New initiative designed to boost brokerages' growth
The largest aggregator in Australia and New Zealand has launched a new program designed to supercharge high-performing brokerages and take them to the next level.
LMG recently unveiled Elevate, which aims to accelerate brokerages’ growth in volumes, people and profit, taking them from Premier Performer status to Platinum Performer status via intensive coaching sessions and master classes.
Leading Elevate is Loan Market’s Michael Karpathakis (pictured above) who has been appointed to the new role of national head of business performance for LMG and Loan Market.
In 2023, LMG and Loan Market achieved a 15% year-on-year growth in businesses achieving Premier Performer status, alongside a 36% increase in brokers achieving Elite Performer status. Elevate is designed to provide a structured path for ambitious brokers aiming to accelerate and be in the top 10% of their game.
“This is a major addition to LMG and Loan Market’s offering and directly aligns with our promise to Loan Market and LMG Partner businesses to help them grow,” Karpathakis said.
“Elevate is beyond the traditional growth program – it’s a commitment to real transformation. We delve into the core of each business, identifying unique paths to scalability and profitability. My mission is to ensure our brokers not only achieve but surpass their ambitions.”
Elevate is available to both Loan Market-branded broker businesses and LMG Partner businesses, which retain their own brand. The inaugural session kicked off in NSW, Victoria and Queensland this month with plans to expand to South Australia and Western Australia by July.
Key features of Elevate
Elevate has a number of different elements including:
- intensive, personalised fortnightly coaching sessions with Karpathakis, focusing on unlocking each broker's full potential
- monthly face-to-face sessions for the Elevate community sharing success stories, strategies and accountability to foster collaborative growth
- masterclasses on profitability, benchmarking, marketing, talent management and leadership designed to equip brokers with the skills to excel
Premier Performer brokers are taking part in Elevate. They service from 75 to 100 customers a year.
Karpathakis said the aim was to lift these Premier businesses to Elite level (125 to 150 customers) and then on to Platinum Elite – brokerages which have more than 225 customers every year.
He said LMG had always operated tailored programs for its high-performance brokers and the aggregator was proud of the fact that the average productivity for its brokers was up to two-and-a-half times the industry average.
“This is great but the average in our business is probably still sitting behind or below that Elite status.”
Pandemic laid foundations for support program
Karpathakis said Elevate had evolved out of Loan Market’s experience working with brokers during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, it had to figure out how to support 180 businesses in NSW during lockdown without face-to-face communication.
“How do we keep creating the communities and keep building a tight team focus within the network?” he said. “I put a peer-to-peer framework in Sydney together and we tried to do it state by state, although it wasn’t called Elevate.”
“Once a week, we had half an hour in the diary where we got like-minded businesses together. It wasn't about lender updates or a ‘quick coffee’, it was about where you are in your business, what's working really well, where you're stuck – and we all solve it together.”
The result was groups of about 10 businesses each that were “really invested and support each other’s growth”, Karpathakis said.
He said the groups became a real community, presenting their business plans and solving problems together and fostering a passion for each other’s success that has continued beyond the pandemic.
“What’s amazing is that they’re still coming together each month and you still get 95 to 100% attendance. If I’m away, they still run the meetings without me.”
Loan Market wanted to run this type of program more broadly across the network and looked to similar high-performance development programs Ray White Real Estate had operated successfully for the past two years.
“They target maybe 10 to 20 agents in each state and they've got a clear framework for six months,” Karpathakis said. “The success they've had around creating communities and growth above the broader market has been fantastic.”
Using the learnings from COVID and the Ray White program, Elevate was recently launched, with six-month programs being set up involving 10 brokerages in NSW, Queensland and Victoria.
Karpathakis said once the six months was complete, the idea was that the groups would keep going under their own steam.
“We want to create a really strong, tight-knit community that works well together and learns from each other.”
Karpathakis said Elevate was all about driving behaviour and making sure brokers had the right structured framework in place for success.
“The first session is all about presenting their plans, sharing what they want to get out of the business, and getting experienced feedback on their strategy for the next 12 months.”
Elevate sessions also focus on people and leadership, providing small business owners with in-depth leadership training and support, including advice on recruitment and retention.
“We're trying to help them become better leaders in their business so when they're bringing people on they're finding the best talent, but also have strategies to keep their best talent. We all know the impacts on a business if you lose a good performer,” Karpathakis said.
In mid-2024, Loan Market has plans to roll-out a separate growth initiative, Elite Elevation, aimed at elevating individual brokers into the Chairman’s Club, representing the top 1% of businesses in LMG. Chairman’s status is based on total revenue rather than customer numbers.
Last September, LMG also appointed Nicole Ferguson to the new role of general manager broker solutions to serve as a key connection between LMG’s brokers, technology, product innovation and broker education teams.
What do you think of LMG and Loan Markets plans to boost the growth of its brokerages? Comment below
