Is your debt settlement company still tracking its leads, contracts and payments with a basic database? If so, it’s likely that you aren’t converting as many of your leads as you should — and you are leaving significant money on the table. It’s time to upgrade your database to a customer relationship management solution. A debt settlement CRM provides a way for your company to track the activities of each lead in real time. It also increases your company’s efficiency by providing marketing automation, client portals and much more. These are the four reasons why a CRM is an invaluable tool that can catapult your debt settlement company toward massive growth.
Lead Management
In the debt settlement industry, most of the new clients who enter your system will be leads that you purchase from lead generation companies. You need a solution for organizing those leads and sorting them by various attributes. A debt settlement CRM provides that solution. Sort your leads by the amount of money they owe, the age of their debts or the creditors to whom they are indebted. Quickly identifying your debt settlement company’s most viable leads helps to ensure that your agents always spend most of their time pursuing the prospects most likely to bring returns.
Lead Nurturing
Although your debt settlement company strives to purchase high-quality leads, the fact is that many of those leads will not convert immediately. A debt settlement CRM makes it easy for your company to nurture the leads who don’t convert on the first phone call. You can put your leads through an automated email marketing program, for example, that periodically reminds them of the benefits of debt settlement and explains how much they can avoid paying if they begin the process today rather than allowing their debts to continue climbing. If you integrate your CRM with your website’s analytics platform, you can receive an immediate notification when a lead takes an action such as visiting your website after reading an email.
Client Portal
Making the debt settlement process as easy as possible for your clients accomplishes three very important things. First, it helps your staff close more deals. Before the debt settlement process can begin, clients will need to provide documentation about their debts and financial situations. A new client will also need to agree to your terms and sign a contract. A CRM makes it easy for clients to submit documents electronically, so your agents can assure clients that the debt settlement process will require very little of their time and personal involvement.
The moment in which a person feels so helpless about his or her debts and reaches out for help is the moment in which your debt settlement company is most likely to convert that person. As more time passes, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the person will convert. He or she may choose a different path for debt relief, declare bankruptcy or simply decide that debt settlement will not work. You need to convert the person before that happens. Having a CRM helps you keep a client engaged because it allows clients to sign documents electronically. There’s nothing to mail — no envelopes waiting unopened on prospects’ counters. While you await the client’s electronic signature, your CRM’s automated marketing platform can remind the client via email and telephone to log in and sign the contract.
The final way in which the client portal in a CRM makes debt settlement easier for clients is by offering an easy way to pay. Clients can pay electronically via credit card, bank account transfer, electronic check and more. With the ability to set up automatic scheduled payments, your clients will never have to worry about defaulting on their agreements — which means that they’ll be happier with your service.
Data-Driven Refinement
No matter how well your debt settlement business currently performs, there is always room for improvement. You need data, though, to tell you where your company is weak and to show you what’s working when you begin to make changes. Your CRM can gather virtually unlimited data points, giving you instant access to information such as:
- Which of your agents are most efficient at converting the leads they’re assigned
- Which of your lead suppliers provides you with the best leads
- Which of your automated marketing programs generates the most engagement
- Which portions of your conversion funnel require optimization to reduce lead abandonment
When you make changes in an effort to improve your company’s performance, you’ll always have data-backed reasons for making those changes — and you’ll have real-time feedback telling you whether your changes are working as intended.
