Foreclosures continue to soar, up 25 percent year-over-year. Nearly 280,000 homeowners have received a foreclosure related notice in October jumping 5 percent over the prior month, according to RealtyTrac.

Rising Consumer Debt and Sinking Economy

These rising numbers are sure to keep your debt business hoping. Unlike the rising number of bank bailouts and loan modification programs, ordinary consumer debt is getting little government assistance.

However, these borrowers being foreclosed on are certainly being strangled by other debts. They need debt counseling and debt relief beyond their mortgages. This is where debt settlement solution providers are going to be crucial to the US economic recovery.

Debt Consumers are Often Misplaced

There is over $900 billion in credit card debt outstanding alone, not to mention billions in mounting medical debt, student loans, and auto payments. These are festering obligations that are putting people in desperate and unrecoverable personal finance scenarios.

Many of these people are wandering about looking for answers that you can give them. Often they inquire online and in their confusion get into the “wrong bucket.” This is where aged debt and even aged mortgage leads can be a gold mine.

Why Aged Leads are a Winning Debt Settlement Strategy?

Here are a couple of reasons to consider adding aged debt leads to your marketing:
•    People facing unmanageable debt go to the Internet for help
•    Often they look in the wrong place like mortgage refinance
•    After being harassed by collectors, they are often initially resistant to help
•    Debt clients typically don’t respond to settlement services until they are in crisis

These are all great reasons to establish a program to diligently manage and build a relationship with your debt leads. The results will help the client, your business, and the economy.

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Consumer debt is often a recurring affliction making aged leads a great way to prospect for debt settlement customers. Even the most general of aged debt or mortgage leads are certain to be full of debt customers.

Debt customers are easily targeted within aged leads as those leads with direct debt settlement inquires or even mortgage refinance and cash-out refinance requests. The secret to prospecting debt leads from aged leads is targeting extended customers and building a lead prospecting campaign.

Debt Settlement is…

Debt settlement is simply the ability to offer clients relief from crushing debt challenges. This makes prospecting aged leads a smart and affordable way to find clients that need help. Often debt customers are confused and unsure of how to solve their debt problems.

Buying Aged Leads

This is why looking for tale-tell signs of this seeking for answers can be so productive. Here are some of the typical things consumers overwhelmed with debt will attempt, and key targets in aged leads:

• Getting a home equity loan or line of credit
• Refinancing their mortgage for a lower rate or payment
• Refinancing their home for cash-out
• Looking for loan modifications
• Seeking more credit card offers

As you are filtering your aged leads buy look for these signals of prospective debt customers.

Debt Database Marketing

Of course, now that you have these great debt prospect leads in your database you need to overcome the same confusion that got them misdirected. This is where a good database marketing campaign can educate these customers into seeking a better debt solution. Create a campaign that establishes the fallacies and dangers of pursuing some of these other solutions.

Believe me, as you begin to help some of these customers that have headed in the wrong direction you will build some great clients. Giving these lost customers hope is a great reward for you and the customer.

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged debt leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged debt leads.

(photo credit: truthabout…)

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Times are tough. Sales production is probably a little off. Time to look at that marketing budget? When sales revenue drops due to market conditions looking for miracles in your sales force or current marketing channels is rarely productive. This is probably the scenario for many of you–time to run the numbers to put you back in the black.

Working real-time Internet leads is a great strategy in a healthy market. Consumers are generally anxious and well-qualified. However, in weaken economic conditions you have consumers that are timid and struggling to qualify. This is a perfect market to shift some of your marketing budget to aged leads.

Real Time Internet Leads

Don’t get me wrong, real-time Internet leads are great sources of new sales. They should be an ongoing part of a successful business strategy. However, as the economy goes into a stall and there is uncertainty in the debt and lending markets why wouldn’t you seek more affordable marketing?

Aged leads should be one of these potential solutions to trimming your marketing budget.

You are essentially getting the same type of marketing methodology and customer. However, with the slowing of the market and the challenges in meeting customer needs–you have similar conversion opportunities for much less. This shift in the customer behavior and market dynamics makes aged leads a real value to consider.

Aged Leads Better Value

Simply running the numbers may give you a new perspective in this market. What is converting and at what price? Are you actually getting a greater ROI out of aged leads than real-time leads? My guess is that you will find aged leads to be a strong value in a slow market.

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged debt leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged debt leads.

