A lot of businesses market themselves with a ‘behind the scenes’ approach. This is a similar concept where they educate their clients about everything that goes into producing their product or service. This can be the beer producer who shows how they source all their ingredients and the whole production and distribution process. In reality, it may not differ much between different beer producers, but when it is laid out in detail it makes people appreciate it more.
As Brokers, we know the effort we go into for our clients that they don’t see, far beyond our appointment with them. The more people understand what is really involved in getting the right home loan and the information we need to keep up to date with, the more they value what we do.
Imagine the ideal — where the client who has just realised they need to get a home loan was already well aware of who you are and viewed you positively — because you had been able to educate them over a period of time and they view you as a trusted source of knowledge, so they are now happy to place their finances in your capable hands. It becomes the logical course for them to contact you when they decide they need a home loan because they already know you are their best option.
So rather than focusing on finding people who want a home loan right now, you just need to find any person who may want a home loan in the future and start a process of educating/marketing to them. What you need to do is to bring people into your circle of influence and have a process for educating them in a meaningful way with information that is relevant to their current situation and future needs. When you do this, the psychological factors of reciprocity (because you are giving them something), familiarity (because they keep seeing your face and name on your marketing materials) and similarity (because you are showing your knowledge is related to their needs) are working in your favour.
If 100 people see my standard ‘I’ve got 30 lenders and you can trust me to get you a better loan’ advertisement, perhaps 5 are thinking right now about doing something with their finances. That would probably be okay, but for the fact that those 5 people have no reason to trust me over every other advertisement they are seeing so have no reason to respond specifically to me. Not only that, the other 95 people who saw the ad weren’t interested right now and will forget they saw it very quickly, so I need to show the ad again next month to hope to catch some of the others who might now be in the market for a new home loan.
Instead, wouldn’t it be better if I brought those 100 people into my education process, not caring if they want a home loan right at this precise moment, but expecting that a high proportion will at some future point. Now these 100 people are getting to know me through my education marketing process and I’m building trust and familiarity with them. If every month, 5 of them want a home loan, I’m much better positioned to be their go-to person and they are much less likely to respond to someone else’s standard advertising.
Of course, you now need to stop taking the easy path of running standard advertisements that barely work anyway, and instead learn how to build a proper marketing system, and then put the time into actually building and testing it.
It is exactly the same process for creating effective relationships with referrers that actually produce referrals. Rather than hope when you talk to a real estate agent that your timing is great and right now they have need of a new Broker, start instead with the goal of getting to know them and educating them over time. Drop in on them regularly with helpful information relevant to what they care about (growing their business, not just about what you do). Now you have reciprocity and familiarity working for you, as well as proximity and similarity. Over time, when they do need a Broker you are going to be top of the list.
All of this is designed to help move you from a transactional relationship to the position of Trusted Advisor that we seek.