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The Ugly Truth About Mortgage Leads (And How to Fix It) · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  Hello, my friend. Thanks for turning into this episode of the Market Marketing Radio Podcast.
• 0:15
  Once again, your humble host, Jeff Zimfer, coming at you for this week's episode. I got
• 0:21
  a question for you. If I was to put up a billboard in your local community and every day,
• 0:28
  where local real estate agents would drive by that billboard, consumers considering buying
• 0:33
  a house or potentially in the market in the near term to buy a house, how many of them
• 0:39
  would recognize your name, your face, your brand, or how many of them would just keep on
• 0:44
  driving by without knowing anything about who you are they've never seen you before.
• 0:51
  My question is, is if you had multiple billboards around town, consecutively over weeks and
• 1:00
  months and potentially years, would you become more well known? Would you be more recognized?
• 1:06
  Would you build local market awareness? Would that precursor, that attention that you've
• 1:13
  created by that billboard, would that then facilitate a better conversion rate when you
• 1:23
  did execute sales activities such as calls, such as doing events and classes? If you were
• 1:29
  running ads and people saw your ad, if you were doing social media, what am I getting at?
• 1:35
  I'm getting at one of the biggest challenges that we have in business is awareness and
• 1:40
  that plain and simple, not enough people know you exist and more people need to know. The
• 1:49
  question is then, how do you do that? Well, we've got two different markets right there,
• 1:53
  two different targets for us. We've got the referral partner, real estate agent, and then
• 1:57
  we've got the consumer. And in today's conversation with my special guest in a moment, we're going
• 2:04
  to talk about how do you more directly reach the consumer at scale doing paid ads the right
• 2:11
  way where you don't break the bank and you don't waste a lot of time, money and effort figuring
• 2:17
  out how to do the Facebook ads thing and working bad leads and all that kind of stuff. So stay
• 2:23
  tuned for that in just a moment. You're going to hear more about that solution. Before we
• 2:28
  get there, I wanted to bring to you something I haven't done in a while and that's a win
• 2:31
  of the week from one of our members over the my agent classes platform. So you need to
• 2:36
  become five mile famous with your local real estate agents. And as you know, the way we
• 2:41
  help you become five mile famous is leading with a content and education platform that puts
• 2:45
  you in front of real estate agents at scale in your local market and other places virtually
• 2:49
  for looking to scale your reach. And we've got one of the wins of the week coming in from
• 2:53
  just the other day, Greg Fisher, what's up Greg? Shout out to you. Greg did the open house
• 2:57
  class for the first time and 20 people registered for his zoom. We sent out the email campaigns.
• 3:06
  We did the text about follow up messages. He had 11 out of 20 show up and since he posted
• 3:11
  this just a couple of days ago, already three agents have reached out about working together.
• 3:18
  And as Greg says, he feels like this approach opens the door to more partner based efforts
• 3:24
  than other methods and has the potential to secure a new relationship faster. And there's
• 3:30
  a lot of reasons for why that happened. I won't get him into them right now. But I just wanted
• 3:33
  to say that if you're looking to scale your reach with real estate agents, become more well-known,
• 3:38
  five mile famous so that the other activities you already hopefully are doing, right? Accelerate,
• 3:45
  the resistance goes down and the trust goes up. Well, maybe checking out our platform could
• 3:49
  be right for you. I don't know. Check the link in the show notes. Go to mortgagemarketing.pro.
• 3:54
  You can see the success stories from people like Greg and others over there. Link in the show
• 3:58
  notes, mortgagemarketing.pro. Now, my special guest for this week's episode came to me actually
• 4:05
  by one of our members in the managing classes community. Trevor, what's up? Shout out to you.
