Did you know that in 2018, 78% of homes were purchased with a mortgage here in the U.S.? In other words, the mortgage industry is booming.

Smart brokers and teams know that to stay competitive you’ve got to keep up with the latest trends and technology.

Follow these 20 proven insider tips on how to grow and improve your mortgage business in this thriving marketplace.

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  • 1 –– Save hours on administrative work every day.

    Mortgage loan officers are responsible for a variety of paperwork, tasks, and client interactions at any given moment. These procedures are often both complex and dynamic. A paper and pencil system no longer makes sense.

Not only does it make sense to adopt a modern, upgraded business management system – it’s what your mortgage clients have come to expect. Use software like Shape Mortgage to automate your daily to-do list and spend more time helping your clients.

  • 2 –– Increase the productivity of your entire workforce.

    Managing a team of loan officers means dealing with the many messages, replies, and comments they have daily. It can often be challenging to get everyone on the same page and all too often, important client details or new leads slip through the cracks.

A centralized online hub for your business needs provides a single location where your employees can share updates, import files, and document their progress. Shape’s cloud-based tool offers maximum accessibility and user permissions to help you manage sensitive data.

  • 3 –– Strengthen relationships with prospects and clients.

    Relationship building used to require a lot of time and energy. Thanks to marketing automation software included in Shape, creating or improving relationships can be automated, authentic, and successful. Shape offers features that help you streamline relationship building via email, social media, and text messaging.

  • 4 –– Automate follow ups.

    Fact: Following up with prospects helps you win more business. About 80% of sales require five follow up touch points. For busy mortgage professionals, following up with every lead that many times isn’t sustainable.

At least not without the right software. A proper mortgage software system can send perfectly timed follow-ups at any stage of the sales lifecycle. Customizable templates and automated email delivery triggers make those five follow ups a snap.

  • 5 –– Build email drip marketing campaigns.

    Open rates for drip email marketing campaigns are 80% higher than single emails! Drip messages also have a click through rate that’s three times higher than their one-off counterparts. Building these campaigns doesn’t have to challenging or even time consuming. Shape actually can be configured with pre-built templates, or you can design your own campaigns, to nurture effectively based on status, lifecycle, and more.

  • 6 –– Provide timely status updates.

    Sometimes the process of acquiring a mortgage takes longer than you would like. Keep prospects reassured with status updates you can set and forget. They’ll be alerted to any new signatures required, paperwork requests, or follow up meetings as they come up. With Shape’s client portal, you can even build a robust welcome center where they can upload those documents, read more about your business, get status updates, and more.

Putting prospects’ minds at ease is one major way you can stand out from the competition through excellent customer service.

  • 7 –– Calculate amortization payments with ease.

    Accurate and real-time payment data is critical for your business. After all, it’s what’s used to make some of your most important decisions. Plus, your customers have come to expect quick results so having a handy system for crunching these numbers is a necessity. Shape comes loaded with the calculators your mortgage business needs to always give the most accurate data available.

  • 8 –– Improve your intake process.

    The hope most people have when they first adopt mortgage software like Shape is that the program will cut down the time they spend on everyday tasks. The intake process can be time consuming when done manually. But it’s one of your most powerful customer service tools. Automate the process with e-Signature capabilities, reminders, and status updates sent for you.

Mortgage businesses who automate parts of their onboarding see turnaround times shrink from weeks to hours.

  • 9 –– Organize company wide communication with one central hub.

    Taking notes on paper that can get lost or thrown out is not a great way to maintain compliance or run a mortgage business. With Shape, mortgage professionals can keep each other up to date with real-time data, comments, and information. If someone on your team needs to quickly reference a client projects they can quickly log into Shape to view notes from their colleagues.

Shape also allows you to assign leads and tasks on the fly to team members, so no to-do ever slips through the cracks again.

  • 10 –– Score your leads by quality.

    What if you could have a system that seamlessly reviewed every new prospect, assess their needs, and generate a score based on their interest and urgency? Add it to the list of all the other amazing features Shape has to offer.

Shape Mortgage Software will automatically score your leads based on data from your company as well as any specific parameters you can set and manage at any time. Once your leads are scored you can concentrate your efforts on reaching out to those with the highest ROIs first or even automatically assign them to marketing campaigns.

