Elite broker Justin Doobov on doubling loan volumes, finding the right staff, and what keeps him motivated year on year.
For Justin Doobov, perfection isn’t a goal – it’s the expectation.
As director of 2013 AMA Brokerage of the Year Intelligent Finance, Doobov says he accepts nothing less than perfect in his business – from his staff, in the service delivered to his clients and in his business processes.
Growing a team that can meet these high expectations has proven to be a substantial challenge, and Doobov says he follows a strict recruitment process.
“Some people joke that it’s like getting into NASA!” he says. “We have questionnaires, testing and personality quizzes for candidates to go through to get on board. The reason is that each time we have a new starter who doesn’t cut the mustard, we’ve looked at the characteristics that they lack or the characteristics that caused them to fail in certain aspects of the job – which allowed us to develop a filter for this in the future through testing that identifies those characteristics.”
And those characteristics don’t necessarily equate to experience, says Doobov. In fact, two of his senior staff didn’t even know what a mortgage broker was when he hired them.
“In the past we have found that we would hire experienced staff from other brokerages who expect high incomes and because our systems, processes and the way we do things are different to other brokers, we would be paying top dollar for a new candidate and then have to effectively say to them ‘Forget everything you know about broking, we will teach you our way from the ground up’.”
Perfect candidates don’t come along every day, says Doobov, so when they do it’s important to grab the opportunity.
“You have to go through a few candidates to find the diamond in the rough. You need to allocate the time to recruit staff. I’ve always hired people before I’ve actually needed them. People say I’m crazy for hiring where there is no position to fill, but if you find the right person with the right talent, the business will follow.”
And the business has followed, with Intelligent Finance doubling its loan volumes in recent months. A big part of this is thanks to an overhaul of business processes, says Doobov.
After years of rehashing old processes and applying ‘band-aids’ whenever something went wrong, Doobov recently made the call to redesign and start again from scratch.
While he was initially resistant to the change, Doobov says he is now a strong advocate of regularly reviewing processes “to see where you are simply plugging holes rather than removing the entire leak”.
“The change didn’t come from the top down, but was a collaboration from all the team members. The whole team owned the building process and we made sure that there was input from all levels of staff. This has helped us come up with a great way of doing things and also helped us be able to modify and improve our processes on the go. It is always a continual improvement.”
The transparency of these new processes also allows Intelligent Finance to easily pick up any errors, which helps to ensure clients receive the best possible service.
“We don’t accept mediocre. We only accept perfection. Our clients engage us to run a 400m race and if you only run 380m of that race you fail. Our intention is always to run a 410m race by over-delivering, which keeps our clients consistently happy.”
Being open to unusual and creative solutions for clients is one of the key differences that sets Intelligent Finance apart from the rest, says Doobov, and he regularly draws on his background in accounting, finance and engineering to come up with outside-the-box advice.
The real key to success, however, is truly loving what you do, he says.
“I don’t see this as a job. I see this as 80 per cent of the time I am spending time with people that I like, many clients who are my friends and many clients who have become my friends over the years… To see the smile on their face and the sense of satisfaction I get when we achieve something that the client thought was not possible, pushes me that extra mile and that extra energy and enthusiasm is what motivates me.”