• 4:11
  Alex Machuka is a gentleman who has spent a lot of time, money, sweat equity, and effort
• 4:17
  in running ads, creating leads for mortgage professionals. He is the CEO of mortgage-lead
• 4:24
  hackers. And our conversation today unpacks some of the more common frustrations and challenges,
• 4:32
  but also opportunities when it comes to if you're considering running ads on Meta Google
• 4:38
  other places, what are some of the criteria that you should have in place before you even
• 4:44
  decide to run ads? How do you know if it's the right time for you to even look at scaling
• 4:49
  your reach and running ads? Because I will tell you, as I said in the intro, the name of
• 4:56
  the game is to reach more people, transaction recession. In my business, I'm looking to
• 5:00
  reach more people with what I do in the managing classes platform. That's why I'm running ads,
• 5:06
  because I can only do so much with my organic content and email and things like that. And
• 5:10
  ads is one way to take something that's working and apply money to that with the right strategies
• 5:18
  and systems in place to be able to increase your opportunities, your conversations, your conversions,
• 5:23
  et cetera. But you've got to do it the right way. You've got to do it in a way that you don't
• 5:28
  at the expense of the other pillars in your business. You don't lose focus on the primary
• 5:33
  sources of business, but this is an add-on, a layer in addition to when you've already
• 5:38
  got that base foundation built up. So what I love about Alex and his company over there,
• 5:42
  lead hackers, is they've turned the traditional advertising agency on its head. Normally, you
• 5:48
  have to pay a pretty decent monthly sum to an advertising agency just for their management
• 5:53
  fee to be able to run your marketing campaigns and the ads and all that for you. Well, Alex
• 5:58
  said, no, no, not anymore. Lead hackers has turned its on its head. And so now they've
• 6:03
  got this amazing platform, which will do everything for you, help you actually launch a proven
• 6:08
  mortgage or real estate ad in just three clicks. Think I'm lying? Think again, listen to
• 6:15
  this conversation. Most importantly, if you think you're at the right time and place
• 6:18
  after this conversation, will you do want to learn more about our ads right for you right
• 6:22
  now? Check the link in the show notes. There's a free demo up there, a link to a video that
• 6:28
  walks you through this platform and helps you decide if this is the right move for you
• 6:33
  at this time. But I can tell you, these guys have a lot of credibility, right? Them being
• 6:37
  partner of the, you know, highly acclaimed by aim, by NAMM as their top partners. I can
• 6:44
  see it says right here that this is the number one lead generation solution in Nexus Market
• 6:49
  Place. Eliminating ad spend, spend management fees allows you to get exponential returns.
• 6:55
  So guys, there's a lot of great buzz brewing around this and there's hundreds of loan officers
• 6:59
  around the country already using this platform. Again, it's not right for everybody, but it
• 7:02
  might be right for you right now. Check the link in the show notes and contact Alex at lead
• 7:07
  hackers to learn more. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Alex,
• 7:12
  welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Hey, man, it's good to connect with you, especially
• 7:16
  on this topic of leads, lead gen marketing consumer direct versus referral partners.
• 7:24
  We're going to unpack all that in a minute. But before we do, what do you want to tell
• 7:28
  the audience about who you are and what you do? Well, I could go on for days about that
• 7:32
  while trying to give you the short version. It might seem long because I've been doing
• 7:36
  this a long time. I've actually been in the mortgage lead generation space for seven
• 7:41
  years. And my first company that I started was a mortgage lead generation company. I was
• 7:46
  able to scale that to half a million dollars a month and under 11 months. And we saw
• 7:51
  some success, but it was my very first time running a marketing agency. And so I was
• 7:56
  learning operations on the fly. And as you know, the housing market took a turn for the
• 8:02
  worse about three years ago. And so we were a high ticket service charging anywhere from
• 8:07
  four to six thousand dollars a month. And so when the market turned, I mean, loan officers
• 8:11
  and mortgage brokers abruptly stopped buying our services. Everybody was afraid to spend
• 8:16
  money. And rightfully so, right? And so we went from about 50 deals a month to zero, right?
• 8:23
  Started losing sales guys for lack of deal flow. And so I faced this huge problem in my
• 8:28
  business because we had no revenue coming in and a ton of overhead expenses. And so
• 8:36
  kind of solving this problem really seemed like an insurmountable goal. Because in order
• 8:40
  to solve my business problems, I had to solve your business problems, meaning the audience,
• 8:44
  right? The problems of the mortgage brokers and loan officers. And so like any decent entrepreneur,
• 8:51
  I had to pivot. And that's how my company lead hackers was born. How do you know when
• 8:57
  somebody is right for investing and paying for some type of a lead generation? They're
• 9:03
  currently closing loans. It's as simple as that, right? They're currently closing loans.
• 9:08
  And so they have the money to snowball into it. I'm not just, you know, and I say this
• 9:12
  on my demos, right? We're the only lead generation company that's endorsed by both the National
• 9:18
  Association of Mortgage Brokers and the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts. And so I
• 9:22
  feel like I have a responsibility to tell people the truth and do it. Like we can't lie to people
• 9:28
  and be like, yes, sign up for this. This is a good fit for you, right? And so if it's not a good
• 9:33
  fit, we tell them like we're obligated to tell them, right? And so, you know, here's when it's not
• 9:38
  a good fit when you're just getting into mortgage and you don't have anything in the pipeline
• 9:43
  for any, you know, any friends and family, you haven't even attempted to get realtor relationships.
