The vast majority of mortgage brokers suffer the same challenges; too few incoming leads to work and not enough time to find new ones. The idea of building a functional, manageable, measurable and evolving lead generation program is beyond the most business professionals, and this includes mortgage brokers. Most mortgage brokers feel that to make more money, you must make more calls, invest in more mailings, place more ads’, visit more realtors, visit more banks, and/or simply cut prices.

Though any of these investments in time and money may pick up your business activity, unless you can manage both, in addition to increasing your marketing AND systematic qualification process, your new potential prospects will not get the attention they need to become raving referral fans.

Regardless of how difficult lenders get, or how few prospects will qualify for loans, or how many competitors work within your market territory, there will always be a handful of extremely successful brokers and an extremely large number of mediocre brokers working just as hard and earning far less.

In the upcoming posts, you’ll benefit from the Blueprint for Building a Successful Mortgage Lead Generation Program. This plan was not designed with a lot of hype and RAH RAH. This document was written the business system in mind. The blueprint is more of an education in building a business model that works by design. The plan is intended to accomplish the following:

* Create a clear and uniform message that will increase the likelihood of attracting new business and new referrals
* Spend less time and money on unproductive marketing
* Improve your spending habits to complement your business referrals

In essence, in today’s market as a mortgage broker, whether you are a one-man show or a multi-location franchise, you must do all of the following:

* See yourself as a business entrepreneur and act accordingly.
* Think in terms of marketing, management, accounting, labor cost, sales, budgets, and how to measure the likelihood that your current prospects will want to refer you to business again and again.

* Build a database of prospects, customers, and referral agents.
* Regularly communicate to your prospects, customers, and referral agents.
* Deliver an abundance of specialized communication that’s valued by your prospects, customers, and referral agents.

This program was written in an effort to help mortgage business professionals systematize the marketing arm of their business. Taking larger corporate level marketing applications and modifying them to fit the smaller, more nimble mortgage broker business model, we offer a must more advanced way of thinking about your business and your role as a service provider. Our goal here is to shift your thinking from how you currently view the building and managing of your business to one that is far more efficient and manageable.

No doubt, if you’re reading this now, you’re probably working with a passion to grow your business. By applying the same passion for change, you’ll be rewarded with a clear plan of action for building your business, a more manageable system for measuring your progress, and a higher paying more secure career.

You’ll soon find that this plan is not one in which we try to give you a booster shot in the arm and pump you with excitement. Rather, what is offered it the framework for growing and managing your business.

Read on to the other posts for Parts I through IV of this document. Part one is about Building your database of prospects, customers, and referral agents. Part two is about changing your perspective on how you view your mortgage business. Part three is about developing your referral business. And Part four is about measuring success.

On any given day you’ll find a number of direct mail marketing pieces waiting for you.  Some of this direct mail will be bills for the electric and phone, while others will be a coupon for a local electronics store.  And undoubtedly there will be a direct mail piece that contains the wording “pre-screened” or “prequalified”.

So what exactly is a prescreen offer of credit?  A direct mail piece containing a prescreen offer of credit, or “firm offer of credit” are based on information in an individuals credit report that indicates they have met specific criteria set by the business making the offer.  This business using direct mail as a way to reach it’s potential audience has purchased a credit score mailing list containing people they are able to offer of credit to for their product or service.
The wording “firm offer of credit” means that all things being equal, the business making the firm offer must extend the credit to the recipient of their direct mail piece.  The recipient of this direct mail piece may not qualify for financing because the though their credit score is high enough, their income may not be enough to support the additional debt load.  And since credit reporting agency doesn’t account for a person’s income, a “firm offer of credit” isn’t an automatic approval of credit.  Therefore, in addition to the words “prescreen” or “prequalified”, the direct mail piece will also include disclaimer information.  The disclaimer information is the fine print.  Among other things, it says that there’s a possibility that if the debt to equity ratio is to high, or that the credit score has changed since the credit score mailing list has changed since the direct mail piece was mailed, the firm offer is void.

The prescreening works for direct mail because it surely filters out everyone unqualified on credit score alone.  In the direct mail world, if you can utilize a mailing list that allows you to direct mail to less people, while hitting the same number of good direct mail recipients, you’re return on direct mail investment goes up.

Since there are no “inquires” on your credit report showing which companies obtained your information for prescreening, when a mailing list broker pulls your name for a direct mail campaign making a firm offer of credit, your actual credit score is not negatively affected.

Opting Out
If an individual wants to reduce the number of prescreened offers being direct mailed to them, they have two choices to “opting out”.  They can call toll-free 1-888-5-OPTOUT (1-888-567-8688) or visit www.optoutprescreen.com for details.
The telephone number and website are operated by the major consumer reporting companies. When you call or visit the website, you’ll be asked to provide certain personal information, including your home telephone number, name, Social Security number, and date of birth. The information you provide is confidential and will be used only to process your request to opt out.
Remember that if you have joint credit relationships, like a mortgage or a car loan with a spouse, partner, or other adult, you may continue to receive some prescreened solicitations until both of you exercise your opt-out right.

The Pro’s and Con’s of opting out
Some people would rather not receive direct mail of these kinds of offer, especially if they’re not in the market for credit.  They prefer to reduce the direct mail “clutter” in their mail box by being removed opting out and being removed from the mailing list.
However, before a person opts out and is removed from the prescreen mailing list, they should consider that at some point, they may be in the market for a new car or a new mortgage.  Prescreened direct mail offers help an individual stay in tune with all the options available to them.  And a well informed consumer is one who keeps a watchful eye of all the options available to him. Opting out will take as long as 60 days to go into effect and will last for 5 years.  After that, one may start receiving prescreened direct mail offers again and will have to once again opt out.

There are other opt-out programs available for the non-firm offers of credit.  There’s the National Do Not Call Registry which is an easy way to be removed from a telemarketing list.  This is done by going to www.donotcall.gov or calling 1-888-382-1222 from the phone you want to register.  You should start reducing your call solicitations within 31 days of registering your phone number.  This also will last for a period of 5 years.  And finally, there’s the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), a trade association for businesses in the direct mail marketing business.  The DMA maintains a Mail Preference Service that lets the consumers opt out of receiving direct mail marketing from many national companies for five years.  This will not however stop those organizations that are not registered with the DMA’s Mail Preference Service.  To register with the DMA, send a letter to:
Direct Marketing Association
Mail Preference Service
PO Box 643
Carmel, NY 10512
Or register online at www.the-dma.org/consumers/offmailinglist.html.
The DMA also has an EMail Preference Service to help you reduce unsolicited commercial emails. To “opt-out” of receiving unsolicited commercial email from DMA members, visit www.dmaconsumers.org/offemaillist.html. Your online request will be effective for one year.