Nathan Vecchio explains how five simple tips can help you sort the serious clients from the time wasters
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Director of Hunter Galloway, Nathan Vecchio, started broking in 2015 and using the techniques from Joshua's Top Broker Handbook, is writing big numbers, leading to Vow Financial naming him Broker Partner of the Year Rising Star in 2016.
Like most brokers when I was just starting out, I struggled to separate the time wasting customers from the serious clients. I would literally go and see anyone and EVERYONE in hope to set up their loan – they just needed a heartbeat and a mild interest in property, and for me that was enough.
I could spend hours upon hours going to prospective clients homes, negotiating awesome rates and structures, for them only to return to their bank (or another broker) and act on my advice, without me.
Now with experience and having been in the industry for several years, I’ve finally been able to understand the process to determine which customers are real opportunities, helping me spend more time focusing on them, and less on the time wasters. But how much better could my business have been if I had known how to do this from the start?
Today we’re going to look at the art of the mortgage deal, and five simple tips to help you sort the good customers from the ones that will happily waste your time and never do a deal with you.
1. Be clear about who you want to deal with
If you want to get better quality clients, you’ve got to be really clear about who you want to deal with. What sort of client are you looking for? What type of job do they do? How much do they earn?
As we’ve covered in the past, you can ask existing customers that you love working with a few simple questions to help you determine how you can find similar types of customers.
Ask them things like:
2. Communicate with confidence
As brokers, we deal with hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars worth of transactions each and every week. If you seem unsure of yourself, this can easily leave doubt in the minds of every party involved.
Make sure that when you’re communicating with clients or referrers you do it in a clear, confident, and positive manner. If you’re not the best communicator, consider leaving this role to your business partner or hiring someone specifically for this. Figure out your strengths, and play towards that.
Top Broker tip: Regular and clear communication is better than sporadic bursts. Throughout the application process I give my clients an update every 24 hours either by a simple SMS or email, just to let them know I’m on top of their application and managing it through the process.
3. Change your mindset to ‘it’s possible’
As brokers we live very busy, and very full on lives. We can go from heights of exhilaration from a settlement that happens in the morning, to the depths of depression from a bad phone call from a bank all within 24 hours – so it’s critical that we manage our mindset when talking with customers.
As soon as you begin communicating with a customer, your mindset really needs to be in check. Think of it like this, a lawyer never goes into a court thinking, I’m going to lose this case. So you should never begin a customer conversation or referral partner meeting thinking that you’re not going to land it either.
No matter how your client is feeling or what’s happening, to me, my job as a broker is to remain positive. We provide solutions and are the good guys in this process, so if we’re not going to remain positive, who will?
Top Broker tip: Practice smiling, you’d be surprised at how often we go into a resting face of no emotion. Smiling puts people at ease and also helps create a more positive space. Studies have also shown that smiling helps generate more positive emotions within you too.
4. Relationships (and humility) are key
I’ve seen some brokers over the years start to build their businesses rapidly, but then begin to get caught up in their ego and forget about the relationships and people that helped them get to that point.
It is critical to remain focused on maintaining the relationships between you, your team, clients, referral partners, banks, BDMs, and on.
Remember that the relationship starts before the deal does, so make sure you spend some time getting to know your client and create a foundation of trust.
If your business is big enough to have a team, it’s also important that you maintain a strong base between yourselves, as this energy exudes on to the client.
Top broker tip: Each morning we have a team huddle for 15 minutes and talk about our goals for the day, then again in the afternoon we look at what has worked and what hasn’t. This is how we keep our team close and our communication clear. It’s a daily ritual and to some, half an hour of the day seems like a lot, but for us it’s a vital part of our business.
5. Really consider: can you serve them well? If not, walk away.
Finally, this one is a little bit unusual, but you need to remember that you can say NO. A quick no is better than a drawn out, avoided no.
If you sit down with a client or referral partner and their goals don’t align with what you can offer them, it’s okay to say no and refer them on to someone else better suited.
Remember, if you can’t serve them well, then you aren’t going to give them the best result and then they are going to be less likely to refer people in the future.
This also comes back to focusing on your core strengths, it might be exciting to assist a customer with a development finance opportunity, but if this isn’t something you do day to day, it can easily take a lot of time and energy away from your core business.
Top Broker tip: Remember that ‘no’ is much more respected than a dragged out maybe.
So finally, before the deal begins, be clear about whom you want to work with, communicate with confidence, control your mindset, focus on relationships and really consider if you can serve each client well.
All these factors will help you settle more deals that better fit your services and help you build long term relationships with clients.
PS: I’m going to be taking over here at Top Broker for a little bit while Joshua focuses on a few big and exciting projects we are looking forward to bring you in the next few weeks. A quick background, I started broking in 2015 and using the techniques Joshua has given in the Top Broker Handbook I have grown my business in a very short time to writing some big numbers, and was fortunate enough to be awarded Broker Partner of the Year Rising Star in 2016.