  • 11 –– Eliminate duplicate leads for better customer communication.

    Let’s say you have multiple files for the same lead. One has their nickname and phone number. Another has their full name and business email. And yet another one has their name, LinkedIn profile, and notes on your last meeting. Annoying is a nice way to put this problem.

If you or your employees look up this lead, there’s no way of knowing which version they’ll choose. Which means that notes added to one file might not make it over to the other. So your lead might be getting repeat sales calls from different reps. This kind of sloppy customer service can be remedied with features like Shape’s automatic duplicate merger.

Even if a team member accidentally creates a new file for someone already in the system, Shape can scan, detect, and merge them so all your information remains in one place. This will save you tons of time and headaches over the lifetime of your account.

  • 12 –– Sync your loan process with your other favorite apps.

    Exporting to Fannie Mae 3.2 File or bi-directionally syncing with your LOS makes the whole process quick and easy. It also eliminates the need for extra administrative work. Shape Mortgage Software does this, as you may have already guessed, automatically after you’ve synced your accounts.

  • 13 –– Keep an eye on your website analytics.

    Experts recommend that you track and review your website analytics if you want to grow your mortgage business. See which CTA button colors and placement get the most clicks. Or find new ways to improve the overall user experience. Shape helps you create custom forms and automatically collect data from your website visitors.

  • 14 –– Record and store phone conversations for future reference.

    Whether you need to review information for compliance or reference it as a great case example for the future, recording and storing phone conversations is a valuable tool for your mortgage business. Utilizing Shape’s best-in-class integrated dialer with call scripting and recording is one of the best ways to improve your mortgage business. And, as long as you have their permission, your clients will appreciate your attention to detail.

  • 15 –– Prioritize client communication via SMS messaging.

    Mortgage lenders can use texting in lots of great ways. And according to Ellie Mae, borrowers seem to prefer it more and more. Keep up with these shifting consumer preferences by adding Shape’s SMS messaging capabilities to your mortgage business tool box. Send one-off messages to your prospects and clients or build SMS into your next big marketing campaign with ease.

  • 16 –– Automatically organize lead overflow.

    Yet another magic trick Shape can perform for you! If you often get backlogged when new leads come in you can use Shape’s intelligent overflow management interface to gather and prioritize it all. They’ll be sorted based on status or timeframe so you can concentrate on high priority items.

  • 17 –– Use a CRM.

    If you’re not already using a CRM, it will transform your business. Especially if you run a one with multiple employees which most mortgage companies do. CRMs like the kind Shape Mortgage Software offers give you full transparency and visibility into your entire database of clients, prospects, and referrals. Keep more accurate records of your clients, search prospects, store documents in one central place, and so much more.

  • 18 –– Sync your email with your calendar.

    It’s a small task but when you’re planning multiple meetings every week that involve different groups of people, manually adding it all to your calendar gets time consuming. Syncing your email to your calendar saves you the trouble of having to weed through old email chains to find someone’s information. It also makes it easy to add, confirm, and remind meeting participants without having to exit your business management platform.

Shape’s meeting scheduler will also keep your team in sync and your clients from missing any important calls.

  • 19 –– Use advance reporting to review the health of your business.

    While Shape Mortgage Software does help you with the important day to day details, it also keeps you focused on the big picture. Advanced analytics and reporting helps you take a deep dive into what’s working for your business and what’s not. You can keep track of things like cash flow, lead sources, and open cases in real time.

Wondering what the ROI of your last big marketing campaign was? Shape can even run reporting for sales and marketing, which will allow you to properly invest your time (and money!) into business decisions that actually move the needle.

  • 20 –– Integrate your business management software with your tools you use every day.

    Adopting a system like Shape doesn’t mean you have to give up your other favorite business tools you rely on. In fact, you can seamlessly integrate apps like Zillow, MailChimp, and many others in just a few simple steps. It all seamlessly comes together to form a collaborative ecosystem of mortgage business tools so you can achieve maximum efficiency and productivity.

If you want to see what a well-optimized mortgage CRM can do for your business, sign up today!

Try Shape Today!

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