I love always to reflect about tested principles.  What I mean is when you watch the News is all about the gossip of today, what tragedy has happened in the last 24 hours and it my humble view, it leaves you empty, fearful and has no real benefit to you.

On the other hand, I love tested principles, that last over time, like this one from the Dalai Lama:

To help us bring benefit to others through our words and actions, it is useful to cultivate an attitude of sympathetic joy in others’ achievements and good fortune. This attitude is a powerful antidote against envy, which is not only a source of unnecessary suffering on the individual level but also an obstacle to our ability to reach out and engage with others.

Horizontal marketing isn’t a new idea

by Seth Godin

I am always making time to read a book.  Not only relaxes me daily but it shifts my thinking from the urgent of today to the important of a lifetime.  This is an idea I got to add value in my field of work:

To Request your Mortgage Letter: Mortgage Letter Request Form

If you find this idea useful please like my facebook page: http://facebook.com/MortgageLetter

How weird are we?

By Harvey Mackay

For years I have been promoting the concept that you must “humanize your selling strategy.”  The short explanation for this plan is that you must match your sales approach to the individual or company who will buy your product.  How will it benefit them?

Let’s use envelopes as an example. What sets your very ordinary product apart from all the other envelopes that your customers can choose from?  Your selling strategy.  How you sell.  The relationships you have built with the buyers.  The pricing, quality and delivery that you are able to promise, and then the follow through.  Because you’re not just selling envelopes.  You are selling a person.

That strategy has been my ace in the hole for my entire selling career.  And no matter how much the customers change, the formula continues to work.

Seth Godin
I just finished reading Seth Godin’s fascinating new book that reinforces my thinking.  Starting with the curious title, We Are All Weird, I was taken with his observations.  Godin says that “human beings prefer to organize in tribes, into groups of people who share a leader or a culture or a definition of normal.  And the digital revolution has enabled and amplified these tribes . . . who respect and admire and support choices that outsiders happily consider weird, but that those of us in the tribe realize are normal (our normal).

“My argument is that the choice to push all of us toward a universal normal merely to sell more junk to the masses is both inefficient and wrong.  The opportunity of our time is to support the weird, to sell to the weird and, if you wish, to become weird.”

He explains that years ago, mass-marketing led to greater profits, that specializing or acceding to choices was not necessary because producers could make more money from “forced compliance and social pressure.”

Godin cites a statistic that in 1918 there were 2000 car companies active in the United States.  You may recall that Henry Ford’s production line process changed car manufacturing forever.  And he’s rumored to have said that a customer could have a car in any color, as long as it was black.  Was that the beginning of mass marketing?

On the contrary, years later Microsoft “knew that every single company in the Fortune 500 was using their software, usually on every single personal computer and server in the company.”

With that sort of success, Godin asks, “Is it any wonder that market-leading organizations fear the weird?”

Godin predicts the end of “mass” as we know it.  And he says that may make you uncomfortable if your work “revolves around finding the masses, creating for the masses, or selling to the masses.”

Rather than seeing this change as a threat, he says it is the opportunity of a lifetime.  “The way of the world is now more information, more choice, more freedom, and more interaction.  And yes, more weird.”

I can certainly relate to Godin’s premises.  My customers are not the folks who buy plain old #10 envelopes.  They need all sorts of specialized products that they can’t find at the mega-office supply store.  I would not characterize them as weird, but we see each account as having specific requests and needs that we can fill better than any other company.

Our company motto is “To be in business forever.”  We can’t accomplish that if we refuse to accommodate the specific, unique and occasionally weird orders that we receive.  Because if we don’t do it, someone else will.  And we are happy to take customers from other envelope manufacturers who don’t appreciate the “weird.”

So let’s go back to humanizing your selling strategy.  Whether you are selling face-to-face or through a website, your customer has to feel like their business is your most important account.  Do you know enough about them, about their lives outside their work, about why they buy from you rather than another vendor?  Do you tailor your sales presentation to address those needs?  Can they trust that you aren’t just all talk?

