Herbert said that without any contact for a considerable period it can be the hardest call to make but one held in high esteem by your customer.
This week we asked our panel of experts to share their tips on working your client bank. We asked them to share their strategies and suggestions for opening conversations to make that first call comfortable and fruitful for both parties.
David Carrington, marketing director, Personal Touch Financial Services, gives tips on different ways to slice and dice your client bank by mining the fact find.
Dominik Lipnicki, director of Your Mortgage Decisions, discusses the importance of looking after your regular clients as much as those with specific needs.
Andrew Montlake, director at Coreco, says using technology such as email campaigns and electronic diary reminders help lighten the load of keeping in touch with your clients.
David Carrington, marketing director, Personal Touch Financial Services
Gives tips on different ways to slice and dice your client bank by mining the fact find.
There is hopefully a clear understanding of ‘know your client’ but I suspect the same can’t be said about the concept of know your client bank. Without a detailed understanding you just have a list of names and phone numbers. Put this alongside the fact that the biggest barrier to calling an existing client, out of the blue, is not knowing what to talk to them about and the solution starts to become a bit clearer.
There are some obvious ways to slice and dice your client bank – age, location and end of fixed term are obvious but look to segment the data in different ways – recent first-time buyers need a different opening line when you call them than professional buy-to-let customers.
Go back through your fact finds and look at the mine of information you gather but maybe never use. Do they have a will? Do they have dependents? Are they self-employed? Do they own their own business?
If your fact find data is in electronic format this is relatively easy and you can cross reference to produce lists of for example; mortgage clients aged under 40 with children but with no will. Here you can use the will as your lead in.
Think of every response in your fact find as a piece of a valuable clue that you can use to create very targeted client messages – whether over the phone or in writing.
Ask yourself, whether you find it easier to talk to a stranger or a close friend at a party?
Dominik Lipnicki is director of Your Mortgage Decisions
It is a pity that many brokers fail to make the most of their client bank. It is a lucrative resource that is mutually beneficial for advisers and consumers.
All of our clients are contacted two months before their current deal expires and they welcome the call. They appreciate the quality advice that they received the first time around and they expect the same high standards of service again.
The important thing for brokers is to take a holistic approach to their client’s finances. As well as a mortgage that works best for their financial circumstances and future aspirations, the conversations should also highlight the importance of other products such as protection, wills and estate plans.
Regular clients should never be taken for granted. Each case needs the same attention to detail and each client the same level of care. Good brokers often hear from their clients when they are looking for advice and recommendations outside of their mortgage deal. This is a good sign that they will be back when it is time to renew.
Thorough advice really is the key here. Not only will clients feel confident in you but they are also more likely to recommend your services to others. Nurturing your client bank should also help to build your client bank further.
As long as the contact is useful for the client they will never mind hearing from a broker. Client acquisition is expensive so it is madness to waste an existing database. Make the most of what you’ve got.
Andrew Montlake is a director at Coreco
In my experience there are many brokers who are fantastic with new clients, taking the time to offer a great service and professional guidance throughout the mortgage process. However, when it comes to aftercare service, especially around the time that the clients rate comes up for renewal, few seem to be anything more than reactive. They wait for the client to remind them that they need to renew their rate.
This has certainly been the case at previous firms I have worked at and at Coreco we were determined to work in a different way. With technology advancements it has become easier than ever to keep track of a borrower’s expiry date, even if it means simply entering the date on an outlook calendar.
We have set up a dedicated customer service team who, amongst their many duties, contact every customer four months before their rate is set to expire and make an appointment with the original adviser to review their requirements.
We also do much more than just contact our clients out of the blue every two or five years, but through our carefully constructed email programme, keep them up-to-date with the general property and mortgage market news each month. We also encourage the use of social media, which keeps us in the mind of our clients as often as they wish to engage.
It takes an awful lot of time and effort to engage clients in the first place and not looking after them once they have entered into a relationship with you is such a shame. There are acres of diamonds under the feet of most brokers and with lenders poorer than ever at looking after their own customers, we should be making sure our clients are wrapped in cotton wool and showered with jewels.
