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In modern business today you just have to have a website. If you're not up there on Google then your business is simply not happening. I don't necessarily agree. A website is great, as long as it has a purpose. I always want to know, what is a website trying to achieve? It seems to me that many of the ones I've seen are trying to be everything for everyone. So, before building a website, isn't it important to understand what you want to get out of it. For example, with this website, brokermentor.com.au we have two goals. The first is to provide information online to our broker network, allowing them to have easy access to information, documents and other resources to help them to grow their business. The secondary goal is to help our network of brokers to both be and feel connected, through both my daily blogs and through the interactions of the forum. The reason I bring this up, is because we've just launched our new look site www.visionms.com.au Previously on the old website we had information sheets and calculators and many other tools, but when we really examined it, was the website achieving what we really wanted it to do, to generate enquiries to us from customers. The unfortunate answer was no, it wasn't. So the new website is designed to lead the reader into an online enquiry or to allow them to search for their local broker and contact them directly. It is now a website with a purpose. By the way, if you're a potential customer and you've accidently stumbled across this website please don't misconstrue what I'm saying, the reason we want you to speak with us directly is so that we can help you. Online calculators and all of that sort of thing just don't give you enough information to really make an informed choice. Which leads me to my next point, if you're a broker in our network and you would like more business - where is your profile? Send them in so that we can advertise you for free. On a serious note for today, I would like to add that our thoughts are with the people of Victoria who are currently affected by the bushfires. We have added a section in our online forum with information about how people can assist, so please login and see what you can do to help. |
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Written by Michael Calam
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Friday, 06 February 2009 17:31 |
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Welcome to Friday. I'm quite happy with myself today as yesterday I managed to arrange my final 6 interviews for the month, so now I know that I'm on track. Today is looking to be quite busy as I have 3 interviews almost in a row. While I'm always careful to take good notes, I'll have to be extra careful today. I know of some brokers who leave some of their note-taking until after the interview, when they're sitting somewhere on their own and not having the client waiting for them. But, if I tried to do that after several interviews in a row, it would be quite easy to make mistakes. There is a lot of talk about the potential for a recession in Australia and so I have made a personal decision. Even if there is a recession, I'm choosing not to participate. I came to this decision last night while out walking. I recently took up the offer from Signwave where they have printed 3,000 of our dl brochures for free (as long as their details were printed on the back of each brochure). Last night my wife and I took the dog and a stack of those brochures out for a walk. As we went along we dropped the brochures into people's letterboxes. This got me thinking. Regardless of what the economy is like, people still buy and sell houses. They also refinance, consolidate debts and restructure their finances. Using the example of the free brochures above, I realised that there are literally dozens of ways that the clever broker can market their business for free. So, if I can keep my overheads low, have a strong marketing plan and keep on looking for new business, I can avoid participating in the recession. If we have one that is. What's that famous line? "Failure is not an option." |
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Just Another Manic Monday |
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Written by Michael Calam
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Monday, 09 February 2009 20:31 |
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It's Monday and I broke my own rule this morning. I woke up and knew that I had a hundred things to do today and so I just started doing them. As a result, I've been chasing my tail all day. I really feel like I've been unproductive. Hindsight, being a wonderful beast, allows me to see how I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort today, simply by organising my day up front. But instead I've jumped from item to item, double handling and working on similar activities at different times of the day. I know that there is a famous line which reads "The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step." But maybe it doesn't necessarily mean that if you want to go somewhere you should start running immediately, maybe it's better if you know where you're going first? So, anyway, the end result for my day is that I felt rushed and harried throughout the day and don't feel as productive as I could have been. I've been the perfect example today of "bad" busy as opposed to "good" busy. It is such a temptation though, when things get really busy, to just dive in there and get started. Taking the time to pause, take a deep breath and plan your day makes such a difference though. Tomorrow will be a different day for me. My regret today is that a bad Monday normally carries forward into the rest of the week. So, I think that I'll make tomorrow my backup Monday and get my week planned then. |
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Written by Michael Calam
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Thursday, 05 February 2009 07:42 |
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Thursday morning, always a special time for me. It's not just because it's wheelie bin day, or because it's close to the end of the week, although in their own ways these are good things. No, Thursday morning is my Checkpoint. Those gentle readers who read my Monday morning blog would have seen that I set myself some goals on Monday morning. For the month of February I've set myself the target of $2.4m in loan applications and I had worked out that I needed to setup 15 appointments for the month to comfortably achieve that goal. So, this week (the first week of the month) has been my appointment setting week, where I setup those appointments for the month. Thursday morning then becomes my checkpoint. The checkpoint is where I look at whether I'm on track to achieve the target for the week. Over the years I've found that Wednesday is too soon to tell how I'm travelling and Friday is too late to do anything about it if I'm off track. So Thursday morning I take a moment to pause and consider how far away I am from completing the actions I decided I needed to do for my goal of $2.4m to be achieved. At this point, I have 9 appointments in my calendar for February. So, today I need to focus upon finding those other appointments. If I can nail them by this afternoon, then Friday will be a cruisy day for me and I'll probably finish up early in the afternoon. If I don't get them by this afternoon then Friday will still be a busy day. So, how will I get those 6 other appointments? First, I'll go through my list of existing prospects and make a list of those people who were waiting to see how the RBA meeting went. They'll be top of my list of people to call today. Next, I'll work through my list of existing clients and see who may benefit from a home loan checkup, considering the changes to interest rates. These are my warm leads, people who I already have a relationship with. Once I have completed that process, I'll then visit the websites of some of the lead providers and I'll start buying and ringing leads until I achieve my target of 6 more appointments. I'll get some knockbacks, certainly, but if I simply continue until I achieve my target in appointments then based upon my earlier calculations, I should be well on my way to hitting my goal for the month. It's all about the activity. Don't get me wrong, it's not a sure thing that those numbers will work out. At the last minute some appointments will cancel. Some interviews won't convert to applications. However, I'm not just sitting there waiting for the phone to ring to make my business succeed, I have a plan. And the funny thing is that while I'll set these appointments in the first week, during the next few weeks I'll come across more appointments and opportunities which will help me to achieve or better my goal. Is it too early to start ringing prospects now...? |
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