Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Ep #27: How Velma CRM Helps You Close More Loans
Transcript
- 0:00In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
- 0:04real estate agents is essential for success.
- 0:06However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
- 0:11With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents,
- 0:15it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
- 0:20Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
- 0:25Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
- 0:31And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
- 0:35with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
- 0:39To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
- 0:45of the case study today.
- 0:47You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
- 0:52in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too.
- 0:56Don't miss out.
- 0:57Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
- 1:17Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio.
- 1:19Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute.
- 1:22Your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing.
- 1:26Hey, Mortgage Professionals, welcome to another episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio.
- 1:40This is your host, Jeff Zimper.
- 1:43Once again, thank you so much for tuning in.
- 1:45I hope you're getting value out of these podcasts and I tell you what I'm really trying to
- 1:50do is bring knowledge, inspiration, insights, access to tools, resources, people, ideas,
- 2:00and thoughts that are going to help you be more successful in your business.
- 2:05And today we are talking with Velma and we are talking about CRM and marketing automation
- 2:13and all the different things that go into a successful deployment and onboarding of a CRM
- 2:21tool within your organization.
- 2:23So whether you're an individual loan officer, you're in management or senior executive,
- 2:30you obviously probably already have some level of a CRM if you don't have a CRM.
- 2:35You need to get in touch with Velma right away.
- 2:37If you do have a CRM, oftentimes companies are in flux when it comes to CRMs and maybe
- 2:45in the market for changing or looking at alternatives.
- 2:49And Velma is one of the CRMs in the mortgage industry that should be on everybody's short
- 2:53list because they're designed and built for the mortgage industry specifically.
- 2:59So they understand and get our business and they've made a pretty big impact, right?
- 3:05They've been around for over 10 years.
- 3:08They understand the pains and struggles and issues that mortgage company faces when
- 3:13we're trying to be more efficient in our marketing activities.
- 3:19So Velma, there's lots of different things.
- 3:20It's a very robust platform.
- 3:22They're continually adding new features and functionality to it.
- 3:26So whether that's email marketing automation, you want to do print, yes, print, still alive
- 3:31and well, post-closing, gift marketing.
- 3:35The other great thing about Velma is it integrates into your LOS.
- 3:39It also integrates into mortgage coach.
- 3:41So there's some extremely powerful benefits and streamline processes when you can work
- 3:48back and forth between your LOS and your CRM to automate a lot of those marketing opportunities
- 3:53and touch points, whether it's pre-lone transaction during or post-lone closing.
- 3:59They actually even do things such as search engine marketing and web design.
- 4:04And they've been doing it like I said for a long while.
- 4:06I mean, if you look at their website, you can see that they've had with their various
- 4:10campaigns, they've generated over 63 million marketing impressions.
- 4:15That means over 63 million times a piece of content or a message that's been generated
- 4:21on behalf of a client through Velma has been viewed over 340,000 relationships under
- 4:26management and 320 pizzas ordered.
- 4:30No, just kidding.
- 4:31That's actually taken right from their website and that hopefully gives you a sense of the
- 4:34type of humor that Velma likes to take in working with their clients and they definitely
- 4:40are a great bunch of people over at Velma.
- 4:42So today, my special guest is Brent Emler.
- 4:45He's the director of sales and marketing at Velma, a long time veteran of the mortgage
- 4:50industry and senior management executive person at Velma.
- 4:55And I'll tell you what, Brent definitely has seen a lot of CRM's come and go.
- 5:00He's seen a lot of the challenges that take place when companies and individuals are trying
- 5:05to be successful with a new CRM.
- 5:09And so he brings a lot of those insights, best practices, what to look for, what to watch
- 5:14out for, what to really save time and be more efficient with the CRM and really with
- 5:21the number one key to being successful when you're launching and implementing a new CRM
- 5:25tool.
- 5:26So I hope you really get out of today's session what I did, which is a lot of insights
- 5:32and best practices in terms of how are we going to really make a CRM successful and have
- 5:41it fulfill on the promises that most CRMs make but many fail to deliver on.
- 5:46I think Velma, with their experience in the marketplace and with Brent's guidance
- 5:52as you'll soon hear, Velma definitely delivers on the promise of CRM.
- 5:56So with that said, let's transition into this week's show.
- 6:01Hey Brent, welcome to the show.
- 6:03Hey Jeff, yeah, thanks for having me.
- 6:05No, it's my pleasure.
