National Lead Service has been in the Internet lead provider space for 7 years now. A lot has changed in the mortgage origination market place over the past 7 years. The "mortgage broker" business has more or less been dismantled by legislation in favor of consumers utilizing big banks for their loan needs. Many brokers saw this coming back in May of 2009 even. “The tougher regulatory environment is hammering those that remain, so much so that Access is seeing its ‘phone ring off the hook’ from mortgage brokers looking to convert to mortgage bankers,” said Christine Clifford, principal at Access Mortgage Research, Columbia, Md.
With that all said one thing has remained true during the ups and downs of this crazy market. The adaptable, seasoned veterans still know how to get loans originated. Many of them used to solely rely on referral business but as of recent times they've been forced to seek alternative marketing sources to build their robust pipelines. Aged mortgage leads are a natural fit to their current models. Here are a couple reasons why and a sales approach to close more deals.
It is alarming in retrospect to think back how easy selling mortgage leads to lenders was prior to 2007. Pricing was not an issue, having enough volume to supply these sales origination machines was. 
There was no vintage leads marketplace during the hay days. Times have changed, there are no more giant subprime lenders buying every real time lead you could send them at a premium price. There are however still consumers trying to get approved for a refinance loan or a new loan. What happens to those consumers that were never handled properly when they originally submitted their online mortgage application? The consumer typically completes more than one application online.
Let's assume the first loan officer floats the rate and the rates go up, his chances of retaining that consumer as a trusted customer are most likely dead. The second loan officer goes out the night before for Thursday night drinks and is a little worthless on the phone Friday, the consumer never is reached. What happens to the consumer at this point isn't relevant but what happens to that opportunity is. This lead has now become an aged internet mortgage lead. One can begin to see the "why" these lead types are a great source of marketing.
Currently the real sweet spot, based off existing client’s results, seems to be a combination of 3-10 day old leads and a large volume of 30-90 day old leads. The pitch is the same. Think about what the customer has already been through. Our quality control reps speak with customers daily, who after ranting and screaming about how they were treated originally or lack there of, 
and establish a tremendous repoire by simply listening to the customers. Each one of our leads comes with date and time stamp of the customers originally application. Starting the conversation with "Mr. Customer, I am calling on behalf of XYZ customer satisfaction department to make sure all your needs were met when you completed your original application on 03/15/11?" He who speaks next loses. Our clients love the aged leads because they can disposition the files quickly to find the "diamonds in the rough." If the customer has already received help, "Great, let me send you an email with all my contact information so if you ever have any questions about your loan you can contact me directly," place the lead in the appropriate category within your CRM and move on.
The other big portion in the success and "how" to market to aged leads is the dialing solution you are using. If you are fortunate enough to still have LO's or junior LO's the last thing you want to do is give them a list to manually dial on daily. I used to call this "dialing for dollars.” The manual function of the dialing is actually the real villain in this model. There are tons of dialing solutions out there for around $80-$100. These solutions will not only increase efficiencies of lead management but will take the finger dialing out of the process to make your LO's much happier. The 30-90 day old lead product price point is so low that many of our clients utilize this lead category, with dialing solutions, for their Junior LO's. Volume is the best experience builder for young LO's that are eager to learn the tricks of the trade. It is an expensive proposition to turn them onto real time leads or even the 3-10 day aged leads.
Waiting for the referral business to come back around, regulations to ease, and the market to correct itself isn't going to pay the bills. Aged Internet Leads can help build a healthy pipeline.
Spring is here and it’s time to clean house. Not just in your home – but mentally, physically and in the business sense. If you are looking for leads in the debt settlement, mortgage, loan modification or credit repair industries maybe it is time to start thinking aged. What are you sitting on or better yet what vintage leads are out there waiting for you to breathe some life into them?
I like taking the opportunity to officially “spring” clean out my closets. It's nice to find things that I have forgotten about, and then run down a quick check list of “do I need, do I want, will I use/wear again and is it worth holding onto?” We can do this not only in our closets - but in our lives and that includes in the workplace. It’s a tough time right now in the internet lead generation industry, but it’s still a business. We are not the only industry that has taken a hit, so maybe we need to remember that we are not the only ones that need to learn how to make it through. Real time leads are still available, but not at the rate that they were a few years ago.
