Former top broker and now broker coach at Success & Broker, Ruan Burger, said that brokers should not let the pursuit of perfect processes and systems lead to them neglecting their focus on people.
Following his 2021 move into coaching after growing Home Loans Etc in Gladstone and Time Home Loans in Brisbane, Burger (pictured above) said brokers should not overly worry about having the perfect process.
“People talk about creating the perfect process, but I never thought of my process as being perfect,” Burger said. “The question I would ask is, ‘if my process is perfect, am I being complacent?’ ”
“If your process is perfect I am confident you are not asking enough clients for feedback, and if you ask feedback then you will find out something that might be uncomfortable.”
Burger made an art of asking for feedback at Time Hone Loans, where he generated 700 Google reviews by asking clients how the business could have done better or for a Google review.
“That is the way to cut through to the truth, through vulnerability. Because although something is what you don’t want to hear, it might be what you need to hear,” he said.
The approach led Burger to winning multiple mortgage broking industry customer service awards, as well as being able to evolve his business processes in line with customer feedback.
“It’s looking at things through a lens where you are paying attention to things. I don’t need to overthink or overcomplicate things, I just have to listen to what the client has to say.”
Burger said this applied to generating lead flow, where without a perfect process and system you might have to work a bit harder, but you could adapt and refine that system based on feedback.
Focusing on human data as well as processes and systems
Burger said brokers were in danger of forgetting that it was the strong person-to-person relationships they were building with customers that set them apart in the market.
“Being in mortgage broking you are providing a product – but we are selling ourselves.”
“You are selling you – not a process. You can have people in your business making sure everything is going fine, but it doesn’t matter who is in the business – it matters that I sell it.”
“You have to get people to connect with you. It’s hard to build relationships. But if you can’t build relationships, we have something called clawbacks and that will be your nemesis.”
Burger said this was particularly the case in market where, instead of competing with banks as they did in the past, brokers were actually competing with each other as much for new loan and refinancing deals.
“Broking started as a people business, and we need to be careful we don’t give away the very thing that put us in a position where seven out of 10 people use our channel for lending,” he said.
“We have to remember a lot of tech systems in the market are actually about talking to clients less. When seven out of 10 brokers are using them, we are all talking less to clients.”
Burger added that systems would only work for brokers if they used extra time to generate leads.
“We say systems create efficiency, but they also come at a cost. How are they helping generate a referral. What else are you doing to get more leads and appointments to justify that cost?
Burger said the human touch was important in marketing, where it might be harder to know the real data social media, but it could be easier to measure data when it came to human relationships.
He gave the example of a real estate agent telling a broker that another broker was giving him six listings a month. This provided a clear metric to meet if brokers wanted to win referral business.
“Maybe we should not be so quick to follow where everyone thinks the world is going, versus the data that brought us to this point as a mortgage market,” Burger said.
Is your business becoming overly process-driven at the expense of strong person-to-person customer relationships? Share your thoughts or stories on this topic in the comments section below.
