SOFTWARE FIRM HONORS PROMISES – 20 YEARS LATE
I frequently tell a story about a huge mortgage software company (now the biggest in the industry) that came to me in the late 1990s, offering me online app tools, drop-down fee schedules, awesome user-interfaces, customer portals, and everything else.
And – 20 years later, they finally came close to coming through with all of their 1990s promises. This is typical of most technology offerings – a ton of promises and too little actual benefits.
BUT – lately, the benefits of our all of our technology have been much more noticeable, measurable and pronounced.
This is b/c the marketplace for 3rd party software and tech providers is so much more powerful and robust.
THIRD-PARTY TECH PROVIDERS ENABLE SMALL BUSINESS TO COMPETE
And that is the gist of this blog – the huge, vast and hyper-competitive marketplace for third-party tech providers enables small businesses to readily compete with even the largest of firms.
What is even more interesting to me is how often I hear stories of large firms wasting millions of dollars trying to develop technology themselves when they too should have just gone the third-party-provider route.
RECORD MONTH THANKS TO TECHNOLOGY
In any case, we are having another HUGE record month – for # of loans funded, total loan amounts funded, total # of preapprovals and total # of referrals – and we owe much of it to our aggressive embracing of new technology.
Embracing it all was very expensive, time-consuming, and frightening at times, but absolutely necessary.
So, the other message (or reminder) from this blog – don’t be afraid to embrace new technology.
DON’T LISTEN TO TECH SALES GUYS
AND, don’t listen to the tech sales guys for tech suggestions.
It is a necessity to be part of an industry trade-group so you can get input and suggestions from likeminded individuals who are not trying to sell you anything.
TECH THAT HELPS JVM
Here is some of the software/tech that is helping JVM.
- SALESFORCE – CRM: This is not for everyone b/c of the customization it requires, but it was a total game-changer for us. We use it for everything – marketing, reporting, data collecting, forecasting, cash-flow, etc. We could not grow without it.
- BLEND – POINT OF SALE: Blend is the app we use on our website for borrower loan applications. Our borrowers love the interface, and we love all the labor it saves us for numerous reasons.
- PARDOT – EMAIL MARKETING: This is a necessity for anyone doing mass email marketing. It spam-proofs messages and enables everything (open rates, read times, etc.) to be measured.
- OUTREACH – SEQUENCES: Our conversion rates (from referral to close) are among the highest in the industry and this is partially b/c of this excellent software that we use for our multi-touch sequencing or client-follow ups. Outreach fully automates our sequences and ensures no referral falls through the cracks.
- ZOOM – VIDEO CONFERENCING: This almost seems trivial but it too is a game-changer. It makes all remote meetings much more effective b/c it allows for visual exchanges and very simple screen sharing, and it is very easy to use.
- ASANA – PROJECT MANAGEMENT: This is another game-changer for any team working on large projects. Every idea and agenda item can be dumped into Asana to be addressed later during the appropriate meeting. Everyone has access to Asana too to check project-status and to edit or check off agenda.
Jay Voorhees
Founder/Broker | JVM Lending
(855) 855-4491 | DRE# 01524255, NMLS# 310167
