Debt Help- Mint.com

What is your number one job as a mortgage broker or debt settlement counselor?

Build confidence in the customer.

Sales is Creating Confident Buyers

Does that sound weird to you? It shouldn’t because it is the most critical skill a sales person must possess.

You are not there to sell them something. You are not there to spill out a bunch of numbers and options. Your only job is to give customers the information and education they need to be confident buyers.

Confidence Start with You

Creating confidence in your prospective clients has to start with you. You need to have confidence in your opening, your knowledge of the product options, and your recommendations.

That confidence needs to show up in your voice and your face-to-face meetings. You need to be professional and even in your delivery. You need to be attentive to questions. You need to be direct and authoritative in you answers.

Ask Questions to Build Confidence

Most importantly ask questions of your prospects to make sure you are communicating. This process is much like a teacher in a classroom. You need to occasionally pause from the pitch to get feedback. This feedback can come from asking if there are any questions or giving a little quiz.

The purpose is to see if they are still paying attention, they are grasping what you are telling them, and most importantly proving to themselves that they understand. This understanding will give them the confidence to make the decision to move forward or discuss it with their spouse.

In either case moving the discussion to a closing.

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The current recession is making debt settlement leads look more like a common phone book. It seems that nearly everyone is in need of some credit or debt management assistance. That means those debt leads you are buying are increasingly valuable if you have a good marketing plan.

Turning Debt Leads Into Clients

A marketing plan? You thought you outsourced marketing when you bought those aged debt settlement leads. Wrong. You bought customers with intent and need, but they responded to someone else’s marketing.

The smart debt settlement company embraces that customer interest as an opportunity. However, they know that it won’t stick without a little work. You need to make a personal effort to make that client really yours.

Introduce them to your debt settlement company, give them confidence that you will be responsive, and build a trusting relationship that assures them you are here to help.

Marketing Debt Solutions

One of the quickest ways to convert aged debt leads into viable prospects is to turn the marketing back on. Chances are these clients were either dropped or have been ignored for some extended period of time. That means you need to re-engage them.

I think the best approach is to start a value-based education email campaign. This means you need to start by introducing yourself and the company. And offering them educational content with no strings attached.

Here are a few examples:

• Free tips on credit repair, maybe even attach a short e-book
• A getting started guide on negotiating with creditors
• Brief outline on organizing your total debt picture

These no-obligation educational content pieces are powerful marketing tools. They will help your prospective debt clients gain confidence in getting help and will drive them to you with questions.

Taking the Long View on Sales

As you all know debt settlement solutions are typically long processes. People in debt trouble have been beaten down, are often in denial, and rarely believe there is hope. That is why it is critical to take the long view on each of these leads, which means working in volume and automating your marketing.

This is certain to bring a steady flow of conversions into you pipeline and maximize the people you can help free from suffocating debt burdens.

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I just stumbled on this press release from a group called MSTARS, LLC. Now I don’t know anything about this service, have not seen it in action, or have any financial interest in them; however, the concept seems really valuable.

I spend a lot of time trying to help my clients stay up to date on regulatory and compliance issues. In the debt settlement business this is so important. It seems that since this industry deals with distressed consumers, they are always targets of legal or regulatory action.

Unfortunately, training debt agents can be costly and it is very difficult to ensure every agent’s continual compliance. Even if you provide the necessary compliance training it can be hard to document that training should a problem arise. This is where I think the MSTARS virtual training system could be interesting.

Here are the elements that I think could potentially be very valuable:

• Providing consistent compliance training
• Saving managers valuable “floor time”
• Easy way to track and account for compliance training
• Easier for the agent to accomplish training
• Ability to push training to multiple locations

Again, I haven’t seen the solution myself and can’t endorse it. However, I do think something like this would be a real value to the company-even if you just did your own videos series or webinars for ongoing agent compliance training.

How do you manage your compliance training?

I am interested in solutions and processes that debt settlement businesses are using to keep on top of all these changes.

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Americans for Consumer Credit Choice, a membership organization comprised of consumer finance businesses, has sponsored an interesting research study on the Debt Management industry.