- 6:07And so I've been wanting to get you on here for some time because one of the things that
- 6:11I'm trying to do with this podcast is bring tools and resources to the mortgage community
- 6:17that's going to help them be more effective at the various and multiple roles that are
- 6:22going on for them in the business and it's always changing and technology.
- 6:26So we're going to talk about that.
- 6:27But do me a favor for a moment, just give us a quick bio, who you are, what you do.
- 6:32Yeah, yeah, my name is Brent Emler and I am the director of sales and marketing at
- 6:37zelma.com that's VELMA.com and you know, Velma was born in 2006, Jeff and actually launched
- 6:47an earnest in 2007, just in time for the collapse.
- 6:54So it was the timing was challenging and over the last decade, a lot of things have changed
- 7:02in the CRM space and I'm excited to kind of share some of those thoughts with you and
- 7:07your listeners.
- 7:08Yeah, so that's a great point and so congratulations to you for surviving through that and coming
- 7:13out the other side.
- 7:14And as we know, there's a lot of choices for CRM out there in the marketplace.
- 7:17So I bring up my first question and I'm curious, how are we looking back on that, right?
- 7:22So 2006, 2007, you know, that's about 10 years now and a lot of CRMs have popped up over
- 7:29that time.
- 7:30How are you guys able to survive and rise above and become a pretty eminent choice in the
- 7:39mortgage community today as compared to all the others?
- 7:41What do you think that you guys did through that process during the tough times and even
- 7:48leading up to today that helped you be successful?
- 7:51Yeah, you know, with any small business, it's important that you're able to pivot.
- 7:58Things change, the market changes, you know, what do they say, Jeff?
- 8:04They say the only constant is change and so you really have to be able to go with the
- 8:10flow and restructure what you're doing when things change.
- 8:15And so in 2008, we were designed for individual loan officers originally.
- 8:23In fact, believe it or not, we were designed for individual loan officers to deepen and
- 8:29develop the relationships through print only marketing, which is pretty amazing to think
- 8:37about.
- 8:38We very, very quickly added email, but the idea was, let's provide a very, very easy
- 8:46use system for individual loan officers to add their contacts and to effectively nurture
- 8:55relationships.
- 8:57And it worked out, it worked very, very well for the folks that we onboarded, but then
- 9:02of course the crisis happened and things changed.
- 9:06There was a consolidation in the marketplace generally.
- 9:10And so what we had to pivot to was more of an enterprise model.
- 9:15And so while we still support individual loan officers, our focus is always on making
- 9:20sure that the product is very easy for individual loan officers.
- 9:25We put a lot of our development emphasis on building enterprise level tools.
- 9:31And when we made that switch, things really took off for us and we were able to help
- 9:38a lot more originators and organizations by providing those enterprise level tools.
- 9:44Of course, all of those tools, the goal is to benefit the individual loan officers,
- 9:50but with less reliance on them to initiate things.
- 9:55That's interesting.
- 9:56He's a comment about print.
- 9:58I'm curious today if you have any sense of what percentage, because I know you guys have
- 10:03evolved and we'll dive into that a bit in terms of email and obviously marketing automation
- 10:07and so forth.
- 10:08But any sense of today, what percentage of your users are still kind of using that original
- 10:13focus, if you will, like you had said, on print-related marketing?
- 10:18Yeah, yeah.
- 10:19So it really depends on the organization.
- 10:22A lot of the print marketing that we're doing is the post-close campaigns, the automated
- 10:28post-close.
- 10:29Although we are doing, we do see quite a bit of the just listed, just sold, co-branded post
- 10:35cards, that type of printed activity where you're getting a list of people in a particular
- 10:42neighborhood, and if one of your realtor partners has been successful in selling a house
- 10:48or listing a home in a neighborhood, why not send a postcard, a co-branded postcard
- 10:53to all of the people in that neighborhood?
- 10:55Obviously, we can get some additional business that way.
- 10:58There are some niche things like that, and of course, the post-close.
- 11:04We do still see a lot of loan officers doing personalized birthday cards and thank you
- 11:10cards to realtors, but the predominant medium is email.
- 11:16No question about it.
- 11:17We're doing tens of millions of emails a year, and certainly not that level of print marketing.
- 11:25Interesting.
- 11:26So in terms of email, then what are the types of programs or campaigns that you'd say are
- 11:33most popular within your platform?
