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hello everyone and welcome to today's webinar lead generation growing your independent mortgage business my name is kathleen and on behalf of the team at bammortgagebroker.com i'm excited to welcome you to today's session in this webinar we'll be talking to industry experts about using lead sources to grow a stronger mortgage business for those of you who may be unfamiliar with bmortgagebroker.com we help connect individuals with professionals who assist you to become or join an independent mortgage broker now i'm pleased to introduce our panel of mortgage experts vince parlov director of wholesale development with united wholesale mortgage andrew pollock co-founder and ceo of leadpops and brian coster ceo of real estate connection i have a few housekeeping items to cover the recording will be available on demand after the live session we'll send you a link via email after the webinar if you want to listen to it again or share it with others if you have questions for our experts please feel free to send it through the q a feature or email us at info bmortgagebroker.com and we'll reach out to you after the webinar now i'm going to hand things off to vince to kick this webinar off hey kathleen thanks a ton hey guys and girls out there i'm super excited to bring brian and andrew today in with myself and talking about lead generation this is uh you know something a lot um you know people wanting to get into it touch on it and things of that nature um and uh you know i'm just really happy to have two pros you know with me today who have been through this different uh uh dynamic to the lead generation idea and mindset and so let's just jump right into it and i really welcome you guys thanks for thanks for joining us today thanks for having us excited to be here absolutely vince we're very excited to be here as well awesome stuff hey listen we uh you know mindset you guys i wanna you know you know as we were leading up to this we and we had a couple calls in regards to talk about what we're gonna do today and one of the things we all three of us agree on is um you know the lead generation mindset and what it's about you know andrew maybe you can kind of you know start things off today and and just you know tell us about what what you see folks out there having coming into the lead you know generation piece of of their business and the right mindset to have yeah thanks vince so lead generation uh it can come from a number of different places right so there's lead generation that exists online doing marketing lead generation that exists working with real estate agents and referral partners past clients so your leads are coming from a lot of different angles and the way you look at leads and opportunities that come from different sources you just got to have the right mindset in terms of how you treat those consumer opportunities coming at it the same angle when you're working with realtor referrals and thinking about it with the same approach as you would a lead you captured online from some marketing you've done it's it's gonna set you up for failure so you just have to understand that there's different ways to approach and follow up and interact with leads depending on where the lead came from and going into it understanding that will help you make good decisions and treat leads uh ingly and and capitalize and get the most out of opportunities that present themselves so just real quick uh as as an idea uh that to kind of uh explain that a little better you know realtor referrals phenomenal you might close one out of every two one out of every three of those and it's a simple phone call it's it's not a slam dunk but it's a layup the the person's ready to talk they've been warmed up a realtor said nothing good things about you that's great very different than a lead you captured off of facebook marketing you know different approach different amount of effort different amount of time you're going to have to put into it both of those could be great opportunities it's just you're not going to be able to get the same results from referrals and warm leads as you will if you're capturing people online so just thinking about these things and kind of going into it understanding that will help you uh set you up for success yeah you use the term a couple times there opportunity you know brian you know take it take that you know what you see you know is these opportunities are coming people's way and you know and how they're capitalizing on those well so to andrew's point right so whether it's a person you meet on facebook whether it's a referral from a real estate agent or it's somebody you walk around at the mall and find you know all leads and all of these all these people are leaked in some capacity it's just they represent various relationship dispositions so meaning how close of a relationship do you have with the person on facebook versus the person you met in person versus the person you met from a local refill realtor referral uh at the same time you know from those facebook leads you could find somebody who's ready to go right away it's it's it's a left less often occurrence uh but it can happen right and so starting with the mindset of okay everyone i meet interact with is a lead and then just where are they at right and then being able to record that and move off of that right whether that's a referral because like to andrew's point maybe one out of two one out of three uh we'll we'll close or get a pre-approval or if it's a facebook or 100 um you know we find that if you can engage and treat everyone like a lead and you have that mindset the rest of the sort of takes care of itself yeah and this this really this part of your business really is a lifestyle you guys right i mean this isn't i get these calls people like oh i don't have a loan so i bought a lead and it was a terrible