How he leverages a team and database to reach massive milestones.
“I could’ve easily sat on cruise control, but at the same time you rub shoulders with really big businesses and you go – challenge accepted.”
Daniel Zarkovic, director of Loan Market Narellan, is kicking major goals as a Loan Market broker and business owner. His recent achievements include being ranked 13th in MPA’s highly competitive Top 100 Brokers list for 2023 and earning Chairman’s Club status for FY24, a prestigious rank that acknowledges the top 1% of brokers in the Loan Market network.
His forward-thinking strategies for driving business, expanding his team, and cultivating strong relationships with his clients and referral partners highlight the growth opportunities available in the industry when you take the right approach.
“I’ve always been that broker that’s always trying to get referrals out of agents for years, and then I realised things have changed. If I had my time back, I would’ve been a lot more aggressive in prospecting data within the real estate offices I worked in.”
Dan and his team maximise their relationships with the real estate agents they work with, leveraging shared databases to drive their prospecting activity. He emphasises that it’s taken a lot of hard work to prove the value he and his team can add to a real estate office, and once the mutual respect is there, data is in abundance.
In the height of the global pandemic, Daniel couldn’t rely on referral partnerships in the same way as before, prompting the need to explore new opportunities for driving business revenue. A self-proclaimed game-changer for Daniel was leveraging the power of his database. By nurturing his existing contacts and cleaning and maintaining data, business started pouring in – converting leads and driving word-of-mouth referrals which is now Loan Market Narellan’s primary source of business.
“We had 2500 to 3000 contacts in our database, which is huge, and once we started calling we found that everyone’s happy to hear from you. You might get some anxiety about calling people after a year or two, but people want to hear from you. Calling puts you front of mind again.”
“You might not have called them for a few years, but then all of a sudden by saying hello you either help them or the next week when they’re having coffee with a friend, they go, oh hang on, my broker just called me, and then they refer you someone else randomly.”
The driving force behind Loan Market Narellan’s rapid and sustained growth is Daniel’s team of dedicated CSMs. By utilising their support, the business helped over 300 clients in FY24 with an impressive 94% approval-to-settlement conversion rate. Daniel credits the efficiency of the business’ application process to his team’s commitment to delivering great customer outcomes.
“I wish I hired people sooner. I can’t see people doing it alone anymore. You definitely need the help and you’ll notice the difference, it’ll free up your time to call your database and say hello when you need to.”
“You get so busy writing loans – but at the same time you’re neglecting referral partnerships and face-to-face time with clients. My vision for the future is to free up more of my time to eventually be like a BDM for my own business, to go out and maintain these referral partnerships and generate new ones.”
With an ambitious goal of settling $500M annually within the next 3 to 5 years and lodging 41 deals per month, Daniel is strategically investing in his future by leveraging Loan Market’s industry-leading marketing solutions to unlock new lead generation opportunities, having previously spent nothing on marketing. Additionally, he is dedicated to mentoring his CSMs, nurturing their development, and creating pathways for them to grow into successful brokers from within the business.
“I went to a conference with my peers earlier in the year and they talked about spending 10% of their revenue on marketing, and I haven’t spent a cent. So I’m excited to see what happens if I spend even 5% of revenue, I’d be able to grow brokers from within and feed them leads to convert.”