- 11:36Well, so the thing that we discovered when we went to a more enterprise model was that
- 11:44for us to deliver big value to these big organizations, we really had to focus a lot
- 11:52of energy on integration with the LLS, with their website solution, lead capture forums.
- 12:00Collecting data is one of the most challenging, not only collecting the data, but also collecting
- 12:06the data and aligning that data to the marketing objectives, the overall marketing objectives.
- 12:13And doing all of that in a way that is completely hands-free for the originator, when we asked
- 12:21originators to change, and this really goes for any software.
- 12:25If you ask a salesperson to change their behavior, you'd better be delivering huge value
- 12:32to them, because otherwise it just becomes a burden and a nuisance.
- 12:37And that's one of the big challenges that CRM has in terms of adoption is asking loan
- 12:42officers to fundamentally change their behavior on a day-to-day basis, and still asking
- 12:50them to do even more work. And while that work may be useful, I equate it to getting
- 12:57a gym membership. And a lot of us will go get a gym membership because we know it's
- 13:04good for us. And we have all these designs on who means great things at the gym and
- 13:11getting fit and all the rest. And a vast majority of people just end up not going.
- 13:17And that's really how CRM, the analogy is, yeah, we all know that if we do a lot of
- 13:23CRM features and we spend a lot of time in there, then we're probably going to get a return
- 13:29on investment. But man, I'm so busy every day. I just don't have time to do that. I don't
- 13:34have time to be thinking of about two weeks, three weeks, you know, six months from now.
- 13:40So our emphasis, our primary emphasis is on automating the things that loan officers
- 13:47use to have to do manually. Yeah, which, that was a long winded answer.
- 13:51No, it was a good one. I love the gym analogy. It's actually, it's actually true. I mean,
- 13:56what you're basically saying there is, and I can relate to this, you know, having been
- 13:59in the loan officer chair for, you know, over seven, eight years, it's got to be, where's
- 14:05the payoff, right? It's like the gym analogy. Why don't I go to the gym and put it on all
- 14:08that sweat, sweat equity and hard work, go to the payoff, right? I'm going to look better,
- 14:11feel better, have more energy. And so it's a similar argument with CRM. And I definitely
- 14:17can appreciate your point about the difficulty of getting that salesperson to pivot. So it
- 14:21leads me to be curious because on the one hand, it's like, you know, this, this, this, it's
- 14:27the character in the stick. You know, hey, there's this proposed payoff. But what have you seen
- 14:32recommendations? Let's just say there's an enterprise listening to this and they're
- 14:36considering a change in their CRM. So what would Velma do to help make that change more easily
- 14:44happen within an organization, right, to make that pivot? Is there anything you guys have learned
- 14:48in the past that you would, that you're a process that you have in an organization when you
- 14:53on board? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a, that's a really good question. And I, and I think, you know,
- 14:58I was just thinking about this, this morning, and, and we talk about it quite a bit. It's
- 15:03that the number one most important thing, whether your listeners are going to buy Velma or any
- 15:09of our competitors. And, and this really extends beyond the mortgage industry. This is CRM
- 15:16in general. And, and I'll tell you a job, I've done a lot of research. And the mortgage
- 15:20industry is not unique in terms of CRM, CRM adoption challenges. I was just reading an article
- 15:28recently, a guy who worked with Salesforce as an add-on service. He'd been involved in over a
- 15:36thousand Salesforce implementations. And almost, almost to accompany, the adoption was less than
- 15:4520%. And this is Salesforce. This, we're talking about Salesforce, right? I mean, this is the,
- 15:52the billion dollar monster out there. And adoption is less than 20%. And that's frustrating,
- 16:00if you're writing these big checks every month. And, and so, you know, you're asking, what,
- 16:07what can executives do, what can companies do, what can loan officers do, marketing directors,
- 16:12and all the rest? What can they do to improve adoption? I would, I would say that the number one
- 16:20most important thing is for the executives to really buy it, to really buy into what it is
- 16:29that we're trying to accomplish together to identify what the objectives are. And, and to make
- 16:35sure that everybody is agreed on what the objectives are with the product. And, and to make sure that
- 16:42there's a change management process in place. And then all of the department heads understand that
- 16:47this is an important thing that we're doing together. You know, compliance, marketing, sales,
- 16:54IT, everyone has to be on the same page. It has to be, you know, a, a, a, a top-down approach.