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Finding great mortgage leads in the current economic environment can be tough. There are several things working against you–declining credit scores, depreciating home values, and tightening lending guidelines. These factors should lead you to only one conclusion–I should be paying less for leads.

If your conversion rate is inherently going to be less because of market factors, and you can’t filter out those factors without phone calls, you need to adjust. This is why keeping an eye on your cost per funded mortgage loan is critical. If it changes you need to make adjustments.

Reviewing the Mortgage Market

The current mortgage market has a few unique twists that are making aged leads increasingly valuable:

• Failures in Hope for Homeowners and possible broadening loan modification programs
• Uncertainty in the anticipated economic policy changes of President-elect Obama
• Ever tightening lending guidelines and credit standards

These unique situations are taking some of the urgency out of Internet mortgage leads. Meanwhile, it is adding the need for education and smart mortgage counseling. These are elements that make aged mortgage leads an intelligent choice for your marketing budget.

Focusing My Mortgage Lead Buying

Aged mortgage leads are going to be full of potential homeowners and mortgage borrowers that are patiently waiting for the right market conditions or the right loan officer to guide them into a good mortgage financing decision. These are not hasty real-time Internet lead customers that are desperate and willing to be hooked into another bad loan. These are customers that want to talk to a professional.

You have the perfect opportunity to focus your mortgage marketing on less expensive mortgage leads, without sacrificing big on quality. Your trade-off might be a little more work on contacting and following up with these clients, but this is the client you want. Someone who knows you have invested time in their financial health when times are hard. This will be a client for life.

Finding the Right Aged Leads

Finding the right aged leads is key. Don’t just rush into aged mortgage leads because they are cheap leads. No, really think about what adds value to your mortgage business. Spend time finding the right filters and pick an aged lead broker that takes time to make sure you have the best leads. A lead broker that invests in your success.

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged mortgage leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged mortgage leads.

(photo credit: TruthAbout…)

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Buying leads is always a challenge to get perfect. Unlike your own marketing you are not certain what is changing in the mix on the front-end. Changes in methodology, placement, targeting, and creative can have significant effects on your sales results. However, you can monitor these subtle changes and maximize your results with a few simple metrics. Then tie these metrics to your lead buying.

Making smart choices on the aged mortgage or debt leads you purchase is directly related to how well you track your sales metrics. Things will continually change in the marketing mix of aged leads. Having good lead metrics will let you quickly spot the studs and duds in that mix. Here is a great framework for getting the most out of aged lead buying:

Track Contact Rates

Contact rates are your early beacons of quality. If you have a lead that is responsive you have a good lead. There are a myriad of ways for a bad sales call, sales person, lack of product, or pricing to kill a final deal with that customer. However, if you make contact to a responsive customer then marketing is doing their job.

Track Withdraw Rates

This is probably as important as tracking contact rates. Granted these are aged leads, so you are not paying for 70% contact and conversion rates, but you should establish a baseline. This baseline of withdraws (non-responsive and people you can’t help for whatever reason) should be set early so you can measure against a benchmark.

The withdraw benchmark should be a combination of a normal (equilibrium) level of typical withdraw rate and a maximum acceptable level for target ROI. With these metrics you will immediately know as you begin working your aged leads if you need to make an adjustment to filters or alert your lead broker that something has changed in their lead mix.

Measure Cost Per Funding

This is where the rubber meets the road. Are you making money with your aged lead buying? Margins are constantly changing in mortgage and debt products so make sure that your marketing is still allowing you to hit your margin levels. This is why many people are currently switching from real-time leads to aged leads. As margin decline it forces you to seek out more affordable marketing, like aged leads.

Calculate Return on Investment

This is really the bottom line–is your business making money? Regularly assess the ROI of each of your marketing sources. If you are buying from multiple lead sources this should be the fundamental measurement.

Share Data with Your Lead Provider

This point can’t be emphasized enough, if you are buying leads from a lead broker share your results. This is going to allow them to acquire better lead data, share sales tips that are working, and make adjustments in their quality control and data enhancement processes.

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged debt leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged debt leads.

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I am getting a lot of questions about Next Wave Marketing Strategies–who we are and why I started this blog. So, I thought I would take a few short paragraphs to give you a little peek into Next Wave Marketing Strategies.

Next Wave Marketing Strategies is a small company that can have a BIG impact on your debt or mortgage business success.

Who is Next Wave Marketing Strategies?

I am Troy Wilson, Captain of the Next Wave Marketing Strategies enterprise. I am a veteran of the Internet lead generation business with over seven years experience generating and cultivating the best leads for mortgage loan officers and debt counselors. I have committed the last five years of my career to perfecting a unique process for maximizing the value of aged leads.

