A finance professional and former brokerage franchisee is on a mission to help mortgage brokers perform at their best.
Auctus Coaching director Christian Paterson (pictured above) said he could show brokers the tools they need to reach the top 1% in Australia. He identified the issues that he sees most commonly among brokers – the number one issue was not having clearly set goals.
“They just want to ‘write more loans’ or ‘create a saleable asset’ but they don’t factor in what it takes to do this effectively (without burning out),” Paterson said.
“Another issue I often see is if they’re coming from a corporate, banking or big brokerage firm, they might be brilliant brokers, but to run a successful brokerage they also need to learn how to attract, motivate and retain staff, build systems and create operational processes. They also underestimate the power of repeat business and instead focus on getting new clients rather than nurturing their existing ones.”
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Paterson said he understood the importance of process and technology which helped brokers more easily foresee outcomes and scale-up businesses.
“The inclusion of technology into a brokerage adds a level of professionalism and can help brokers in the day-to-day running of their businesses. I like to break down the barrier between technology and broker and build efficiency from that,” he said. “I believe having a process and putting support staff in place allows you to get a standardised outcome.”
Paterson said a key facet to success in the mortgage industry was having the right people in the right places to help upskill them.
“This way brokers can de-risk their businesses and keep them growing and flowing,” he said.
“I like to educate brokers about changing their support teams to move away from data entry specialists and be verification specialists. It is important they embrace their role and upskill – I see a lot of time and effort put into broker development but not enough for support staff development.”
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Paterson said he incorporated customer experience statistics into his training to help mortgage brokers understand the importance of looking after their clients.
“Companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%, meanwhile 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue,” he said.
“Companies with engaged employees outperform the competition by 147% and a 2% increase in customer retention is the same to profits as cutting costs by 10%.”
Paterson said he taught the four pillars of service to his clients – workflow, automation, CRM and training.
“We believe (and have plenty of client evidence to show) that when you focus on setting up these foundations well, you are creating a business that will last,” he said. “We help to put structure into the team as well as the processes and operations done by using an industry-leading CRM, which can be completely customised to each client’s unique processes and requirements.”
Paterson said he could help establish a mortgage broker as a thought leader to create valuable content online, which could bring more business and opportunities to their brokerage.
“We don’t push clients to use ads or rely on word-of-mouth marketing, we help to empower them to manage their own pipeline and lead generation through content and email marketing that is based on solid SEO and digital marketing practices,” he said.
“We help to maximise the digital real estate for our clients by optimising their CRM to capture new leads to a website and embed them straight into a well thought-out nurture campaign, so that when the client makes contact with the lead, they are happy to get the process going because they feel welcomed by their brand and safe in the knowledge they can help them achieve their property and finance dreams.”
