I broadly define every broking business as having four main components:

  1. Initial Marketing – your lead generation, communicating with people to draw them to your business
  2. Sales – getting people to agree to use your services
  3. Operations – what you do to get your clients a loan
  4. Post Sales Marketing – communicating with clients to keep them in your business

Or, put more simply:

Attraction -> Conversion -> Service -> Retention

Your Aggregator or Franchise is predominantly focussed on the third component, Operations. These are the lender accreditations, broking software and compliance tools you need to get loans for your clients. My focus is more on the other three components, Initial Marketing, Sales and Post Sales Marketing — generating, converting and then re-engaging the client inquiries that will feed the operations of your business.

If your Aggregator or Franchise is the engine of your business, Initial Marketing is the fuel that makes it run.

Marketing is not to be confused with Sales. Marketing is getting people to know about you, Sales is getting the people who know about you from that Marketing to transact with you. For this reason, Marketing is more important because without it there can be no Sales, no matter how eloquent and persuasive you may be.

To be a successful Mortgage Broker is to be a successful marketer of your Mortgage Broking services.

It is just as important to be a great marketer of what you do, as it is to be a great “doer” of what you do. In fact, in terms of the success of your business, I would say it is more important to be a great marketer of what you do than a great provider of the service or product of your business.

This is a very important concept. Most people in a business see the business in terms of what it does, the service or product it provides. But that is just one small piece of the puzzle. Sure, a bar sells drinks, that is how it makes money – but if all you wanted was to drink alcohol it would be cheaper to buy it from the bottle shop and drink at home.

“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”

David Packard

I am not saying it is acceptable to be a bad Mortgage Broker who happens to be good at convincing people that they are a good one, that just makes you a liar, which is not a pathway to anything but very temporary success followed by long term failure. What I am saying is that, comparatively, it isn’t that hard to be a good Mortgage Broker given all the great operational support your Aggregator or Franchise provides you – it just takes your time, effort and conscientiousness in running your business and looking after your clients.

The frustration is getting out the message about the value of your services so that you have a steady stream of new clients who want your help and not someone else’s and ultimately how good you are at that is the key determinant of your financial success.