A strong brand presence and a great community reputation help brokerages to succeed, says an award-winning Brisbane mortgage broker
Melissa Wright (pictured above), director of Zest Mortgage Solutions, said when she was building her business, she wanted to focus on creating a brand that locals could trust.
“I invested time and energy into building relationships through charity events, community groups and building a brand that the local community would recognise,” Wright said.
“We are now at the point where our brand carries us forward, so instead of me going to seek business from accountants or planners, I have people contacting me saying we have heard about you and can we refer your business. Building a brand and a good reputation is so important in this industry.”
Wright won the Young Professional Award at the MFAA National Excellence Awards in July.
She said the recognition of all the hard work that she and her team had put in to get her brokerage to where it was today was worth it.
“The award win really helps cement that we are doing something right and we are doing it well,” Wright said. “It has been an awesome year for my team and I – we are absolutely over the moon with the win.”
Wright worked in banking for almost 10 years with the Commonwealth Bank, Heritage Bank and NAB before taking the plunge into the world of broking in 2016.
“The opportunity to become a broker allowed me to provide extra support to my clients in the manner that I wanted to,” she said. “I have worked in banking and finance since I left school … when you work for corporate and work for banking, you're very much told how to do your job, how to speak to clients, how to manage clients, so you are very restricted by what you can do and support you can provide.”
As a broker, Wright said she would always ask a client to provide feedback or reviews.
“This helps build a reliable and relatable client base along with a good word-of-mouth presence in the community,” she said. “I wanted to identify early on what my client base would be and ensure that I was the sort of person that my clients would want to work with. We are very family oriented. We work with your mum-and-dad clients. That is our space and we know that is our space.”
Wright launched her own brokerage in Brisbane in November 2019 with a focus on residential broking.
“I know that I can’t be a Jack of all trades, so my team and I specialise in the residential and commercial space and we do that very well,” she said.
“I have five support staff and I am currently the only broker in the business. We are in the process of promoting one of my staff to be a loan writer which is very exciting, as well as recruiting another staff member or two. I have the most amazing team and I am very grateful.”
