Your professional brand determines your success as a commercial broker, so it’s important to build your brand thoughtfully. Your brand isn’t just social media posts, advertisements and mailings; your brand is how your clients, referral sources and lenders perceive you. In order to succeed, you must build a trusted and skilled professional brand. Certainly, your marketing plays a crucial role in this development, but there are other things you should consider.

Here’s what you need to do to build a successful professional brand:

Employ the human touch.

Social media, email campaigns and websites are all crucial elements when marketing your services. However, to build up your brand as a commercial broker, a human touch is required. Commercial mortgages aren’t always clean-cut and always require real interaction with your borrowers. Setting up phone or face-to-face meetings with clients goes a long way toward establishing you as a trustworthy broker who is willing to work with borrowers.

Learn from any mistakes or obstacles.

Issues are bound to crop up during the commercial lending process. It’s up to you as the commercial broker to handle any mistakes or problems in a way that will lead to a solution. If you can manage these obstacles in a way that builds your borrower’s confidence, you are building a positive brand.

Contact your leads directly.

Mortgage brokers receive commercial leads from various sources: social media channels, websites, referral sources and borrowers themselves. No matter how a lead comes to you, it’s important to pick up the phone and contact the lead directly in a timely manner. This will inspire a sense of trust in both your referral sources and borrowers.

Remember that you’re only as good as your lenders.

It’s important to keep in mind that the lenders you choose to work with will have an impact on your professional brand. Before deciding to work with a lender, you should discuss their products, their process, how they handle any problems that might arise throughout underwriting and processing of the loan, and how they handle customer service during the processing and after the loan has closed.

A strong professional brand is a key to success for any commercial mortgage broker. In order to succeed, your brand must foster a sense of trust and reliability. Employing the human touch, learning from mistakes and problems, contacting your leads directly, and choosing your lenders carefully are great habits that go a long way toward building your brand.

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