At National Lead Service we have cleaned out the business closets for you when it comes to obtaining internet leads, and we’ve done all the work. We have quality aged leads – debt settlement, mortgage, credit repair and tax repair. Using our quality assurance we have verified leads from all 50 states and many verticals. Just because the leads have been in the system for 30, 60, 90 or more days doesn’t mean they're any less valuable. If anything – there is a quality to them that is similar to finding that old fabulous shirt in the back of your closet. Not only is it vintage, but it is ready to be put back out into the spotlight.
The generation process is the same for real time internet leads and aged internet leads. The only factor that separates the two is time in between your execution on them and obviously the price. You can relax a little bit when calling on your aged internet leads and you will definitely find yourself with more opportunities than when dialing on real time leads.
Aged debt leads are great for debt lead buyers because as with everything in life – timing is key. Unfortunately most of the people who have ended up having debt problems it has been due to mismanagement or little education when it comes to their finances. Also, a slow process to getting any type of assistance or help is a common character trait. This can be a positive for companies wanting to work with them now months later; they will finally be ready to get the help you can provide.
As for aged mortgage leads, this is a very competitive market in lead generation. Many homeowners are looking to refinance or get a loan modification but the process can be very intimidating. From the aged standpoint this can also be an opportunity for you to work with them now that some time has passed and they are no longer having their phone ring off the hook with sales calls.
Aged internet leads are something to really consider this spring. Just think about the consumers who filled out their forms within the past few months but have not actually committed to working with a company yet. They are ready, they are doing their own spring cleaning – around the house and on their finances. This is the perfect time to really provide help for those who are looking to get out of debt or maybe refinance their home loan. It’s time to dust off the vintage leads and really turn them into a new business deal.
There was a very interesting article I read yesterday in the National Mortgage News written by Brian Collins. He wrote, “Despite their vocal opposition to principal reductions, major banks are actually reducing principal on loans they hold in portfolio and the re-default rate on these modifications is much lower than standard rate and term restructurings, according to a new report from Amherst Securities Group." This got me to thinking about the overall state of the home value crisis we are currently faced with. If the banks really wanted to resolve this mess could it be done fairly quickly?
What if the banks reduced principal loan amounts to levels that coincide with the home values in a given market? 
There would be a great deal less of short sales and foreclosure of consumer’s homes in my opinion. If you look further at the reports Amherst provides it drills down into the default rates of principal reduced loans versus just a standard rate modified loan that gets sold off to investors.
"Six months after modification, bank portfolio loans have an 18% re-default rate, versus 28-42% held by other investors," AGS analysts estimate. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans have a 28% re-default rate, and loans in private label securities have a 42% red-efault rate.
"Principal reductions are clearly the most effective type of modification," the ASG analysts conclude.
Now I am not mathematician but I do know that one typically pays a little more in interest than they do the total loan amount borrowed on a home. For example, if your home loan is $250,000.00 over a 30 year period of time at a rate of 5.50% you will pay approximately $261,000.00 in interest during the lifetime of that loan. Take this loan value figure above and let's say a home value of roughly $200,000, which keep in mind is about $100,000 less than the consumer paid for the home 5 years ago, and reduced that principal loan amount of $250,000 down to the $200,000 what might be accomplished?
While I don't think it is fair necessarily for the banks to bail out every irresponsible consumer across the United States, I do feel there is a large percentage of consumers that would stay in their homes if this was done on a larger scale. Values would stabilize in markets quicker, consumers would have confidence that their home is an investment again, and just maybe we might see a shift of attitude in the buyers/sellers market.
The current model lends to the customers re-defaulting once their rate modification is up and adjusts back to the levels that make the original loan amount unbearable again. I think it is time for the banks to really look at what they have to lose versus what they could possibly retain and service for the next 10, 15, 20+ years of that loans life.
