So, what's the issue with griping about the state of the economy and your business?  It's simple – you tend to achieve whatever you focus on.  There's a function of your brain that's called your Reticular Activating System, or RAS, for short.  Whatever you concentrate upon, the RAS will help you find it.

The best example I've heard about this is when you get a new car.  You choose a car that you don't often see on the road, in a colour that's a bit different to all the others.  Then, when it finally arrives you go and pick it up from the showroom and as you drive home, you see three others on the road!  They were there all along, but until you'd got one, you didn't notice them.  That's your Reticular Activitating System at work.

On top of this, your subconscious will try to make sense of the world through whatever filters you decide to give it.  So if you spend a lot of time thinking about the recession, watching the doom and gloom on the news and thinking about how customers might leave you, that's precisely what you'll find will happen.  Which brings me to the 3 people I've met in the past couple of weeks who've demonstrated this principle in action.

1. The first was an independent consultant who said his business is doing roughly half what it was a couple of years ago.  He said he's so depressed by the economy that he only works from 10 am to 2pm, because it's hopeless.  Looking on as a third party, I asked him how many hours he used to work.  Of course, he was doing twice as many hours a day.  So now he's working half as much and earning half the amount.  Hmm.
2. The second was a client who's winning more sales at higher prices and has figured out how to do even more – he texted me at weekends now with the results of his latest actions.  His energy is buzzing because of his successes.
3. The third is a potential client who, when talking about his business, put a fair bit of focus onto the problems he's experienced because of the government.  In fact, every discussion we had generally ended with a comment about problems with the council, or the tax man, or central government.  Hmmm.

So the lessons we can all take from this?  When we look for problems, we can be sure we'll find them.  When we focus on success, we'll have the energy to chase after more success.  When we think it's all somebody else's fault, we'll find somebody to blame.

The problems won't fix themselves just by complaining about them, the actions of government are beyond quick influence.  So surround yourself with positive people and focus on what you can change.  It reminds me, in fact, of a favourite quote…

"God give me the strength to change the things I can
The courage to accept the things I cannot.
And the wisdom to know the difference."

Now go focus on something positive for your business, remind yourself of this positive goal every day, work hard to achieve it, then savour the results…

They are on track to equal, or even beat, their best ever month in terms of sales.  Not so remarkable, you might think.

Until I tell you they are mortgage brokers.  I've also heard from another broker client this morning that they're having their best month so far this year.  Meanwhile other clients, including a property rentals business and a restaurant, continue their growth unaffected by the bad headlines printed on the front pages of newspapers every day.

Attitude = Altitude

The motivational poster says, "Attitude more than anything else determines your altitude". 

Your attitude now is critical.  Stop buying your daily paper, don't watch the news.  That will save you 15-30 minutes every day.

It will also help you avoid journalist-induced depression.  You can't do anything about the doom on the front pages, but there's lots you can do to improve your business.  You don't have to be brilliant at business, just better than your competition…

Action = Results…

So instead of newspapers and TV news, spend your time asking yourself these questions:

• What's the single biggest obstacle holding your business back?
   
• What's the biggest opportunity you can think of to improve your business profits?
   
• What's the smartest thing you could do, right now, to address either one of these things?

As a business coach, helping you to focus on the things that matter and ignore the things that don't is a key part of my role.

For a confidential chat about growing your business, contact me using this form…

It seems that the majority of brokers have got their heads down and spend so much of their day thinking how bad things are, they don't have much quality time left for selling.

One client, a mortgage broker in London, was telling me recently how his team are selling far more insurance now than previously, even when they don't get the mortgage.  The strategy is very simple – if you can't source them a better mortgage, don't try to flog them a rubbish one, just treat customers fairly!  Hmm, treating customers fairly – that sounds familiar…

Tell them the best deals available for their circumstances, even if you make no money from it.  Put yourself in the client's shoes – how much good will does this level of honesty create, especially when mortgage brokers have takes some bad press lately.  Then make sure you understand how to do the insurance sale the right way.

