Usherpa Blog - How to make your CRM work FOR you
As the pendulum swings, LO's need to be ready to work smarter not harder. Dusting off or honing selling skills won't be enough. Loan Officers should turn to systems and processes that make their life easier, keep them organized, and help keep their name in front of their database with relevant and engaging marketing.
What LOs don’t need is having to learn to use a complicated and complex CRM. It should be easy, so intuitive that anyone can use it on the very first day. What today’s sales professionals need is a refresher on how to add value to business referral partners and how to provide answers to the questions prospective borrowers have.
As for the latter, studies have shown that consumers will do their research online and by the time they make an application for a loan they already know if the lender has the answers they will need. Some of this comes from their website but much of it comes from the marketing material they’ve seen coming out from the lender’s loan officers.
Business referral partners are different. They are not looking for answers. They are looking for value. To build a business referral relationship, the LO must add value.
The right CRM will make this easy, by offering valuable content that the lender can schedule to go out to partners on a regular basis. Video-based information that real estate agents can use to attract more home buyers is particularly attractive and available in modern CRM systems
Of course, no automated system can take the place of a well-timed call from the loan officer. The CRM should provide regular alerts that give the LO a reason to call on partners and the information required to add value. Lenders who employ LOs who make those calls will outperform those who do not.
This can be very effective for real estate agents, but even more so for builders, who generally receive fewer calls from mortgage originators. Builders have a longer sales cycle than real estate agents and so it’s important for them to stay in touch with prospects during the home buying process. It’s impossible to know whether they will find the right home or turn back to the builder for a custom home.
LOs who can provide that kind of drip campaign to a builder’s prospects have found a way to add real value to their partner. By sending out material that focuses on the builder/lender relationship, it builds a stronger bond that will deliver more business.
All of this is available in modern CRMs developed specifically for the mortgage industry. But it must become a normal part of the LOs day to use these tools for prospecting and building stronger relationships with business referral partners. Helping your partners get more business is the best way to get more business from your partners.
Lenders who train their LOs to do this before the purchase money market gets here will succeed, both in that coming market and the current one.
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Also, read part one of the series: Preparing for the Coming Purchase Money Market and part two: Two Marketing Techniques Set Lenders Apart
Full article originally published in the August 2021 issue of Scotsman Guide - read the full article here.