I know as an Internet Lead Provider that generates mortgage leads it’s been a long haul since 2007. We've watched veteran loan officers jump to other industries that they are unfamiliar with simply to make a living. Some of these guys have been originating loans for 20+ years. We would like to see their market come back for selfish reasons. After all if we aren't selling mortgage broker leads or aged mortgage leads to our clients, that most likely means they aren't making money either. Let's hope the banks see the "writing on the wall."
National Lead Service started utilizing social media and search optimization tools approximately one year ago. We've seen some tremendous growth phases and we've learned a lot from our mistakes. The biggest mistake I made personally was inviting my friends to partake in my business fan pages on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. More the latter two platforms than the first.
Many friends and colleagues use LinkedIn for their personal business lives. There are plenty mistakes we made along the way. Rather than focusing on what not to do I thought I write today about 6 things that we've learned to be true about having a growing social media and search platform that actually creates new business opportunities.
1. Create a Brand - I had no clue what this meant when we first started out building our pages, content, identity, and "brand". I mean I know how to identify a brand like Coca-Cola or Kleenex but how did I figure out what our companies brand was in our verticals, which happens to be offering Internet lead generation for the financial services markets. Unlike Coca-Cola or Kleenex or a million other products out there that are tangible products, we provide an electronic request from a consumer online looking for fulfillment to their request.
How do you brand that? What I figured out is branding our products is almost an extension of our companies personality or culture. We aren't selling really anything different than another 100 lead generation companies out there. We may do it way more ethically but how did I differentiate our brand from theirs? It really came down to finding content that was fun, relevant, useful, and purposeful to our readers within our verticals.
2. Don't be Over the Top Salesy - If I look back at all the blogs we've written the majority of our earlier blogs were very sales oriented. Sometimes even to the point they were straight advertisement specials of products we were trying to move. Social media is not about generating new sales from the content that you are providing to your followers. Sure a message from time to time about a new product, service, or even a new release of an existing product is in my opinion considered a prudent action. Just don't "always be selling" and you will be surprised overtime how your brand, authority in discussions, and overall involvements in groups will generate its own new sales for your company.
3. Optimization - If you haven't utilized a paid service to optimize each and every page, image, blog page, landing pages, descriptions you are not being seen by the search engines effectively. There are tons of software companies out there that provide simple tools for users to optimize their HTML code so the search engines robots/crawlers know what their sites are really offering. Please feel free to contact us about what we use.
4. Content is King - relevant content is king. Inbound links from relevant sites doesn't hurt either, in fact it is the majority of the weight held in the eyes of the search engines. If you don't have the right content, tools, and lots of it you are hurting you chances of retaining eyeballs to your site for more than a few seconds or sometimes minutes. You have to stay on top of the content on your site and continue 
to add to it daily if possible. Not the easiest of tasks I might add. A team of 5 and you could really take your visibility to the tops of the search engines, not quickly but a lot quicker than most if you are doing it right. Wish I had that many bodies working for me.
5. It Takes Time - unless you have ties into Hollywood, end up catching an unreal video that produces millions of hits on YouTube or your Facebook page… chances are you are going to be in the sandbox for a bit of time. We've worked diligently over the past 10 months and here are some examples of our keyword results and where we were 2 week's ago with the top search engines. Keep in mind we were not even on the grid when we started:
Internet lead provider – #1
Internet debt lead provider - #1
Aged debt lead providers - #3
Debt lead provider - #3
Mortgage lead provider - #9
Internet mortgage lead provider - #10
6. Don't be afraid to inform your readers of your product offerings in your signature, tag line, or elsewhere beneath the conveyed content.
We hope you provide us with some comments about your efforts and insights.
National Lead Service provides mortgage lead generation, amongst other lead verticals for its loan officers, debt settlement companies, and attorneys with quality aged mortgage leads, mortgage broker leads, and other relevant lead products.
We've written in the past about the value proposition of purchasing quality aged mortgage leads. In this blog I want to focus on more on what you are doing with your existing database of past clients or sales opportunities. Do you have a CRM solution that helps you follow up and keep an active database of potential buyers? If you don't you are not properly monetizing your aged leads most likely.
