One webinar, 1,000 brokers, and likely 10,000 opinions. Accomplishing the first of those feats is relatively easy, said industry trainer Greg Williamson, preparing to use an online discussion in early July to offer fellow brokers a strategy for “winning the rate war.”
Hosting one webinar, attracting 1,000 brokers, and hearing what's likley to be 10,000 opinions.
Accomplishing the first of those feats is relatively easy, said industry trainer Greg Williamson, preparing to use an online discussion in early July to offer fellow brokers a strategy for “winning the rate war.” The webinar is meant to address the growing need to attract clients even as the banks undercut broker rates. The second item on that list – getting 1,000 brokers, from one end of the country to the next, to join in the conversation – may be more challenging. Still, there is a need, said the broker.
“I am concerned,” Williamson, who began planning for the event early this year, told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “The trend I see of more brokers cutting commissions to win deals sets up a bad precedent that I am certain our lender partners are watching very carefully. I have methods that prove to be successful for my team, in winning deals against banks even when they have a better rate, and I want to help my colleagues. I will share fully – no smoke screens or manipulation – if brokers want to learn, all they have to do is lean in.”
If he pulls off that mass meeting, the event will cap off a free training series, hosted and organized by Williamson’s 180 Degrees Coaching. Also online, the video program is aimed at persuading brokers to ditch “Old World” sales and marketing technique for what Williamson dubs the “New World” of social networking and other next-generation marketing tools focused on growing business outside of dangling low rates and established client lists.
“People are growing increasingly resistant to the methods of how we deliver information to them,” he said. “And, at some point a broker’s database becomes exhausted. They can get much better results by building a big prospective database of people they have not yet done business with.”
The message also challenges the idea that newer brokers without established portfolios to comb through for refis are doomed as the market continues to slow. Still, even as the banks slash rates in order to win a dwindling number of deals, brokers can’t afford to have their value proposition reduced to “rate,” said Williamson, whose online training course will also lay out ways in which brokers can take charge of their referral relationships.
“Sacrificing rate in order to compete only on rate is essentially a race to the bottom,” the Calgary broker and motivational speaker told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “That’s because today your rate may be the lowest, but tomorrow it may be someone else and pretty soon you’re working more for less money.”
A growing number of brokers are scratching their heads over the increased willingness of banks to eat premature-closing penalties in order keep clients from accepting broker-arranged deals. That tool is being applied at the branch level, and outside of any corporate-wide policy directive, say mortgage professionals. The effects on brokers, however, are the same.
Williamson’s 1,000-man-and-woman webinar next month will likely provide the industry a shot in the arm, he said.
“It’s about what to do when you’ve been bested on rate,” he told MortgagebrokerNews.ca. “You don’t have to go to that level.”
For more information, visit: www.180degreesacademy.com
