Forget the sizzle, it’s the steak that matters – even in mortgages

You’re probably aware of the selling adage that businesses should ‘sell the sizzle not the steak’.

This relates to the premise that customers respond to benefits not features and as such you should talk about not what a product does but rather what it can do for you.

In the mortgage and house buying sector this focus on the sizzle is pretty strong and potential borrowers are often pushed to look beyond bricks and mortar to what ownership will mean to them.

Young couples are encouraged to picture not merely a house for sale but a place to raise their family, and first-time investors will envisage their first buy-to-let not as a 25-year debt but as a step towards a future property empire.

There are countless examples of financial products being sold on the back of the lifestyle it will provide and the glitz and excitement of the ‘benefits’ to be gained. You’d be forgiven for thinking that adverts sometimes seemingly ignore or gloss over the myriad conditions to be met in order to qualify for such products.

In a similar vein another well-worn adage we’re using to hearing is that ‘people buy houses not mortgages’. Equally true, and for most a mortgage is an annoying but inevitable necessity (pending that lottery win) and not a goal in itself.

The real job, or the steak if you will, is in actually turning the dream into a reality. That’s where the broker adds value and, with due deference to those fans of the sizzle, we’re all about the steak here at Knowledge Bank.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that brokers are the killjoys of the house buying process and lack panache in any way but, let’s face it, if we don’t do our job properly and match borrowers with lenders then clients are left with sizzle but no substance.

Our job is securing the right loan for our client which is the most crucial element and the ‘meat’ of the deal. In order to make borrowing dreams a reality it means getting to the heart of the advice process and finding out quickly and easily which mortgages are genuinely available to which clients.

We currently hold over 90,000 pieces of criteria from over two hundred lenders, which change on a daily basis, so the universe of options is broader than ever before. Couple that with the needs of borrowers who have an ever increasing and diverse set of circumstances and the scale of the task comes into focus.

Furthermore, our figures show that on average brokers search on five different criteria categories per client so getting to the meat of the options is more onerous than ever.

As mortgage professionals we understand the challenge of the mortgage advice process but we should appreciate and accept that borrowers’ minds are focused elsewhere. Understandably perhaps, they are more concerned with what colour to paint the new kitchen not whether a series of rejected mortgage applications will result in their dream house being snapped up by a rival borrower.

That’s the power we have to actually deliver results and that’s why it’s imperative that brokers are able to match their clients to the myriad criteria conditions before they even start the application process. The sizzle may have got them to your office but the real work is in delivering the steak!

On a final note you may be interested to know that the ‘sizzle’ quote wasn’t from the decadent ‘greed is good’ decade of the 80s with red braced salesmen driving convertible Porsches but from an American salesman extraordinaire Elmer Wheeler in 1937. So, salespeople have been selling the sizzle for over 80 years leaving someone else to make sure the steak is up to scratch!