I used to hate the sales pitch for life insurance, until I realised that everybody who sells it has ample life cover themself.  It makes sense – there doesn't need to be any kind of hard selling done, which is where so many go wrong. 

How the top 20% of mortgage brokers sell around 80% of the life cover…

Used properly and with integrity, disturbance selling is the right way to wake people up to the responsibilities they would leave behind if they suddenly died.  So when you walk away without selling a life policy, are you giving the client what they need, or are you avoiding learning how to sell life insurance properly?

Consider my services to be protection for brokers in the credit crunch!  Here are some questions that might cause you some disturbance…

    1 – How many months will your business survive if the market gets a bit worse each month for the next 6 months?

    2 – If you work very hard and long hours for a living, how will you feel when your kids leave home and you realise you've missed the best years with them?

    3 – What is your overall business goal or vision, and when will you achieve it?

If you are interested in talking to me further about protecting your mortgage business, review my free business coaching offer, open to any business, including mortgage brokers. 

It's only 1 free session, but if you have noticed the credit crunch and don't like the effect it's having on you, what are you doing that you know will help you protect your livelihood?

First it's worth noting that you can't actually "save" time.  All you can do is switch what you are doing while time happens – because that's what time does – it happens – whatever you are doing, the clock's ticking.

To cut the hours you work, or to get more done, you've got to change what you do, because how you're spending your day is the problem, not the amount of time you've got.  Here's the big secret though – it's not just WHAT you do, it's also HOW you do it.  In this post, I'm going to teach you how to eliminate time enemy number 1 – distractions & interruptions.

Distractions Slow You Down

Ever get annoyed when you are in the middle of something important and the phone rings?  You take the call, make a note to do something and then get back to your important task.  But you've lost the flow and can't get back into it.  You resign yourself to take a break and grab a quick coffee.

The quick call that you took just cost you 20 minutes of progress on your important task.  You start again and ten minutes later have to go to a meeting.  After the meeting, you bump into an old friend you've not seen for years and chat for 30 minutes over a coffee.

Finally you get back to the office, sit down to finish and a text message comes in, asking if you can pick up some milk.  Annoyed at the distraction, you pick up the phone and start an argument with your partner about how you're too busy to take texts about shopping.  You waste 5 minutes and come off the phone in a temper.  You give up for the day on your most important task and you wonder where all the time goes..

Here's the trick to getting more done.  Start something and don't stop for interruptions until you're finished.  It's really up to you to choose whether you like being interrupted or not and then to change things to how you really want them.  It's not difficult, it's just different.

How To Stop Distractions & Interruptions…

If you have staff, tell them you don't want to be disturbed for a certain time every day.  Book a meeting with yourself and use this time to get important stuff done.  If they interrupt you anyway, don't deal with their request, make them wait until you are done.  Set a rule that only immediate danger to health, the law or an angry customer on the phone can be used as reasons to interrupt.  If it's not one of those, tell them to go away and play by your rules.

Humans take too long to switch tasks with full attention.  Stop switching tasks, you'll get lots more done.

Close Instant Messenger, Internet Explorer and email when you are writing a quote in Word.  Clear your desk and clear your mind.

So What Now…

The most successful clients I work with are the ones who recognise they need to change themselves a little in order to change their businesses.  Changing what you do with your time is a brilliant place to start.

Try this out today and stick to it for a week.  Tell me how you get on.  In fact,  do it now and don't let me distract you!

Don't read any further unless you're up for 10 minutes distraction!

If you are in the mood for a bit of distraction and are interested to know more about how the brain works, you'll enjoy Brain Rules, a website with video explaining how your brain works and how to get more out of it.

The best article on referrals that I found, which really made me sit up and pay attention, starts with a questionnaire about what you currently have in place for generating referrals.  You just have to go and do this questionnaire.  It opened my eyes to some great new things you can do for word of mouth marketing.

I don't mind admitting that didn't score anywhere near as high as I would have liked and so I'll be taking some steps to fix that in the next couple of weeks!

