1. What is the best way for my company to work with iEmergent?
There is not a single "best" way. The individual relationships that we have with our clients span a broad range of purposes, applications, and methods. In some cases, we provide market assessments and forecasts on a project basis with beginning and end dates. In other cases we provide training and support services via a 12-month or more retainer agreement. We work closely with our clients to develop the type of relationship that fits their short and long-term needs.
2. How are the Market Manager products and services priced?
We do not publish a standard set of products or prices, because our clients have unique needs, structures, growth strategies, locations, managers, and experience. Therefore, we work with our clients to determine together the markets and organizations that will be covered, the analysis that will be delivered, the training that will be required, the on-going services that will be needed, and the time-frame for these services and relationship. Once we agree on the content and duration of the support, we determine a mutually acceptable price.
3. In what ways are your products, services, and support customized for your clients?
The level of customization we provide is practically limitless. For many of our real estate and mortgage clients, we started working with them on Market Manager by providing mortgage and real-estate transaction forecasts for the current period and over the next five years. Then, we helped them set their market priorities and evaluate their long-term growth plans. The next natural step was to help them develop/improve their performance and growth strategies using our simple 360 Strategies method. That led to applying our Future Scenes technique to help them anticipate and prepare for the impact that different future market and economic scenarios could have on their strategies and growth plans. In contrast, our relationships and support to other clients developed in a sequence that is the exact opposite of what we just described.
4. Who in our organization should be using Market Manager?
Business leaders who are responsible for sales activities, transactions, revenue, market share, share growth, competitive position, and operations performance should apply Market Manager. Therefore, we work with all levels of leaders, from CEOs, senior executives, regional managers, branch managers, sales managers, and individual sales people in very large corporations to small local financial services firms. If you want to build a market-centered organization, Market Manager should be one of your basic tools for all of your business leaders.
5. How can Market Manager be customized for my organization and my markets?
The Market Manager program is partitioned into four separate modules - Market Opportunities, Market Priorities, Performance Plans, 360 Strategies - and each module contains individual tools, techniques and information. We work with many of our clients to create a custom program for them that is tailored to their competitive needs and the needs of their markets, referral sources, customers, business model, managers, sales people, products, and services.
6. Does iEmergent provide Market Manager training?
We train our clients on how to utilize the Market Manager program for their performance and competitive advantage using a variety of tools, methods, and communications techniques. We conduct training programs via in-person training and strategy sessions, our Web-based on-line conference system, instructional materials, one-on-one manager sessions, as well as on-going support for our clients who select our long-term retainer relationship.
7. Can Realtors use Market Manager to forecast real estate transactions in cities, local communities and neighborhoods?
Yes. Our purchase mortgage transaction forecasts are a very effective and accurate proxy for predicting real estate transactions. Coupled with our mortgage zones techniques, we can project future mortgages and real estate transactions within any type or size of community, down to the neighborhood and census tract group level.
8. What's the best way to combine counties, cities, communities and neighborhoods into mortgage zones and compare them?
We don't believe there is one "best" way, but rather an almost infinite number of very useful ways. Even though many of our clients compete in the same geographic markets, they partition their markets into mortgage zones that are completely different. How you choose to look at a high-potential market depends on your business model, referral sources, competitive position, product strategies, consumer relationships, and performance needs.
9. How are Mortgage Conversion Rates calculated for different markets?
The algorithms, formulas, and methods that produce Mortgage Conversion Rates, as well as the market velocity and mortgage density indicators, are proprietary to the iEmergent Group. We're also in the process of patenting them in order to protect their unique value for forecasting mortgages and real estate transactions.
10. Can we order previously documented sets of 360 Market & Sales Strategies that have already been developed and have been proven successful?
Not really. The 360 Strategies that we have helped our clients develop in the past remain the sole property of those organizations and we doubt they would want to share their success or their competitive advantage with competitors.
11. Where can I get a list containing all of the Mortgage Conversion Rates in the U.S.?
We do not sell a national list of Mortgage Conversion Rates for a number of competitive and proprietary reasons.
12. Why doesn't iEmergent publish a list of all its Market Manager clients?
We have pursued and continue to practice a strict non-disclosure/privacy policy in support of our clients. We believe it helps them maintain confidence that the custom market assessments, strategies, growth plans, and business decisions we help them develop remain as unique and private as possible.
13. Why is a market's Mortgage Density number such an important measure?
It allows you to effectively compare the purchase lending opportunities across different sizes of markets. For instance, when comparing the total lending opportunities in the Atlanta metro market against the total opportunities in the Nashville MSA market, Atlanta is obviously a much larger opportunity in pure number of loans. However, comparing the same two markets based on each market's purchase mortgage density (per every 10,000 households) leads to a different conclusion. When zooming down to individual communities and neighborhoods, the density comparisons become even more important to setting market development and investment priorities.
14. How is the Market Velocity Index used to compare the mortgage lending differences between markets?
The Market Velocity Index compares the speed of growth of mortgage lending opportunities over future years per 10,000 households within any size of market you want to define. Since the MVI is an index (compared to a base speed value for the entire U.S. = 1.0), it gives you the ability to compare the relative differences in speed between any sets of markets without being concerned about the size of the markets in total households.
15. Why is the Purchase Mortgage Conversion Rate (PMCR) so important?
Consumer purchase mortgage behaviors are the most stable over time, interest rate levels, and economic conditions. Our analytics reflect our focus on purchase mortgage dynamics. We believe that mortgage lenders who concentrate on building their market share/power on purchase lending will outperform their competitors over time. Our clients' performance results have confirmed that belief.
16. Can Market Manager be used to evaluate different ethnic, race, gender and income segments within our local markets?
Absolutely. Customized segment analytics and lending comparisons within and across different consumer mortgage and real estate markets is a signature capability of the Market Manager program.
17. Why does the Market Manager program place so much emphasis on purchase mortgage behaviors?
See 15 above.
