We’ve learned much of what we think is true about lead and loan officer performance, is true a lot less often than we imagine. Finding and filling those gaps is a massive competitive advantage and like Billy Beane and the Moneyball Oakland A’s, the numbers will lead you to the right answers.
The difference between traditional mortgage lead nurturing and a strategic, scalable mortgage lead optimization process comes down to understanding the patterns in your data and putting it to work to improve your decisions – a great job for machine learning.
To help loan originators be more strategic about lead management, we’re sharing a couple of insights we’ve picked up over the years. Our goal is to maximize the value of every lead a lender receives, using your historical data and the power of machine learning technology.
Reassigning Leads: Playing to Your Team’s Strengths
Our global lead data shows that 28% of all closed loans originate from reassigned leads. Each loan officer has their own unique skills and communications patterns. Still, many sales managers overlook the power of lead reassignment.
Further complicating matters, loan officers often hang on to unproductive leads way too long. For mid-level performers, we’ve seen time and again that lead reassignment is particularly valuable in boosting results. Inefficient lead distribution that lacks a mechanism to reassign leads when they are becoming stale leaves significant opportunity untapped – even in today’s market.
Who gets a specific lead, and when they do in their own workflow, matters for boosting performance. A lead gathering dust with one loan officer could be a lead closed by another. Reassigning leads with loan officers better suited to handle a specific prospect during a more optimal period of their workflow can make all the difference in securing a customer.
Lead Follow-Up: Why ‘Right-Away’ Can be the Wrong Approach
For shared leads, speed matters; though if you’re not first there’s still plenty of opportunity. Being second, third or even fourth in line to reconnect with a lead can secure a deal. While contact attempts within the first ten seconds generate the best results with shared leads, additional attempts made after the first minute and up to ten minutes after lead receipt are only marginally less successful. One common mistake is an unsuccessful initial contact attempt within the first minute; then additional follow-ups get pushed out too far. Understanding and adapting for the customer’s journey is a great guide for a productive follow-up cadence.
Often, follow-up activities are hyper focused on communication during the early stages of mortgage loan exploration, and there is little follow-up during the middle stage of the funnel when a customer is ready to finalize a deal. Knowing how to modify when and why loan officers approach a lead, and how they can position themselves to connect at the opportune moment can make an entire sales team more efficient and effective.
Strategic Lead Optimization: Putting it All Together
Strategic, scalable lead optimization requires constantly re-evaluating which loan officer gets what lead, why and when. Managing lead reassignment is just as important as initial lead assignment in building momentum across your customer pipeline. We’ve learned over the years that prospect matching isn’t just about connecting with the right customer. Strategic lead optimization requires knowing how to pair the right loan officer with the right customer — and at the ideal time for everyone involved.
If you’re intrigued by these insights and want to learn more about what this could mean for your company’s lead management processes, contact us today for a brief introductory call.