21 Dec Your Roadmap To Success
Now is your time. What do I mean by that? The mortgage lending industry is undergoing radical change. In the STRATMOR Insights Report, Nicole Yung, the company’s Senior Partner put it this way:
“While there have been many significant advances in mortgage technology over the years, most of were focused on improving lender processes and productivity, not on fundamentally changing the borrower’s experience,” said Yung. “But, as the publicity surrounding Quicken’s Rocket Mortgage and the Agencies’ stated commitment to Day 1 Certainty attests to, Digital Mortgage may well be a game changer that no lender can afford to ignore.”
So, the big question is: How do you as a vendor take advantage of these new industry trends? One way forward is to know what’s going on in the industry so you can use that knowledge to turn that lender into a high-value prospect. For example, in the late summer of this year Embrace Home Loans, a prominent leader in the mortgage industry, added industry veteran Patrick Mullen as its new Director of Recruiting. In his role, Mullen will spearhead the growth and expansion of Embrace Home Loans’ sales organization by developing a robust recruiting strategy.
“My vision is for Embrace Home Loans to be the employer of choice for mortgage origination talent in the markets in which we serve. Embrace Home Loans is uniquely positioned for growth and I am thrilled to play a role in helping drive our future growth,” said Mullen. “I joined the team at Embrace to continue to build upon the great foundation the company has built over the past 3 decades. In my 15 years recruiting within the mortgage industry, I’ve learned mortgage originators desire a stable and secure company, a supportive culture and strong executive leadership; Embrace Home Loans is that company.”
How can this news help you? You can use this newsworthy trigger event at Embrace Home Loans to talk to them about how your technology will help them recruit. Knowing about these trigger events and using them to your advantage is essential to success these days. In the White Paper entitled “Hidden Gems: The Ultimate Strategy To Find High Value Prospects” written by Jill Konrath, she explains that many trigger events are newsworthy announcements. Companies share much of this information via press releases. They want to be visible. Sometimes the media writes about what’s happening. Or, people on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter spill the beans about what’s going on. All this is online, waiting to be found. You need to use this knowledge to adjust your thinking about how you sell.
If trigger event thinking is new to you, it’s important to broaden your understanding of these catalytic agents first. That means we need to take a look at the plethora of “trigger events” that can create a ripple effect within an organization. Here are just a few of the major categories:
- >>Mergers, Acquisitions, Partnerships. With these types of activities, organizations re-evaluate many of their existing relationships to determine what Strategic Initiatives. >>Strategic Initiatives. When new corporate directives become a priority, there’s a shift virtually overnight in what decision makers are concerned about. They need to quickly determine if their status quo is sufficient to help them achieve their new objectives.>>Market Challenges. This broad category can include competitive activity, changing customer demographics, economic turbulence, rising gas prices and a host of other factors that can both positively or negatively impact future business.
- >>Legal/Compliance. Any changes in government regulations or corporate litigation can cause an organization to undertake immediate action.
- >>Reorganizations. Tumultuous restructurings change priorities and shift alliances virtually overnight. Existing business relationships are all in jeopardy too.
- >>New Leadership. Anytime a new executive is brought onboard, they’re expected to deliver results quickly. Change is always in the air. Depending on what you know about the organization and position (e.g., CFO, VP Marketing), you can infer what might be forthcoming.
- >>Financial Announcements. If an organization has missed their earnings expectations or sales growth is lagging, expect to see big changes in the upcoming quarter. Conversely, if growth was better than expected, watch for new initiatives to support their expansion.
These are some of the biggies. But there are also a whole slew of other trigger events that can catalyze change. They’re not earth shattering. But, if you’re aware of them, you can get your foot in the door to have a good discussion with a person who’s finally open to new ideas or vendors.
Knowing about these and other trigger events happening in the mortgage space can make that lender a perfect target for a sale. Today research shows the profound impact of this vital sales intelligence on the sales process. CSO Insights found that effective use of sales intelligence results in a 17% increase in revenue productivity/rep.
Also, Aberdeen Group discovered that companies who support sales teams with sales intelligence tools see a 28.4% increase in year-over-year revenue. Additionally, Aberdeen Group found that 81% of companies who used a sales intelligence platform saw significant yearly gains in team quotas.
Leveraging sales intelligence yields compelling results. And, the key driver of these results is a trigger event that alters a prospect’s priorities. By using them effectively, you can initiate more opportunities, deepen existing relationships, shorten your sales cycles and minimize competition.
Selling via trigger events is not meant to replace your existing prospecting process. It’s imperative that you still target and go after your ideal customers. Instead, think of trigger events as an ideal augmentation strategy to find those hidden gems. It creates more opportunities for you. And, if you set up a system to do the work for you, your technology partner will alert you when something happens that could create a need for your products or services.
Sometimes finding the best way to use this new knowledge and marry it with your existing strategies can be tricky, which is where trusted partners like NexLevel Advisors can be crucial. If you think about it, this type of knowledge and expertise is valued by executives when making decisions. Executive leaders look to make informed decisions based on more than just internal knowledge, they seek information from trusted external resources. Fact based research, viability assessment, target market segmentation, and competitive analysis all provide a detailed view of potential opportunities, risks and rewards specifically developed for your organization.
As a trusted business advisor, NexLevel Advisors leverages years of experience in business strategy, corporate performance, strategic selling, and marketing to deliver customized solutions that help our clients take advantage of their unique business opportunities. These custom developed solutions allow you to obtain new insight and perspective, optimize sales & marketing effectiveness, and increase customer loyalty quicker and more strategically as you take your company to the next level.