“Consumers buy the who, not the what” – Dan Kennedy

Make no mistake, as a Mortgage Broker you are selling something. You are trying to get people to buy something and if they don’t buy it you will go out of business.

What I find is that a lot of people who join the Mortgage Broking industry do so because they want to have their own business and the lifestyle and income benefits that come from working in sales, but they don’t see being a Mortgage Broker as being a salesperson. When they read my earlier chapter about how the public view Mortgage Brokers, they probably thought it didn’t apply to them.

Rather, they think a Mortgage Broker is someone people go to when they have decided they need a home loan organised and their job is to help their clients get the right loan. In this way, many Brokers perceive themselves as a guide or advisor to their clients, and they chose to be a Mortgage Broker specifically because they don’t want to ‘sell’ anything to anyone.

Yes, it is true that the outcome of the service you provide is to get them the right loan. That is the ‘thing’ that your business produces, at least as far as your clients are concerned.

However, before you get to that point there is a whole lot of selling that has to happen first.

I think most people find the term ‘salesperson’ distasteful and it has connotation of you being pushy and aggressive and getting people to buy things they don’t need. Certainly I would never say to a potential client that I am a ‘salesperson’ as I’d expect them to be very defensive from that moment onwards.

When people think of a salesperson they think of someone whose sole purpose is to turn them upside down and shake all the money they have out of their pockets.

It’s for that reason I’d never display to my clients any sales awards I might have won. It will just make them feel they need to be extra careful as they are dealing with someone who is particularly accomplished at persuading and extracting every last cent from them.

No-one wants a salesperson, what they want is a Trusted Advisor. That is the status you want to attain with your clients.

When I ask new and experienced Mortgage Brokers ‘What do you sell?’, these are the sorts of answers I get:

  • ‘I sell home loans’.
  • ‘I sell the Great Australian Dream’
  • ‘I don’t sell anything, I help people choose the right loan and I organise it for them’.

Years ago I probably would have agreed with those statements, but now I see things differently.