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ISCOVER
“Trust” is the term du jour because of its increasing prominence and quintessential value, not only in broking, but commerce in general.
If you have trust, you win through deeper and more meaningful relationships, which is a natural catalyst for repeat business and referrals.
While trust is the new currency, it can’t be bought; it needs to be earnt through consistent demonstration as consumers’ radars for empty intent are laser sharp and unforgiving.
Much focus is often directed to how to build trust with new clients. With brokers in our network citing that referrals generate approximately 80 per cent of revenue, it’s critical to actively foster trust within your current network as a natural means to demonstrate duty of care and a core measure that contributes to organisational growth.
Consider these measures to help accelerate trust and generate higher sales volumes:
- Be clear: Make it crystal clear what you do, what type of client you’re able to help and what your point of difference is.
- Be relevant: Clients needs change throughout their life cycle. Be there ahead of the game through conducting financial health checks every six months (or at minimum, annually).
- Be strategic: The greatest way to add value for your clients is to provide strategic, actionable advice that empowers your clients to realise their goals. In the processes, honestly assess whether your offering meets your client’s needs, then proactively fill in the gaps as a means of delivering true value. This may be in the form of considering refinancing, consolidating debt, offering insight into alternate products, and so forth. The obvious way to meet these requirements is to diversify – whether that may be by specialising in a particular area (i.e. asset finance), collaboration (i.e. working with a broker with a complementary area of expertise), or becoming a champion of spot and refer (i.e. knowing which lender to approach to fulfil a specific need).
- Be consistent: Consistently demonstrate that you understand your clients' needs and have the most relevant product for solving it.
- Be seen: Embrace social media to build visibility and reinforce your offering. This should include promoting your wins, client testimonials, community engagements and sharing relevant content. Also engage in community and industry events to further gain exposure and build partnerships.
- Be an exceptional communicator: Be responsive, efficient and consistent with your communication. Be sure to under promise and over deliver, as it goes without saying that of the quickest ways to kill trust is to not deliver what’s been committed to – especially in a deadline-driven climate.
- Be personal: Reach out to your clients at key milestones – not just at a loan renewal, but to acknowledge key personal events such as births, birthdays, anniversaries, new jobs, etc.
- Be positive: Enthusiasm and passion are attractive personality traits that people enjoy being around and that clients enjoy working with.
- Be proactive: At the completion of a successful settlement, ask your clients for review and share testimonials on social media to reinforce your wins. Be sure to have a Google Business page set up, and ask clients to rate their experience with you (which is a great driver of new visitors to your website).
- Be accountable: Make the conscious decision to prioritise trust-based initiatives and ensure you have the technology and resources to implement your program. We suggest:
- Investing in a CRM to prompt client contact and centralise results
- Approaching your aggregator about sales support resources, including client-centric email templates, social media posts, blogs, etc.
- Setting a specific schedule for upcoming communications to get ingrained in the behaviour of reaching out to clients
- Scheduling the review of all communications (i.e. open rates of emails) and corresponding sales on a monthly basis (i.e. at 8am on the first Monday of each month)
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