“if you are serious about the business or industry you’re in, you’ve got to be noted as an expert or leader.” –  Chris Abts

When it comes to their home loans, everyone wants to have a Trusted Advisor to turn to.

A Trusted Advisor is the person you go to when you realise you need help and you trust they have the knowledge and resources to help you, but just as importantly understand and care about your situation enough to act selflessly in providing this help. As Mortgage Brokers our goal is to become Trusted Advisors to our clients and we are well positioned to do so.

The clear benefit of being a Trusted Advisor is that you are no longer seen as a salesperson and all the negative connotations people attach to that. It massively reduces resistance and essentially means there is little or no selling involved, just the customer service role of gathering information and providing solutions.

There are specific attributes that you need to demonstrate in a genuine way to your clients if you hope to get to this level.

 

  • A Trusted Advisor puts their clients’ interests first, rather than their own “Marketing thinking is shifting from trying to maximize the company’s profit from each transaction to maximize the long-run profit from each relationship” – Philip Kotler

Clients expect that a salesperson is acting out of self-interest, to get the sale and earn an income. They are already predisposed, at least to a certain extent, to assume that is what you are doing and will pick up on any evidence of it quickly.

When you focus on your client’s interests first you are genuinely listening to them rather than thinking about what you are going to say next to progress the deal. If you are not paying full attention to them this a red flag that you are not sincere and serious about building a relationship. You need to discover what is really important to your client and accept that you may not have a good solution for them.

As Mortgage Brokers this is probably the easiest thing for us to do, which I think is one of the things that attracts people to this industry. We all have a wide range of options so we don’t need to push things down a linear sales path to achieve a set outcome. Whilst it isn’t our job to approve or disapprove of why people want to borrow money, we also need to use our own judgement and be prepared to walk away from a loan if we are not comfortable that we are helping them.

If your client truly believes this to be true, the sales process is almost nonexistent. All you need to do as their Broker is to gather further information, make a recommendation and they will follow it.