experience touch on that just real quick in regards to you know this is this you're in it to win it for the for the long term on these types of you know on the lead generation piece right yeah i mean you might generate a lead that's eight months out right having the right understanding that hey they might not close today but i want to treat them right i want to build trust maintain that relationship how can i maybe help them along the way and be their go-to person when they are closer to a decision versus oh they're not ready that's a that's no good lead i'm not going to put any effort into it that lead might make you six thousand dollars in six months but if you just treat them uh as if there's there's no value there or there's no opportunity to help them down the road i mean it's it's a huge lost in a loss in potential income commission and a client that could be a repeat client a client that could refer you their family and friends so just thinking about like the lifetime value and potential opportunity that one person can create for you down the road is is really important not just thinking about short term is it going to close in the next month if not i'm on to the next and i'm not going to put any effort into that person yeah you touched on trust right brian trust we got to trust this process right and to andrew's point right so you know people are in different dispositions and people are different timelines by the time somebody actually talks to a real estate agent or talks to a loan officer they're in the buying process right so the referrals that you get you know from a retail loan officer's perspective are people really that have been shopping for multiple months i mean they just didn't come up with this idea and then talk they were already looking online but the lead game is about getting them further in the process right there you know a lot of people are missing out on a lot of opportunities because people do find uh people online and just you know sort of sort of buy a house right uh and then being set up to to facilitate right just sort of being set up to facilitate a transaction right because you're running out of business right so it shouldn't really matter uh whether it's a referral or whether it's a lead that's out you know two years from now right because we deal with people on the real estate side so we have a real estate team uh we do with people who are moving from other states moving from other countries we deal with people who you know are moving to dc from georgia and have a house to sell and they're going to move in december and they're just looking for a professional to facilitate the transaction right so whether that's a local lender a local agent right and they expect you to have the processes in place to fulfill that transaction you know a year from now six months from now um and the ones that do do well right i mean yeah yeah this segues real nicely you know from the standpoint into the process right because everybody's got a process that they need to follow you guys both have a process in regards to you get your people when they fight the process i know here at uwm when people fight our process you know what i mean it's sometimes you know not a great experience and then once they get to that aha moment you know talk about real quick about the processes that you guys have and and go from there maybe andrew you could take this one again you know first yeah sure so uh you know the the the mindset takes you right into the process the right mindset means you understand the why behind the process you're bought into it uh there's there's a process that we look at at leadpops uh that that considers one aspect is the conversion online there's there's a couple places we look at there's a conversion from a click or a viewer of a video or a click to a website or a landing page or someone that opened up an email that you sent out there's a click to lead conversion process that we we spend a lot of time on here so we've kind of perfected that process and it's something loan officers and mortgage brokers could be doing very similar to what zillow and bank rate and quicken loans and all these big companies are doing there's a method in terms of how you ask for information certain questions you don't ask certain messaging you use messaging you don't use lots of examples of this stuff out there you don't have to look too far it's a couple google searches away click on lending tree i can assure you they can afford it you're not going to cost them too much if you guys start kind of looking around and paying attention to what these big companies are doing and how they ask for information because that's a really important step to understand and it's not just a matter of throw a loan application out there it's great as a service tool it's not a lead conversion tool it's not going to help you generate a lead so there's a process there to understand how to convert a click into a lead and then the next step of that is okay leads are great but how am i going to convert leads into actual customers into closed loans so there's a process there in terms of the follow-up how many times what should that text message say for that first uh first uh communication that you send out to that lead yeah all these things that that define the process to help you convert leads into sales are are important to understand and either study and and spend time on and think about or hire a company that can help you with it that can give you the right tools and the right techniques and technology and can do it for you so there's different ways to look at it a lot of our clients are do-it-yourselfers and then we have clients that are hey can you do it for me so i can focus on closing loans talking to realtors and all these good things but there's definitely a process whether you want to do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you