Accelerating your business

With brokers being busier than ever, it is crucial to have consistent, measurable processes in place to ensure that customer service remains high and the brokerage is able to grow sustainably. As such, The Adviser held its annual Business Accelerator Program in March 2022 to help busy brokers identify how they could be optimising their businesses to ensure growth and manage a growing customer base.

Designed for experienced brokers who are serious about expanding their business, the workshop provided brokers with a blueprint to help them take the steps to build more structured, efficient and profitable businesses.

The hands-on workshop was emceed by broker training specialist and the former managing director of the successful brokerage The Australian Lending & Investment Centre (ALIC), Jason Back. The founder of Broker Essentials was joined by Six-Sigma coaches, business consultants and industry experts to help broker business owners complete a health check of their business and:

•  Develop a better business structure through ongoing (manageable) small changes
•  Discover the most streamlined loan processing models and the technologies
• Expand a business to capture more loan volume without more stress
• Build a more robust lead nurturing framework
• Harness the latest lead generation solutions
•  Develop upfront communication strategies to ensure frictionless experience for your clients 

What happened on the day

Opening the day was Nigel Collin, business coach and author of the The Game of Inches, who ran a two-part session designed to challenge the mindset of brokers on the concept of business growth and innovation, and tackle issues impeding processes.

Noting that brokers are increasingly time-poor and under pressure to deliver high-volume businesses, Mr Collin provided tools to help reduce the feeling of overwhelm and gain control by making small, consistent changes.

By harnessing Kaizen, Six Sigma and design-thinking philosophies, Mr Collin helped brokers refine their processes and develop new efficiencies. He deep-dived into methodologies used by some of the world’s most successful businesses to identify gaps and create opportunities.

Speaking after Mr Collins’s session, delegate Natalie Denyer from Birdie Wealth said: “One of the highlights for me was to be a Gap Hunter rather than an Ideas Hunter, and how – when things go wrong – to identify how to make improvements and then find the solution. I’m going to take that back to my team.”

Following Mr Collins’ session, Mr Back unpacked how efficiency and productivity are directly linked to profitability and walked brokers through how to measure the success of their particular business.

After helping business owners understand the health of their business, Mr Back then discussed how brokerages can be structured for success, from understanding which staffing model is right for them to learning how to build an attraction business to be an employer of choice.

The Broker Essentials founder helped brokers consider the manner in which they would most like to build their team and scale their brokerage based on their work volume. He then led a discussion with AFG, FileInvite, Sherlok, effi, and Nodifi – to showcase how brokers can be working “smarter, not harder” with tech.

Brokers heard from these leading fintechs in a roundtable discussion unpacking how to harness complementary software to streamline workflow and pursue client satisfaction, growth and success.

Delegate Sheyne Walsh, principal of Kingsbridge Private, said that while he had been running a successful broking business for over 20 years, he had still learned new tools and practices to take away from the event: “What I found was, there are an increasing number of smart apps or add-on that we could be using. We’ve been in business for a long time and done things well, but maybe we haven’t been doing this ‘smart’.

“You might think you’ve got a successful business and know the right recipe to do an excellent job, but maybe it’s not the most ‘intelligent’ way of doing it anymore. That’s what I’ve learned from this event.”

As the roadshow toured Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, delegates also heard from leading brokers regarding how they built their businesses – and discussed the challenges and opportunities they faced along the way.

In this peer-to-peer learning session, Darren Little (chief executive, Smartmove), Ruan Burger (founder, Broker Success), Josh Bartlett (managing director, Mortgage Advice Bureau Melbourne), and Anthony Landahl (managing director, Equilibria Finance), unveiled the importance of tracking every metric in business to identify shortfalls, and the necessity of having a good process structure and team.

As well as hearing from brokers, the Business Accelerator Program heard from broker groups, as they discussed how the right support can help brokers grow more quickly.

Gerald Foley, the managing director of National Mortgage brokers (nMB), and his colleague, Terry Walker (head of sales, nMB) detailed how the group was supporting its brokers by helping reduce the administrative burden and provide back-office support, while the managing director of broker network Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB) Australia, Darren Cantor, and head of partnerships Kristy Bartlett outlined how brokers can build value in their businesses outside of trail and deliver more services to clients.

In the final session of the day, digital marketing was the topic of discussion as Prospa and ActivePipe walked through actionable strategies to manage ongoing client communications for retention and to position brokerages for growth.

Speaking to The Adviser following the event, several brokers outlined that while their time was in increasingly short supply at the moment, the event had been well worth it.

Kingsbridge Private’s Ian Walsh said: “I could have gone to my office and done what I do everyday and hope that is the hallmark of being a very good business. But, I came and listened and there was so much great advice and words of wisdom on refocusing and redirection.

“And, on top of all that, there were a lot of new ideas and applications that I didn’t think about in my business that could maybe save a lot of money. And, maybe if I hired that next staff member, we could be a smarter business than we are today.” 

Thank you to all of the speakers, sponsors and brokers that supported the Business Accelerator Program 2022.