- 17:02And I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly, you know, what sort of approach to take, you know,
- 17:11for, for the different individual organizations together. They're all, they're all different,
- 17:16Jeff. You know, we talk to some depository lenders and, and they really want to control everything
- 17:23from the very top. In fact, success for them has nothing to do with loan officers logging in.
- 17:30It has everything, everything to do with impressions. It has everything to do with measuring ROI,
- 17:38with retention loans and lead pull through. And, and that's not the same for, you know, typical
- 17:47independent mortgage banker. They want to see the loan officers logging in and engaging with
- 17:51the product. So, yeah, yes. Oh, that's not so I want to pause there, yes, because what you're
- 17:56talking about is the, you know, key metrics or KPIs, KP, keep performance indicators. And,
- 18:01and I agree getting buy-in from the top executives is key. And I'm going to come back to that. But
- 18:07what do you mean by impressions as being a unique indicator? Oh, yeah. Sorry. That's kind of a,
- 18:13that's a marketing term. The impression impressions are each time an email or a postcard
- 18:22lands in front of a set of eyeballs. Okay. Right. Okay. So, right, CPM, right,
- 18:27it's a customer, some, some we're kind of think. So, they're looking at basically what's the
- 18:33increased exposure they're getting by implementing the various functionality tools of the CRM? Yeah,
- 18:39you know, that's, that's the brand awareness piece. And that's, that's obviously really important.
- 18:46But also beyond that, measuring the effectiveness of those impressions. And so, measuring things,
- 18:53one of the things that we measure is clients coming back. So, if there's a loan already in the system
- 19:01and we send marketing material to that contact and they come back and get another loan six
- 19:07months, 12 months, two years later, that would be considered a retention loan. That is, that is a
- 19:13client that you've retained. And, and there is marketing that's happened to that contact. And
- 19:19therefore, there's a corresponding ROI. Yeah. That obviously makes sense. And then of course,
- 19:26there's reporting on all that within your system that people can pull those quarterly or whatever
- 19:31reports to, to see what type of retention they're getting, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It,
- 19:38okay. So, so back to the question of getting executive via it. I totally agree with you 100% on
- 19:42that. And I know from past experience that that can be a challenge. And there can be multiple
- 19:49players in the implementation and conversation of a CRM. Now, an executive level person might
- 19:55sign off on it or, you know, approve the budget. But then sometimes they disappear after that,
- 20:01right? And there's other people within various levels. There's obviously IT. There's integration,
- 20:06right? There's the marketing people, like you said. So, any suggestions you have from your experience
- 20:11on, again, right? For anybody listening to this, when they're considering a CRM, Velma or anybody,
- 20:17you want to be successful with that. How do we keep the top level executives involved in general?
- 20:24I know it varies based on organization. But any comments you would have on that?
- 20:28Yeah. So, at Velma, the development team is obviously huge. We've got a really big,
- 20:35amazing development team. And they're cranking out new features and ideas and automation and
- 20:41integrations and all the rest each and every day. And it's just a wonder to watch them work. But,
- 20:48you know, I think probably even more important for us is the client services department. And what
- 20:57they do at Velma is, you know, we don't just do this implementation training and then off you go,
- 21:04I hope you're successful. We actually do what's called a quarterly business review, a QBR.
- 21:11And this is not to pop us up. I'm sure other CRMs do this as well. And if they don't,
- 21:16you should ask your CRM provider to do it. But do a quarterly business review.
- 21:21And in that review, you should be reviewing the objectives. So the first quarterly business
- 21:29review for us would have all of the objectives that we outlined in the sales process.
- 21:35So when we sit down with the executive, the marketing team, the sales team, what are our objectives?
- 21:42What data do we have and what are our objectives? And then when you sit down to do that quarterly
- 21:47business review, did you achieve your objectives? And so really dialing in on objectives, goals and
- 21:55making sure that you're hitting those and then providing comprehensive reports that can be delivered
- 22:00to the executive showing that the CRM implementation and ongoing training and adoption and automation,
- 22:10that all of that is working and delivering value to the business. When we do that,
- 22:15yeah, when we do that, the executives, they get excited about it. They can see that they're making
- 22:21money, that they're getting a huge ROI and then they're more invested in the relationship
- 22:28and more willing to allocate resources to strengthen it. Yeah, it makes sense. What should some of the
- 22:34objectives be? Do you think or what do you generally see? Is there a recurring theme in terms of
- 22:41when somebody's investing in a CRM? There's a certain theme of objectives that they're trying to
- 22:46accomplish, a better efficiency, you know, whatever. Yeah, you know, it really does depend on the
- 22:53organization. If you've got a strong reverse group and you really want to focus on getting more
- 23:02reverse business, then you identify, you know, the data that you have, the data sources that you
- 23:09have, you identify, you know, how are we going to go to market with that particular product? I'm
- 23:15just taking something randomly, but it really is dependent on the organization. Of course, you
- 23:23want to make sure that you're retaining all of your past clients by having a post-close campaign.