Like most brokers when I was just starting out, I struggled to separate the time wasting customers from the serious clients. I would literally go and see anyone and EVERYONE in hope to set up their loan – they just needed a heartbeat and a mild interest in property, and for me that was enough.
I could spend hours upon hours going to prospective clients homes, negotiating awesome rates and structures, for them only to return to their bank (or another broker) and act on my advice, without me.
Now with experience and having been in the industry for several years, I’ve finally been able to understand the process to determine which customers are real opportunities, helping me spend more time focusing on them, and less on the time wasters. But how much better could my business have been if I had known how to do this from the start?
Today we’re going to look at the art of the mortgage deal, and five simple tips to help you sort the good customers from the ones that will happily waste your time and never do a deal with you.
1. Be clear about who you want to deal with
If you want to get better quality clients, you’ve got to be really clear about who you want to deal with. What sort of client are you looking for? What type of job do they do? How much do they earn?
As we’ve covered in the past, you can ask existing customers that you love working with a few simple questions to help you determine how you can find similar types of customers.
Ask them things like:
- What made you decide to work with me?
- What’s one thing I do better than other brokers like me?
- What’s one thing that I could do better?
- Would you refer us or do you refer friends and family to us?
- If you would refer us, what would you say?
2. Communicate with confidence
As brokers, we deal with hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars worth of transactions each and every week. If you seem unsure of yourself, this can easily leave doubt in the minds of every party involved.
Make sure that when you’re communicating with clients or referrers you do it in a clear, confident, and positive manner. If you’re not the best communicator, consider leaving this role to your business partner or hiring someone specifically for this. Figure out your strengths, and play towards that.
Top Broker tip: Regular and clear communication is better than sporadic bursts. Throughout the application process I give my clients an update every 24 hours either by a simple SMS or email, just to let them know I’m on top of their application and managing it through the process.
3. Change your mindset to ‘it’s possible’
As brokers we live very busy, and very full on lives. We can go from heights of exhilaration from a settlement that happens in the morning, to the depths of depression from a bad phone call from a bank all within 24 hours – so it’s critical that we manage our mindset when talking with customers.
As soon as you begin communicating with a customer, your mindset really needs to be in check. Think of it like this, a lawyer never goes into a court thinking, I’m going to lose this case. So you should never begin a customer conversation or referral partner meeting thinking that you’re not going to land it either.
No matter how your client is feeling or what’s happening, to me, my job as a broker is to remain positive. We provide solutions and are the good guys in this process, so if we’re not going to remain positive, who will?
Top Broker tip: Practice smiling, you’d be surprised at how often we go into a resting face of no emotion. Smiling puts people at ease and also helps create a more positive space. Studies have also shown that smiling helps generate more positive emotions within you too.
4. Relationships (and humility) are key
I’ve seen some brokers over the years start to build their businesses rapidly, but then begin to get caught up in their ego and forget about the relationships and people that helped them get to that point.
It is critical to remain focused on maintaining the relationships between you, your team, clients, referral partners, banks, BDMs, and on.
Remember that the relationship starts before the deal does, so make sure you spend some time getting to know your client and create a foundation of trust.
If your business is big enough to have a team, it’s also important that you maintain a strong base between yourselves, as this energy exudes on to the client.
Top broker tip: Each morning we have a team huddle for 15 minutes and talk about our goals for the day, then again in the afternoon we look at what has worked and what hasn’t. This is how we keep our team close and our communication clear. It’s a daily ritual and to some, half an hour of the day seems like a lot, but for us it’s a vital part of our business.
5. Really consider: can you serve them well? If not, walk away.
Finally, this one is a little bit unusual, but you need to remember that you can say NO. A quick no is better than a drawn out, avoided no.
If you sit down with a client or referral partner and their goals don’t align with what you can offer them, it’s okay to say no and refer them on to someone else better suited.
Remember, if you can’t serve them well, then you aren’t going to give them the best result and then they are going to be less likely to refer people in the future.
This also comes back to focusing on your core strengths, it might be exciting to assist a customer with a development finance opportunity, but if this isn’t something you do day to day, it can easily take a lot of time and energy away from your core business.
Top Broker tip: Remember that ‘no’ is much more respected than a dragged out maybe.
So finally, before the deal begins, be clear about whom you want to work with, communicate with confidence, control your mindset, focus on relationships and really consider if you can serve each client well.
All these factors will help you settle more deals that better fit your services and help you build long term relationships with clients.
PS: I’m going to be taking over here at Top Broker for a little bit while Joshua focuses on a few big and exciting projects we are looking forward to bring you in the next few weeks. A quick background, I started broking in 2015 and using the techniques Joshua has given in the Top Broker Handbook I have grown my business in a very short time to writing some big numbers, and was fortunate enough to be awarded Broker Partner of the Year Rising Star in 2016.
