From the ground up - Business growth strategy 101

Good planning – and then good execution – is the key to success when taking a fresh look at your growth strategy. ‘Plans’ that include ‘I’ll work harder this year’, ‘I’ll be more committed to my plan’ or ‘the market will pick up through the financial year’ are likely to be unfocused pipe dreams that won’t work.

Back to basics
To successfully grow your business, you will need to plan your strategy from the ground up (there’s a good reason for my column having that name!).

Your strategy should include client relationship management, referrer recruitment and management, and quite possibly investing in an assistant. Your plan should also outline specifically the goals you want to reach.

Your volume of settled loans, number of leads generated, percentage of client advocates and number of professional referrer partners could be some of your measurable goals for FY2013.

If you want to write more business, you will need to change some of the things you do on a day to day basis. Most brokers who I speak to do not generate enough leads to meet their volume goal – let alone convert them! Therefore, the most important initiative they need to focus on is lead generation.  

Client relationship management is the key to ensuring a longer ‘client life’ for your business. Good relationship management also improves the chances of creating a larger proportion of client advocates for your services.

Start by calling all your clients and ask them about their plans for the future: Are they thinking about buying? Or selling? Are they satisfied with your service and happy about the marketing materials that they receive from you?

This will give you the opportunity to remind your clients about your referral program when it is appropriate.

Referral partnerships
Every successful mortgage business has referring partners in related business fields. These people advocate the broker’s services because they truly believe their broker referral partner will look after their client.

These relationships, however, do not develop by accident; they take time, hard work, regular communication and some negotiation. You may need to find new referrers or enhance the relationships you already have.

Either way, you will need to commit significant time to making them happen.

Revenue-producing activities
To achieve continuing business growth it is essential that you spend most of your time on the activities that produce the most revenue. Your doctor will not schedule your next appointment and your solicitor won’t type up the next contract – these are considered low-paying activities that should be delegated to assistants.

One challenge for brokers stems from their spending a relatively small amount of their time with clients when writing a loan and a large amount of time processing the application and settlement.

If the broker completes the entire loan application themself, they will spend about 80 per cent of their time on activities that are relatively low pay-off and only 20 per cent of the time in client engagement – which is, of course, high pay-off.

Brokers need to be able to delegate these low-paying activities to increase their capacity to implement more profitable activities.

Consider employing an assistant or using an outsourced back office so you have a greater capacity for client relationship management, referrer recruitment and management and other lead generating activities.

In any area of business, the top performers are never afraid to take a fresh look at their activities and to enrol themselves in ‘Growth Strategy 101’ to ensure they are focused on doing the right thing.

Early in the financial year is a great time to do it.