Accelerate the Sales Cycle by Understanding How Buyers Buy
Buyers of services typically go through a five step cycle when making a purchase decision. It is the goal of service providers to assist buyers to move through these steps as quickly as possible in order to shorten the sales cycle.
The steps of the cycle are:
We will examine these steps and relate each to the reverse mortgage sales process.
Awareness
This is the most elemental stop on the sales train. Awareness is a potential buyers recognition that a service exists. In terms of reverse mortgages in 2007 and 2008 about one third to one half of eligible seniors have yet to become aware of reverse mortgages. As reverse mortgages gain in popularity, and more and more marketing is done by companies of all sizes. Everyone in the industry that is raising the awareness of the product.
Education
As the level of awareness of a product heightens, awareness slowly begins to turn into education. Again, it is product marketing in a relatively new marketplace that assists all in the industry in educating prospects. It is the education stage where many reverse mortgage leads are captured and a very high percentage are also lost.
Research
As a consumer becomes more educated about a product and decides that it might meet a need or desire, they begin to research possible suppliers. They determine who the suppliers are in the marketplace, who are the leaders, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of each provider. In the reverse mortgage industry the research phase is often done as a senior is contacted by various providers. The senior often utilizes their network of advisors to determine if others should be considered in the decision making process and who those others may be. Ultimately, after some researching their options the prospect with ultimately make a determination of who they want to do business with based on the next phase of the model, Rapport.
Rapport
The Rapport phase of the purchase model is the last step toward making a sale and many argue the most important. It is that brief period where you as a provider are under consideration and where you need to convey elements of trust, integrity, confidence and leadership to your prospect.
The Buyers Purchase Model and Reverse Mortgage Sales
The majority of reverse mortgage lead generation companies generate their leads by promoting “more information” and “free information kits”. This is a clear indication that a great many seniors fall squarely into the education phase of the purchase cycle.
Unfortunately, it is also in this educational phase where a great many lenders drop the ball. They contact prospects who have responded to “free information” offers to find out that prospect is in fact merely gathering information (go figure!). If the senior is not ready to make a purchase decision within 60 days in most cases, the lead is lost forever.
In some cases, with top loan officers, the lead is followed up on semi-regularly for a 3 to 6 month period. As we all know, in the vast majority of cases, loan officers move on to try to locate the leads that find themselves in the “research” or “rapport” phases of the buying process.
It is in the Education phase where Lead Contact Solutions helps our clients build the bridge to the purchase, accelerate the sales cycle and improve their marketing ROI. Our programs help make it easy to continue staying in contact with your customers and top prospects. These programs provide prospects with continuous education on financial issues and reverse mortgages (Education phase), while establishing our customers as knowledgeable industry leaders with our content (Research phase) in a very friendly, informational newsletter that comes directly from a sales rep (Rapport phase).
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