Losing my CRM Was The Best Thing That Happened To My Business.

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

In October, 2006, I had a problem. While getting ready for a trip to the Outter Banks, I was bouncing my 17 month old on my lap, drinking a coffee and checking my emails.   Fast like lightning, he spilled the Starbucks on my Toshiba…and in an uncanny feat of chance, the coffee had also gone into the back of my Networked Drive, and my Router.

A cleanup made my computer seem to be OK, but it wasn’t meant to be.  About 10 minutes later, my Venti Verona seeped into the computer, and it breathed its last.   I was using ACT 6.0, nothing online at the time, and it was tweak-figured to my liking.  Activity series, word docs, and all.  Gone, toasted, busted.  A trip to the data recovery center at MicroCenter said it was dead to them, dead to all.

The whole disk.

My backup disk was in worse shape, taking it out of its casing revealed that it had been entirely saturated in coffee.  My son in one swoop, used a 1.85 cup of coffee to destroy a $700 laptop and a $300 backup drive.  In a lot of ways, I was a proud dad.

But, I had a problem: I was leaving for vacation without a database.  My lifelong history of maybes, dids, mights, won’ts and dids-but-with-someone else was gone.  I only had my pipeline of 7 deals in the Flagstar pipeline, and the emails that my gmail had archived.  And that was it.  Nothing else–nothing else at all.

That was about the best thing that ever happened to my throughput.  That blessing from Jack doubled my income and my capacity to produce.

One of the things every realtor-mortgage lender (that doesn’t use something like Kaliedico) does is over-report and overestimate their pipeline.  The reason for this is the maybes.  These are the folks that could benefit from you, but don’t feel a sense of urgency.  They may not get the paperwork together for weeks or months.  But they close, and they kill your inventory turns because you count ’em in March, April and May.  And hey, you are right at the beginning of each month.   But you make less and work more because you chase the maybes.

I had a lot of maybes in my pipeline.  People coming off subprime BS loans, people wanting into new sub-prime BS loans. Chasing probables. Inefficient and stupid.  And with the probables gone, and me then (as now) having to earn each month to pay the hydra that is the IRS, the maybes were suicide.

My maybes were gone.  I had to find people that could close the second I got back from the OBX.  So, what to do?   (Hint: it’s me, so it involves picking up the $@#% phone).

Every house that went into contract, got a phone call from me.  “Congats on getting your house in contract, I’m assuming you need a pre-approval for your next purchase.”

“Why yes, we do, but we’re working with the RealtorsLender.”

“Oh, so are they giving you daily updates about your mortgage status so you know your move is smooth–and do they have a backup plan working to ensure that nothing….”

Etc.  I had to find people that were ready now, to fill my shiny new ACT fields.  I didn’t have the pseudosecurity of a pipeline that counts in each month, and the whole understanding of velocity changed.

I needed NOW MONEY.  People that had to have a loan RIGHT NOW.  Purchase money.  Finding them, even if it started transactional was the most efficient and real part of the next step in my business.  Telling people I’d close in 2 weeks (I know, not super realistic now) and doing it.   The CRM let me see that my pipeline was good, so I got complacent.  Hell, there are 40 loans in process in my ACT, so why hustle?

…

Because the loans were pseudoloans.  Clients could benefit, but I didn’t sell them on the urgency.  (And, kids, it ain’t my way.  There’s nothing more repulsive than someone that needs your business.  It doesn’t work, objection handling is BS, and Jedi Mind Tricks only cause tension).

The real question is this:  what false realities are we all embracing?  What faulty assumptions drive our businesses?

For me, it’s not cool to fail.  I’ve failed before, it hurts like hell, and I hate it.  Its not an acceptable outcome to be anything less than excellent in any metric.  Complacency leads to failure, and we rationalize it all saying ‘it’s no big deal.’

It’s no big deal till it is. My CRM was holding me back from having the Rake-Tacular business that I rocked in 2007.  Not Brian Brady numbers to be sure, but 19mm in central Ohio didn’t suck.
…

The lessons to learn:

1. Focus on NowMoney.  75% of my efforts are focused on the soonest spending people.
2. It is 100x Better to know TODAY that someone’s not closing, than it is to think they are for 3 months, and learn that they didn’t care/couldn’t pay their second mortgage.  Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions.
3. Have killer systems that deliver on your promises. (This is where I’m failing right now, but each week gets me closer to my goals).
4. Use a LIFO system for follow up.  The newest are the hottest, and work backwards off of inquiries.  Don’t start at the back and work your way to the front, it’s assinine.   If you’ve made someone wait 3 days, start with the dude that just pinged you, and take the loss that was your screwup.
5. Consider Acceptable loss:  I care deeply about my relationships, but I also know that I am not operating right if I’m serving anyone.  Jam your capacity to the max, and understand that customer services issues will happen and are chances to get better.
6. Don’t get complacent when you have loads of tepid people kind of interested in working with you.   Those don’t all close, be happy and fed if you close 25% of your pipeline.
7. Limit followup then automate.  IT was two calls for me.  Then it would go into an activity series of quarterly calls.
8. Finding new leads is easier than extracting gold out of nonsense leads that were never closing.  Leads are abundant and plentiful and WAITING for some spark, some intelligence to interact with, someone with intellect and competence.
9. The path to money is finding compatible and happy people that are like you, that like you, and that trust you.
10. Old Jags Still Suck. Avoid them like the plague