Mathew Crossley is a mortgage broker for Coronis Finance based in Brisbane.

In the first episode with Mathew, we look at how top brokers can get more referrals from their business partners and discuss the importance of becoming a trusted advisor. By the end of it, you’re going to feel confident in knowing how easy it is to generate more referrals and have better conversations with your online business partners.

In the second part, we look at how certain processes allowed Mat to double his settlement volumes in less than 12 months. We then discuss the importance of outsourcing your low dollar producing activities and how to do it. After listening, you’ll leave feeling pumped about how you can double your settlements with these key steps.

Let's start with a quick snapshot about you?

I work at Coronis Mortgage and Finance, we’ve been going for a bit over 3 years. We’re part of a bigger real estate group, 22 real estate offices all company owned, 9,000 property management and the second biggest in Australia.

The finance business was set up as a way to grow that full-service property service solution with Coronis. We started at zero - three years ago and are now sitting at a little over $300Mil book in that time, with 10 other brokers, five of which I mentor. We’re kicking over $20mil a month in settlements too.

 

How did you get into the industry?

I finished university studying hospitality management in the UK. I then moved to Australia with my fiance and started working with Westpac in the call centre. I didn’t realise until 2 weeks in that it was home loans I’d be doing. I progressed from there for 12 years and went to Darwin, worked as a lending manager up there. Luckily, then the GFC bypassed Darwin, and then I moved to Queensland and spent 4 years in a partnership role, finally going out as a broker.

 

The best brokers all have routines, what’s an average day for you?

I'm an early riser, I’ll be up by 6am and sometimes I'll go to the gym or spend time with the kids. I’m always in the office as early as possible.

The first few hours of the day is emails and doing tasks for the day, I believe in having things automated with our CRM. From there it will vary day to day but it might be prospecting, appointments and lodgements.

 

What does prospecting look like for you?

Being fortunate to be part of a real estate group, there’s internal and external prospecting that I do.

External involves new clients, nurturing what we’ve got in the pipeline and staying in contact with them.

In order to get those opportunities I spend a lot of time with the internal client (being the real estate agent) in our business, we attend a lot of training events, day to day in the office following up on sales, their open houses and seeing how we can add value and find opportunities for lending.

 

I know as part of your routine you’ve got a value add for your referral partners?

We do, so every Monday and Thursday morning we have a sales meeting in the office. Part of that is running through two things – one, being referrals; what they’re up to, where they were good and bad. The other side is just industry knowledge; how we can help them have better conversations with their existing and potential clients, rates and so on, service levels with banks and where we’re seeing things with valuation. It's all finance and real estate relevant conversation.

 

A lot of brokers have issues with referral partners, one of the things is - they have a different meeting, more of a social style one. It sounds like your meeting are very structured and about adding value, how do you get more referrals from partners?

The biggest thing is the value add. The value add is not that we provide finance, but it’s helping them get the listing over the line or the sale. We look at where the client might need more information to feel comfortable, so the actual value we add is helping them with their job, our outcome is a by-product of that, focusing on them more than us. Because if they have finance fall over they have to remarket the property, it's not a nice process for them, and trying to sell a property a few times is time that they could have used elsewhere. So our goal is helping them avoid that - a big value add.

 

So when you are catching up with a real estate agent, you’re coming in a way that helps them grow their business through your services?

Absolutely! Now there is so much competition and other means available to deal with finance and it’s all about the value we add to them.

 

A lot of brokers think they need to pay referral fees, what do you pay yours?

Nothing! We might buy them lunch or coffee but there’s no monetary payment in what we do, it’s a challenging mindset. For us, if someone is referring us for money they’re not referring the right client for the right reason. The biggest thing is the value add where we’re helping them get a sale. Real estate agents are earning 2 – 3% commission in sales and that’s pretty good income, if we can help them earn that commission through the house that’s a bigger referral fee rather than a few hundred dollars from a loan that may or may not go through.

 

You need to know what you’re talking about with referral partners, have you seen a difference in the service offering?

The advocacy is different and the way the agents talk about you and introduce you to the conversation is through their own trust rather than them seeing dollars in their eyes.

 

What’s your way to add value to real estate agents?

The vendors or the potential vendors are where the opportunity is. The people that are potentially thinking about selling – three to 12months want to know what their house is worth but don’t think about it from a finance point of view. We get a lot of introductions in that earlier piece to help foster that relationship to give the sellers that comfort to know what they can and

The people that are potentially thinking about selling, from three to 12 months, want to know what their house is worth but don’t think about it from a financial point of view. We get a lot of introductions in that earlier piece to help foster that relationship to give the sellers that comfort to know what they can and can't do.

Getting contracts over the line is a big thing we do, but helping them actually find the next seller and property come to market is just as important. If I said give me 25% commission on selling that, that’s a lot of money, so that’s where we can have the synergy of not paying as we add back into the equation through helping them get the property to the market.

 

It comes back to being a trusted advisor as they’re genuinely advocating your service as they see the value all around. It’s a different mindset to have, the easy thing is to give money for business but short term that might be okay but what happens when the next person comes along and offers more money?

 

Essentially by taking away the money, you're making the agents realise the value you bring so when they are referring they come from a different mindset, as they have to inherently understand the service you’re bringing.

The more intelligent agents see the value of how if the person you’re talking to goes to another broker they may already have another real estate agent, so it’s about the full circle of the process.

 

In summary:

1. Understand how you can add value to your referral partners, each one will be different so you’ll first need to understand what it is about them and how you can link in your services to add value.
2. If you focus on commission based referral partners, you’ll find you’re a commodity and easily replaced.
3. You must become a trusted advisor, an easy way to do this is by keeping your business partners in the loop with all the changes on a weekly basis in lending. Lending is changing rapidly, so update them each week about it.