- 23:29I don't think there's a CRM in the mortgage space that doesn't have some sort of email print
- 23:34or combination there of post-close campaign. That's easy. The lead marketing, you know,
- 23:41it can be nuanced, right? So, how deep do you want to go with your lead marketing? Do you want to
- 23:46have very targeted campaigns, specifically for refives or specifically for renters or, you know,
- 23:54do you want to try to resurrect, you know, some of the, look Jeff, these companies, it's unbelievable
- 24:02to me how much data they have at their fingertips sitting in their LLS. There are thousands and
- 24:08thousands of opportunities sitting in the LLS just languishing away. And it's really, it's really
- 24:15disheartening until you get a hold of it and you say, wow, look, look at this data. Let's do this,
- 24:20this, and let's pick these three objectives and make sure that that we're going to identify
- 24:27everybody who could benefit from X or Y product and let's develop a campaign around it.
- 24:33Yeah, and you help them make sense of that data and make that data usable, right, rather than just
- 24:38sitting. Yeah. So, you mentioned that you gave that example earlier of, you know, depends on
- 24:43the organization in terms of objectives and you use the example of reverse and I know I'm kind
- 24:48of putting you on the hot seat here a bit, but so reverse is one, it could be refile, it could be
- 24:52jumbo, it could be USDA, FHA, right, but I guess put it in the context and I'm sure you've been
- 25:00asked this question before, but I really want to hear your opinion of this as how would or how
- 25:06does a CRM help me sell more of a particular, if that's my objective, right, if I want to drive
- 25:14reverse, if I want to drive USDA. How's it going to help me or my company, my organization, right,
- 25:21grow my share of X product? Does that make sense at all the question?
- 25:27It does, it does, and so yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So the key here is the automation is
- 25:34taking the data and getting it into the CRM so that each, each originator has their own
- 25:41individual database that is going to be marketed to automatically. The loan officers are not
- 25:48having to get into the system and select contacts and figure out what to send them and all the rest.
- 25:55That's all happening automatically, that's being driven by the marketing department and when
- 26:01when the, for instance, when those pieces go out, you can look at your marketing
- 26:06history, you can see who's opening the pieces, who's not opening the pieces, and as you're thinking
- 26:11about spending time in your day, here's a great example. Let's move off the reverse because that's
- 26:17typically more of a print play. Let's talk about free approvals. So we all get these free
- 26:26approvals, and then oftentimes they get in that free approval state, and then they sit there,
- 26:33and they're stuck there in that free approval state, and then they don't move forward.
- 26:38Without some sort of marketing automation CRM tool, those people can just get stuck in the LOS,
- 26:45and then you move as an originator, you're going to move on, right? You're going to move on
- 26:49and work closest to the money. I mean, that's what we do as salespeople. We work closest to the money.
- 26:54And by that way, when you say work closest to the money, you mean the deals that are going to close
- 26:59quicker sooner? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so if somebody is stuck in this pre-approval state,
- 27:06we have a tendency to say, I'm going to move on to the people who are more likely to buy today
- 27:11than two months from now. And so by sending out, by having campaigns designed around that status,
- 27:18that milestone of pre-approval, as we're sending out that communication, we're keeping the
- 27:23loan officer and the company brand connected to that borrower. And so when they do decide to buy,
- 27:30they've got something in their inbox that says, oh, you know what? I'm going to call Jeff.
- 27:34That's what I'm going to call. I'm ready to move that. And when they open those marketing pieces,
- 27:39you can see that in the marketing history. And then you can pick up the phone and say, hey, Jeff,
- 27:43I just sent you something on the value of pre-approval. I noticed that you opened it. Have you
- 27:47started looking again? So it really gives you a sort of a warm list of people to call based on
- 27:54the consumption of the marketing material. Yeah, it's interesting. What's coming up for me in hearing
- 28:00that description is I did a podcast last week and I talked about the number one thing that every
- 28:05successful business has and that is a predictable sales system. So CRM helps you have a predictable
- 28:11sales system. It moves people along a path whereby if you relied on simple human effort,
- 28:18right, that heavy lifting odds are that's not going to happen. So that's one of the advantages of
- 28:23a CRM. Yeah, no question about it. Yeah, there's no question about it. And you know, if we
- 28:30rely on a spreadsheet or a file system, we're going to forget about this. Scratch pad.
