Written By: Karen Deis

The responses received from our editorial called "Buying Leads - A True Story!" generated an enormous amount of interest from our readers. And yes, we even received a letter from a lead generation company as well.

Each one of you has to make the decision on how to generate business. If it's buying leads, that's great - just as long as you have a system to "work those leads". My only motivation in sharing these experiences with you, is that before you spend your hard-earned money on ANY lead generation method, investigate the source and make an informed choice based on facts, contracts, documented results and referrals from other loan officers.

Here are some of the comments:

Scott Hoag, Affordable Home Funding writes:

"I enjoyed reading your article about tele-marketers and have to admit to doing the same. I had 2 credible companies call me, send me information, but NEVER called me back. Amazing. In fact, as I write this, I received a tele-marketing call from a loan officer who was given a list from Equifax. He shared that he has been in the business for 2 weeks. I told him my rate was 5% but he still stuck to his "script". He kept pushing to set up an appointment to refinance.

I turned the tables on him and asked him how much he was being paid to set up an appointment and he said $100 per loan. So, I asked him if he would like to find a job where he could talk to better quality prospects and make $200 for every loan closed. This is a way of recruiting - especially if you feel the loan officer is good on the phone."

Anonymous writes:

"I'm one of those loan originators who pays for leads and had no idea where they really came from.
I have spent thousands of dollars and can say that I have made some good commissions over an above what I spent, but there must be an easier way to make a living in this business."

Mark Conley, Lead Generation Company, writes:

"I read your article regarding buying leads...you are absolutely right when you say that spammers are ruining the mortgage industry leads.

I am one of a handful of lead generators who strive to generate genuine leads for lenders. By genuine, I mean interested prospects; sold only once; no spamming involved. I will be submitting an article not only to set the record straight on the motivation behind spamming, but also to educate the loan officers on what is involved in generating quality leads from them at a price that is realistic. Too many LO's think that they should be paying $12 for an EXCLUSIVE lead. Now, THAT's a price that's unrealistic.

I work long hours in the leads business and would like to share my viewpoint with you."

Anonymous writes:

"Probably the worst experience I ever had buying leads was from a salesperson that claimed that they were a fellow broker selling their excess leads. It turned out that in reality, this slime bucket did have a license to broker, but never did one origination due to poor sales skills and lack of ethics. All he did was purchase crappy bogus leads from other vendors and resell them to unsuspecting customers."

LoanOfficerMagazine.com strives to provide methods and systems that you can use day-in and day-out; year-in and year-out to generate good, quality business. Yes, it does cost money in advertising, marketing and an investment of your time in setting up the systems.

However, I can assure you that once you have a system in place, your business will grow and you won't have to start over with every phone call you make.

Copyright, 2004, LoanOfficerMagazine.com

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