Will this trend put mass marketers out of business?  Probably not, but small businesses should pay particular attention to this phenomenon, because they can most easily adapt to selling to the “weird.”  Call it what you want, but Seth Godin makes being “weird” the new normal.

Mackay’s Moral:  If you can’t be all things to all people, aim to be all things to some people.

Post thanks to Harvey Mackay

The honest broker

All across the country, mortgage specialists and brokers are busy fielding calls from people who’ve just heard about this week’s news about record low mortgage rates. Is it worth your while to try to break your current mortgage to get in on the new deals?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/01/13/f-mortgage-rates-record-low.html

Please watch the video to understand what is behind the low mortgage rates.

From Canadian Mortgage Trends

2 Out of 3 Don’t Shop at Renewal

More specifically:

• 20% stayed with their current lender after maturity and did not negotiate
• 45% stayed with their current lender and tried to negotiate a good deal, but did not shop around
• 35% compared mortgages from several lenders and choose the best overall lender and product.

The youngest group (ages 30-39) was most likely to shop around (41%), but was also most likely to
accept their current lender’s offer without negotiating (24%).

We asked Doug Conick, President & CEO of Manulife Bank, why on earth people would give so much power to their lender.

“Most people lead very busy lives and may not have the time or expertise to fully investigate their options,” he said.

“Through our debt survey we’ve found that only about 3 out of 10 Canadians work with a financial adviser to manage their debt more effectively.”

“With busy lives and a lack of advice for most, this decision often gets left until very close to the renewal date, causing borrowers to follow the path of least resistance and renew with their current lender.”

“The unfortunate thing,” he added, “is that this could end up costing them a lot of extra money and keep them in debt longer than they need to be.”

That’s for sure.

In our experience, people who auto-renew often pay 1/2%-3/4% more than necessary, or worse! In fact, we’ve seen innumerable people sign renewal letters at their bank’s “special offer” rate, which is usually well above the market. (Example: Today’s 5-year fixed “special offer” bank rates are 3.94% to 4.09%. That’s up to 80 basis points above competitive rates on the street.)

Even a 1/4% rate difference amounts to over $4,000 more in interest over five years, on a $200,000 mortgage with a 20-year amortization. That’s money that could normally go towards prepaying a fat chunk of principal.

It’s hard to fathom why anyone would let a lender pick their pocket like this. At the very least, folks must find it within their strength to lift up the phone and call an independent mortgage planner.

Even if you’d rather stay with your current lender at renewal, seek out a second opinion. You absolutely owe it to yourself to keep your lender honest by surveying the market.

Of course, this all begs the question of why someone would ever want to deal exclusively with a lender that aims to maximize the interest they pay…but that’s a story for another day.

Sidebar: The report also confirmed, yet again, the various studies which show that people underutilize their prepayment privileges.

In the last year, out of respondents with a mortgage, 70% did not make any extra payments.

By far, the most common reason cited for not making an extra mortgage payment was “a lack of extra money.”

Survey Details: The Manulife Bank of Canada polled 1,000 Canadian homeowners between ages 30 to 59 with household income of more than $50,000. The survey was conducted online by Research House between October 25 and November 7, 2011. In a similarly-sized random sample survey, the margin of error would be plus or minus 3.10% at a 95% confidence level. Here’s the full survey. 1112-Q4-Renewals-Manulife

I have been recently asking this question myself.  I know most of you value the fact that I can go to different banks and lenders and give you options and solutions.  In my mind no one bank (Ex. CIBC or BMO etc) will come to you and let you know TD or Scotia or RBC has a better mortgage, so working with a broker makes sense.

But how to compete with banks? One of the best answers to this is:  Helping homeowners save money, reduce their interest expense and lower their mortgage payments…

I just got one solid idea… Banks will review your mortgage only when you approach them, ex. when you buy, you refinance or you renew your mortgage…. but what about when you can save money, reduce your payment and interest?  Would they approach you?

In my research, they would not approach you as they have your business already…  Their main concern is that you keep making the payments… Please take the time to help me understand if you’d like an online place or notifications where you can better manage your mortgage… it will take you less than 1 minute…

Click Here and help Camilo

Posted by Camilo Rodriguez