Even if you are utilizing Excel to keep track of the last point of contact, contact name, details of your last conversation you are at the very least taking the first step in creating potential sales merely following up appropriately. There are some tremendous CRM tools out there like Leads ROI, Leads 360 amongst many other available platforms. Most of these CRM solutions give you robust follow up tools to initiate continual contact with your leads throughout their buying process. Follow up is very important to any lead type, whether it was derived from a referral; from an Internet mortgage lead generation company, or possibly a phone generated transfer.
Let's face it, in today's marketplace it takes a lot more than just waiting for referrals to hit to make a living.
Loan officers are working twice as hard per deal and making nearly a 1/3 of what they were making on loans 3 years ago. LO's need to be proactive, efficient, and diligent in their efforts to make a decent living during the economic downturn.
Another valuable function the CRM solutions provide is data mining. This gives the user the ability to filter based of data field selections. Maybe you want to look at all the leads in your database that have only Excellent or Good credit with 6.25% rate or higher. These web based tools offer that type of solution. This will allow you to focus on the type of campaign that matches the type of product you are trying to sell to the customer. Just blanket messaging your aged lead database isn't always the most effective method of advertising or staying in contact with your customers.
Remember with any aged mortgage leads that are over 90 days old you must scrub them against the Do Not Call list before following up. There are exceptions about following up, you can review the DNC website for further details. A general rule of thumb is to only follow up with customers that are up to 75 days old if it was a lead you purchased. There is no need in pushing the 90 day Safe Harbor window.
Quality control equals success when following up with aged mortgage broker leads. The consumer submitted their interest up to 75 days ago. Where they promised something that the initial LO's couldn't deliver? Was the customer never called back? Was the customer called too many times initially, lost interest, and still need assistance? If you approach the sales opportunity as just that you will most likely be struck with resistance.
Taking the time to find out if the customer was handled properly at initial time of submission is a fantastic way to open the door. 9 out of 10 times the customer does have some feelings that he/she wants to vent. Take that opportunity to be the good LO that listens. My sales manager used to say to me "he who speaks first loses."
I can't begin to tell you how much my brain hurts from all the reading I've been required to do just to keep up with the fast past growth of social media. Specifically, in regard to how it applies to online lead generation. I don't consider myself to be an expert, nor even a mid-level student. I've seen amazing tools like Hootsuite, Twitter, Groupon, Yelp and "cloud computing" software hit the Internet technology sector offering a wide variety of offers and solutions to bring better efficiencies in which the rate of speed of information is passed along.
What I think I've learned more than anything is the need to generate a relative brand that creates informative, non-intrusive, sometimes fun, information about the verticals we work within and who we are as a company. We are no Lower My Bills, while we feel we can generate leads at the same level at a better price point, we don't have millions of dollars to spend on advertising. For an internet lead provider like National Lead Service, social media at the beginning was primarily a method to try and generate sales. Our blogs many times were sales oriented, we apologize. ;-)
We originally set out to generate leads but in return what we've built is so much stronger than a single point sales channel. We now have a voice to collectively communicate what products might be doing well for our clients, specials, relative news that is industry specific, fun tidbits, feedback in discussions, and a united company identity.
Our goal is to continue to learn how to combine social media with our B2C efforts to deliver a higher
quality lead that benefits both the consumer and our clients mutually. It is not a secret that social media is big and the importance is growing every day. It is also not a secret that more and more the younger generations will depend on it to communicate. The only secret is who is positioning themselves to take advantage of the vast new marketplace.
Join us, like us or follow us in one of the following groups:
http://www.facebook.com/NationalLeadService
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nationalleadservice
http://twitter.com/nationallead
Most of the time successful sales organizations have a proactive approach tackling their sales goals. After all, the phone doesn't just magically ring in a competitive sales landscape. It is typically the salesperson that is most diligent, proactive, and knowledgeable that earns the consumers business. That attitude is necessary but not all leads call be handled with the same approach. Case in point is aged leads, specifically aged Internet leads.
