MA Money has tapped the best and the brightest brokers in the business to learn the secrets of their success.
The non-bank division of global alternative asset management firm MA Financial hosted a panel event on Wednesday — dubbed "Roadmap to Broker Success: Insights from the Top 1%" — to share best practices, and other tips and tricks, among the industry.
Stephen Michaels, managing director at Catalyst Advisers; Chris Hall, founder and managing director of Blue Crane Capital; and Fabio De Castro, director and mortgage broker at Simplify Finance, spoke on the panel at the firm's Sydney headquarters, while Gabrielle Aoun, head of partnerships at MA Money, moderated.
"Every day is a challenge," Hall told the crowd of a few dozen brokers. "If it was easy, then everyone would be doing it. It's just about how you approach things."
The trio went on to discuss tried and true professional techniques, while offering words of advice.
"Go out there and do your best," Michaels said. "Give it an absolute honest effort, and if you make a mistake, put your hand up. And if the client doesn't want to speak to you, then that's the end of it. Just move on. There's so much business and opportunity out there."
With that in mind, Australian Broker rounded up a few of the brokers' best ideas. The following comments have been edited for grammar and clarity.
"If you can be organized and also conscious of where you're spending your time in life, it is really powerful," he said.
"Different brokerages acquire new leads and opportunities through different lanes," Michaels said. "It might be a podcast; it might be online marketing. It might be through genuine referral partners. It might be your own personal network. Everyone should acknowledge where they fit into the market; where they want to acquire their target client. And then [say], what are we doing? And why are we trying to shoot for the stars all over [the place]?
"An example would be, our business doesn't necessarily market or advertise at all. And we really haven't for the last decade," he said. "We acquire at least 65% of our business from existing clients. And the other 35% are from referral partners. So accountants, real estate agents, solicitors, etc. Before I try to go and find another referral partner, I always look to myself and the team and think, have we delivered 11 out of 10 for all of our existing customers? Because they're the first people to refer us [to others]. They're the largest cohort of referrals within our business. So unless I've given all my thought and attention at that point in time to my existing clients, only then will I move on and try and expand business further from that."
Hall added that scaling a business shouldn't be done too fast, but rather in a "very controlled manner."
"If you aggressively scale, it can lead to a lot of other problems," he said.
"Try to be self-aware of what you're good at," Hall said. "There's going to be problems on every transaction. You problem-solve all the time."
Sydney-based De Castro said it was important to him to have his team nearby.
"The biggest risk for me was building a team in Australia," he said. "A lot of people are encouraged to go overseas. I'm not discrediting that. I think various parts of the process you can do overseas. But for me, I was very big on — at least for my credit team — to be in Australia.
"For context, we have a team of six in Australia, and then two overseas. And all they do overseas is data entry, no interactions required," De Castro said. "That's the risk. It's expensive. If you're going to run a business in Australia, you've got to pay Australian salaries. But the cost to me was not even close to the experience that I got and the ability that I have to work with my team. So for us to do a lot more complex transactions — we do a lot of investors, self-employed [transactions] — building that relationship with someone obviously is really hard for me [overseas]. It pays off [to have people locally]. You see more people, and you build that connection. So I think the risk, in a way, was to stay in Australia, which a lot of people usually go overseas. I just think that's a lot more productive, and you can see the improvements that we had in terms of conversion price. If you go through the process of doing a lot of great approvals … Maybe there could be a communication issue. Maybe we could have structured a deal better. So I think that is one thing that definitely paid off for us to stay here.
"It was always about building a team and building a brand," De Castro said. "It was never about me as a broker. It was always about the experience that people have with the brand. So yeah, introducing people in the piece and making sure clients don't feel like you're passing them over is a skillset."
Michaels said his firm hires roughly 50% through its network and 50% through recruiters.
"But the ones, or the staff members, that have turned out to be in the business for the longest, and have performed above and beyond what we thought they would, were the junior staff that we've then been able to elevate into the next role, and then the next role, and then the next role," he said.
"If they've got a good attitude, and they're keen, and they're kind of curious to learn, and then eventually, if they're a good performer, you'll mold your business to fit [the talent] into the business," Michaels said. "And that's a really good thing. And slowly, but surely, you'll be creating roles that you didn't think existed."
"There are so many other pieces of technology that can quickly and cleverly collect someone's information," he said. "But it might be easier for you as the broker to collect that information. But if it's more painstaking for your customer then they're just going to go somewhere else."