• 9:49
  Like these are all things that you should do at the beginning. Your client acquisition
• 9:52
  cost at the beginning. It needs to be zero dollars, right? And so if you start spending $2,000
• 9:58
  a month in ad spend before you know it, you could be in the whole $67,000. And the reason
• 10:05
  that's going to have a negative effect on you aside from the obvious, which is your bank account,
• 10:10
  but it's a lot harder to sell when you need to sell, right? It's a lot. People can sense
• 10:16
  desperation. And so you're putting yourself at a disadvantage in a bad environment to actually
• 10:22
  be successful because your plan catch up the whole time. All right. So help for those listening,
• 10:29
  some people may have tried ads in the past. Maybe some people are currently doing it. But there's
• 10:34
  also maybe this is just an narrative in my head, right? So let me approach it this way. Like
• 10:41
  the when people throw realtors under the bus, right? As an obvious kind of scapegoat. One of the
• 10:46
  answers I have back to that is like, you know, when they say, oh, realtors are hard, realtors suck
• 10:50
  or whatever. And I'm like, look at everything's hard. Every channel is hard, right? Leads, paid ads
• 10:55
  is hard, right? It's about choosing your hard, but things can become easier if you've got the right
• 11:02
  systems in place. So where do you, where do you see, like if somebody's listening right now,
• 11:07
  they're thinking, hmm, I'm closing three loans, five loans a month. Is it right time for me for ads?
• 11:13
  What do they need to have in place that you would want them to have in place before you would consider
• 11:20
  they're ready? Well, so if I'm doing like three to five loans a month, right? And I have, let's say,
• 11:26
  you know, one realtor that's passing me business, maybe two of them. And I know that the kind of
• 11:32
  the sales cycle is a little bit long because it's about relationship building. Well, then I,
• 11:38
  you know, you have enough money to scale here. Here's what I say. There's only three ways people
• 11:41
  can get leads. Friends and family, realtors, or you can just buy them, right? And so friends and
• 11:47
  family, most people do not have enough friends and family to scale their business. They are not
• 11:53
  popular, right? And if they were, they wouldn't even be looking at lead generation in the first place.
• 11:59
  And the second thing, realtors, great way to supplement your deal flow, not a good idea to be
• 12:03
  relying on someone else for your business. But buying leads is the only scalable and predictably
• 12:10
  scalable option. And the reason I say that is because if I know that I close one loan for every
• 12:17
  thousand dollars I spend in ads, that means if I spend two thousand dollars, I'm going to close
• 12:21
  two loans, right? And so you can have some predictability in your business. You should be doing all
• 12:27
  three, right? Because you never want to be pulling one lever because if that lever falls apart,
• 12:34
  you're screwed. So this is why I tell people that I think a big mistake people were making,
• 12:39
  especially during my marketing agency's tenor was everybody who was relying on refinances. And so
• 12:45
  they became order takers. And by the time it came time to close home purchase deals, they forgot
• 12:51
  how to do it, right? They didn't have those relationships built in as well too, right? Because
• 12:57
  that's more of a relationship based sale. And so, you know, a lot of people who were just
• 13:02
  order taking and doing refinances, yeah, they made a lot of money. But that's probably the same reason
• 13:07
  why there's only, and I don't know if you look this up Jeff, somebody had me Google this the other day,
• 13:12
  how many mortgage brokers there are left? There's between mortgage brokers and loan officers,
• 13:16
  there's 95,000. You want to know how many mortgage brokers are left according to Google?
• 13:21
  20,000 in same. Yeah, I mean, I always question the data. Yeah, but that's what shows up. Yeah,
• 13:30
  no, I get it. I get it. Okay, so let's deal with this narrative of like, you know, I've seen
• 13:38
  people comment on lead gen companies in the past, hundreds of leads, you know, low conversion,
• 13:46
  blah, blah, blah, timeline is 12 or 18. Like, how do you address what I know? You know what I'm
• 13:51
  referring to there, kind of in there. So yeah, I'll address a few of these at once. Okay. As to the
• 13:56
  audience, I hate to burst your bubble. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But bad quality leads
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  when it comes to lead gen is unavoidable. Okay, we have a law in place called the Fair Housing
• 14:09
  Act. You guys should know this. Your mortgage brokers and loan officers, but somehow it goes over
• 14:15
  people's heads because I want to be very clear about this. Okay, we have a law in place called
• 14:19
  the Fair Housing Act. So what that means is you cannot target people on Facebook, Instagram, or Google
• 14:27
  by the three most important factors that we use to judge lead quality on. And those factors are
• 14:32
  income, loan amount, and credit score. Okay, it's not even an option that any of these platforms
• 14:39
  provide. You guys think Facebook and Google want to be fine billions of dollars and just blatantly
• 14:44
  ignore housing loss? Of course not, right? Yet what most of you do is you jump around from lead company
• 14:51
  to lead company searching for better lead quality. That doesn't exist, right? And so, you know,
• 14:57
  most of the time when I ask a mortgage broker or a loan officer, what is your objective when
• 15:01
  you're buying leads? Most of them say, well, the objective is to find the best quality lead.
