GUIDE TO BECOMING AN ELITE BROKER: putting your knowledge to work
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27/02/2009 8:00:00 AM
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Things change - be it the seasons, the economy or the laws governing the mortgage profession - and it's the businesses that are well prepared for these changes that are going to survive. But preparing for change takes time and, sometimes, even money. Following are some tips that can help you on your road to changing with the times.
Many brokers/agents have likely read the book Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. It's the story of a group of mice who find a stockpile of cheese large enough to feed them all for a considerable time. While one prudent mouse makes note of the pile and moves on looking for more, the others are content with their new-found bounty. Naturally the pile runs out, catching the mice off-guard and forcing them into a last-minute searching frenzy - that is, all the mice but the one who kept looking for more cheese and found some.
David Yuzpe, a senior mortgage consultant with Real Mortgage Associates in London, Ontario, believes that many brokers/agents have become like the majority of the mice in the story - they had so much business coming through their doors over the past few years that they've become content and failed to take the time to work on their businesses.
"When the cheese is gone they go to find more," he says. "Well the question is: do they make it or do they die of starvation?"
Making time
The hardest thing about implementing changes to your business is finding the time to do it. With over 30 years in the business, Gary Siegle understands this perfectly well.
"I've always told our folks that there is a percentage of time, whether it's a full day or half a day a week, that should always be dedicated to finding new business," says the regional manager for Invis in South Alberta and Saskatchewan, and teacher at Mount Royal College's mortgage agent's licensing course in Alberta.
"If finding new business is always on your secondary to do-list - that, 'I'll get to it when I get time list' - you'll never get time," he says.
That's why Paula Roberts, a Toronto-area mortgage consultant with Mortgage Intelligence, sets aside a few hours on Wednesdays, even if it's once every other week or once a month, to remove herself from the office (that means no phone calls and no e-mails) to work on implementing new strategies.
"So many people go to all these courses and 80% of them will walk out of there and then not implement any of the things they learned," she says. "Life just gets in the way and they run out of time. But one of the key things is to take time to work on your business."
Roberts and her business partner/husband, Al, determine what needs to be worked on, then each chooses a task and sets time aside to work on it until it's complete.
"Just like you'd make the time to go to dinner or have a birthday party for your kids, you just find the time because you have to," she says.
That said, there have been those busy summer months where they didn't do it at all because it simply wasn't possible. "We're not going to stop doing business to try to get business," she says, adding that during the slower months, especially now with the slowing economy, is the time to clear your schedule for a few hours to think about your business.
Identifying the need for change
There's nothing worse than being caught offguard and ill-prepared when a simple task like reading the economic reports could prepare you for what's ahead. If you don't take a proactive approach to adapting your business to growing concerns, you'll see that a small problem can become a big one - quick.
"It sounds like a clich‚, but we continually look at the horizon and we don't wait for the dark clouds to drop on us," says Yuzpe. "Everyday we're watching the economic forecast, staying on top of economic reports and monitoring business trends locally, provincially and nationally."
As a result, Yuzpe and his associates saw the recent credit crisis looming and were able to devise a program back in April to help weather them through the storm. It's called the Pipeline Development Program - a forwardthinking strategy that has helped this brokerage stay busy even when business is dropping off all around them.
"Even though business was good, we started seeing inflationary measures going up and realized that, pretty soon, people weren't going to be able to afford their dream homes," he says. They set up a program that looks at a potential customer's employment and credit analysis, then their personal goals.
"We then structure a plan so that they can get into that home in 12, 24 or even 36 months down the road," says Yuzpe. "Not only are we providing them a service, but by looking ahead we were able to fill our pipeline enough to keep us busy through the tough times."
In other words, they were sitting on the stockpile of cheese and decided to go out and look for more, and it paid off.
The implementation stage
When you're trying something out in your office for the first time, whether it's a new way to market your database or completely changing the way you do business, there will always be a learning curve. Sometimes the hardest part is just sticking with it long enough to see past it.
"One thing that I've learned is that you never know how something you did today is going to help you until the next week, next month or next year," says Siegle. "But as long as you are consistent with something that you or someone else with experience thinks works, then you will see payoff."
Roberts suggests giving every new strategy at least two weeks. "Even though it might be difficult, by the time you give it two weeks it's just going to be a normal system," she says, adding that if after two weeks the system doesn't work, simply change it or cancel it completely. "As with everything new, you don't know what's going to work until you try it," she says.
Maybe the strategy doesn't bring in new business, but it increases office efficiency. That two-week learning curve is definitely going to make it all worthwhile, she says. After getting used to a new strategy that you feel good about, it's time to start tracking whether it actually works.
Tracking results
The only way to know if anything you have implemented is working is to track it. It can be hand-written in a notebook or entered into complex software, just as long as you can look at a set of numbers and see if your hard work is paying off.
"If you're going to monitor anything you have to look at it every week," says Siegle. "I wouldn't modify any plans if I'm not getting results on a weekly basis, but I do want to know if I am making progress week by week."
Even though there are fancy programs out there that you can buy to track these things, Siegle says a simple Excel spreadsheet is all you really need.
"Always have a plan - daily, monthly, quarterly," says Yuzpe. "I do a master plan every year and it's updated depending on our goals at the time. We set them and make sure we're forward planning to meet those goals. If we're not meeting them, then something needs to change, and tracking is the only way to know how."
Yuzpe says he reviews each program on a monthly basis to determine if changes are required, admitting he has always been involved with planning - whether it's personal, business or as a mentor.
He likes to allocate time to sit down with his partners and discuss potential ideas for the business. "It's basically saying this is where we are, this is where we're going, this is what we need to do, this is what we're doing that's working and this is what we're doing that's not working," he says of the approach that hatched their successful Pipeline Development Program.
Through tracking results, Yuzpe and his partners also concluded that traditional advertising wasn't working.
"Mortgage brokering is a very personal business and this type of advertising doesn't seem to be reflecting that, so we're stemming out and looking at niche marketing. The Pipeline Builder is a great example of that and it works great."
Roberts recalls her company's 'How to Wow' strategy. "It was a very detailed checklist of perhaps 20 things for the broker to do when dealing with a client, but we realized that out of those 20 we never checked off about eight of them so we just got rid of those eight. It ended up improving a system that we already had in the office for a long time."
And it all boils down to just finding the time to stop and think about the direction of your business or of ways to make the office more efficient.
"When times are tough, a lot of people sit back and say, 'There's no sense in going out there and knocking on doors because no one has any business'," says Siegle. "Rather than do that, you have to ask what it is you can do to set your business apart from the others." CMP