Take into consideration the following scenario: Consumer completes an Internet mortgage lead application on one of our websites. Consumer completes another application on a competing website wanting to make sure they get more than one quote. Consumer is then called by two of our clients and possibly two to three of the competition’s clients over the next 72hrs. No decent sales organization is only going to call just once when they receive a new lead. 
Typically that consumer will be called multiple times over a 72 hour period of time by all four or five clients. Let's assume the consumer does in fact settle with one of the client’s offers.
The client however hasn't locked the rate in but instead tries to "float" to see if the rates might go down. Rates go up and consumer is now ticked off at client because he can't deliver on what he promised. What happens to that consumer after this point? He or she still needs help with their existing or new home loan. However, do you think the consumer is going to be eager to speak to the next fast talking salesperson on the phone? Probably not.
That is just one of many scenarios that happen all too often with real time leads. That is why assuming the "reactionary roll" while following up with aged leads works much better than being a proactive, hard, selling machine. The consumer may have had an awful experience upon original submission. Most likely they are going to want to speak their mind about it before they ever start divulging details about their current needs. If you react with concern, understanding, and patience you might be surprise just how low their walls of resistance might be diminished.
Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes before you jump on the phone. Think about the type of leads you are working, work them proactively but don't forget to react to the consumer to build rapport.
Lead generation companies are a dime a dozen in today's online world and not all are created equal. Among lead generation companies, we at National Lead Service feel we are a step above the rest. We offer superior customer service and excellent quality leads.
Our founders have over 20 years in combined service in the lead generation field. They have held senior management positions with publicly traded, private, and small to large sized marketing companies. Our experience allows us to cost effectively generate quality Internet leads. We know how to manage a successful lead generation campaigns. We help train our customer’s sales people on how to make their lead campaigns profitable. Our extensive knowledge base is handed down to clients and we are absolutely dedicated to helping our clients grow their businesses.
Customer service is a key component when choosing the right Internet lead generation company.
If the provider doesn't pick up the phone when there is consumer complaints or there is poor lead quality, that is a pretty good sign you are going to be for a long road ahead trying to achieve a decent ROI with that vendors leads.
Stay away from lead generation service companies from the State of Florida all together. Nothing against Florida, I love the place but the biggest kinks tend to love the tropical lifestyle while acting like they are working. Typically you might even find a week or two of good leads, after that disaster. If you know of any decent Florida sources feel free to comment. We've run into one or two decent sources over the past 10 years.
Another quick tip. Do some quick research with merchant services records to see if there are any complaints about the lead provider you are considering working with. If the company doesn't have the ability to take credit card payments and only works on a "pre-payment" check or cash basis... RUN the other way. Most dishonest lead generation companies don't have merchant services because either they cannot get approved or they fear charge backs due to poor lead quality. We've always had merchant services, we've never had one charge back, and we've been with Wells Fargo since inception.
Whether you are calling to learn more about our robust, yet inexpensive dialing solution, our aged internet mortgage leads, aged Internet debt leads, or any of our various real time exlcusive internet leads, our marketing staff is there to help you. We take pride in our customer service record. Referrals are available upon request.
Writing about politics from a business platform can always be a touchy subject. My father never separated the two but I am going to take my first stab at it. No matter your political position, there were certain key topics (especially if you are affiliated with any of the same arenas we work with), that I had particular interest in during the State of the Union speech. Some of them were related to new or proposed changes to existing regulations, government spending, and health care. The other topics, while entertaining aren't all that relevant to the financial services world.
Obama spoke about our Nation’s debt but really didn't focus on how they were going to achieve a debt free country. He touched on "freezing government spending” but again I really didn't hear too much about a detailed plan on how to accomplish this huge task. I realize that the State of the Union is more of a high level blue print on where we are currently and where we as a Nation are headed.... a 50,000ft level view from our Commander-in-Chief. However, I was hoping for a more definitive understanding of what this office intends execute... not more about the battles they've been fighting in Congress or the joke about the battles that have been fought about health care reform.
