Watching the story of the Chilean miners unfold has made me reflect on how it is that different people overcome adversity.
We’ve been no stranger to adversity in the mortgage market and it’s clear to me that people fall into three categories: Those who make things happen; those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.
I think the people we have left in the mortgage market are definitely the movers and shakers who have made things happen, overcome the adversities that have been thrown at us and are still here to tell the tale.
But it’s not plain sailing yet. While there is a welcome level of optimism, which we’ve seen at Leadbay reflected in the growing number of advisers looking for new clients, most forecasts seem to predict that real growth could be another 12 months away and that we have more challenges to face between now and then.
It seems to me that one of the most effective ways we have in financial services of overcoming adversity is by helping other people overcome theirs. As a lead generator, the more successful we are at meeting your needs as advisers, and helping you to overcome your difficulties, such as by offering you clients looking for a wider range of advice, or doing it in an easier or more efficient way that better fits with your business requirements, the more successful we will be for example.
We have seen an increasing number of consumers turn to the Internet looking for advice, each of those people with their own challenges to overcome and each one looking for a professional to help them.
On the face of it each one has expressed a product need – for a mortgage, a loan or some other product, but it’s almost a given that each of those people will be having their own challenges or own levels of adversity to overcome.
With a bit of exploration many of these people often reveal their concerns that they are not protected in a variety of different ways: maybe they are facing ever increasing debt problems, have a new family and haven’t got a will or life assurance in place, or it could be that they are worried about losing their jobs and want to protect their income.
The Chilean Government has done an admirable job of overcoming a challenging situation more quickly than most people thought possible and in a way they broke most conventions – and everyone is talking about it as a result. We all have a different approach to overcoming our challenges, but maybe the more we find different ways of helping our customers overcome theirs the more we will overcome our own challenges at the same time.
Grant Stevens is managing director at Leadbay
