Don't be afraid of making changes to improve your business
You may remember Mann from such articles as “How to Meet Face-to-Face with More Referral Partners,” in which he outlined a way to meet more partners in a week than most people did in a month. When push came to shove, however, Michael Mann wasn’t afraid to change his strategy and adopt a new one.
Michael Mann is an Allentown, Pennsylvania-based strategic mortgage planner and branch manager of the Michael Mann team with Fairway Independent Mortgage. His strategy was a simple one: he would pick an upscale restaurant and stack four or five appointments back to back. Mann liked the concept of literally “breaking bread” with people to bring them closer together, as well as being in a neutral location. He also liked the idea of being a connector; he’d meet a real estate appraiser followed by a meeting with a real estate agent, and have the appointments overlap long enough to introduce the two and have them connect.
Using this method twice a week, Mann was able to meet with almost 1,000 partners over the course of two years. “It was extremely successful . . . 137 agents referred me something that closed last year. Last year we closed 522 transactions,” he said. “Back in 2013, we closed $14,204,000 in volume, and last year we closed $110,511,000, so it was an eight times increase within the past four years, and I firmly believe that meeting those agents like that had a lot to do with it.”
In spite of that success, Mann has moved away from stacked meetings.
One reason is because sitting at a restaurant twice a week and eating every hour for five hours isn’t exactly a healthy habit. Mann said that he always felt he had to eat something at each meeting to foster that “breaking bread” concept, but he was packing on the pounds as much as he was building his relationships. The former was much less sustainable than the latter.
The second reason Mann switched tactics was because he enjoyed teaching and was looking for a way to incorporate more of that into his business plan, especially as be began to scale.
“I love teaching, coaching, and inspiring. It’s not that one-on-one appointments aren’t a good idea, because they still are. But my organization grew so large that I needed to do more in less amount of time because my other goal was to do more of what I wanted to do. And speaking and inspiring in front of a room full of people really fires me up.”
Now, he said, he does stacked speaking engagements, shifting from a one-on-one approach to a one-to-many approach. He’s increased the number of classes that he teaches from one or two a month to 10-14 classes a month.
“It allowed me to reach a broader audience, and then I honed in and focused on the people that I wanted to sit down and meet. As opposed to meeting a thousand agents and only figuring out a hundred that we’re going to work with, I’m teaching to a thousand agents and then only meeting one-one-one with the hundred that we’re going to work with.”
The theory is the same: he teaches a class in the morning and one in the afternoon. He invites the morning class to stay for lunch, and also invites the afternoon class to come earlier and eat as well. Both groups are able to network and interact with each other, and Mann still gets to be the connector.
“Plus, I think your influence is larger. You’re standing in front of a room which, adds instant credibility. Everybody’s coming together, and seeing 10, 12, 15, 25, 30 other agents in a room, they’re thinking, ‘hey, I’m in the right place,’” he said.
Many people—business owners and otherwise—follow the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” strategy; staying with something until it doesn’t work anymore. The stacked appointments worked for Mann’s business, but from a personal and professional development perspective, something had to change.
Change isn’t something that all originators handle very well, but it’s critical to make decisions for yourself and your business when an opportunity presents itself, not once things have already gone sour. Be proactive and don’t be afraid to make the changes that your business needs.
