Mortgage Lending
Hamish Shares His Tips for Success in Business
Mortgage Broker and Adviser Hamish Patel of MortgagesOnline.co.nz shares his business tips for Loan and Mortgage professionals.
Hey Mortgage Professionals. Here is our preliminary checklist for high performing mortgage professionals to make the most of leads.
In the current environment competition for leads is ever growing. Ensuring that you are in the decision set for potential customers and even ahead of competitors is paramount. In fact, most mortgage brokers using FileInvite, rank lead generation in the top three of their business plan priorities.
To give you an idea the number of people searching for the term Mortgage Broker in Australia grew 96% in the first week of 2019. New year, new plans I guess... With that in mind here is our preliminary checklist for high performing mortgage professionals to make the most of leads.
1. Make your website mobile friendly
Make sure your website is accessible on mobile devices now. With a WordPress website this may be as simple as enabling a mobile version or template, so call your web guy now! I'd even argue that they'll Google you, and visit your website before they think of calling you.
2. Let them start the process without you
Qualifying a contact often requires just a few details. Creating a simple “contact us” form, readily accessible from your home page, or a way for them to submit documents for a loan application can get them rolling with the process. Heck they could even be doing this while you sleep or are on another call.
3. Be across your response times
The chance of you making successful contact with a lead are 100 times greater when you respond within 5 minutes when compared to responding 30 minutes after the lead was submitted. The odds of that lead entering the sales process or becoming a qualified lead, are 21 times greater when contacted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after the lead was submitted.” (Oldroyd, 2007)
4. Respond FIRST!
In research conducted by InsideSales.com, 35–50% of all sales go to the vendor that responds first. If you think about it, it seems right.
Marathon runners at a water station are just like a hot lead, they always grab a cup from the first to extend their hand.
If you have a contact come in from your website, or even better, they send you basic loan documents, you can guess they have done a fair amount of research and are in the right frame of mind to buy now.
5. Let social proof reinforce your message
If your clients are ever in doubt. A great way to instill confidence is a recommendation. I’m sure we’ve all tried a restaurant that a family member had raved about on Facebook. You may not have a recommendation from one of their family members but what about your existing customers that could write a testimonial for our website, Facebook Page, or even better record a video of how great the experience was.
What happens once you get the leads?
We recently talked to Joel Wyld, director of the North Sydney-based company, Peasy. Joel is a progressive Mortgage Broker, yet his tips on a business strategy would be valuable to any professional.
Joel has a team of 8 with a big focus on the education of first-time buyers. Not just “getting them a loan” but giving them an understanding of the home buying process and explaining the whole procedure, end to end. They also help investors to grow their portfolios, leveraging loans to take the next step.
We asked Joel what tips he might have for brokers looking to get more referrals.
1. The first step is to develop a routine
If you’re looking to make any change in your business the first step is to develop a routine. Unless you can get a rhythm going you’ll never get anywhere.
Now that doesn’t mean being in the 4 am club and doing 10 cold calls before 10 am. Or working all night every night.
It doesn't matter when in the day you work, but develop a routine to introduce some normality into your life.
It could be working Sunday nights to prepare for the week, or it could be taking Monday morning off to have a run and brainstorm.
Developing a routine is key to setting a consistent set of actions.
2. Hone that consistency to increase referrals
Having consistency in your routine leads to consistency in your actions. This flows into your interactions with clients.
If your conversations are clear, informative, and concise - then your emails, your marketing, and your phone calls should be the same.
If you can be consistent, customers will know what to expect and will have confidence in your ability to get them the loan they're after. They’ll also have the confidence to refer business to you, as they know what to expect and what their contacts can expect.
3. Remember you're a salesperson, so get talking.
Don't be afraid to ask for referrals.
As brokers, we need to think of ourselves as salespeople. As a salesperson, our role is to talk to people. Constantly be talking to existing customers, real estate agents, lawyers, accountants, and our referral partners. Extend your circle of influence, build your contacts and relationships. Constantly keep yourself top of mind with your referral network.
Calling them up once and arranging a referral deal isn’t enough. You need to build a relationship. Provide them with value and referrals if you expect that in return.
4. Use Mortgage Broker tools and software to do the work for you!
Double handling documents and dragging out the collection of supporting files can have a massive impact on your conversion rate.
Joel talked of how the process used to take so long that by the time some customers provided all the documents required, files from the start of the process had expired and needed to be resubmitted.
5. Map your processes to get even more efficient and improve conversion rates
Unless you have a clear picture of your process it’s hard to improve them. Using a system like Process Street lets you map them out and establish standard operating procedures. This lets you see the inefficiencies and refine the process. You can really have a focus on removing pieces that cause friction for your customers.
Also, if you’re looking to scale, you will at some stage have to bring onboard new staff members. Having documented procedures not only makes it easy to educate them and bring them up to speed with tasks but it also means you can measure their performance in these activities too.
This will help measure overall performance towards your business plan.
6. Focus on customer experience
Joel believes customer service is everything.
They come to us as brokers because they want an easier process.
Generally speaking the home loan process is arduous and archaic. It’s our job as brokers to streamline the process and make it as easy as possible.
That’s really the key to where Joel gets most of his referral business. Happy customers that enjoyed the process and recommend Peasy.