• 15:07
  Well, now we know better, right? Now we know that that objective is fool's goal. So what is it,
• 15:11
  right? What is the objective? If the name of the game is not about finding better lead quality,
• 15:15
  then what is it about? Right? And so it's about the same thing, funny enough, that every business has
• 15:21
  been about since the beginning of time, business 101. How do we acquire new customers for the lowest
• 15:28
  cost possible, right? If we know that lead quality is left to chance because income loan amount
• 15:33
  and credit score all come in at random, well, then we know that the objective is simply, how do I say
• 15:38
  about cost and get the most leads for my dollar? Once they're in our ecosystem, we can then figure out
• 15:44
  which ones are the better quality leads. Now I'm not getting into the specifics like, of course,
• 15:49
  you can build a funnel and ask them, you know, questions and filter them out that way on landing
• 15:55
  pages. But when you're talking about generating the lead, it doesn't matter what their credit score is,
• 16:00
  according to Facebook, I got to pay the same amount for every single lead good and bad, right? And so
• 16:06
  to address the timeline, the timeline is one of the funniest things ever to me because you got to
• 16:14
  just ask yourself this question because a lot of people, and this is how I explain it, when you go
• 16:19
  into the mall, and let's say you go to American Eagle, you want to buy a pair of jeans, right?
• 16:24
  And the cell, you know, you're going in there like, hey, I'm going to buy a pair of jeans,
• 16:28
  I'm good, this one I'm going in there for, the sales associate comes up to you and says, hey,
• 16:32
  can I help you with anything? What do you say? Just looking man, just looking not interested, right?
• 16:38
  It's the same thing with these phone calls, right? And so like, when somebody says, oh, like,
• 16:43
  because I'll use that from some of our students, hey, yeah, the lead said they weren't ready to move
• 16:48
  for another 12 months, I'm like, ask yourself this question, would you click on an ad
• 16:55
  about purchasing a home if you weren't ready to move for another gear? Of course not, right?
• 17:00
  Prospects lie, you just didn't build enough rapport on the call. And I tell them, you know what you
• 17:06
  should do? Here's what I do, like if I'm calling because I've done this, I'm like, oh, you're not
• 17:11
  able to do it, like, and I'll call myself. And so when you're having that conversation and they
• 17:16
  say, yeah, I'm not ready to move for another night, I'll joke around and just throw it back
• 17:20
  with them and say, yeah, listen, I always click on ads about purchasing a home when I'm not ready
• 17:24
  to move for another nine months, you know, like, just joke around about it. Or I'll even kind of play
• 17:30
  the guilt factor. And so like if somebody says, like, yeah, oh, no, like, I'm not interested, I didn't
• 17:35
  feel out of form or I didn't, you know, just looking or whatever it is, I'll say, hey, can you do me a
• 17:41
  favor? So I just started running Facebook ads. And each one of these leads actually cost me $20.
• 17:48
  And so I'm trying to figure out like why somebody would click on the ad. If they're not ready to
• 17:54
  like purchase a home, you think you can give me some feedback. And you know what they'll say?
• 17:59
  What? Well, you know, I am looking and boom, you got them, right? And so you have to understand
• 18:06
  prospects lie. Yeah. They're getting a call. They're automatically on the defensive.
• 18:10
  What about the types of ads that seem to work or would be because, you know, the the complaint
• 18:16
  narrative to keep pulling on that thread seems to be that some of the other lead gen companies,
• 18:21
  you know, are going with the DPA type ads. Yeah, low down low credit. What's your take on that?
