The power of customer intelligence

With the right intelligence, originators can know exactly when to follow up on a lead or past customer. And without it – they’re leaving literally millions of dollars on the table

The power of customer intelligence
The bane of the mortgage industry is the missed opportunity – that client an originator couldn’t help for one reason or another, who then goes on to get a loan from a different originator.

But exactly how much business are originators losing that way? Well, if one company’s analysis of its customers is representative of the whole industry, the numbers are pretty staggering.

Sales Boomerang connects to any existing CRM or lead management system and acts as a tracking and alerting system, keeping tabs on leads and alerting originators when a previously unqualified customer becomes qualified. The company recently ran a “missed opportunity” analysis for its clients – and the results were sobering, according to Alex Kutsishin, co-founder and chief ROI Booster.

“We took our clients’ data and said, ‘Okay, here’s everyone you turned down, and here are all your customers.’ Then we analyzed their data to see how many of their past clients have gotten a loan from a competitor,” Kutsishin said. “We showed them what they missed. Why we do this is, it’s a predictor of the future. If you lost 500 loans this year, there’s a very good chance you’re going to miss 500 loans next year. Unless you have intelligence, how are you going to know?”

According to Sales Boomerang’s analysis, its clients had more than $2 billion in missed opportunities in the first six months of 2017 alone. And Kutsishin puts that loss down to one continuing challenge for the industry: access to customer intelligence.

“Customer intelligence is knowing when your client has fixed their credit. It’s knowing when they’re shopping again, or when their home has equity” he said. “It’s knowing that the guy you pre-approved for a loan six months ago still hasn’t taken a loan.”

Many originators, Kutsishin said, use a scattershot approach when it comes to following up with leads – basically cold-calling old customers to ask if their situation had changed and if they were ready to buy or refinance.

Customer intelligence, on the other hand, is “using relevant data to reach out to customers rather than just playing the odds,” Kutsishin said.

That’s what makes products like Sales Boomerang so useful, Kutsishin said. The program tracks customers and alerts originators when they meet certain thresholds. Perhaps the customer’s credit has improved sufficiently to get a loan. Maybe rates have dropped to the point the customer was looking for. In any event, the system lets originators know when to re-establish contact with an old lead – in a way that can help the customer. And that’s something customers appreciate a lot more than receiving cold calls, Kutsishin said.

“It’s numbing when somebody reaches out to you every day, every month, or whatever – just to say, ‘I don’t want you to forget me. I don’t have anything of value to offer you right now, I just want you to remember me,’” he said. “The way to make sure someone remembers you is to contact them with something they can use. If you call a person at the right moment to help them, they’ll never forget you.”

“When you have intelligence, you don’t reach out randomly,” he said. “You reach out to say, ‘Hey, Mr. Customer, I just want to remind you that I’m always working for you, even when you don’t hear from me. When I have something positive to tell you, you’ll hear from me.’ That message is very powerful.”


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