Australia’s top broker has claimed that part of his success stems from never visiting a client outside his office.
After writing more than $160 million and settling almost 600 loans in the 2012/2013 financial year, principal of The Australian Lending and Investment Centre Mark Davis told The Adviser that his winning formula stems from letting his clients know who’s in charge.
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“It's worked for me from day one,” he said. “It's about valuing your skills and experience. If you value yourself, why do you need to go to their house?”
According to Mr Davis, who was ranked number one in The Adviser's 2013 Elite Business Writers ranking, the main reason is time constraints.
“If you go out and visit people, you'd end up only seeing two or three people a day. Before Christmas, I was seeing seven people a day. When you go to a house call you sit down, they give you coffee, you talk about social things and you've got to meet the dog. It's the biggest waste of time,” he said.
Mr Davis believes that if you're of good value, clients will come and see you.
“I don't give any clients, no matter what level, the opportunity to request a house call,” he said.
But there’s more to it than just time, with Mr Davis pulling the strings from behind the scenes before even meeting the client.
“A lot of brokers have no-shows because you're 'just a broker', you're a dime a dozen. As soon as you change that attitude to 'you come to me because I don't have time to see you' then it's a completely different mindset,” he said.
“We intentionally make our clients wait 10 minutes in our foyer to give them a chance to look at the reading material which I’ve set out to help put them in the right mindframe for the meeting.”
The top broker also displays his awards and certificates throughout the office – something he couldn’t do on a house call.
“A lot of customers think they know what they're doing and try to run the meeting, but as soon as they read all the material in the foyer and see that we know what we're doing, it allows you to effectively manage the meeting on your terms,” he said.
For more tips and tricks from the nation’s top brokers, make sure you check out the ‘This Works For Me’ section of the March issue of The Adviser.