- 28:37Yeah, scratch pad. We're just going to forget about people. So having that normal workflow,
- 28:42so when I get a pre-approval, I'm going to always do this. I'm going to make my systems always
- 28:47going to send out this letter, this email, and then this email, and then when they open it,
- 28:51then I pick up the phone and I call them. So this is the process that I always go through.
- 28:56And you're right. Here on CRM does that. Yeah, it makes me think of the term customer journey,
- 29:01which I'm sure you're familiar with, and actually comes out of various events I've attended
- 29:06at Salesforce in the past. And knowing that in today's world, people are on a certain customer
- 29:12journey, right? And in the mortgage space, it depends on how they're engaging you, but whether
- 29:16it's online, referral, whatever, but there's a process, there's a journey. And if we don't have
- 29:20that defined for them, then it breaks down and they don't get the engagement and their responsiveness
- 29:26that they expect and deserve. So they're going to go elsewhere and want to have that
- 29:31positive customer journey, right? No question about it. And one of the really exciting things
- 29:38that is coming to, it really kind of already here and just beginning to grow is this idea of
- 29:45behavioral marketing. And so as consumers consume marketing material, we're adjusting the
- 29:53campaign pieces, the cadence, the, you know, when we're delivering the pieces, what time of day,
- 30:02we know what type of devices that they're opening pieces on, so we're optimizing for the devices.
- 30:08And so when you talk about customer journey, you're really talking about creating a segment of one.
- 30:15And that's really the, that the shingle off for marketers, right, is, you know, taking a thousand
- 30:22customers and and segmenting it down to one contact and having really, really highly personalized
- 30:30content, delivery schedule and all the rest. Yeah. And then in addition to that personalized
- 30:35one-to-one experience, which is definitely where it's headed, is then of course getting the real-time
- 30:42triggers that notify you, your sales and marketing team, you know, at various stages of engagement,
- 30:47so you can appropriately follow up in a timely manner. Yeah, that's right. And, you know,
- 30:54speed to contact, making sure you are the person who is there at the exact right time is really
- 31:02hard to do without having a CRM in place to tell you a, Jeff, it's time for you to call Jim,
- 31:08he just opened the email or it's time for you to call Jim. He hasn't, you haven't talked to him
- 31:13in two months and you're scheduled to. So you're absolutely right, trying to remember that and,
- 31:18and you know, let's face it, as salespeople, we're managing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
- 31:24relationships, unlike, you know, yesterday or when you didn't have to manage as many contacts
- 31:30as many relationships, it's, you know, relying on your memory or a file system,
- 31:37Scratchpad, Excel, it's just, it's, it's so 2000.
- 31:45Yeah, what do you see out there when you're engaging with a company before they bring on,
- 31:53you know, Velma, for instance, are they on an existing CRM and they're switching?
- 31:58Is that the usual case where they, you know, not on one currently and there are a lot,
- 32:02in a lot of pain? What are you seeing?
- 32:07Yeah, you know, when, when, not too long ago, Jeff, they, the number of organizations,
- 32:13so when I was out prospecting, I would talk about 50% of the organizations didn't have a CRM,
- 32:20they kind of knew, you know, I better, I should probably do that. And I don't know,
- 32:25that was probably three, four, five years ago, I guess I'd have to really think about that.
- 32:30It wasn't too long ago that it was about half. But today, I honestly can't think of the
- 32:36last time I went into a perspective, a new prospect sales call where they did not have a CRM.
- 32:43If you don't have a CRM today, you are unquestionably in the minority. And so,
- 32:50yeah, organizations are moving from one CRM to the next. And honestly, I've seen a lot of movement.
- 32:58It seems like organizations are jumping around quite a bit these days.
- 33:05And I think that it's, in part, because CRM is not delivering what the organization's
- 33:14sold and CRM and or the executives had the wrong expectations. So it's either sold wrong,
- 33:25bad expectations, poor implementation, no follow-up, no training, and all the rest. And so
- 33:32it's not necessarily the product that's the problem. It's the people around the product
- 33:38that is creating as much movement as there is from CRM to CRM.
