Attract Targeted Customers to Your Mortgage Business Using Insurance Agents, Accountants and Attorneys
Buying leads is a common mortgage lead generation method. Over the last few years it’s been a very effective strategy indeed. Due to high demand, if you just “did the numbers”, it was relatively easy to make a profit.
Being at the right place at the right time
Unfortunately, things have tightened, causing two problems. First off, demand has obviously weakened. Secondly, your prospect still gets flooded with calls from competing mortgage agents. What’s worse is that your prospect can’t tell you apart from the others. To her all mortgage lenders look and sound the same.
Differentiating Your Business
You need to separate from the pack. But how? Cold calling and prospecting is hard work so buying leads should still be part of your overall strategy. You can use the services of different mortgage lead generation companies or partner with someone to cold call for you. Buying leads may still provide some work, but smart mortgage agents are busy building a network of referring allied professionals – and setting themselves apart form the pack in the process.
Using Allied Professionals to Generate Mortgage Leads
An allied professional is a professional service provider who frequently comes in contact with your potential prospects, but who doesn’t sell mortgages themselves. They could be real estate agents, accountants, insurance agents or lawyers. We all know that referred business is better business. Referred prospects will likely know a bit about you and you come with an endorsement from the person doing the referring – a person they already trust and do business with. In short, the prospect will listen to you, take your advice, and buy from you precisely because their other advisor introduced you. Your job is simply to make the process easy and comfortable for the client.
It’s worth remembering however that referral business doesn’t come for free. While there may be no monetary cost, you need to invest your time, energy and professional reputation into building the right relationships.
Why Would Allied Professionals Help You?
They’re not just helping you. You’re helping them. Most pros want to take care of as many of their clients’ needs as possible. By doing this they raise the chances of keeping that client over the long-term. They also like to be looked on as the expert and the ‘go to person’ with the connections. If you do your job well your referral partner will look good too. Moreover, by having “his people” service his clients he lowers the chance of someone else stealing the business.
If you’re smart, you’ll also look for ways to refer business back to your professional partners. Not only will it cement the relationship between you but it will also encourage them to send you even more referrals.
Choosing Allied Professionals to Work With
It’s important to remember that you want allied professionals who are successful and who are working as hard as you. That’s step one – drawing up a list of possible partners.
Attracting Partners and Developing Your Network
From there your goal is to make working with you attractive, simple and rewarding for your potential partners. Developing and working with networks of allied professional is not a cheap mortgage lead generation tactic. It might not cost you any cash but it certainly takes time and effort.
OK, sounds great. But how do it get started?
First of all, this is a soft-sell approach with a focus. Your objective is to create business alliances, not to sit back and wait for them to come to you. At the same time using a hard-sell approach to build these alliances is likely to put other professionals off working with you. They may be afraid you unleash your hard-sell techniques on their loyal customers. Be professional, be willing to help and be straight to the point.
What’s next?
Develop a Specialty or Niche
To attract professional partners, you need something that sets you apart from your competitors. Instead of being just another mortgage guy, you want to become the new home mortgage lead generation specialist, the small business owner’s mortgage pro, the multi-unit mortgage advisor or the government secured mortgage expert. Don’t fear being pigeon-holed, people will remember you and you can leverage that into new fields over time.
Build a Local Territory
It can be as big or as small as you want. It doesn’t even have to be your own neighborhood. If there’s a more lucrative part of town make that your territory. You want to be the local expert that all the allied professionals call when they have work in that area.
By drawing a defined territory it’s easier for you to manage, market to, and defend. Plus, it’s easier to travel and meet these professionals in person at their office, over lunch or at a professional business function.
Finally, success breeds success. If you can demonstrate your success, that encourages professionals to work with you. That’s much easier to accomplish in a well-defined territory.
Build and Demonstrate Your Value
Become an expert. Hold workshops, teach courses, present to local business groups and write articles for the local press. This raises your profile and demonstrates your expertise to other working professionals in your area. Make sure to keep clean copies and reprints of all your press (articles, write-ups, and reports) and use this material as supporting evidence of your expertise when approaching potential partners. All this makes you more attractive to customers too – making it easier to refer business to you.
Hire or Partner With an Assistant
You must be on top of your physical game. You want to be rested, cool, and calm when you hold meetings with the allied professionals. This is hard to do if you’re running around all day chasing leads and sales. Let your assistant do that.
Rewarding Referrals
Depending on your local rules and regulations, always reward referrals that turn into business. You should even consider giving a small gift for an honest lead or referral even if it doesn’t turn into business. Not only is it good business etiquette but it also encourages more of the same behavior.
Referral fees and rewards can be a touchy issue for some people. So, leave the possibility open and ask your allied professional if they have thoughts for or against it. Cash incentives may, in some cases, be too blunt so be creative in rewarding those that help you grow your business.
What Next?
We do it for you: If you need help developing leads for your mortgage business, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report