• 18:26
  Yeah, that's what listen, the people, the reason boutique lead gen companies go with the DPA ads
• 18:32
  is because in the marketing communities and the classes and the courses that guys like me used to
• 18:37
  take when I was a kid coming up, those are the ads that are provided. Nobody provided HELOC and
• 18:42
  DSER ads and all that stuff. As a boutique company, nobody was doing that before. Our most
• 18:49
  successful ads that we have in my community are HELOC. We use something called figure eight. We
• 18:55
  heard about it. It's pretty cool. And so what it is is it's an AI application that you can get
• 19:00
  approved in under five minutes for a HELOC. And so what we decided to do was run ads directly to
• 19:05
  the application and what would happen. They would either get approved without even having to speak
• 19:09
  to the loan officer or they even better, they would get denied. If they get denied, we can call
• 19:16
  them up and get them on refinances, right? And so a lot of people have been doing really like
• 19:22
  Mitch Chang crushes HELOC's Alan Parker do crushes HELOC Simon Glenn. Simon Glenn just became
• 19:29
  he just won top 1% at nexamorgage, which I think is great. I mean there's 2500 loan officers
• 19:36
  there. And he's he's a great at HELOC. And other huge one is DSER. I love it. You know Trevor loves
• 19:43
  DSER. And the reason that we recommend it is because it's the gift that keeps on giving your
• 19:49
  customers are investors, which means they're not just investing in one property. Unlike a home,
• 19:55
  they're not buying one every 10 years. And so if you get a DSER client, you could theoretically
• 20:00
  it's like the gift that keeps on giving. You can close more and more deals through.
• 20:04
  Yeah. Hey podcast family, are you tired of chasing down real estate agents for referrals,
• 20:08
  making cold calls and feeling like you're just not getting the results you deserve?
• 20:13
  What if in just 90 days you could double your agent referrals and finally lock in that consistent
• 20:18
  monthly income you've been striving for? My agent classes is the ultimate program designed to help
• 20:24
  you effortlessly attract, engage and convert real estate agents into top referral partners.
• 20:30
  We've done the hard work for you. You'll get a full library of turnkey done for you presentations,
• 20:35
  a marketing automation platform to streamline the entire process, plug and play marketing,
• 20:39
  email, flyers, social media posts, text messages, weekly coaching and accountability calls,
• 20:44
  plus access to a private community of high performing mortgage pros from all over the country,
• 20:50
  sharing what's working in today's market. And to top it off, we'll even load you up with 200
• 20:55
  producing agents in your local market to help you get started fast. So stop chasing agents and
• 21:01
  start building meaningful relationships that lead to real consistent business without the stress
• 21:06
  of cold calling or feeling undervalued. And don't just take my word for it. Head on over to
• 21:11
  mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes and you can read real success stories
• 21:16
  for mortgage pros just like you. So if you're finally ready to grow your agent referrals without
• 21:21
  chasing and have fun doing it, check out mortgagemarketing.pro today. The other thing that I think
• 21:27
  is unique about you guys and you kind of alluded to this earlier, but it's a very important point
• 21:32
  for people to understand. And I know this very well because I'm actually spending money on Facebook
• 21:37
  ads as we speak. And so you've got two costs. You've got the agency overhead cost and then you get
• 21:42
  your ad spend cost. But you guys have a bit of a fresh twist to this which allows, as you said
• 21:48
  earlier, freeze up more capital for you to redirect that spend instead of towards the agency overhead
• 21:54
  cost, which you're going to pay a thousand, three thousand, whatever it is, agency overhead costs
• 21:59
  for them to kind of run the ads by the spots, all that stuff. And therefore you've got less to
• 22:05
  drive towards towards ads. But you guys kind of flipped that on its head a little bit. Tell me more
• 22:09
  about that. Yeah. And so, you know, mostly generation companies, the service fee is more than
• 22:13
  the ad spend. We do the opposite and then we do even more. So we charge 297 a month. And the
• 22:22
  reason for that is because, you know, people ask me, Hey, why'd you go from charging $6,000 a
• 22:28
  month to 297 a month? I said, it's a volume play. And I know that they'll stay forever because if
• 22:35
  you close one loan, it pays for itself for the whole year. How do you get? There's no, remember guys,
• 22:40
  all leads are created equal, right? When it comes to those important factors that we talked about,
• 22:44
  it's all at random. And so if that's the case, well, then what's going to make you more successful?
• 22:49
  The cost of the service, if it's extremely low, well, then the time horizon on which you can be
• 22:55
  successful is much longer. So if a lead gen company is charging you $2,000 a month, and I only have
• 23:01
  $4,000, I better close a deal in those two months, right? But if with us, the time horizon is much
• 23:09
  longer. And so you can rest assured knowing that, Hey, my overhead costs aren't going to be
• 23:15
  substantial. The reason most people fail is because again, lead generation, especially in the
• 23:21
  mortgage industry, is fundamentally flawed because your marketing dollars have a 100% markup. And so
• 23:27
  you're getting 50% of what you're actually paying for at most. And if we know that all leads are
• 23:33
  created equal, you might as well cut out the middle man, right? The whole reason you're paying that
• 23:38
  lead generation company is you're paying for their expertise. But in the mortgage industry,
• 23:43
  their expertise are a new point because they can't get you better income, better loan account,
• 23:48
  better loan amounts or better credit scores. And so the only reason you would be using a lead gen
• 23:54
  company is because you don't know how to generate your own leads. But now you can do it with our
• 23:57
  software unless then three clicks. And all the ads are pre-built and proven and tested.