Unlike most aged lead brokers I don’t just grab other peoples’ trashed Internet leads and dump them on you for money. No, we take you marketing and sales success seriously. Our data enhancement process is a serious business. We are continually working with our network of email firms, search engine marketing firms, call centers, and other lead generation companies to bring you the best aged debt and mortgage leads. Both are prices and our returns policy are vey reasonable.

However, our efforts don’t stop there. We take all of this feedback, along with our own data analysis and enhance each new batch of leads with our unique 4 step process that includes:

• Data scrubbing and hygiene process using our proprietary data cleansing engine
• Data normalization and field validation
• Data extract customization tools, giving you leads in any required format
• Ability to suppress leads against clients’ existing database or DNC
• Ability to import or feed to any of the most popular CRM or lead management software

If you are looking for high quality, high volume leads to keep your sales floor humming in tough economic conditions–Next Wave Marketing Strategies is your solution for aged debt or mortgage leads.

Why Did I Start the Aged Lead Strategies Blog?

This is an easy question to answer. Just like our extra effort to find the best lead sources and invest in industry leading data cleansing processes, Next Wave Marketing Strategies always wants to go all out for your success. This blog is just one more effort.

I talk to lead generation companies, loan officers, debt counselors, and lead management companies everyday. I get a ton of insight into what is working and what isn’t. I hear early trends and techniques in sales and market conditions. I learn marketing tips that can make your businesses better. Now with this blog I can pass on those sales and marketing tips to all of my clients and even those of your thinking about the value of purchasing aged leads.

So, I hope you are enjoying the blog. If there is anything you would like to know more about or want me to ask my network of experts just give me a call or email me. I look forward to working with your and giving you everything I can to make your business more successful!

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged debt leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged debt leads.

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Do you want your marketing to give you buyers or shoppers, interested consumers or confused Internet clickers? I think the answer is pretty clear. You want the most for your hard earned marketing dollars. But, in order to get that result it is important to share your sales performance data. Let your “marketing department” (even if it is outsourced to a lead provider) know what is working best for you.

Your objective is to get the best leads for your specific business. If you are buying leads then you should be telling your lead provider what leads you close the best. Here are three simple lead measurements that will give you better leads from your lead provider:

1. Contact Rates

Who are you getting on the phone the fastest and most frequently? If you can’t get a customer to respond to your communications you are going to be at 0% lead conversion. Leads (even within the same lead provider) originate from a lot of different marketing sources and methods. Some marketing channels may not set good expectations, match your pitch, or even be expecting a call.

Share contact rates immediately to get your lead provider tuned into their marketing source that takes your call faster and more frequently.

2. Closing Rates

This is a no brainer. If you don’t do anything else tell your lead provider what leads are making you money. A good lead provider doesn’t want to sell you a single lead that doesn’t close. Sure it is an impossible goal, but help them get as close as possible.

3. Withdraw Rates

Withdraw rate is another precious metric, but it is often overlooked. These are the leads that are either consistently non-responsive or more often than not the ones you can’t help. This typically means you have a mismatch in your lead filters or the lead provider is not sufficiently segmenting their lead generation.

For example, if you don’t do loan modifications you don’t want a loan modification customer inquiry sold to you as a mortgage refinance or debt settlement. Look for these pockets of lead generation and product mismatch.

Give Me the Good Stuff

Regardless of who you buy leads from, real-time or aged leads you need to share performance data. Any lead buying program is going to need a little tuning. Your business is going to be slightly different from every other client your lead provider services.

You may be one of hundreds of mortgage lenders, but are you experts in VA, FHA, reverse mortgages, or maybe your have a special accelerated mortgage program. Maybe you are one of hundreds of debt settlement specialists, but are you staffed with ex-loan officers, experienced debt counselors, or experts in credit card consolidation, or maybe loan modification specialists.

All of these little nuances are going to dramatically effect what leads work best for your mortgage or debt business. Make sure you are sharing this information and data from your sales teams so your lead partner can give you your sweet spot.

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged debt leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged debt leads.

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Nothing kills sales production faster than buying the wrong number of leads. Too many causes lots of wasted money. Too little can be even worst–bored sales agents and frustrated compensation. Learn to tune you lead buys to optimize not only sales resources, but sales performance.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

My Dad used to always tell me to measure twice and cut once. I think the same rule applies to lead buying. So often we get some initial data and knee jerk into a reaction. In lead buying this can waste a lot of money lead shopping and damage some potentially great marketing partnerships.

