Rapid referral. Fast-track. Courier service. Phrases like these are springing up like wildfire all over secured loan advertising in the trade press. You must forgive us for the wry smiles these words induce.
When Gerry Lafferty took over the running of Access four years ago, the first thing he did was to recruit a team of full-time employees, available from 9am till 9pm, Monday to Friday and even weekends, to assist customers with the paperwork from our lenders.
Daunting
Why did he place such importance on this? Most of you will agree that, because we are used to documentation within the financial services industry, we forget that it can seem daunting to the uninitiated. That is why we wanted to offer a bespoke service, where our trained field sales representatives are always on-hand to explain the agreements to the client, as well as gathering any sundry documentation we need to provide the lender. The customer is part of the appointment process and agrees to the visit by sending in the requisite letter. Our office staff then rings them and ‘hot-keys’ them through to the representative, to save the customer the cost of the call and ensure they are aware of what is happening, who they are about to speak to, and why.
The beauty of the whole process is that the customer knows at all times who they are dealing with. The same underwriter, processor and representative handle their case through to completion. In some cases, where the customer fails to meet the appointment or the details change, the same field sales representative will revisit the customer to ensure all is well and set their mind at ease.
We are glad that our customer service levels are inspiring the rest of the industry!!
BDM bandwagon
We predict the next thing to be trumpeted from the roof tops will be the announcement of business development managers (BDMs) being hired to look after introducing brokers out in the field. The flurry of bandwagon-hoppers will be all too
predictable.
When I joined Access two years ago, we set about the recruitment of corporate development managers to cover the whole UK. We have achieved this and now have five experienced and proven industry professionals, with a sixth set to join in a few weeks. The benefits of having a permanent, experienced, and accountable salesforce are legion. The obvious one is that they travel to new brokers, tell them about the services we provide and get them to try us with a case. It is the on-going benefits that we consider to be most important.
The accountability of the individual corporate development manager (CDM) for their own brokers and the appointment of dedicated broker support consultants at head office, who work with their CDM to provide all-important continuity. It is the on-going relationship which we prize.
Forging strong links
The willingness of brokers to consider a secured loan has not always been the case and has been well documented in these pages. However, the mood has changed and we have found that introducers gain so much more information from a conversational setting, than they ever would from the myriad of leaflets we receive, or even from the superb e-shots which we all receive regularly. They also love the fact that they can speak to the same people all the time. It is this approach which has forged strong business relationships with brokers of all shapes and sizes and we will continue to expand in this area because the feedback we get from brokers is universally positive.
In the age of the information super-highway, instant offers, and instant valuations, it is all too easy to forget the old adage that ‘people deal with people’.
We find that they do. mi