to convert leads into customers uh so um it's not just hey i want leads and you know you buy them and now they're gonna close there's processes with all this stuff not even close right i mean you touched on the user experience right out the gate you know from that standpoint brian i know you've been around this this business for a long time as as andrew has too that first experience you know it really bodes you know sets the stage for the relationship right on both sides of the transaction so a couple things right so to andrew's point um you know within the space right so you're buying a house so there's a lot of people that need to get involved and during that there's you know some baton passing uh between entities in between companies that need to sort of be orchestrated so uh whether that's you know let's say like with leap pops in the lead generation right so they generate the lead uh you know you need to get that into some sort of qualification process right so that's some sort of text message engagement some initial engagement uh that could be a loan officer that could be a realtor uh and then you need to get it into a leak conversion process right so like when we engage with you uh you know we're separating kind of the talkers from the walkers uh now we're gonna in you know now we're gonna convert you right we're gonna get you out looking at houses we're gonna get you a pre-approval letter we're going to do all those things and then there's the transaction management process right which is the actual nuts and bolts of negotiations the agreements uh having the ratifications collecting the emd check all those things and then okay now we have that and then closing management process right so establishing those sort of core sectors and then it's not that complicated right so to andrew's point it could be a text message right that's your you know our transaction management process is a once a week text message that says hey have you found the house you know before yet right and then we send them the homes that came on for sale for zillow right real simple stuff uh but you got to have a process in place that your team can build around so there's a level of consistency with execution right so it's like a football player right we're going right 48 power uh if they don't have that play to execute off of then everyone just goes their own way and then the buyer says well this is unorganized well why is it unorganized because you're coordinating between a real estate agent a title company a loan officer an underwriting an appraiser you know all of these things and it takes some orchestration right by nature yeah right yeah um yeah so yeah you have to have that process in place and it's not complicated either yeah you guys so vince parlov vince parlour mortgage is going to come to you guys i'm i'm i'm talking to both you guys about getting in the lead generation gig if i do everything right and i listen to you guys and things of that nature what's the return on my investment and realistic from you guys okay so i mean it's pretty straightforward right so uh for most mortgage companies or most real estate companies it's kind of uh kind of naive for them to think that they're not going to have to use the internet right like the internet like how much are you on your phone um and so the same thing that happened within the music industry regarding you know the distribution of cds or within the car industry uh regarding uh you know manufacturing overseas is going to happen in the mortgage industry within the sense of uh 90 of buyers are going online right and so if you want a sustainable business um you're going to have to put yourself online in some capacity right now whether you take it seriously or not it's up to you but what you would see is on average a 700 to 1100 lead cost acquisition right so if you think uh closed loan right if you're self-generating or you're buying from a lead aggregator between 700 and 1100 so you could go way up to 1800 if you didn't know what you're doing or if you if you're doing it yourself uh and you're generating leads yourself and you've got there's not a lot of overhead it's you know 700 or so so we tell people if you're not willing to spend two to three thousand dollars a month for three to three six months you're not going to see one loan a month and you're going to get discouraged right because it's going to cost between 700 and 11 to 1200 so if you're spending a thousand there's a chance you're not gonna get a loan for a month or two and then you know two months later you may get one where if you're spending three thousand you're gonna pretty much get a loan every month right i mean you may and you hit two loans next month um but it'll generally cost you know 700 to 1100 you know california might be 1800 and you know regionalized is different andrew any thoughts on that i like it those are those are good numbers i say anywhere from 500 bucks to a couple thousand dollars per closed loan it depends on where you're at depends on what your traffic sources are depends on how much money you're going to put into it depends on what you bring to the table going into it are you a brand new loan officer who just got licensed six months ago or you've got someone you know that comes to you with a database that's been doing some marketing that's got great reputation online that's got six realtor partners already referring them business i mean these are all different variables that are gonna that are gonna you know influence what kind of success you're gonna get and how quickly you're gonna see that kind of that success so there's it's hard to answer that question i hate to answer questions with non-answers but it's it's really it really depends on what you're coming with and what what do we have to work with if i have something to work with you've already got traffic you've already got some success