Conducted by the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University this report studies the true, if any benefit to debt management versus more traditional consumer credit counseling. Since the ACCC looks like a relatively new organization and the report seemed to be fairly self-serving I was a bit suspicious of its efficacy.

However, I was pleasantly surprised with the depth of the analysis and the richness of the data. Here are a couple of conclusions that I found interesting:

“The debt settlement company generates tremendous value to its clients, as more than 57% of the clients have offers to settle at least 70% of their original debt, and almost 30% have settlement offers for at least 90% of their original debt.”

And

“The debt settlement company has an increasingly higher value to customers with higher account balances and higher total debt, but lower number of accounts.”

The report is definitely worth a read if you are in the debt settlement business. This report might also be a good piece of information to provide to new debt clients, as they are making their choice between consumer counseling and debt settlement.

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How many times have you heard, “passion sells?” Or, “find what you are passionate about and it will make you rich.” Fact is, passion does sell, but these motivational quips often confuse us during execution.

The truth is most don’t have the means or the guts to just drop their day job and chase a passion on the “if come” of fame and fortune. However, I am going to tell you a secret–there is a smarter way.

Chances are you are in the mortgage or debt business because you are good at it. You got there because there is something that you enjoy about this business. So, if you want to be a big-time success in your mortgage or debt business do a passion inventory.

What are the parts of your business that make you passionate–then sell it:

• Teaching personal finance
• Sales training
• Debt reviews and workouts
• Personal financial reviews
• Economic and market analysis
• Mortgage rate monitoring

These are all little cornerstones of the business. Opportunities for you to be the best at a niche, a unique selling proposition. Find what makes you passionate about your current business; emphasize it, magnify it, get rich off of it!

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One of the great things about the Internet is community. You can quickly and easily find people like you and collaborate.

Nowhere is this more important than the debt and mortgage industry. Our industries are changing dramatically. Legislative and regulatory actions that are underway will fundamentally change the way we do business. Is you debt or mortgage business ready?

Make sure you are tuning into websites and communities that are keeping you informed about the changes underway. Here are some great communities to be aware of and participate in:

Debt Community

• The Debt Hub
• LinkedIn-TASC
• LinkedIn-Debt Settlement/Negotiation

Mortgage Community

• Lenderam
• LinkedIn-Lenderama.com
• LinkedIn-National Loan Modification Group

Are there others? Let our community know with a comment.

The important message is to find and participate in a good debt or mortgage community–your business may depend on it!

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I am not going to lie to you–converting an aged lead into a closed mortgage or debt deal is an uphill battle. Of course, that is why they are pennies on the dollar compared to what a fresh Internet lead costs. However, by following these simple steps you will be amazed at the conversion lift you experience.

There is after all gold in that there lead pile…

1. Contact: Be diligent. Unlike your typical fresh Internet lead these consumers may not be expecting your call. That does not mean that they won’t be glad to hear your voice since most are likely to have gotten little or no follow-up. However, for this reason you will have to put in multiple touches to make initial contact.

2. Follow-up: Once you have made contact be tenacious about follow-up. Like I mentioned in step 1, most of these have been dropped on the floor once. If you break that trust again it will be hard to get them back and to the closing table.

3. Presentation: Another challenge you might uncover is that these borrowers have complex scenarios or are not as financially educated. Therefore, your mortgage or debt presentation needs to be polished and simple. Make it intuitive and get to the bottom line quickly.

4. Acknowledge, Respond, Control: As with any sales process you are going to get objections. Chances are aged leads will be full of them too. Especially since some will be skeptical based on how they were treated by the companies that responded to their initial Web inquiry. So, don’t be defensive or avoid the objection–try this approach:

• Acknowledge the objection in an empathetic way. Assuring them that you heard their concern and you are going to address it
• Respond in an even and sympathetic tone of voice. Address their concern and explain how you can help.
• Control the conversation again. After you acknowledge and respond to the customer make sure you take the conversation back. Leaving it in the customer’s court will just start a tennis match of objections and responses. Not a good thing.

5. Follow-up: I harp on this all of the time. This is the key to every successful sale. Follow-up with the customer and following through on simple promises will build a strong trust that will return dividends now and in the future.

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