• 24:02
  Yeah, I guess that's the other headwinds people would come up against when running ads,
• 24:07
  which is the intricacies of working in with the Facebook ads manager and promoting on meta,
• 24:12
  all that stuff, because that's like a separate skill set in and of itself. So how do you facilitate
• 24:19
  that? That's such a low cost to you. You know, with somebody who doesn't want to be a Facebook
• 24:24
  ads or I should be saying meta ads expert. Yeah. And so, so again, it's a software that allows you
• 24:31
  to launch your ads in less than three clicks. And so what we have is a library of proven ready-to-use ads
• 24:36
  they're pre-built for you. They're guaranteed to get you the lowest possible cost per leap. And so
• 24:41
  if you wanted to launch an ad, you would simply select the ad you want, enter how much money you
• 24:45
  want to spend a day, which is great because you're in control of your own ad spend, put in your
• 24:50
  website and click launch. Now, we provide you landing pages and so you don't need a website,
• 24:55
  they're already pre-built, embedded into your software for you. And so it's just click and drag.
• 25:00
  It took me three months to learn Facebook ads. It'll take you guys three minutes.
• 25:06
  Really? Come on now. That sounds a little oversimplified. That's what it is. And here's the beauty of it.
• 25:12
  The expertise, guys, is built into the community. We have 60 plus live coaching calls
• 25:19
  a month. Today alone, we've had five. We have support calls twice daily. Every single day of the
• 25:27
  week, we have CRM trainings twice a week, where it's just a walkthrough of the CRM to get you
• 25:33
  comfortable with it, walkthrough of all the features. We have ads trainings three times a week.
• 25:40
  We have sales trainings. We even have advanced coaching because some of our power users were like,
• 25:45
  hey, I'm sick of all these rookie questions. You know, I want the harder stuff. And so we made
• 25:50
  advanced coaching calls. And so, you know, if you were to partner with a lead gen company and you
• 25:55
  have an issue, you're going to have to send an appointment with them wait three days with us. You
• 25:59
  can reach us every single day of the week. Very interesting. Very interesting.
• 26:05
  Plus, okay, so the other aspect of this whole lead conversion thing, timeline, all that stuff is
• 26:11
  is the conversion. And the multiple steps that are involved, such as somebody clicks on an ad,
• 26:17
  they opt in, they fill out your funnel. Then we've got the text messaging. We've got to do some
• 26:22
  phone calls. We've got to do some longer term email, drip nurture campaigns. How do you help people
• 26:28
  do that? So all of that, all of what you mentioned is built into it. And so every single lead is
• 26:34
  going to be texted within minutes of them filling out a form, ensuring speed deleted the highest
• 26:38
  level. So there's text follow up. There's email follow up. All those emails are already prebuilt
• 26:43
  for you. Top 10, you know, top 10 best tips on buying a home, right? These beautiful emails. And so
• 26:49
  they're put into long term nurture sequences. But nothing's going to be dialing, right? And so,
• 26:55
  you know, we teach you strategies on dialing. For example, when I ask a mortgage broker,
• 27:00
  if they're double dialing, they have no idea what I'm talking about. And so, for example,
• 27:05
  if I call somebody, or if I get a phone call from a number that I don't know, I'm most likely
• 27:10
  not going to pick it up. Right. But if they call me consecutively, I'm going to think,
• 27:16
  oh, this must be an emergency. And I'm going to pick up the phone. I'll give you an example. I was in
• 27:21
  the hospital with my father. He was in ICU. I got a call from a number I didn't know. I didn't
• 27:27
  pick it up. I got it the second time. I was going to pick it up. And I said, no, they called me
• 27:31
  a third time. I picked it up. I'm like, hello, I'm in the hospital with my dad like, hello. And it
• 27:36
  was Grand Cardone's office. And I'm like, you got me, you know, like they, they got they were trying
• 27:41
  to sell me, obviously, some stuff. But um, and so the other, the other factor for double dialing
• 27:47
  is because most people they have their phone on do not disturb with and it breaks through the do not
• 27:52
  disturb if you call twice consecutively. Oh, really? Yeah. And so it's great for contact
• 27:57
  success rate. Those are things that are important, right? Strategic dialing as well. Certain hours
• 28:02
  like their systems that you can use to by process of elimination, eliminate times of availability,
• 28:08
  so that you are making you are being efficient with your dialing. So for example, most people,
• 28:14
  they dial sequentially. So let's say I have a list of callers. I'm just going to start at the
• 28:18
  top and go from the bottom, right? And instead of doing, and the problem is is you just keep doing
• 28:23
  that over and over again, you're praying and spraying, right? And so what we call strategic dialing
• 28:30
  is, all right, so let's say it's Monday, I'm going to call this lead at 9 a.m. on Monday,
• 28:36
  right? And then I'm going to call them at let's say 9 30 or 10 o'clock on Tuesday, right?