and you're already marketing yourself it's a lot easier to just tweak a couple things and get you better results from stuff you're already doing and turn on a couple things here and there that you're not doing than as if you're starting from scratch with someone who's never generated a lead before they close one or two deals a month it's all referral and they've never really done any kind of phone sales and they have no crm coming to you they do everything in google sheets yeah that's a tough ramp that's a a year before you start closing deals but guess what all the time and effort you start to kind of put into building that thing up once it starts to hit and it starts to create some consistency it really becomes something that is a driver of your business but you've got to be able to be willing to spend i like what brian said three months six months i mean nine months before things start to really flow especially if you're brand new to this stuff and you're just turning it on especially if you have a limited budget it takes that much longer for things to ramp up for the algorithms to learn where they should be showing you and all this good stuff that happens with tech these days but uh you know it's it kind of varies there goes go ahead brad that's a good point so we tell people you know to our clients who are looking to get an ad spends like look if you're not willing to invest like 3 000 a month and have you know between the branch between the partners between the division that you're trying to get going almost 100 of that go back to reinvest into the ad spend to andrew's point to kind of build out the process and infrastructures and sort of fail forward into it um you're probably not going to do well right i mean this is a pivot into leads and you have to have processes and you have to kind of be good at it right and you don't get paid uh to get good at something you get paid when you're good at something right so yeah and it's not a one size fits all right now either one of your situations i totally respect that with you guys saying it you know but really you know going forward people follow the process follow what you guys are doing and you've really got you know you get to referrals and relationships that really you can bank on for for a lifetime damn near right you guys i mean that's really where it is that's what i love about this is when you start getting good at consumer direct lead gen you start getting in front of realtors or i should say in front of consumers before the realtors have a chance to and that creates a lot of leverage for you with those realtor relationships with referral partners all of a sudden i got to the lead before my realtor did i i'm the one as the loan officer who gets to text my realtor and say hey trisha check your inbox i've got another one for you and all of a sudden i'm the one that's referring clients to my agents and they're sitting there looking at me like where the hell did you come from this is phenomenal i've never had an experience where long officers are actually referring me clients it's always a one-way street that becomes a pretty exciting and compelling way to create new relationships with new agents uh you know reinvigorate existing relationships that maybe that the realtor isn't sending you as much business as they could be but now you've got something to call on them and talk to them about that's a lot more exciting than just rates and the fact that you can do a good job on the loan so these things play really really well together when you're smart about it and you kind of marry them and don't think oh the internet stuff is completely separate from like my referral business a lot of people just go into it thinking these are two completely different things and they need to keep them disconnected when it couldn't be any any further from the truth these things work really really well together you just have to be smart about it and look for opportunities when you when you generate a lead as to who else can i connect this person with in my sphere of influence that could could become uh you know this could become a client opportunity for them and then those referrals start coming back to you and that is something you also have to calculate as part of oh how many leads did i get out of that marketing spend well x amount of leads directly from the actual campaign but i got another two or three leads that that closed in the last couple months as a result of realtor relationships that i know wouldn't have happened had i not been doing this other legion stuff over here like that that's why those leads even came to me in the first place right right right that's i mean that's and that really that really you know dips into this referral for life because it's not just hey vince referred me a deal it's like hey now you posted that on linkedin or whatever like that and you that was a byproduct of that relationship that you that you established that could be this pays dividends you know over time right and from a different a bunch of different angles you know right 100 right and so to to andrew's point about you know agents and and buyers i mean uh and lenders i mean uh agents uh are looking for leads right so uh i mean a lot of agents the way their structure is set up with uh on a franchise level is their brokers uh you know won't buy leads right it's up to them uh to buy leads individually right and so as a lender uh you're in a perfect position to go out and buy you know mortgage leads who generally you know are are interested in getting pre-qualification and then going out and looking at a house and what's good and we talk about process you know part of having a process is not necessarily your internal processes but your team's processes right so uh when you're a loan officer and you have a lead that you can give to a real estate agent that real estate agent is now your field agent