As this applies to buying the right number of leads you have to be very careful. Over buying is certainly counterproductive, but so is under buying. Attempting to maximize your sales production each month means hitting maximum throughput on your sales capacity each month. Often that means pumping more, not less through the sales engine.

Sales Capacity is an Individual Thing

Sales capacity is truly an individual metric. Each sales person’s capacity is effected by a myriad of influencers. If you are trying to determine overall sales capacity you have to create a weighted scale not a flat average.

Whenever I am asked how many leads each sales agent should get I always ask what is their velocity. This has a lot to do with sourcing the appropriate lead flow. Sales agents will have a variety of conversion ratios, call volumes, and performance levels. These will all effect the number of leads you buy.

Here are some of the factors I like to look at:

• Call volumes
• Number of attempts before sale
• Number of attempt before withdraw
• Desired number of sales
• Commission tiers (you will be amazed at the glass ceilings this causes in sales)

Remember your sales team(s) are made up of human beings. They will perform as such, each as individuals. Calculate your lead buys on the combined demand of the individuals, not an average of the group.

Buy Leads Based on Sales Performance

As you dig into all of these numbers stick with the golden rule that will always serve you well: “Buy leads for performers.” Poor performers will always hoard and waste leads. So, feed your top performers and starve your poor performers–both groups’ sale numbers will improve with this strategy.

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged debt leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged debt leads.

(photo credit: timparkinson)

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Lead management is more than a piece of software. It is a strategy for converting more leads. There are key processes your marketing and sales teams should have in place to maximize your conversion of aged leads.

Use these 6 elements to create a higher converting lead management system:

1. Orderly Lead Receipt

Whether you get your leads in real-time or in batch you need an orderly process of lead receipt. Make sure that you get them in a consistent and efficient format for you to database and distribute.

Here are some minimum requirements of your lead receipt process:

• Consistent data elements and formats
• Standard data file formats (i.e., XML, .xls, .csv)
• Sufficient data elements to filter for product types
• Some minimum level of data quality scrubbing

Given these minimum data requirements, your lead receipt process should be able to take in all of your leads quickly and efficiently into the database.

2. Efficient and Timely Distribution

An important extension of orderly lead receipt is getting them to the sales team. Your lead distribution should be just as organized as your lead receipt. Again, whether you are getting real-time or aged leads you need to get them into the hands of sales immediately. This steady flow of leads is the lifeline of your sales production.

Leads sitting around certainly won’t close. Sales people setting around won’t close either. Get you leads from receipt to sales as soon as possible.

3. Managed and Consistent Sales Process

Getting leads to sales is not enough. You have to ensure there is consistent follow-up and sales activity on every lead. This means accountability.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of your leads sales process:

• Require every lead to have an immediate initial contact
• Require every lead to have a minimum level of follow-up
• Design a consistent sales process
• Provide leads based on performance only

The secret to successful lead allocation is providing leads based on sales. If you don’t sell, if you don’t close, you don’t get leads.

4. Automated Marketing Follow-up

Maximizing the sales activity on every lead will increase conversion. This is where automating marketing can put additional sales pressure on each lead. Here are some basic fundamentals of automated marketing that should be in your lead management process:

• Initial lead receipt email to every imported lead
• Follow-up contact email templates
• Well designed email drip campaigns
• Ongoing lead nurturing campaigns for unconverted leads

Automated marketing systems, coordinated with your lead management system, can improve sales results. Applying maximum sales pressure is the advantage of marketing automation working on your pipeline while sales is pressing on live calls.

5. Reporting and Analysis

Since marketing, sales, and markets are always in flux you need to measure, measure, measure. The true advantage of having a lead management process is the consistency it gives you in tracking and measuring your results for improvement.

6. Process Improvement

This is the key to it all. Marketing and sales are far too dynamic. Success or failure teeters in the balance everyday as the market and customer needs change. If your lead management process is not designed to capture opportunities to improve or worse you don’t have a system to show you opportunity at all–you are dead on arrival.

Build and document a lead management process today–then seize success with your process.

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Next Wave Marketing Strategies brings over 5 years of integrity, innovation, and client satisfaction to the aged debt leads market. We offer industry leading quality control, data cleansing, and a generous return policy to empower you to build your business in the fastest, most cost effective manner. Learn more about aged debt leads.

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