Accessibility Increases Your Success Rate

I believe that a key to origination success is being available to customers. How do you make your services available 24 hours a day, seven days a week using effective and unique systems that appeal to a variety of different personal styles and still keep a personal life?

The only way this can be done is by utilizing effective marketing tools that work independently of you 24/7, but that give customers and others the feeling that they’re communicating with you. One of my favorite systems is an 800 Automatic toll free mortgage HelpLine Service that runs 24/7 and is completely independent. It has many free and valuable messages and money saving reports that work with a return fax service. To compliment this great tool, I have added an extension that operates independently as a free affordability line, allowing clients to get pre-qualified with the touch of the buttons on their phone. I never miss a call, as the system captures the caller’s phone number and the system pages me within 20 seconds of their call or activation of the fax back service, so I can be as involved as quickly as I want to be. Should the client be working late at night, they activate the system while I am sleeping. In the morning, I will have this information available for follow-up. There are many times when the system is activated and I am available so I follow-up immediately with great success in closure on a transaction.

This system also provides a call report that I can access through my computer or a return fax that prints a listing of the callers and what extensions they have accessed and the time and length of their call on my system.

This service allows you to keep your clients updated on a weekly basis with a personalized that you can set up for each client to inform them of their loan status. Each client can have their own personal mailbox that they access and retrieve personal messages you have left. This enables you to keep clients informed early and creates the feeling that you are bending over backwards for them. The result of this is an enormous amount of satisfaction that creates more referrals.

This resource has opened many doors for me. It alerts me when someone has indicated a desire for help in the buying and financing discipline. One of the critical pieces to the success of this operating system is the messages that are left for clients; they have to be very appealing and inviting so that clients want to receive more information. The data and reports that are on the system that you create have to be distinctive in order to generate attention.

This system allows clients who do not want to have a direct interaction a chance to take baby steps in the process in a secure and safe way.

Just like the messages on my help line service, it is imperative that the voice messages and visual messages on all your other systems such as your home phone, cell phone, work phone, and Web site are creative, authentic, and appealing. The message should let the client know that they have been heard and that you will be responding quickly and effectively and most importantly, that you want to know who referred them to you so you can graciously thank them. You cannot overemphasize the importance of this short message.

Clients like to know that you have a pager because it allows them to know that if an emergency arises, they have a way to locate you. It creates a feeling of tremendous ease when clients know this service is available to them if needed.

Web site and e-mail options allow you to be constantly accessible. Of course, people can visit the site 24 hours a day and seven days a week. These systems often appeal to customers who dislike salespeople. The cost of entry is low and doing business online costs less. You can compete on equal footing against larger companies. Online, no one knows how big your company is or how long you have been in business. Customers only care that you have the product they want and in the time that they need it. You can sell to targeted audiences with special interests. You can educate clients using your e-mail or site. You can supply maps and directions and other supplements and links that are appropriate to clients. You can establish one-to-one relationships with customers and prospects using e-mails and send targeted messages and advertisements to customers who request them.

You can build long term relationships by responding to clients’ wishes and then following up with newsletters, notes, and free reports. Answers to frequently asked questions can be sent via e-mail and a system set up for cost effective response.

The most important thing to note is that as each one of these systems expands, you can hire an assistant to maintain and operate various sections of your business such as your e-mail systems, Web site systems, 800 Help Line, and your affordability lines. As your business grows, you will begin to develop a team concept that you share with your clients.

By Cindy Worrell