social media should be focused on listening, discussing, and adding value–in that order.

Listening teaches you what people are interested in learning about, what they find valuable, and messages that call them to action.

Discussion allows you to build relationships and grow your audience. Again, you should be learning here too.

Adding value, this is what produces business opportunity leads. Directing people to and providing valuable, problem solving information drives them to you. This approach drives them to you in solving these problems and attracts others with similar problems.

How do you maximize the value you get back from your time spent on social media and social networking? What are the tools you use?

Reprint: From Bill Rice's "It's About Conversion"

Are You Someone Who Moves?

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

I was thumbing through one of my many compendiums of quotes (one of my favorite collectibles) last night and I came across one of my favorite sources of inspiration–Benjamin Franklin. And the quote I stumbled on was this gem:

“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.” -Benjamin Franklin

What struck me was this afternoon Brian Clark’s (Copyblogger.com) post on the “Zig-Zag Method For Catching Attention and Building Credibility” hammered home Ben Franklin’s 200 year old point!

Decision time are you immovable, movable, or a mover?

So often our businesses, our marketing, and our writing get stuck in the immovable or movable classes. Often this is the result of contentment with equilibrium, poor performance, or recent failure–none of which breeds break-out success.

Equilibrium

Contentment with status-quo is certainly the number one killer of dreams. We fall into the good enough class. Good enough money, good enough relationships, good enough life.

In other words, things don’t suck in an uncomfortable way. You read it right there is no passion in equilibrium. However, pushing myself has a 50% chance of sucking more.

I am immovable.

Poor Performance

Performing marginally or poorly on tasks often sends us into a dangerous search for a formula. This is the classic business school case study or business case. The rationale is that if I can cite an example and I perform poorly again at least this time I am not accountable.

Inevitably, this becomes a habit forming slippery slope. A classic cancer that grows internal to many large corporations, even good ones.

I am movable.

Recent Failure

Underperforming can often masquerade as acceptable, but failure strikes immediate panic. Panic in leadership and in individual contributor. This often triggers immediate invisible, uninteresting, wannabes.

Without a conscious intervention this will wrap you into an ever accelerating death spiral of repeated failure.

I am movable.

Be a Mover

Looking for examples and patterns of success are certainly a healthy exercise. The secret is studying them for not for formulas, but rather what made them unique at the time. Was there something emotional, trendy, relevant, outrageous, comforting, dominating? Look for the tanget to the trendline at that time.

This is why I often advocate reading literature, periodicals, non-fiction, and blogs outside of your industry for inspiration in your next project. This makes it very hard to stay immovable or be movable. It is likely to spark leadership and innovation.

I am a MOVER!

Reprint: From Bill Rice's "It's About Conversion"

Sales Success = “You Engaging Others” (YEO)

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

Jeff Turner, a willing and able advocate of social media’s impact on sales production and the real estate business, brings it back into focus with his capstone quote at Inman’s Bloggers Connect conference–”You Engaging Others” or YEO.

There has been a ton of excitement and hyperbole around leveraging social media to bring floods of customers. Meanwhile, the facts are (at least in the Real Estate and Mortgage business) that customer inquiries are on the decline. This means building systems for quantity and discounting quality is a guaranteed failure.

What? Bill are you closing your Twitter account, swearing off blogging, and auctioning your LinkedIn contacts? No, but perspective and objective are important metrics to revisit in social marketing.

Your social media strategy should be designed around these core perspectives:

• Start conversations
• Facilitate intelligent discussions
• Nurture long-term relationships

Furthermore, your social media efforts should acheive these principle objectives:

• Create opportunities for unique conversations
• Create opportunities for learning conversations
• Create opportunities for teaching conversations
• Create opportunities for seeking conversations

None of these perspectives or objectives brings you an immediate flood of closed deals. Engagement brings you a long-term flood of sales. That means listening, providing value, getting personal, and sitting down for a cup of coffee or a meal–not flooding the Internet with keywords.

Reprint: From Bill Rice's "Better Closer"

The Mortgage Market is Soiled. You Better Have a Trust Strategy

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

If you are a mortgage broker and you haven’t already figured this one out I will state it bluntly–no one trusts us! Sure there is an enormous amount of finger pointing going on. From Wall Street to Main Street everyone has an opinion on who got us here. Guess what? The customer thinks it was you.

