If you’re most passionate about forming client relationships, spend extra time calling your database and reconnecting with past clients. Ask them for referrals and testimonials. If it’s Realtors you enjoy talking with most, carve out the extra time you need to form more relationships with them. Start with the most-successful Realtors in your market and go from there.

Perhaps your passion is helping people find liquidity, safety and rate-of-return in their finances. Now also is a great time to connect with accountants and financial planners looking for new alliances with mortgage brokers. You might also consider joining a business networking group and establishing partners that way.

When you show your passion all the time, people will want to do business with you and form relationships with you. There’s a magnetism to passionate people that starts from the heart and cannot be denied.

Creativity

What can you do to help you stand out from everyone else? That’s the question at the root of finding your creative niche.

One idea is to improve the level of service that you provide to clients. If you decide to go this route, make a list of the action steps you want to take with each client. Aim to create a client experience rather than just a business deal. Incorporate others in this, as well.

For example, if you decide to send clients a housewarming gift after they move into their new home, think about sending a gift to the referring Realtor at the same time.

Whatever you decide to add to your business model, make a special effort to add a creative twist that will set you above your competition.

Keeping on keeping on

It has been said that perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of the hard work you’ve already done. To find success in today’s market, mortgage brokers must keep on keeping on.

Someone once said, “The race is not always to the swift but to those who keep on running.” Michael Phelps again exemplifies this. In 2004, he had a goal of winning eight gold medals at that year’s Summer Olympics. Instead, he won six gold and two bronze.

Many people would have accepted that as success. Not Phelps. Instead of calling it a career, he trained for four more years and achieved a level never seen before.

Likewise, there is no time for slowing down in a tough economic climate. Instead, keep your focus, keep on working and keep on believing.

Louise Thaxton has been a producing branch manager at Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. for eight years. She is a certified mortgage planner with more than 10 years’ experience in the mortgage business. Thaxton speaks at industry events and is one of the featured women in the recently released book Stilettos in a Loafer World: Mortgage Women Who Walk Their Talk by Karen Deis. Contact Thaxton at lgthaxton@fairwaymc.com.

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