South Australian agent Nieuvision has united in-house schooling and small business coach training to aid its new-to-industry brokers during the first year on the job.
The firm has packaged its own knowledge that arrives in an educational and finance history and interwoven this with practical 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’re doing is compiling all of the experts in their companies with their own wisdom and offering affordable web design to assist their agents get up and running. 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, he has been able to meet a wonderful deal of mortgage brokers over time. “I’ve seen issues with mortgage brokers — they have articulated them to me, ” he said.
The FBAA and the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) have done a whole lot of research. The 
greatest issue in the company is new agents and the way they shed quickly. If my business can provide some additional support mechanisms to agents wanting to come into the market and leverage from our experience, the business will be better for it.
Nieuvision’s latest group comprises three mortgage brokers along with Nieuwenhoven himself. All have benefited from the corporation’s small business coaching and learning programs. The system’s been great. Nick and Andy are going great guns and Steve’s construction well here. I myself was writing great volumes before I took over a more managerial role in the business as CEO. It’s a amazing fundamental base system.
For a great deal of agents entering the business, the step was the first on an entirely new career path, Nieuwenhoven said. 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 industry are ‘make or break’ for new representatives as they struggle to know exactly how the company works, the processes involved, media, etc, he said. If we could fast-track this with online tips about website design, it makes it much more achievable for people to hit goals a good deal sooner and make some revenue.
While training is all done in a traditional way, the business has plans for an integrated system encompassing a choice of training and mentoring benefits to be accessed anywhere at any time.
A flaw in lots of broker training programs is too little emphasis on the business component of being a mortgage broker, Nieuwenhoven stated. 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 aid agents achieve success in the business has been a means to come back to agents and the business, he said.