There is also an excellent book on this topic by Tim Templeton.  From the same stable as the One Minute Manager series of books, I like this book a lot because it has a practical system inside it that you can copy to generate more referrals for yourself.  I've added this to my library listing to give you a bit more to consider when adding oomph to your word of mouth approach.

What I like about both of these sources I mention above is that they don't depend upon you being a member of a networking referrals meeting.  Instead, they are about the relationships you create and maintain with your contacts and how you can get the best out of them by planning to get a business referral from the outset.

Imagine if every one of your clients, on average, brought you another one client as a referral.  How sweet would that be in terms of growing your business without the need for a big marketing budget?  While I've been fortunate to meet many clients through referral, I know that I could do a lot more and this has given me the impetus to take action and put something solid in place.

Oh, on the topic of referrals, if you find my blog postings useful, please do tell a friend about me

Now, this isn't too unusual, as we have a cat that loves to hunt but doesn't like the kill.  Often he'll bring in a mouse which we then release after capturing it with our humane mouse catcher, a brilliant device that catches the mouse without harming it and holds it so that we can release it back into the fields without harming it.  Maybe I'm too soft!

Anyway, what has this got to do with success, especially in tough times?  Well, when I saw that this mouse had been eating a chocolate bar – in fact, some expensive continental chocolate, it made me smile that this mouse was making the most of a tough time.  Imagine, you're foraging about one day in the field and a cat grabs you in its mouth and brings you inside.  You escape but end up stuck in strange surroundings without food or drink.  I once found a dead mouse that had escaped and then died after staying frozen to the spot in a "safe" hiding place.

Surviving in a Recession

Trying to make a living while the economy is going through hard times is just the same.  You are picked up out of your comfort and dropped bang into the middle of an environment that needs you to think differently to survive.  If you just lie still and hope the danger will pass, you'll end up like the dead mouse – unable to help yourself even.  Yesterday I learnt of a large financial services company that has gone into liquidation as a result of the credit crunch.  I met the owner back in January and he was quite upbeat about business.  Now he doesn't have a business.  Just like the cat taking the mouse, he found himself in tough circumstances and didn't change his habits fast enough.

In tough times, winners will be those people who are smart enough to go find the chocolate bar.  There's a great book about how we react to change and how it helps or hinders us, called Who Moved My Cheese.  Coming from the same stable as The One Minute Manager series of books,  it's a short book with a big theme – change with your circumstances or suffer the consequences.

So, in practical terms what can you do to change with your business circumstances at the moment?  If you are feeling under pressure at the moment, I recommend you start by

1. Understand your numbers – keep a simple tally of how many enquiries, appointments, quotes and sales you are making.
2. Figure out where you are losing sales and then try something new.
3. Try some new marketing out – target a very specific niche group of potential customers (maybe by looking at your client list to spot your own best customers) and then figure out where they go, what they do, what they read, who they know, who else they buy from.  When you have figured out where to find them, you can market to them.
4. Put some effort into a new marketing campaign, or get some help to develop a new campaign, including identifying your target market, by sending an email via my contact page.
5. Make sure your activity levels are AT LEAST as busy as in the good times – make lots of calls, talk to customers, prospects, contacts.  Do enough "stuff" and you'll get results.

Until next time, get busy and stay happy on your chocolate hunt!

Here’s a list of 7 of the most common issues I see – read through and try to spot familiar signs in your own business…

1. You Are The Key Employee – if everything in your business revolves around you being there, at a certain point you will become the bottleneck that everybody has to go to for answers and to get things done. When your business is small, this is fine. When you get bigger, it will hold you back dramatically.
    
2. No Unique Selling Proposition – your business needs to stand out from the crowd, but most businesses just offer the same services as everybody else and compete solely on price. What makes your business special? How do you make sure people know about it?

3. Over-Rating Your Own Service – when your customers think about you, what do they say when you’re not listening? Ask yourself this question honestly and think about filling the gaps so that you create something special.