I don't think there are many Americans laughing these days about any of the related topics in regard to the overall economy. I realize the folks in Congress have been waging war over these topics and this was a moment of levity during the speech, but I just couldn't muster a laugh. Little is being done by either party, which brings me to this idea and question. Government freeze on spending. 
What does our government spend their money on currently? Here is an image I found Online, source is, "US Government Printing Office" for the year 2007.
It amazed me to find 8.7% of our tax payer’s dollars were spent to cover our governments’ own debt. The nice folks over at brillig.com have a nifty little national debt clock. Here is what they've found: The Outstanding Public Debt as of 26 Jan 2011 at 09:31:48 PM GMT is $14,071,555,040,999.65. If that number isn't alarming enough, now take the figure from the pie chart showing our tax payer dollars are going towards 8.7% of our own government’s debt. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $4.16 billion per day since September 28, 2007 you can understand my concern.
I wonder how much personal wealth was represented vs. the debt incurred to tax payers of the people sitting in that chamber in our Capital building. The lawmakers, politicians, and lobbyists that attended the speech, how much money did it cost the tax payers for them to merely attend that event? The clothes they wore, the forms of travel it took for them to attend, all the way down to the protection that was offered to them to attend the speech.
At National Lead Service we offer services to true Americans who are in trouble due to unsecured debt problems, mortgage foreclosures, credit issues due to unpaid medical bills, amongst many other reasons. While we don't have an answer to what's it going to take to resolve our Nation’s issues, we strive to a. stay positive, ethical, and continue to contribute to the continuing growth of our clients industries and b. to deliver quality aged debt leads, real time debt leads, and all types of aged Internet leads to all of our clients helping those consumers that a part of this mess.
In downturn economies like the current recession we are going through, do you have a marketing strategy other than just waiting it out? If you've purchased medium to large amounts of data or aged Internet leads prior, what are you doing with those leads now? Have you implemented a quality control solution to remarket to your potential and existing customers?
There are a lot of the CRM tools available to manage your leads. These CRM functions give you the tools necessary to keep your data clean, categorized, and easily downloaded based off certain criteria you set for particular campaigns. Some of the CRM solutions even provide National Change of Address (NCOA) updates. This is a nice added feature if you are utilizing direct mail as the first part of your marketing approach. Most of the CRM or dialing solutions that are coupled with a CRM also provide the option to bounce your data off the Do Not Call (DNC) database. If those solutions aren't available I strongly recommend updating your entire database at least every 6 months. There is no point in marketing to def ears or eyes at the same time potentially creating "heat" around your marketing efforts.
A solid quality control approach in your opening discussions, with a potential or existing customer, is a tremendous opportunity to gain rapport with the client. If you come out of the gate salesy the customer is most likely going to be less receptive towards listening to what it is you have to offer. 
Whereas if one takes the time to listen to the customers feedback, more than likely your approach might lend to more open ears and a less defensive customer.
Consumers are riddled with creditors calling their lines, lenders calling asking about where their 30 day late payment is, or debtors calling on behalf of both entities. It might have been a while since someone listened to what it is the consumer is actually trying to accomplish versus just selling them a product to "fix all their issues".
Implement a timeline for corresponding to your customers. If you send weekly newsletters to your customers about mortgage rates being low, don't be surprised if your phone doesn't ring. Most customers know where the current rates are fluctuating at any given day. Maybe a weekly newsletter for this type of customer isn't the best course of action. One suggestion might be to correspond with these folks quarterly about things relevant to the overall market place.
Take time to send information about what your company is working on from a customer service standpoint rather than just all sales. The bottom line is you don't need to hammer consumers all at once, spread out your touch points with them over the year. You never know when that customer might be in the market randomly for the product you offer.
If you aren't managing your own data, you aren't taking out the trash. If you don't take out the trash it just sits there and builds up until it becomes worthless. Turn your trash into dollars by reworking opportunities that fell by the wayside.
Feel free to contact us about any of our real time leads or aged internet lead products.
