Boost outbound activity and supercharge sales in 2022

But with the new year well and truly underway, it’s important to ensure your mortgage brokerage is doing all it can to supercharge its sales efforts, and that means getting a head start with outbound calls.

Whether it’s booking appointments or qualifying leads – proactive outbound calls are essential. It’s how hard-fought opportunities are converted into business.

Here I share five tips to maximise outbound activity.

1. Categorise calls. Think about the different types of calls you need to make. Perhaps it’s to qualify enquiries, get feedback on quotes, provide remortgage reminders, reawaken old data or gather client information to speed up onboarding. Categorising calls will help to ensure the right person makes them, identify how promptly calls must be made and where support might be required.

2. Set targets. If you’re faced with a huge list of calls to make it can feel daunting. Set targets so that the team feels motivated. They might relate to the number of calls or the conversions you want to hit (this could be incentivised), but they could also be in relation to how much time will be spent on the task each week.

3. Be prompt. Competition is hotting up between lenders and brokers as they increase their rates, plus a very busy property market and a pandemic-led ‘race for space’ means there’s no time to delay. If your outbound activity is following up leads, then it’s important to be prompt. Make sure outbound teams know the urgency of different types of calls. Responsiveness wins business.

4. Embrace CRM. Most brokers know the value of CRM systems, but it’s important to ensure everyone tasked with sales calling is using it properly. Put CRM guidelines in place, stipulate the core information that must be captured and ask for calls to be recorded directly into CRM as they happen. It will save trying to decipher hand scribbled notes at the end of the day.

5. Remove the headache. New research suggests that keeping a work/life balance is one of the biggest challenges facing brokers in 2022 with many working more than 45 hours a week - so it’s fair to say that many will feel time poor and over-stretched as we start a new year. For these brokers outsourced support is the answer and it’s why we launched our outbound service. Using our experienced employees to qualify leads, provide detailed quotes, convert enquiries, assign the matter to an individual, and input the relevant data into CRM - we take the headache out of outbound. We respond to leads from any source, calling them promptly from the broker’s office telephone number and guaranteeing a professional experience. Problem solved.

Failure to prioritise call backs and follow ups can lead to lost opportunity, as well as bad sentiment. Outsourcing outbound as well as inbound calls provides the perfect solution for already busy brokers. Even after the unprecedented demand of the last couple of years, brokers must still prioritise client care and progress all opportunities before a competitor gets to them.