4. Lack of Leadership – Your team will respond to the way you lead them. If they turn up late and go home bang on time, look in the mirror for the reasons! Your job is to motivate and inspire them by creating a business that gives them a buzz.

5. Poor Marketing – there is a technique you can learn and apply to make sure that you get new leads every month. A great book to read on this is Tested Advertising Methods – a book I get all my clients to read as their starting point to learn how this works

6. Lack of Financial Control – most businesses don’t run using management accounts and as a consequence they are out of financial control. Having a good book-keeper is a brilliant start and reviewing your cashflow forecast and Profit & Loss on a monthly basis are fundamentals. Don’t know how to do this? You’re in good company, since most accountants never explain it in a way that makes clear sense. You can learn though, and it’s not complicated or difficult to understand – just takes a bit of effort.

7. No Clear Goals or Focus – where is your business going? Imagine jumping into a taxi and saying “take me anywhere”. The driver would be confused and probably just throw you out! If you don’t have a clear vision or big goal for your business, you’re doing the same thing and you’ll just go around in circles. Give yourself a direction.

Now, make a quick To-Do entry for today to start fixing your own top issue this week.

Need some help? Give me a call for a quick free telephone consultation to help you off to a flying start on 01480 370142

Let's take a closer look at the numbers game using mortgage sales as an example.  You can apply the same approach to any product or service, no matter how simple or complex.  You can use this and boost your sales massively…

Your Sales Funnel…

You can think of the sales process as a funnel that starts with lots of enquiries going in the top and ends with sales at the bottom.  Here's a diagram of an example funnel for how to sell mortgages

There are a number of steps that have to complete before you get paid.  By helping you to understand your numbers, we can figure out which areas need work and then improve them.  If you're not in the mortgage game, spend a bit of time to figure out the steps in your business and then apply the same principles.

Leads – any kind of enquiry from a client showing interest in your products and services.  This could be over the phone, via the Internet or personal introduction.  If you meet clients face to face, there's another step here which is "book meeting" before you can do the fact find.

Fact-Find – the part of your sales conversation where you find out about your client's circumstances and what they want.  Think of this as understanding their needs.

Quotes – you provide details of the products that fit your client's needs.

Applications & Insurances – when your client decides to go ahead and apply for the mortgage, plus any insurances you sell on top too.

Completions – when your client's new mortgage comes through, you get paid (well, soon after anyway!)

How To Sell More By Playing The Numbers Game…

If you don't currently know how many leads you need in the top of your funnel to get to a client at the bottom of your funnel, you can't play the numbers game.  Once you know your own numbers from the top to the bottom, you can put a target figure for every day on each layer in the funnel.

If you want to know how to sell more, start by measuring your sales funnel today and find out how many leads you need to put in to make a sale.

Another great thing you learn from measuring your own conversion rates (i.e. the success rate % when you move from step to step) is which parts of your sales process need more work to improve your overall success.

Using this approach, one mortgage advisor more than doubled his sales within just 2-3 months.  He set targets and kept track of his numbers and didn't stop working until he'd achieved his targets in terms of fact-finds, quotes and applications.  In fact he had several other measures and targets, like how many got to Decision In Principle.  Being determined to hit these gave him tremendous results.

If you want to put this into practice in your business and you would appreciate some help, fill in my contact form for a no obligation, totally free informal chat with me.

Let's start by looking at a cold hard fact – there are over 8,000,000 households with a mortgage against the property, according to government statistics from 2007.  This makes the remortgage market alone immense.

This is an interesting number to dwell upon.  Just because you are having some difficulties placing business right now, do you think that by taking the right actions, you can win more business from this huge pool of potential customers?

Even if the lenders are operating dual pricing and competing directly with you on many products, the way that you respond under pressure to running your brokerage will determine your success.  If you have managed to place mortgages during the last month, do you think that there are more people in this vast pool of 8 million who would also place a mortgage through you?

