Getting down to business

While every plan is unique, they can be setup the same.

Goals

Most people are pretty dollar driven, so in my line of work it’s pretty common to hear a client say they want to earn $100,000, $200,000 etc. as a goal.

I try to instead take the focus away from a dollar amount and set a goal from a broker’s perspective. An example of this might be to write a hundred loans this year.

If you break it down that’s two loans a week – which doesn’t sound too hard. For most brokers, if you write a hundred loans you’re going to well exceed your income goal anyway.

Another goal you could set is having at least 30 per cent of your clients do more than one product with you. We’re just copying what the banks have been doing for years, and that’s getting customers to get involved with more than just one service.

If you focus on money, you’ll always worry about money – while if you focus on helping people you’ll never have to worry about anything.

It’s not a bad philosophy, let’s focus on getting to 100 loans rather than 100 grand. Even if you fall short, you’re probably going to have a pretty good year.

The how

People sometimes show me their business plan and more often than not it’s a list of goals and milestones – that’s back of the beer coaster kind of work.

The main point of a business plan isn’t supposed to show you the ‘what’ you want to achieve, it’s supposed to show you ‘how’ you’re going to do it.

You’ll notice that probably half of the business plan template is dedicated to the high profit activities box.

The reason we focus so much on this box is because these are the actions you’re going to take.

You could literally change the headline of ‘high paying activities’ to ‘how’.

Most people will fill that up with lead generating activities. Things like talking to referrers once a week, contact client database, offering awards to people who refer business to me.

Maintenance

You need to use your business plan like a map in a foreign country.

You need to refer to it at every turn to make sure you’re still heading toward your eventual goal, because if you get lost there’s no one who can help you get back on track.

Typically a broker gets bogged down in loan processing when they get successful, so it’s important to keep these things front and centre to remind us of our priorities.

Most successful brokers do loan processing as fast as possible so they can get back to spending time doing marketing, lead generating and selling yourself.

That high paying activity box is non-negotiable, you’ve got to do it or else you won’t reach your goals.

Because of the importance almost every day, or at least every week, you need to review your progress.