Snapshot of the Florida Mortgage Market

For the purpose of clarity, I am going to focus in on one market–Florida. However, don’t absolve yourself because you are not a mortgage broker in Florida.

The Miami Herald launched an investigative series entitled “Borrowers Betrayed,” written by Jack Dolan, Rob Barry, and Matthew Haggman. These reporters dig in to the nasty underbelly of Florida mortgage originations during the housing and mortgage refinancing boom.

The Miami Herald investigation clearly comes in with an angle on consumer hot buttons: Loan officers with criminal records, identity theft, no background checks, and trails of victims.

The Miami Herald facts are terrifying to your prospective customers:

• From 2000 to 2007, regulators allowed at least 10,529 people with criminal records to work in the mortgage profession. Of those, 4,065 cleared background checks after committing crimes that state law specifically requires regulators to screen, including fraud, bank robbery, racketeering and extortion.
• More than half the people who wrote mortgages in Florida during that period were not subject to any criminal background check. Despite repeated pleas from industry leaders to screen them, Florida regulators have refused.
• Confronted with a growing epidemic of mortgage fraud — Florida now has the highest rate in the nation — the number of license revocations declined over the last five years, leaving borrowers at the mercy of predatory brokers.
• During the peak of the housing boom, the Office of Financial Regulation ignored a state law enacted in 2006 that compelled it to perform nationwide criminal background checks on applicants. That failure allowed people convicted in other states — and in federal court — to peddle loans in Florida without any scrutiny.
• Regulators allowed at least 20 brokers to keep their licenses even after committing the one crime that seemed sure to get them banned from the industry: mortgage fraud.

This is how the customer will increasingly come to know you.

Create a Trust Strategy

You could launch into a flawless debate on who else is responsible. However, I suggest a more productive effort–build a strategy. Create a Trust Strategy.

Put your customer at the center of your business. Steps into your client’s experience and emotions: distrust, fear, ignorance, vulnerable, uncertain. Then design a process that systematically wipes out each of those fears.

Building Your Personal Brand

One thing is for certain, criminals don’t go around building a personal and long-term brand. No, they maintain low profiles and bounce from one victim honeypot to the next.

Spend time on building your personal brand. This is easily done both on and off-line. Certainly have your own web page and blog, but also make sure that local businesses and civic groups know you too. Get involved in community activities. This branding building and community involvement will build a lot of good, verifiable context to your name.

Don’t be complacent about personal brand building. Even if you are backed by a big coorporate brand, people buy from people. Give your client complete confidence in your integrity, as well as your company’s.

Establish Authority

It is one thing to be a nice person, but are you competent. This is going to be the next big question in a mortgage customer’s mind. After all there were probably as many good as there were bad people that got folks into bad loans from simple incompetence.

Remember the earlier list of client fears? Education and knowledge sharing is a valuable way to build trust and remove feelings of ignorance and uncertainty for the mortgage transaction. Create a blog, newsletter, or even weekly column in the local newspaper to educate your borrower before and during their mortgage experience.

Get Endorsed

Renowned expert on influence and persuasion, Robert Cialdini highlights the powerful effect of social proofing in his books and presentations. The principle is simple: “The greater number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.” It is a simple due diligence short cut. If my friends and neighbors trust this person then so will I.

Make sure this principle is in your Trust Strategy. Get testimonials. Nurture public endorsements. Earn the respect of local personalities and influencers. Build referral marketing into your customer loyalty program.

“Climbing the Distrust Mountain”

This advice should have been first because of its power. However, I didn’t want you to miss it. Morgan Brown, of BlownMortgage.com described a process of “Climbing the Distrust Mountain” with mortgage customers. I have linked to it many times, but I will give you the simple technique here.

Trust, in any relationship, is built or destroyed with a series of simple promises. You either fulfill them or you don’t. Promises like:

• I will call you right back
• I will check on the status of your appraisal
• I will give you tips on how to improve your credit
• I will keep you updated throughout the process
• If you have any questions call me (and I will answer)

If you want a mortgage customer to trust you after this mortgage mess you have to make a lot of little promises and keep everyone.

