The Fundamentals of Mortgage CRM: Part 2

In my first post on this topic I discussed the major components of a mortgage professional’s database:

1.    Contacts & Accounts
2.    Referral Sources
3.    Deals

In this post I would like to discuss how MyLoanBiz for Salesforce.com handles managing these various pieces of information (click on image below to enlarge it).

Contacts & Accounts
Most of us are comfortable tracking contacts because of our experience with Microsoft Outlook. MyLoanBiz takes a unique approach to contacts because we allow you to track them in a way that is specific to the mortgage industry. The first thing you will notice on a contact record is the Group Membership field. This field allows you to tag the contact as part of one or more groups that you want to categorize it by. An example would be a contact that is both a Real Estate Agent and a Customer. Having the ability to organize your contacts in this manner will allow you to have a more sophisticated approach to your marketing activities.

Next you will notice that each Contact record gives you the ability to input contact information for two individuals. These are called the Main Contact and the Related Contact. This makes marketing to two people that live together much easier.   For example, you will now be able to print mailing labels that say Bill & Lisa Smith at 222 Green St. rather than having them get mailed to twice because they are on separate Contact records. We have also provided a field that allows you to define the relationship between the two people, such as Husband, Wife, Boyfriend, Girlfriend, etc.

In general you will find that you will have 2 types of contacts that you store in the system, Consumer contacts and Business Partner contacts. Consumer contacts are people that are existing customers or potential prospects and Business Partner contacts are individuals you work with on a professional level such as Attorneys, Real Estate Agents, Appraisers, etc.
We will talk about how to work with these different contact types in the system in greater detail in a future post.

An account is really just a company that a contact works for. If you are adding a Real Estate Agent into MyLoanBiz for Salesforce.com you want to start by first creating an account for the company they are associated with. Then you will add them and all other agents that work for that company as a contact linked to that account.

Referral Sources
A Referral Source is a person or a thing that is referring contacts and deals to you. It is a separate record that you typically create off of a contact record. The idea is that you may have 500 contacts in your database but not all of them are actively referring business to you. When one does for the first time, you go to their Contact record and create a Referral Source record by clicking on the New Referral Source button (this is near the bottom of the Contact record). Keep in mind that a Referral Source will not always be a person but could be a thing such as a marketing piece you mail out or a development project. In this case you might still link the referral source record to the contact record of the main person you deal with in relation to the referral source.

Deals
Deals allow you to track all your transactions from a Lead to a Closed stage. They contain information about the first and (if one exists) the second mortgage. Once a deal is closed you then use the Deal record as a way to monitor future refinance opportunities. A Deal record can be linked back to the borrower's Contact record. This allows you to pull up the Contact record and see all the deals you have ever done with them. The Deal record will also be linked back to the Referral Source record that sent the deal your way. You can also link the contact records of all the parties related to a deal, such as Real Estate Agents and Attorneys.