The Brokerage Offering Business Advice

South Australian agent Nieuvision has begun offering in-house training in general business coaching and small business coach training programs to aid its new-to-industry agents during the first year on the job.

The firm has packaged its own knowledge that comes within an educational and finance history and interwoven this with technical knowledge in aspects such as sales, lead generation and media, CEO Rick Nieuwenhoven stated.

Industry mentors include Shaun Mahoney from email marketing expert ULetters, Benjamin Simkin from lead generation consultancy BusinessNET, Andrew Phillips from sales training firm FocalPoint, and international sales expert Jack Daly.

What they are doing is compiling all the experts in their companies with their own knowledge and supplying a bundle of essential marketing tips for mortgage brokers to assist their representatives get up and running on their affordable websites. Nieuwenhoven also helps mentor novice agents through his own experience as director on the board of the Finance Brokers Association of Australia (FBAA). “Being closely tied in with the FBAA, I’ve been able to meet a lot of mortgage brokers over my time. I’ve seen issues with mortgage brokers – they’ve articulated them to me,” he said.

“The FBAA and the MFAA have done a lot of research. The biggest issue in the industry is new brokers and how they drop off quickly. If my business can provide some additional support mechanisms to brokers wanting to come into the market and leverage off of our experience, the industry will be better for it.”

Nieuvision’s current group comprises three mortgage brokers in addition to Nieuwenhoven himself. All have benefited from the corporation’s small business training and coaching programs. The system’s been great. Nick and Andy are going great guns and Steve’s building well. Nieuwenhoven himself was writing great volumes before he took over a more managerial role in the business as CEO. It’s a amazing fundamental base system.

For a lot of brokers entering the industry, the step was the first on a completely new career path, Nieuwenhoven believes. People don’t necessarily have the business skills, they don’t know the tax principles of handling your own tax, or they don’t have the basic sales skills of working B2B or B2C. It takes a fantastic bit of learning.

The first 12 months in the business are ‘make or break’ for new agents as they struggle to know exactly how the company works, the processes involved, media, etc. If you could fast-track this with online affordable web design tips for mortgage brokers, it makes it much more achievable for people to hit goals a good deal sooner and make some revenue. They won’t be under financial duress in that first 12 month period.

While training is all done in a conventional manner, the business has plans for an integrated system encompassing a choice of training and business coaches to be accessed anywhere at any time.

A flaw in lots of broker training programs is too little emphasis on the company component of being a mortgage broker, Nieuwenhoven thinks. The agents learn how to carry out an application and the compliance aspects. These are fundamentally important and must be educated but then the rest is left up to chance. When you’ve never been in the industry before, it makes it quite tricky to understand the pathways and how to go about finding work. Can you start off targeting businesses or individuals? What’s your niche? What is your point of difference?

Constructing a training program to help brokers attain success in the Industry was a means to come back to brokers and the company, he believes.