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Paramount Mortgages director Sean White has said gratitude is now a core part of how he does business and brokers could be winning more customer loyalty and profits by saying “thank you”.
White said that, while he has believed in the power of thank you since entering the industry at Aussie Home Loans, he and his business have boosted the practice following the COVID period.
Now, White aims for five acts of gratitude a day – as well as aiming to say sorry 10 times a week – and has even set up a department to manage the “thank you” part of Paramount’s business.
“You have to learn how to say I am sorry and thank you,” he said.
“These can be done just as acts, but for me, they have now become part of my DNA, and the more I become grateful for everything, the happier I am,” he told Australian Broker.
Brokers often say they are too busy working in their businesses to take the time to thank customers, White said, which he said was a “transactional” style that risks “taking customers for granted”.
“I tell them, ‘There’s 19,000 brokers and they picked you – that is an honour’. You have to build your business one customer at a time; people don’t say thank you enough.”
And while most brokers say their first business priority is profit, White said broking businesses would be better off focusing on attracting customers and making those customers happy customers.
“Then the profit will take care of itself,” he said.
White said Aussie Home Loans’ John Symond changed his “psyche” around mortgage broking when he asked him in his job interview if Aussie was in the lending business, or the people business.
“I said, John, that's easy. We're in the lending business. And he said, ‘No Sean, we're in the people business. And loans is what we do’,” White said.
White said that lesson is being lived at Paramount. “I’m in the people business,” he said.
“The biggest loan writers in this country do not write loans. All they do is talk to people, referrers, customers, staff and put out problems. Sixty-five per cent of a loan transaction is problems.”
White said the business escalated saying thank you during COVID, starting with 30 Uber meals a week to brokers, and increasing to a diverse range of different interactions with partners now.
While White said that “with the gratitude I get back from doing good gestures I don't even need to make money”, the practice also seems to be impacting the business bottom line.
“The business is going from strength-to-strength since COVID and foramlising how we do this,” he said.
“Most people think money is the main currency. But loyalty is a currency, kindness is a currency; patience, tolerance, these are the currencies you want to build,” he said.
Paramount Mortgages now thanks brokers and other partners in a range of forms, from small tokens of appreciation like thank you cards in the mail and dollar scratchies to Moroccan massages.
“We’ve done whale watching, Harbour Bridge climbs, the Australia Zoo, Nobu restaurant, the NRL - whatever they want,” he said.
White said he was “treating people the way they want to be treated”, and brokers who learned to do it as part of their psyche, rather than as just an act, were likely to see business flow as a result.
He added brokers should be willing to invest in relationships continually, rather than expecting a transaction after a meeting or two, if they wanted to receive from these relationships.
He gave the example of Paramount being added to an aggregator’s lender panel after nine years.
“Most brokers want to build their business by writing all the loans now, but it doesn't work that way. You know when you want to write the loan? When it's ready.
“You’ve gotta be doing good deeds today, because in the next month and next six months, you'll be writing loans from stuff you did a year or two ago - don't be in a rush,” he said.
