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Why One Mortage Firm is Thriving in a Horrible Lending Environment
I met Kenton Brown, co-founder of Sente Mortgage, at a Wizard Academy seminar.
Having experienced first-hand the ugly failure of the lending market, I was curious about how their business was handling the recession.
“So how’s business?” I asked him.
“Never been better,” Kenton responded enthusiastically. “We’re having our best year ever.”
Surprised, I asked, “So what are you doing?”
“We have a master database of prospects,” Kenton said, “who have give us permission to send them emails and contact them occasionally. We email them about once a month with content regarding lending and finance. We really try to create value for them and build a deeper relationship with them before trying to sell them a mortgage.”
Kenton didn’t know about Hub Mentality as a formal methodology, but he and his company were running it instinctively to thrive in an extremely tough market.
They opened with 26 employees in October of 2007, and when I met Kenton they had grown to 88 employees.
The first year of implementing their database strategy, the company enjoyed a 64 percent boost in the total amount of closed loans, and Kenton was up 66 percent year over year personally.
Each loan officer in the company has his or her own sphere of influence, which they market to personally. Together, these databases currently add up to more than 30,000 people, who receive a bi-monthly correspondence from the company.
Kenton understands that his database, which totals just over 5,500 at the time of writing this, is worth far more than money in the bank.
“With every interaction with a prospect,” Kenton explained, “you’re either increasing or decreasing trust. If you don’t return calls when you say you will, you break trust. If you market heavily, fill your pipeline with business, then ignore your database until you need business again, you’ve violated trust. You have to be consistent. You have to prove that you really care about them as people.”
He added, “Authenticity is the portal to trust, and trust is the new currency.”
Kenton explained that his database was formally segmented into four categories: 1) everyone you could be in a relationship with, 2) acquaintances, 3) relationships, and 4) the Inner Circle.
The Inner Circle is comprised of people who are committed to using his services and who are staunch advocates of him and his company. The goal of each contact is to move each prospect closer toward the Inner Circle.
“The more information we have about clients and potential clients,” Kenton said, “the better we can serve them. I like knowing their birthdays so I can surprise them with a call. I try to find out what wines and restaurants they like so I can send them gifts.”
In short, Kenton is masterful at relationships — which is the core of Hub Mentality.
I noted that several times in our conversation, Kenton spoke of the “discipline” that goes into building and managing a database.
“Every time I meet someone new, I ask them if I can keep in touch with them. I get as many contact details as possible. Then, I enter their information into my database as soon as I get back to the office.”
Kenton is a perfect example of focusing on the golden goose of long-term interaction over the golden eggs of one-time transactions. He’s a great example of what Hub Mentality can do for disciplined companies who legitimately care about people.
There are many ways that he and his company can harness technology better in their marketing efforts, but they’re head and shoulders above other companies because Hub Mentality is ingrained into their culture.
*****************************
Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.
He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.
Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.
Connect With Stephen:
Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com
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