• 28:42
  If they're not available in that time window, I'm crossing it out. I will never call them on that
• 28:46
  day again. Yeah, Wednesday and Thursday, I move between 12 and 1. And then Thursday and Friday
• 28:54
  on 5 and 6. I'm crossing those times out and I'm never calling them at those times again,
• 29:00
  because what I'm trying to do is figure out their availability by process of elimination. And so
• 29:05
  there's critical thinking that goes into my dialing. But over time, what's going to happen is
• 29:11
  you're going to have a lit like your contact success rate is going to substantially pick up,
• 29:16
  because you're not calling these people at times that they're not available. You're only calling
• 29:20
  them at the times that could be available. And so by process of elimination, over time,
• 29:26
  you know, your data is going to be wake, your contact success rate should pick up substantially
• 29:31
  in about, you know, if you're doing it consistently, it's going to pick up. What is the recommended
• 29:36
  ad spend for somebody to actually see some results? Are official training videos and everything
• 29:41
  that we talk about is $35 a day. And the idea here, guys, is like, listen, with a lead-gen company,
• 29:47
  they're going to ask you to spend $35 a day, at least $1,000 a month an ad spend. If you don't,
• 29:52
  it's probably not worth it. Now, we have lead hackers who get away with spending $20 a day.
• 29:57
  But I wouldn't recommend it just because they're successful. It doesn't mean that you're going to be
• 30:00
  successful. You know, the funny question that I get, Jeff, which I'm sure you get is, what's the
• 30:05
  conversion rate? Why do you think that there's a general blanket conversion rate for every loan
• 30:12
  officer in America, like this guy over here, he's been a loan officer for 20 years. He's going to
• 30:19
  have a way different conversion rate than you, right? Because it's the magic lead, man. Exactly.
• 30:24
  That's what they want is they want closed loans. They want done for you loans. And that's a mistake
• 30:30
  I made with my first agency is we try to do everything for them outside of wiping their butt.
• 30:36
  And we had a bunch of unhappy customers. And now, we empower them to do it themselves and people
• 30:41
  are much happier. Because they're getting results. They're much more consistent. Nothing's going to
• 30:45
  be better than the broker talking to the lead. People try and outsource it. Yeah, let me get a VA
• 30:52
  to call all my leads. What do you think's going to happen? Listen, I can say this. I'm Hispanic. My
• 30:57
  father's from Ecuador. He's got the thickest accent of all the of all time. What do you think's going
• 31:01
  to happen when they hear a voice from the Philippines or they're not going to show up to the appointment?
• 31:08
  There's no credibility there. They're going to be worried that it's a scam. Unfortunately,
• 31:12
  that's just the reality of it, right? And so people try and outsource too much work when they
• 31:18
  really should be doing it themselves. Like in our community, I have very candid conversations with
• 31:25
  our community. And I'll say, like, oh, yeah, my VA, I'm like, your VA.
• 31:30
  Dude, I looked at your MMI rep. Like, who do you think you are? You're barely closing any loans.
• 31:35
  Why do you think you need a VA? Like, what are you doing? You should be doing this yourself.
• 31:41
  So you can teach the VA how to do it. But clearly, you don't know how to do it. You're wondering
• 31:45
  why all my VA isn't being successful. How do you expect your VA to be successful if you haven't
• 31:51
  made the roadmap and been successful in it? Yeah. That's such an interesting good point.
• 31:57
  Are the ads branded? Are they generic? So the ads are not branded. It'd be really tough to
• 32:04
  kind of brand it for everybody in their own at that cost level. Yeah, at that cost level, for sure.
• 32:11
  And so the ads are generic. I guess, you know, you could call that that. But they're all unique.
• 32:17
  Every ad is different. They're all, they have different value propositions. They look different.
