Mortgage Loan Leads

Basics about Leads

A lead is a record containing valuable information for the sales process. The record “leads” the salesperson to a prospect, or potential buyer. In nearly every sales profession, the lead provides contact information. Different types of leads can also have information such as sales criteria and decision making details. Lead generation or lead qualification is doing research to check accuracy, update, make corrections and additions to a lead record. No one wants to waste good sales time working with poor or outdated leads.

Uses of Mortgage Loan Leads

Mortgage salespeople carry different titles: loan officer, mortgage specialist, broker, lending executive, mortgage underwriter, etc. These are all mortgage loan salespeople. It’s not enough to open a business and advertise by hanging a sign, listing a number in the phone book, or passing out business cards. If you want to sell mortgage loans, you’ve got to get good mortgage loan leads.

Types of Leads

In any sales profession, there are different types of leads. Each type carries a different value to the sales process. Knowing what each is for will make a difference in sales efficiency.

Cold Leads

A cold lead is a brief record referring to a potential buyer, or prospect. The information might be old, outdated or inaccurate. The salesperson who uses this lead could be wasting time because the possibility for finding a willing buyer is small at best. The cold lead is generally used by lead qualification (lead generation) companies that provide qualified leads to salespersons. Information in the cold lead needs to be researched, verified, and updated. Cold leads are usually obtained without cost.

Qualified Leads

The qualified lead contains verified information about the prospect. Someone, usually a lead generation company, has verified that the general information is accurate and meets a set of quality guidelines. This type of mortgage loan lead carries a greater value than a cold lead because the probability for actually contacting a buyer is much greater. Qualified leads usually cost something.

Warm Leads

A warm lead is created when a buyer has applied for a mortgage loan or a real estate agent refers a buyer to apply with mortgage lender. After an application is filled out, the data must be verified and corrected. This is usually done by someone calling the applicant and checking the data with government, employer and other organizations. After verification, the request becomes a warm lead ready for a salesperson to work with in confidence. With warm leads, the salesperson has much less work to do because the customer has shown increased interest in making a purchase. Warm leads are the most valuable and likely the most expensive.

Here are the pieces of data in a typical qualified lead record:

• Name(s) of borrowers and owner contact information including address, phone numbers, email address
• Best method and time to contact
• Loan type and amount
• Property type
• Property address
• Current and original property value
• Year built
• First mortgage amount, rate, and rate type
• Number of payments behind or late
• Second mortgage amount, rate, and rate type
• Loan to value (LTV)
• Employer
• Number of years expired in 5’s
• Household income
• Monthly household debt
• Lead date

This level of detail gives the salesperson plenty of decision making power even before making the sales call. Even more sales power can be obtained by placing thousands of records like this into a computer database. Then the sales force can query the database to list specific targeted groups of qualified mortgage loan leads by many different data choices, such as state, city, property value, etc. Even more powerful is the fact that we can combine database search criteria to make a given list more specific. The list provided by this database search is truly powerful in the hands of the qualified mortgage loan sales professional.

If you want to know more about Mortgage Loan Leads, you can visit Common Mortgage Lead Questions.