What other things should be in your Trust Strategy?

Reprint: From Bill Rice's "Better Closer"

Am I Eligible For an FHA Loan? - Are You Helping Your Mortgage Clients Answer This Question?

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

The recent Federal Economic Stimulus package and now the more permanent Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 is making it easier for you to assist struggling home owners. It may even help you serve savvy home buyers that are interested in buying heavily discounted homes, such as foreclosures and short sales.

The question is are you helping your home owner and buyer answer their burning questions about these programs--Am I Eligible?

Learning about FHA

The latest Housing and Economic Recovery Act makes permanent some very helpful reforms to FHA lending standards. The following are some key opportunities:

• Permanent FHA loan limits at the greater of $271,050 or 115% of the local median home price, capped at $625,500
• Streamlined programs for FHA condos and manufactured home programs
• FHA foreclosure rescue allowing lenders to do principle reductions and refinance into 30 year fixed mortgages at 90% of the appraised value, with a loan limit of $550,440

How it Applies to the Market You Serve

The new permanent FHA program reforms maintain the local nature of their eligibility requirements. Therefore, you need to make sure that you understand how the provisions apply to your service areas.

The local nature of these FHA eligibility requirements is causing a significant amount of uncertainty and confusion for current home owners and potential home buyers. This becomes your opportunity to help.

Simple, Help-based Marketing

The local structure of the FHA programs makes for a prime opportunity to launch hyper-local education programs and become the local FHA mortgage and real estate expert. Here are some simple ideas to claim your position as the local FHA guru:

• Offer brief presentations on the new FHA assistance programs to local civic groups
• Offer home owner assistance seminars or information to local libraries
• Post local FHA qualification and eligibility information on your local website or blog
• Email or direct mail your past prospects and clients an FHA reform alert
• Offer free FHA qualification and eligibility consultations

These reforms were meant to help people. It is your job to get the word out and educate home owners and home buyer that you have programs to ease their pain.

Have You Designed Your Housing and Economic Recovery Act Marketing Plan?

A New Post By Bill Rice
Marketing & Lead Generation Expert
Read other posts by Bill Rice

The recent Federal Economic Stimulus package and now the more permanent Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 is opening a whole spectrum of new people you can help.

These programs are not simple for consumers to understand, but therein lies the opportunity. Put on your mortgage adviser hat and get to educating.

You should develop marketing campaigns to help struggling home owners and savvy home buyers interested heavily discounted homes, such as foreclosures and short sales.

Make sure you are focused on the burning question–Am I Eligible?

Learning about FHA

The latest Housing and Economic Recovery Act makes permanent some very helpful reforms to FHA lending standards. The following are some key opportunities:

• Permanent FHA loan limits at the greater of $271,050 or 115% of the local median home price, capped at $625,500
• Streamlined programs for FHA condos and manufactured home programs
• FHA foreclosure rescue allowing lenders to do principle reductions and refinance into 30 year fixed mortgages at 90% of the appraised value, with a loan limit of $550,440

How it Applies to the Market You Serve

The new permanent FHA program reforms maintain the local nature of their eligibility requirements. Therefore, you need to make sure that you understand how the provisions apply to your service areas.

The local nature of these FHA eligibility requirements is causing a significant amount of uncertainty and confusion for current home owners and potential home buyers. This becomes your opportunity to help.

Simple, Help-based Marketing

The local structure of the FHA programs makes for a prime opportunity to launch hyper-local education programs and become the local FHA mortgage and real estate expert. Here are some simple ideas to claim your position as the local FHA guru:

• Offer brief presentations on the new FHA assistance programs to local civic groups
• Offer home owner assistance seminars or information to local libraries
• Post local FHA qualification and eligibility information on your local website or blog
• Email or direct mail your past prospects and clients an FHA reform alert
• Offer free FHA qualification and eligibility consultations

These reforms were meant to help people. It is your job to get the word out and educate home owners and home buyer that you have programs to ease their pain.

Reprint: From Bill Rice's "Better Closer"