right who's going out there and showing to buy our properties who's doing tour requests who's running ground cover while you're sitting in your office you know generating more leads right and um you know the way we look at it we talk our lawn officers about it you know building a pipeline of buyers assigned to loan officer i mean assigned to local real estate agents that are taking your buyers out and showing them properties and you just facilitate the lead introduction right i mean just have that real estate agent ready um and then to your point you know andrew nobody's doing that so it's a pretty straightforward value prop of hey if you want this party to continue send me your deals right i want to do business with people who want to do business with me right so that's a little one-way street if you're not going to do business with me i'm not going to do business with you right and i've sent you four or five deals so you know what's up right i mean it's a very simple conversation right i scratched your back you scratched mine right yeah yeah well like we always tell people like we want to do business with people who want to do business with us that's a fair value problem right uh if you don't want to do business with us we don't want to do business with you um but as a loan officer i mean i cannot tell you how many loan officers we talk to that want to get reciprocal relationships realtors who are just begging from the business and then you talk to the realtors and they're just buying leads yeah so it's like they don't have anybody like nobody's you know that good you know especially with covet now right nobody fear very few people sphere is that big to where they can actually have a business on relationships like that it's just not a realistic thing yeah and it's like you know listen you just mentioned the loan officer i was like you know and we had talked about this i'm turning tables on you guys you know you guys are the loan officers looking at your guys companies to you know uh perfect this lead buying situation give give give our listeners and the folks that are tuning in just a little idea of you know what you guys see from that successful from the loan officer's perspective yeah you know i'll just throw out there just the the ability to go out there and be empowered and have confidence that you can you can call up a realtor knowing full well that realtor already has loan officer relationships that's usually that scares ellos off many times they go at it and they know that a realtor already has an existing relationship it makes it so that they don't even know how to approach that agent strategically so just having that scripting where you can say hey listen i i know you're probably already working with a ton of loss sure they're good people my experience though is that most loan officers don't do anything to actually help bring business and bring opportunities to their agents i think it's crazy it's 2021 you've got loan officers expecting you to refer them clients and it's not reciprocal it's a it's a one-way street typically from you to them and just kind of leading into the conversation i know the objection going into it you've got loan officers they're coming at you from all these different angles okay i'm going to talk about it i'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist if you're a producer and you've got you're doing business you've got ellos but the beauty of it is you hear about this from the other side of ellos they're gonna complain that oh these realtors aren't really loyal you know i worked on this guy for a few months we developed a relationship and then all of a sudden he stopped taking my calls or he stopped responding to my text he kind of ghosted me or he went dark on me someone else showed up and ate your lunch someone else more exciting with a better value prop with a shinier object than yours and you're always going to have to deal with that pay for my marketing bring me a shiny object none of it is as exciting as hey i've got leads i'm referring new business not only it's spot it's not only buyers it's home sellers it's listings it's opportunities for you to do more business sell more houses that's very very difficult for other loan officers to compete with so bringing that to the table right from the get-go has been really powerful and exciting for our loan officers to like think wow i can actually approach my agents with something really unique that gives me an excuse to put together a list of my top realtors this afternoon i'm going to start calling them just to kind of start talking about this marketing and legion stuff i want to do and see if we can partner together and those reactions alone have been really really phenomenal to see let alone the results of getting leads uh uh from realtors at a higher rate than they were prior so yeah great perspective great perspective a lot of great thoughts there uh brian your your ideas here absolutely so no i agree i think you touched on a lot of your things so if i was a loan officer uh i mean i would just very simplistically uh partner with the lead aggregators right and then also set up processes uh for both retail and lead generation right because two andrew point retail and uh lead generation uh are very interrelated and i would even you know go to say that lead you know direct to consumer lead generation is sort of like the advanced version of retail um because you're putting it all together uh and i would just partner with the lead aggregators like companies like andrew who you know do it directly right which they're lower lead costs uh and you set up the infrastructure and he'll help you do that or there's companies you know you can partner with like realtor.com or zillow or lendingtree to have a lot of that infrastructure already set up and you just kind of pay their tax um and you know that runs about you know 20 to 30 