People who invest in technology often ask questions. Is this a “nice to have” or a “must have”? Few people have the resources to invest in technology they don’t need. This analysis often boils down to worst-case scenarios. “What’s the worst thing you can do if you don’t invest in this technology?”
When mortgage lenders are talking about loan origination and mortgage service compliance, the worst can be pretty bad, so we often see companies investing heavily in the best tools. . But when it comes to marketing a real estate or mortgage business, people who have sold in the past often think marketing automation is a nice to have.
But Mike Jameson doesn’t think so. not anymore.
Mike is an experienced mortgage officer. He was so good at his job that a few years ago his company gave him a spot on their annual all-paid trip around the Caribbean. did. Two days after his departure, he slipped his foot while walking by the pool.
Instead of a relaxing vacation, he ended up in the hospital with a brain hemorrhage and a year’s hefty recovery plan bills, and a year out of the mortgage origination game.
He knew it would be really hard to maintain relationships with partners and clients from his hospital bed. Without marketing automation, he would probably be right.
How Marketing Automation Saved Mike’s Business
In 2000, Mike’s company used a CRM that could automate the marketing of loan officers. This is not his typical CRM thing. A CRM is basically just a database of prospects. A marketing automation and customer engagement platform that provides intelligent workflows to keep professional sales reps on track. Thanks to this technology, most of his customers and business partners didn’t even know he was ill.
The company’s smart CRM became his voice during his recovery and maintained and developed his relationships while he recovered.
This new technology gave him time to teach his injured brain to speak again. Customers automatically received regular business updates, custom his newsletters, loan anniversary celebrations, and all kinds of additional content.
Surprisingly, Mike didn’t lose his business. His production actually increased him by 33% in the year he was recovering.
I’m not advocating running your business from a hospital bed, but growing your mortgage business in the buy-money market requires a focus on effective marketing. Even if you do, effective marketing can save your business.
That’s why a smart CRM becomes a “must have” tool.
How marketing saved my business
This was a lesson I learned in the early 80’s. I was selling homes like crazy in Denver. Like Houston and Southern California, Denver was hit by an oil bubble and everyone in the real estate industry was making huge profits. Mercedes and Rolls Royce were everywhere. Everyone wore a Rolex.
And like all bubbles, it burst.
The crash happened incredibly fast. In just a few months, those big-ticket cars were sitting on the side of the road with “for sale” signs on their windshields. It’s hard to survive and I was caught in the middle of it all.
No one wanted to own a home. It seemed like the worst financial decision a person could make. But the only thing I was really good at was selling houses. So I went door to door in apartment complexes and tried to convince renters to buy houses.
It wasn’t easy, but I made a living. Potential buyers often change their minds or fail to qualify at the last minute, so I lived in the murky most of the time. I was afraid of numbers. We had to sell five houses to close one. But I did the job for three years.
It’s been a rough year, but the time has been well put to good use in many ways. I’ve spent countless hours learning how to sell. I have learned that success mostly depends on building trusting relationships with clients.
If we thought of each and every interaction as just a transaction, it would be hard to connect. Sharing your knowledge and expertise in your industry helps people listen and builds trust. I had learned in those early days that relationships were the key to success.
And relationships, once formed, can be maintained in part through good content marketing.
Make good things great with automation
Effective and merciless selling saved my business when the Denver market crashed. But no one can sustain that pace for long. Effective selling is essential, but the crisis would have swept me away if I had to keep knocking on doors to make a living.
Early in my career, it was clear that marketing automation technology wasn’t just a “nice to have” thing. it was what i needed.
For many people, investing in new technology is not the final answer. According to experts, it is the beginning of a long and painful selection and implementation process that is very likely to fail. Every year, companies in this industry spend millions of dollars on new technology, but there’s no guarantee it will work out as well as it did with Mike Jameson.
why? Readers of this publication know exactly why. The big reasons are:
Technology buyers don’t know what LO really needs.
Frontline founders often confuse what they want with what they need, and by the time those wants are filtered by management and the company’s priorities are mixed, the right solution is no longer clear .
Developers do not understand sales in this industry.
A generic CRM can’t meet the needs of a professional salesperson who sells a complex product like a mortgage. Their tools might help you sell t-shirts online, but not here.
Difficult to implement.
Difficult to implement unless the software is designed to be delivered as SaaS (Software as a Service) with a very easy and intuitive interface. Every reader of this page has seen this happen.
Software too complicated.
Complexity can be a tempting trap. It’s human nature to be drawn to shiny new things, preferably ones with lots of buttons and switches. But if we can move away from buying based on newness, building on complexity, and buying on novelty, we can ask ourselves, what do sales reps need? I can.
The software doesn’t hit the right target.
Modern technology is often created to help power users get more out of their tools. Look at modern graphic art software. What a good CRM software should do is enable the bottom 80% of a company’s sales reps to accomplish the same thing as the top 20%. What does it do to your bottom line?
Fortunately, Smart CRM technology with sales automation capabilities is now available. By using it, you can greatly extend your important customer relationships. And if disaster strikes, it can literally save our business.
Just ask Mike Jamison. He’s alive and well and still taking out loans in Seattle.
Dan Harrington is the co-founder and CEO of Usherpa. His next book, Automate to Great, will be published in 2023.