Mortgage Appointments

mylife · 22-11-07

Please don't lambast me for this post, I'm new on here and just thought I'd throw this one open to discussion.

Can anyone help by taking lead generation to the next level, ie, linking up with someone to qualify the leads generated and booking appointments for the mortgage advisor to simply go and sit?

I have seen a couple of names out there doing this (Mercantile Equity being one of them) but have had problems with them in terms of building a business relationship with them and also quantity issues (it took them 2 months to deliver 10 appointments).

With Mercantile I was paying £125 per appointment and if anyone can do this we'd be looking to take 60-80 appointments per month?

Michael_Anthony · 22-11-07

I think that there may be some FSA related issues that prevent this from being a viable option for most affiliates.

mylife · 23-11-07

As far as I'm aware, Its the act of giving financial advice thats regulated, not the passing of referrals/booking of appointments, so provided the affiliate simply qualifies the lead and books an appointment time I'd have thought it OK? Am I right with this?

Michael_Anthony · 23-11-07

It's not so black and white as you suggest. We had some issues where our affiliates would receive an incomplete lead and call the customer in order to collect the missing details, at which point the customer would start asking questions about the sort of products that they would qualify for.

Clearly at this point there was a problem because the affiliate was not qualified to give any advice - unless you can guarantee that your "appointment makers" were not going to be asked any questions about the products on offer, it would be impossible to do. And the simple fact is that most consumers aren't going to bother agreeing to an appointment without some idea as to whether or not they will actually get the mortgage product that suits them - like I say, a very grey area and as such a tricky one to deal with unless your people have the necessary FSA authorisation.

I have no doubt that our hot key/Indian call centre friends will disagree, but anyone who has taken leads and/or appointments from such operations will know that they would be better off using their money to wipe their backside.

RobOxeva · 23-11-07

Theres a company called Sales & Marketing Services in Manchester that I used in the past for a similar project...

They are about 5 or 6 people in size and make their money on custom campaigns.

Main lady there is Tracy Chapman

SAMS Sales and Marketing Services