- 33:45And that's a great point. And that speaks to your earlier discussion around
- 33:51building out that kind of onboarding, both pre-during and post-onboarding. And that's,
- 33:57your number one thing was to get executive buy-in and have clear objectives. And make sure you've
- 34:05got the appropriate people involved so you can tie off on those and conduct your quarterly reporting
- 34:10and so forth and demonstrate that success. And I would say that is for me. And I've actually
- 34:16been part of the sales guy sitting at the desk at whatever company and a new CRM comes in.
- 34:24And for me, the biggest challenge always had been, well, why are we doing this?
- 34:29Well, what's the benefit? And why do we have to change? And then they get it installed,
- 34:35and it's like going to the dentist, it's pulling teeth. And so for anybody listening who's
- 34:39considering switching CRMs, I would agree with your point earlier, Brent, that that is the
- 34:46biggest thing. Make it clear as to what the benefits are going to be. And then you get the people
- 34:51championing behind you on it. Yeah. And there's probably some golden ratio there.
- 35:00For every extra action that a CRM asks a loan officer to take, the CRM better do five things.
- 35:09So there's probably some sort of ratio there. But yeah, that's really it. I mean,
- 35:16loan officers have been starting their transactions in the LLS for years and years and years,
- 35:23and then you're going to come in as a CRM provider and say, you need to stop doing what you've
- 35:29always done and start doing it this way. And you're going to, you know, what the really great
- 35:35news is, the executive team is going to be able to see, have more visibility into the sales funnel.
- 35:40So like, well, I don't really care about that as a loan officer. What I care about is selling more
- 35:46loans. So how is this going to help me sell more loans? Yes, exactly. Say, top of mind, make me the
- 35:51obvious choice with my customers, automate some of the, you know, processes in terms of database
- 35:57marketing and all that stuff that you that you talked about. Absolutely. 100% agree with you on that.
- 36:02And, you know, I think it speaks to the success that you guys have had that you've obviously
- 36:07figured something out when it comes to that, when it comes to getting executive buy-in,
- 36:11getting the individual loan officers supporting you and then being successful because, you know,
- 36:16as you said, you've been at this for a long time and you are, you know, definitely on the shortlist,
- 36:22I think, for anybody considering CRMs in the mortgage space, you've got all the integrations
- 36:26for LOS. I know you also integrate to mortgage coach, which a lot of top producers use out there.
- 36:31And that, that just, you know, enhances the overall attractiveness of your product, I think.
- 36:36So with that said, any place you want to direct people that are listening to find out more
- 36:42about Velma, where they can maybe dive in and get connected to you? Yeah, real easy. Just go to
- 36:49Velma, V-E-L-M-A.com. Velma.com. Down at the bottom there's a requested demo and we can,
- 36:57you know, we don't have to necessarily even do a demo. We can just kind of talk about what
- 37:00you're currently doing with CRM and I'd be happy to spend some time with your listeners,
- 37:05even if you guys aren't in the market to make a change. You know, I'm really passionate. We are
- 37:11really passionate about helping mortgage companies become more efficient and automate the things
- 37:16that people used to do manually and really delivering value to not just individual loan officers
- 37:23or mortgage companies, but the industry as a whole. It's a phenomenal industry. We're
- 37:29still really blessed to be a part of it. And there are just some unbelievably great things going
- 37:35on in the CRM space, Jeff. And you mentioned that integration with mortgage coach, integrations
- 37:41are getting deeper and deeper and more exciting every day. So yeah, it's a great time to be in the
- 37:48in the CRM space, I think. Yeah, absolutely. And a few people are looking for ease of use. I know
- 37:53you're consistently ranked as the easiest mortgage marketing CRM on the market. And that's part
- 37:58of your motto. Keep it simple. So it gets used. And that's the key hallmark of any successful CRM
- 38:04is it's got to get used and making it simple as a key part of that. So hats off to you guys for
- 38:09doing that. So once again, Brent, thanks for being here. And for those listeners that have tuned in,
- 38:14thanks for listening to this episode of mortgage marketing radio. We always appreciate you.
- 38:18Feel free to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, leave us a comment, a review. And as always, we will
- 38:24see you on the next show by for now. Thanks for listening to mortgage marketing radio.
- 38:30One more truth in mortgage marketing. Get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com.
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