• 32:23
  The colors are different. And so, you know, when you're running ads, we're talking about direct
• 32:28
  to consumer marketing, not necessarily brand awareness. You want brand awareness, you know,
• 32:33
  social media posting is good. We have a social media planner. You can plan out your social media
• 32:37
  for the entire year. It'll automate all your posts. But like, that's not what we sell. You know,
• 32:42
  it's like just a bonus. But, you know, direct to consumer marketing. I'm just worried about the lead.
• 32:47
  Right. Right. Exactly. Wow. That's really cool. Well, obviously you guys from looking at the
• 32:53
  testimonials on your site and, you know, the fact that you guys were the, you know, top aim,
• 32:57
  top name recommended partner. And the fact that you've kind of turned traditional agency
• 33:04
  marketing pricing structure on its head. That's what really got my attention. And the fact that,
• 33:07
  you know, one of our fellow colleagues Trevor spoke very highly of you. And, you know, he was in our
• 33:14
  community as well. That's incredible. Yeah. He's a guy who executes. Yeah. He's a, and, and, and, and,
• 33:22
  you know what I love about Trevor being our coach. I look at him and he will have no problem
• 33:26
  me saying this. If you met Trevor, you would be like, no, he's not good at sales.
• 33:32
  Because he's pretty monotone, right? Right. Right. Whatever is monotone. But you want to know what makes
• 33:37
  him so great is the systems and processes. That's what makes him great. And that's how you know
• 33:43
  his systems and processes work. Because when you meet him, he's not, he's not like this captivating,
• 33:49
  engaging, like enthusiastic person, right? And he crushes, I mean, 84 million in volume in one
• 33:56
  year. Like, and it's, it makes it that much more impressive if you get what I'm saying. He's
• 34:02
  organized. And he's got systems and processes that he know works. And so I think that makes him
• 34:08
  an even better teacher. Because a lot of these brokers might have better raw talent than he does,
• 34:13
  as far as when it comes to the sales aspect. Not enough people know that you exist. And you need to
• 34:20
  become more well known. And more need more people need to be aware of what you have to offer.
• 34:24
  We're in a transaction recession. Right. We've got this attention economy. And that's what I find
• 34:28
  of the hundreds of elbows I talked to over the course of a year. That they're just, they're too small.
• 34:33
  They're too little secret agents. And they're wondering, how do I break out of this and add more
• 34:37
  loans? Well, get more referral partners, scale your reach. And if you've got the budget and the
• 34:41
  wherewithal invest in ads to reach more people at scale, that's it. You know, no magic formula
• 34:46
  there. So I think that's good timing. So for people who want to learn more about what you do,
• 34:51
  I know we've got a website set up for them. We're going to put that link that up in the show notes.
• 34:55
  What is that URL handy? Once again, I think I got it right here.
• 34:58
  Leadhackers.io slash NNI. And what are they going to see when they go there?
• 35:04
  What they're going to see is an eight. I think it's like eight minutes, right? That BS
• 35:09
  and then everybody that's watching this. So we're actually going to give you a free trial.
• 35:13
  So you could go in, see the software. So guys, if you wanted to, you could sign up for this,
• 35:17
  steal all of the ads and then cancel. But you won't. Once you get in, you see how easy it is. We
• 35:23
  actually onboard you and walk you through launching your first ad. And so, you know, we'll hold
• 35:29
  your hand through it all. And so, you know, sign up for a free trial schedule and onboarding.
• 35:34
  Again, we're not going to charge you for the onboarding. It's free. Go in there, launch your ad.
• 35:38
  You'll start getting leads within, you know, 24 hours at the latest. And, you know,
• 35:44
  see what it's all about. Okay. So that's leadhackers.io slash MMI. We'll link it up in the show notes as well.
• 35:51
  Alex, thank you so much for making time, man. I think this is a useful conversation.
• 35:55
  Yeah, it's an honor to be here. I've watched a few episodes now. And so,
• 36:01
  you're doing something incredibly special and useful for the mortgage community. So,
• 36:06
  on behalf of the audience, thank you. Appreciate it, man. So listen, as you know, to check
• 36:11
  the link of the show notes, go check out the video, do the free demo, learn more, start advertising,
• 36:17
  reach more people. And your pipeline will be more full. That's it. All right. We'll see on the
• 36:22
  next one, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Bye for now. Okay. That's it for today's episode.
• 36:25
  Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes. You're proven system to
• 36:31
  double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to co-call again,
• 36:36
  instead building real lasting relationships with top-producing agents who want to send you business.
• 36:42
  With done-for-you presentations, marketing automation, weekly coaching, it's all designed to make
• 36:46
  growing your business easier and fun. So, if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals
• 36:52
  and grow your income, visit mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes. And while you're
• 36:57
  there, don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen
• 37:00
  incredible results. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.