percent of the transaction fee or you know a thousand bucks right or 1200 bucks a lead um and then you know from that you know work on building the realtor relationships right so at the end of the day people want to buy a house right so getting leads in uh getting them pre-qualified and then assigning to a real estate agent that can go out and show them properties is is you know is pretty straightforward you do you know you want to have kind of a blended model right because you know it's not like like for for what it's worth you know zillow wasn't always the great purchase lead acquisition right some people don't like them there was a point where lending tree had like the whole market right now you're starting to see google and some of the independence guys like what andrew does sort of scratch the surface of you know getting these guys attention because zillow and some of these other ones are too expensive right so just going in there knowing the big dogs have their value and then and then you know you got to pay a little more and then also you know building your own war chest of buyers and your own assets are important i like what you said like diversify right like don't have all your eggs in one basket either because guess what one of them goes belly under one of them decides oh we're going to jack up the cost of our leads 50 because we got to keep our board our shareholders happy or whatever or they spin up a new real estate division in your market because now they want to do the whole transaction themselves so they don't even sell you leads anymore like that that's all happening right so just i love the fact that you mentioned that you got to be diverse and kind of get your business from a number of different places so you can compare and you're not relying on any one source because that puts you in a really tough situation sometimes yeah i just want to give you guys one more opportunity just just give somebody a final thought in regards lead generation it's scary people are like oh i've spent a lot of money i'm not guaranteed to get a lead just give them one or two sentences of just your final thoughts to make this happen for them andrew yeah put yourself out there create value help people the internet's the place to be all of your potential clients are there lots of easy free low-cost ways to put yourself out there always use a good call to action drive people to something that's going to engage them and don't just try to push them into a loan application a loan application is a great service tool it's not a good lead generation tool look at what lending tree does look look at what zillow does with their long form lots of examples of this stuff out there anytime you're doing some marketing put yourself out there drive people to click on something whether it's on their phone on desktop whatever it is that's going to then collect some information and make it really easy for them to get in touch with you don't just rely on them to call you have something smart in place that's going to capture information and just put yourself out there and and be willing and ready to help and it might not be overnight but be consistent with it and maybe three months maybe six months in it's gonna be a source of business that you're gonna realize you you can't really live without once you start to get a taste of it you're a good chunk of your business if not most of it should be coming off the internet so brian right final thoughts yeah absolutely so um to what andrew said um you know you have to really embrace leads and that if you're you know going into this space uh and you're getting frustrated to rather than focusing on the flashy sort of marketing focus on the core processes right people want to buy a house uh they want to buy a house from a local professional and they want to deal with somebody who's experienced in the market they don't want to work with some big corporation uh who's just going to put them into another uh you have to have some fundamental processes in place that are very simple to make leads work and if you don't have them in place you'll get frustrated and think they won't but if you do put those very simplistic processes in place you'll find that these buyers want to talk to you that these buyers want to buy properties that they're interested in talking to qualified mortgage professionals and then the results or lack of results that you were getting previously were not because of a bad lead or of a bad whatever but bad process um because you just didn't get enough reps right and to be willing to fail and kind of go through those reps so that to andrew's point once you get through that you realize number one we weren't as good as we thought we were and then number two um we're a lot better now and this is a whole different way to grow your business i mean it's the internet right i mean it's like it's the world wide web i mean everybody so uh you know stick to it stick to it i love it hey listen i knew this was gonna be valuable i knew you guys were gonna bring your a game what you did it's been awesome i know folks are tuning into this and you know are probably going to have some questions but kathleen we'll turn it back over to you really enjoyed this today a lot of value thanks guys thank you thank you vans thank you kathleen thank you andrew all right thank you to our panel for sharing their insight on using lead sources to grow a stronger mortgage business if you have any additional questions please email info be a mortgage broker dot com as a reminder if you would like more information on becoming an independent mortgage broker or joining one as a mortgage loan officer please visit bamortgbroker.com for more resources to help you make the switch again thank you to everyone and our panel who joined us today remember you will be receiving an email with the webinar on demand soon thank you and have a great day