It is too easy to sit back and complain about all the problems.  How many hours up and down the country are lost every day to worry and complaining about something you cannot control – the behaviour of the lenders?  It's the same in every economic downturn – most people in business sit worrying about the things they can't change and never stop to think about what they CAN do.

What CAN you do to help your mortgage sales?

Sitting feeling helpless at the state of the economy and blaming the government, the banks or the US economy is not going to make mortgage sales.  There are brokers right now who are making sales – so what things can you directly influence to help yourself right now?

The first thing you can do is to stop wasting time thinking about all the things that are against you.  It doesn't help at all and it doesn't change anything in your favour.  Start by deciding that you will not be a victim of this downturn, but that you will ride through it to victory.  Certainly there will be brokers who go under as a result of this market, but by staying sharp you can be ready to pick up more business when equity comes back into the market.

Now think about how you spend your time each day – how productive, in terms of creating opportunities and writing business, are you every day?  If you find that you are spending all of your time doing administrative tasks or chatting to industry chums, even though you are not doing much business, get honest with yourself.  Recognise that you are filling in time that could be spent selling instead.

Next, get financial control by putting in place a solid cash flow forecast.  This is crucial during a tight economy because it helps you to understand exactly how well or badly you are doing.  It also gives you an accurate forecast of how you will be doing every week for a few months ahead.  If you don't want my help to do it, get your accountant to help you – this is so important, because money is the language of business and if you don't know how money is flowing through your business, you don't speak it's language!

Now you have financial control, look at the business you have written in the last month, figure out where this business has come from and who is buying.  Get this right and you will know who the good customers are – whether this is residential remortgages, buy to let remortgages, property investors snapping up bargain deals or whatever.  Armed with the knowledge of who your best customers are, you can spend some time to figure out where to find more of them from that pool of 8 million.  You will find more of them wherever your last sales came from – whether it be via introductory letters, a referral system or advertising.

Learn how to get access to them and you can get more new, placeable business in through the door.  And if you have been poor at selling general insurances and life, give your attention to these areas as well.  Anybody taking out a mortgage right now will be far more open to mortgage payment protection than they would have been before, thanks to the economic downturn.  Take advantage of this situation by helping them – offer them protection, give them the peace of mind that so many need right now.  It helps them and it gives you a bigger sale.

In my "Mortgage Broker Survival Kit" there is a summarised 5 step action plan to protect your business and keep profitable in this tough period.  Click on "Mortgage Brokers" in the menu to download yourself a copy.

Now, enough talking – go take action!

Singled Out by National Customer Awards Judges…

I've just been told that The Mortgage Broker Ltd have been singled out by the National Customer Awards judges for their exceptional customer service.  Here's an excerpt of what they said…

'I am pleased to inform you that The Mortgage Broker Ltd have been singled out by the judges of the National Customer Service Awards and have been awarded a 'Highly Commended' status in the Customer Service Team of the Year – Financial Services.'

Helping you to create an exceptional customer experience is something I always strive to do.  When you create something special, people take notice.  They also tell their friends about you and you get more customer referrals and business by doing a brilliant job.  To have one of my "home town" clients recognised in a prestigious national award is tremendous.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Darren, Terry, Pip and the team at The Mortgage Broker Ltd for this brilliant result and I believe many more awards will follow in the future because what you have built is an exceptional business.  Since you have also been short-listed for the self-certified mortgage category of the 2008 British Mortgage Awards, it goes to show just how far you have come and what a great business you have built.

Your Business Can Win Awards Too…

Last year another of my clients, BrightsVisions IT Solutions, were judged to be the Best Small Business in the Hunts Post Business Awards and The Mortgage Broker Ltd won the Judges Choice award.  The year before I was shortlisted personally for Business Person Of The Year.  In fact, many of my clients have won business awards over the past 3 years.  But each of these wins was not a hollow attempt at publicity, it was through effective business development that we got their businesses running well, growing, delivering great service and having a good team atmosphere.  If you, like me, want to build an award winning business using a proven approach, let's talk…

Take your first step to being an award winner – Call Lee on 01480 370142 for an initial free & confidential discussion