Want to improve your sales and marketing efforts?

Use a system that gives originators an edge

By Kimberly Greene

02 Aug 2018

Finding the right tools to support your business can be almost as difficult as getting business itself—and sometimes even harder.

But Intercoastal Mortgage, a full service mortgage lender based in the mid-Atlantic region, selected the Total Expert Marketing Operating SystemTM in 2017, which has boosted sales and marketing efforts by supporting the marketing and branding of individual originators.

“The fact that Total Expert worked with us to help our MLOs brand themselves was a big deal for us because we didn’t want to tell them they couldn’t do this on their marketing pieces. Personal branding is so important to our MLOs to help them grow their business with Intercoastal. It is great to have this partnership with Total Expert to make this happen,” said Intercoastal Mortgage Marketing Manager Jelaire Grillo in a statement.

Total Expert sees complete integration as a key to success for its customers, so one of their goals is complete integration with the point systems that people are already using. Total Expert distinguishes itself by labeling their marketing operating system as such instead of just being a CRM. For Sue Woodard, Chief Customer Officer at Total Expert, the fact that they have a CRM but can also operate with other CRMs is one way they’re able to add value beyond just that of the individual originator. That, and the constant pace of innovation.

“One of our core values at Total Expert is ‘move fast and innovate.’ We say it all the time but we don’t just say it, we actually live it,” Woodard said. “We’re very engaged with our customers, getting their feedback, hearing their pain points, and we don’t say, ‘Yeah, we’ll maybe look at that next year.’ We literally work to get those things turned into code and into our technology, and into the hands of our customers very quickly.”

Customer Success Manager Allison Klapheke said that it’s typical that companies undergo a series of fits and starts when deciding upon a MOS. Intercoastal tried multiple technologies before ending up with Total Expert, and they were unhappy with the rate of technology updates and the level of customer support from their previous CRMs. The real kicker, however, came from an originator who had heard about Total Expert from someone else and advocated for the company.

A recommendation from the end user is the highest compliment, as originators stand to benefit the most from using Total Expert on a daily basis. Total Expert has a lot of automating tools and notifications to help originators shape and organize their day based on their best practices.

“Originators don’t necessarily have to log into their system, but we can use the information that we gather from their LOS and other data integration tools and send those off to them in an email that says, ‘go do these things,’” Klapheke said. “That’s a huge win because of the idea that you don’t have to log in and do some of those steps while you’re going through the initial hurdle of the adoption to technology, so it can be a really easy way to get momentum going for these organizations.”

Early this fall, Total Expert is launching new features within their system, one of which is called the Journey Creator. The Journey Creator will allow customers to create multifaceted journeys for their leads, for their referral partners, and for their past customers. When a customer does a certain series of actions, their response will be timely and relevant to the next step that that person’s going to take, based on automated intelligence.

“These are things that just haven’t been in any kind of mortgage marketing technology ever before. Most times, best case, you’ve got automated campaigns and things like that but they’re pretty static. These are really dynamic, multifaceted journeys that you’re going to be able to create and I think best yet, we’re going to be launching this with pre-built best practices journeys already created, that people will then be able to take those and make them their own,” Woodard said.

The other major release due within the next few months is called Expert Content 2.0, which is linked to the large suite of pre-built journeys that customers can take, rewrite, reorder, and customize. These are all based on best practices in the mortgage industry, coming from the best companies in the space today.

“We have a fantastic client list, and these are people that we are talking to, listening to, learning from, and innovating with daily. They’re on their digital mortgage journey and we’re able to partner with these companies, learn from them, and then turn their needs and their challenges and their pain points into our action items inside of our products and our innovations,” Woodard said.

Between the new features, the set-it-and-forget-it capabilities, and their unique support department that offers end user direct support, Total Expert feels it is positioned to be the best support for originators.

“Let’s face it, this is a challenging market right now that our originators are operating in. They’re operating in very competitive markets, people are staying in the pipeline for a very long time, they’re dealing with multi-apping . . . it’s really tough out there so you have to have a system that really works to support that end user and provides a great user experience,” Woodard said.