Most Brokers aspire to build their own business, rather than someone else’s, and one of my goals with this book is to help the Brokers who want to, to take control of their lead generation and thereby help them progress faster to being a genuinely Independent Broker.
To do so requires working to take ownership of your clients by concentrating on Post Sales Marketing, the foundation for which is laid when you are working with the client in the first place, through the sales and operational systems of your business.
Over time you will become more independent as you gain influence and the trust of your clients through regular meaningful contact with them. Whilst your initial marketing may still be controlled by someone else, you can generate repeat and referral business and move towards independence if you work to develop Trusted Advisor status with your clients and take control of your Post Sales Marketing.
Who owns the client?
What this question really refers to is, who has a genuine relationship with the client from the client’s perspective? Is this a relationship that the client is going to respond to, and who has the right under your agreements to continue marketing to them?
My experience is that clients have very little affinity to the business name you trade under. If you move to another business or brand name, as long as you have done a good job for them and stayed in touch, they will stick with you as someone they know and trust rather than go to a different Broker in the organisation you previously worked for.
I regularly see Brokers who leave big-brand-name broking firms whose clients come back directly to the Broker and are completely unconcerned that they are now working under a different brand.
This is also why all the marketing I do at Mortgage Australia, initial and post-sales, is done completely in the name and image of the individual Broker, promoting them as a person, and with their own contact details. In our business, people choose the ‘who, not the ‘what’.
This is where the individual Broker has a huge advantage. Because of the time you spend with your clients, the exploration of their circumstances that you need to go through and the benefits of future loans you do with them, you have the ability to create a positive and long term relationship with them, even if they were not originally generated by you. Then it is just a case of putting into practice an effective and consistent post sales marketing system to attain the potential lifetime value that they represent to your bottom line.