Practitioner tips to ensure you maximise the investment you’ve made on internet generated leads.
Fixing Meetings with Bought Leads
It’s January and the mass hordes are flocking to the gyms to work off the pounds from Christmas and fulfil their New Years’ Resolutions. We all know by February many would have given up but will still be paying that direct debit gym membership.
We’ve all been there.
Paying good money for no return.
The parallel extends to bought mortgage leads from a marketing agency or an internet company. You often pay substantial amounts for a lead, but do you turn these into appointments. This article will show you how you can maximise your investment and achieve more face to face meetings which you can turn into income.
The Process:
Open
You must aim to call the lead as soon as it has been received; delay and you’ll lose the impact. Even if it arrived at night, try and at least text that you’ll phone in the morning.
“Hi I’m Paul from ABC, we mortgage specialists. You were online just now and wanted to speak with someone about a mortgage.”
“The reason for my call is to see what we can do to help you and if it’s a good time, I’d like to find out what it is you want to achieve?”
Note, I don’t use the “is it convenient?”, never works.
“is that OK?”
Use plenty of test closes to get the customer nodding and agreeing. Yes tags work will here as well, don’t they?
They seriously don’t want to receive advice, believe me, that’s regulator speak not customer speak.
Explore
This is what we all do well as mortgage advisers. The capability to ask questions. You’re not fact-finding though, you’re exploring the motivation behind the call, seeking the customer’s hot buttons. More than likely they were online doing the ubiquitous researching and they reached a point where they couldn’t research anymore and needed some further help.
Are they looking to consolidate some loans? Are they re-mortgaging? Have they had trouble obtaining mainstream finance? Seek their motivation to contact someone.
Use plenty of verbal assertions and paraphrase. Enable them to talk.
Summarise when they’ve finished and sell the meeting.
Sell the Meeting
“We’ve helped hundreds of people in your position over the last 5 years and are experts in this area. I could ask you some more questions, then I might be able to fix up a meeting with you. We can then discuss some options and show you some new ideas that’ll help you to bring all your loans together under one highly competitive mortgage.”
“How does that sound?”
Remember to test close and don’t come across desperate for the business, note the “I might be able to” much softer. Customers also like to hear the word “options and ideas”. They seriously don’t want to receive advice, believe me, that’s regulator speak not customer speak.
At this junction, you may feel some push-back. Be ready for this. Typically, you’ll get the “send me some literature”. You need to deal with these, so plan your responses. I like to work with the principle of knee jerk reactions. Think about it. When pushed for a decision, all of us react instantly with a “no” – we knee jerk react. It’s built into out DNA.
So, when faced with a typical “I’m not sure” or a “send me literature” merely re-ask what it is you asked for. Make sure you acknowledge what they’ve just said and just state the same request you made earlier. They’ve now had time to think about it and will be positive.
Regulations and Fee
You’ve got to do this otherwise you’ll have your compliance people down on you like a ton of bricks but do it customer friendly, don’t use regulator speak.
“Have you heard of the Financial Conduct Authority?”
“They look after us to ensure you get sound advice from us and we’re directly regulated with them. That means we can give you access to every bank, building society and lender, many you’ve never heard of, can’t find on the internet and are only able to deal through me.”
Now drop a landmine, in case the customer is inclined to talk to someone else.
“You see if you went direct to your bank, they can only give you options from within their products and many people online also have restricted options, I can look at all the lenders for you”
“Does that sound interesting?” Note another test close. Now comes the crucial part.
“You might be wondering how I earn a living. First, if we meet up, there’s no charge at all for that meeting and if we can help you, we’ll arrange everything, sort out all the online paperwork and forms, talk to all the
people we need to. We do that all for you and charge a fee but I can let you know exactly how much that will be when we meet and you can normally add it to the loan so you won’t have to fork out for it upfront.”
Here you may get push back again. Handle it. Re-assert you’ll talk through the amount when you meet. If you need to you can pacify by announcing it’ll be less than £500 but this is dangerous as the customer might start wanting more detail. State the fact that the first meeting is on your dollar so there’s no harm talking.
Fact find
The pure purpose of the next series of questions is to qualify the customer not fact find. You don’t want to go see everyone, you need to check to see that you can help, it’s the type of customer you normally work with, they’re not going to shop around outrageously and they are the type of customer where a fee is quite normal.
“I want to make sure we can help you”
Close
Confirm you can help and fix the meeting.
“Great news, I’m confident I can help you so you don’t need to go anywhere else, shall we fix up a time to talk further?”
Follow this methodology and you’ll be successful with the vast majority of leads and you won’t have that guilty feeling of paying the gym membership every month and avoiding any benefit. But you still might have those extra few pounds on you from Christmas – I know, I have.
