Top Ten Tips to generate more referrals and convert more enquiries

This will help you put up your sails and set your boat in the direction that you want it to go to

At our last workshop, Mario Borg presented his Top Ten Tips to generate more referrals and convert more enquiries. The key to these tips is to maintain consistency and persistence.

If you put in a system with these ten key items into your marketing process, you will generate more referrals and convert more enquiries for mortgages.

Here are Mario’s top ten tips (plus one) to generate more revenue for your mortgage broking business

1)    Know your target client

The first step in any marketing plan is to define your target client. To help you define your target client, you may need to ask the following:

1. What is the demographic of the customer you are seeking?
2. Where do they hang out?
3. What do they read?
4. What clubs do they belong to?
5. What’s their “hot” button?
6. What are their issues?

2)    Tune your Human Antenna

Is your brain on auto-pilot? Do you know what a good lead sounds like? Looks like? Smells like? What will they be saying or doing?

There are hundreds of opportunities everywhere – if you know what you are looking for. Once you have defined the type of client you are seeking, you will start to notice opportunities. Using your Reticular Activating System, you will start to gain business. This will enhance your “sixth sense” to seek out new business opportunities.

3)    Have a Point of Difference

Why should your clients use you? If you have the confidence, expertise or experience that your competitors do not have, customers are more likely to do business with you. So what is your point of difference?

See if you can answer these questions:

1. What makes your business special?
2. Why should they need to do business with you?
3. What can you offer then that no other Broker can?
4. How can they trust what you’re saying?

4)    Sharpen your elevator pitch

Can you in 30 seconds or less, let anyone that you meet, know what is it that you do, and why they need your help?

If you want more than 30 enquiries a month, you need to promote your business in a concise manner that sounds professional.

The key is to put an elevator pitch together that is concise, and distils what value your clients will get from you – in half a minute.

Then practice your “pitch”, so that it sounds natural when you say it.

5)    Create a sense of urgency

A sense of urgency instilled in your prospective clients will ensure that they will make a decision and proceed with your recommendations. To do this effectively, you need to work out what your Target Client’s “hot” buttons are. What are the issues that you can quickly fix for them?

Some questions that you may need to answer include:

1. How quickly do you contact a new enquiry?
2. What is your process for qualifying leads?
3. How do you identify the “hot” button of your prospects?
4. What are their issues?
5. Why should they trust you?

6)    Train people to get business for you

Imagine how powerful your marketing process would be if your referrers know how to look for business for you? The key is to teach them to do this. Don’t think this lightly. Most of our referrers probably do not know how to seek business for us – so your job is to teach them how to.

1. How often do you talk about what you do?
2. How many people do you know?
3. Do you have a list that’s segmented?
4. Do all your friends, family, relatives, neighbours know how to find you business?
5. Do your clients know how to recommend you?

7)    Train your Centres of Influence to refer (or better still – recommend) you as opposed to just sending leads

Imagine if a friend just saw a great movie, and told you all about how great it was. Would you go see that movie too? Likewise a recommendation is just as powerful in getting clients to contact you. If your referrers are recommending your services to their clients, this is much more powerful than just a referral. It is no longer a lead.

The key points in this are:

1. Do you know the difference between a recommendation and a lead?
2. Do your Referrers know the difference?
3. Have you embedded your services within their sales process?
4. Have you trained them on when to identify an opportunity and what to say?
5. Keep it simple

8)    Create a follow up system

Once you have most of these in place, and you start to generate some recommendations and enquiries, you need to have a Follow Up system in place. They key is to have a System! Use a method that works for you, whether its via an Outlook Calendar, or a sign next to your computer workstation – make sure you put one in place.

1. What method works for you?
2. Do you have allocated time in your weekly planner?
3. Do you have a system for different client types (First Home Buyers, Investors, Refinance, Upgrader)?

9)    Remain Top of Mind

To keep this in play, you also need a strategy to keep your business Top of Mind. Whether this means that you send newsletters every week, or keep a blog that you update on a weekly basis, or an annual review process – what is your strategy to keep in touch with your referrers and clients?

The key points in this are:

1. Have a strategy
2. How often do you pop up in people’s lives?
3. How much is too much?
4. When is it not enough?
5. What is the most effective method to remain TOP?

10)  Master your craft and remain sharp

If you are an Adviser, then the value you provide your clients are the advice you give them. So what do you do to keep yourself updated? To be the best in the business?

1. Do you maintain a cheat sheet?
2. Do you know your top 6 lenders’ products and policies back to front?
3. Can you teach an educated person something about finance?
4. How confident are you in your own abilities?
5. How hard do you fight for your clients?
6. Remember – People buy confidence! And you can build confidence with knowledge and skills.

11)  And lastly – Put all this into Practice!

Without putting any of these tips into practice, you will not get anywhere.  So what are you waiting for?