The Bridging Timeline Trap
As a bridging specialist – do any of the following apply to you?
- You are too reliant on referrals and recommendations for the majority of your best quality enquiries.
- Although intermediary volume is higher the quality is lower. The undeniable fact is the occasional good intermediary deal hides the true extent of the problem.
- If you’ve experienced being too late to effectively influence a deal… and lost the deal to a ‘competitor’… even though you know the client would have received a better deal or experience from you…
…then you’ve directly experienced the pain of the Bridging Timeline Trap.
- Filtering the poorer quality enquiries from intermediaries/introducers takes more time, input and resources – yet produces significantly fewer deals and less income compared to referrals.
- You’ve consistently tried to improve the quality of intermediary business (through education, incentives, etc) but the needle refuses to move meaningfully, in terms of consistently producing high quality enquiries.
- Yet you 100% know, if you could get proportionately more high quality enquiries (from ANY source) it would significantly increase your growth.
- Over time, you have invested in the foundations of your company, and have the quality of people, systems, experience and resources to grow your business… but cannot get growth to the level where you know it could reach.
- This means the timing of when an enquiry hits you is structurally rigged against being the best quality and the highest intent.
Paradoxically, the best bridging firms are the ones that are most trapped into referral dependence, along with the issues surrounding intermediaries.
The ‘Bridging Timeline Trap’ explains the reasons why.
Here’s the thing…
The traditional entry approach for most bridging enquiries (see above) is at the point of the most competition, and resistance. This is the trap.
It’s why every good firm prefers a referral, but the big problem with referrals is they are passive. You are not in control of the quantity. This means by their very nature they are inconsistent. The only thing consistent about referrals is you are not in control and lead to a feast or famine of enquiries – meaning you cannot rely on referrals for consistent growth.
So getting more direct business is a challenge all credible brokers and lenders have experienced and will continue to experience on an ongoing basis.
The challenge is how do you get to engage with developers to influence deals as they are developing?
Smart and established lenders/brokers have tried various options.
These include the education of brokers – so they are more aware of products and nuances of how to really help developers. It’s a wise move to have more educated intermediaries – it raises the standards of the whole industry – but the fact is – you can’t educate your way out of a TIMING problem.
Another way of trying to attract better quality direct deals has been to write quality articles about the state of the industry and best practices. Again hugely useful in terms of authority but the fact is you are also educating your competitors.
The even harsher truth is your target market (investors/developers) are engaging elsewhere in very different conversations. The developer looking to finance a £4million deal is looking at very different content and nobody in bridging is there.
The question then becomes how do you get involved in the right conversations with the right people at the right time… all while enhancing your credibility and reputation and avoiding the ‘bear pit’?
Andy Frain https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyfrainkroconsultancy/
Specialist Bridging is an arm of KRO Consultancy
5 Brayford Square, London. E1 0SG
Tel: 020 362 70468