Dear Lender/Broker Colleague, I’ve been a Top Ten Purchase Mortgage closer with LendingTree for the past two years, and Top Ten in Refi’s for two years before that. I recently signed up with LowerMyBills.com, recognizing that they are the only other Mortgage Lead Aggregator that both has a brand name, and delivers quality. I found that I’d need a simple way to receive leads from LowerMyBills in a standard format (.csv files), to distribute them to my sales staff in multiple locations around the country, and to track their performance. I work for a large, national lender and knew that it would take some time to marshall corporate resources for this project, so I opted for a simple, do-it-yourself solution. Having used Calyx Point extensively to support the front end of our LendingTree Program, I decided to develop a Lead Management System for our LowerMyBills leads with the standard tools available in Point. I offer it to you here as freeware. Just click each slide in the following PowerPoint presentation… Best of luck, Michael Hillman
Let’s get started… I’m going to assume that you have a reasonably good understanding of how computers and networks work, that you’re very familiar with Calyx Point, that you know where your Point Data and Point Template (PNTTEMPL) files are located, and that you are your Company’s Calyx Point Administrator. If you don’t fit that description, please forward a link to this site to the person in your Organization who does. Just follow the instructions and screen shots in the following slides, and you should have no problem setting up a no cost system for turning your LowerMyBills leads into closed loans. Click for next slide…
1. 2. 3.
Locate the drive on which your Point Data and Point Template files are located. Create two new folders on that drive: LMBLEADS PURCHASE and LMBLEADS REFI. Open Point Administrator from your Program Files and click on Setup Data Folders:
4. You can see that the only Data Folder I’m connected to below is “LTDATA” on my G:\ drive. You’ll very likely see something very different in your Data Folder Manager.
5. Click on “Connect Existing” in your Data Folder Manager and you’ll get the following dialog:
6. Browse to your new LMBLEADS PURCHASE Data Folder, single click on it, and then OK:
7. You’ll get the following “New Data Folder Confirmation”. Click Yes:
8. If you are who you say you are, you should have no problem with the following, if not then “Goodbye!”. Otherwise go ahead and input your Password:
9. That’ll bring up this dialog:
10. Type the Data Folder Name “LMB LEADS PURCHASE” in box 2 as I’ve done above. You may, or may not, wish to copy Data Folder Settings from your primary Data Folder.
11. Set the Data Folder security as you normally would:
12. You’re now connected to your new LMB LEADS PURCHASE Data Folder:
13. Now, take the same steps to connect to LMB LEADS REFI:
Okay, so now you have a place in Point to put your LowerMyBills Purchase Leads, and one for your Refi Leads. In a little bit, I’ll show you how to Batch Import these leads you receive by email (or otherwise) formatted as .csv files (i.e., “comma-delimited”) into Calyx Point. As you can see, my Data Folders (and my Templates) are on a Local Area Network so that they are available to the entire staff here in my office (as well as to others who work at home, or in other branches, who are connected to my LAN via our VPN). As Manager, I receive the leads from LowerMyBills, import them into Point as either Purchase or Refi, and then I assign them to individual Loan Officers by copying them from my Master Folders (LMB LEADS PURCHASE and LMB LEADS REFI) to which they do not have access, into individual folders to which they do have access. The LOs in my little office here are Rob, Jeff, Steve, Marty, Jason, and Bill. So:
Get it? Once I’ve decided to whom a lead is going, I select the LO’s name from the Representative dropdown, save the file, and then copy it over to the appropriate LO Data Folder. I’ve connected each of them to their own Folder (and only to their own), so that when they open Point they select “LMB JOHN” to find their new leads. Those that they’ve worked, they can either recognize by saving them as Borrower Files, or they sort them by Contact Date. Now, how do I import the leads to Point? 14. Go ahead and Download this example LMB Purchase Lead and save it to your Desktop: PURCHASE LEAD EXAMPLE 15. Download this example LMB Refi Lead and save it to your Desktop: REFI LEAD EXAMPLE
As .csv files, they should appear like the image below. Normally, you will receive several records (“leads”) in each batch. The example is only one lead:
HLA_CLICK_ID HLA_IP_ADDRESS HLA_DATE_CREATED HLA_FIRSTNAME HLA_LASTNAME HLA_ADDRESS1 HLA_ADDRESS2 HLA_CITY HLA_STATE 123456789 5/3/2005 15:26 JOHN DOE 123 MAIN ST ANYTOWN CA
16. Now you need a way to import your leads into Point. In your Point Template Folder, you’ll see a folder called DATAIMP. This where you’re going to save the Import Templates below:
17. Download these Import Templates and save them to PNTTEMPL\DATAIMP:
PURCHASE IMPORT TEMPLATE REFI IMPORT TEMPLATE
18. DATAIMP will now look like this:
19. Finally, you need a way to graphically display and manage the imported lead data. We’ll do that with a couple of Custom Screens. Download them below, UnZip them, and extract them directly into your PNTTEMPL Folder, NOT into a subdirectory:
CUSTOM LEAD FORMS DOWNLOAD WINZIP HERE 20. PNTTEMPL now has two Import Templates in DATAIMP, and two .CSF files in the root.
21. Before you do your first Lead Import, let’s set up Auto-File Naming in both of our new Data Folders. Open Point, and select LMB LEADS PURCHASE from among your Data Folders. If you do a blank search, you’ll see “*No Data Found!”. From the topmost Tool bar, click on Utilities, scroll down to Auto File Naming, and then click on Prospect. You get this dialog:
I suggest the inputs on the next slide:
No further identification as an LMB lead is necessary because of the file structure we’ve created, and the “PURCH” in the file name will help your LO to distinguish among his leads. Note that I typed in a couple of spaces after the PURCH to make it stand out further.
22. Now select LMB LEADS REFI, and set Auto File Naming the same way (see next slide):
Well! That’s all the setup work. Now let’s import some leads and get some loans.
23. In Point, open “Templates” and you should see this:
Double-click “LMB PURCHASE IMPORT TEMPLATE” and you’ll get this (next slide):
24. Click on “Batch Import”, click OK for Prospect File, and you’ll open a dialog named “Specify an Input Data File”. Find “JOHN DOE PURCHASE.csv that you saved earlier to your Desktop.
25. Double-click JOHN DOE PURCHASE.csv and Voila!, you get this:
26. Click OK, and then open up “Loans”. If you’re good, there it is:
27. Double-click JOHN DOE, and you’ll see the familiar Prospect Information Screen:
28. But here’s the fun part! Click on Forms and scroll all the way down to Custom Screens/Fields, and select LMB PURCHASE LEAD SHEET. There’s your custom lead form:
29. Now, select the LMB LEADS REFI Data Folder, go back to Templates, select the LMB REFI IMPORT TEMPLATE, and perform a “batch” import of the JOHN DOE REFI.csv file on your Desktop. Now you want to open the LMB REFI LEAD SHEET from Forms>Custom Screens/Fields:
Well, that’s it. Time to smile and dial and close some loans. I hope you find this helpful. Any comments, questions, problems should be sent to mhillman@flagstar.com. Or, if you know me, call me at my office. If you had any trouble with the downloads, I’ll email the files to you. Watch for more good stuff at jumpclose.com.