Tactical Agent - Real Estate Coach In a Box

Mastering Client Relationships to Boost Business - Atif Muhammad

• Scott Ziegler • Episode 4

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What if you could transform your business by simply optimizing your processes? Tune in as we chat with the innovative Atif Muhammad, a mortgage broker who left big banks behind to create his own success with Atlas Mortgage Group. Atif takes us through his captivating journey, revealing the secrets behind his thriving brokerage in Regina, Saskatchewan. His insights are invaluable for anyone looking to improve client onboarding and the overall client experience. Adav's emphasis on client-centric service not only builds loyalty but also efficiently scales a business without overwhelming its owner.

In this episode, we promise a deep dive into the world of automation and systems that can revolutionize your business operations. From leveraging BombBomb’s educational video emails to the intuitive scheduling power of Calendly, Atif shares actionable strategies that enhance client relationships while simplifying workflows. Discover how foundational tools like Zoho CRM, MailChimp, Twilio, and Zapier can elevate your productivity and ensure seamless communication, even when key team members are not around. We also cover the importance of standard operating procedures and strategic team meetings that prioritize company growth over mundane tasks. Get ready to unlock insights that can propel your business to new heights.

• Understanding the importance of a structured client journey
• Steps to enhance customer service without lengthy hours
• Utilizing automation tools to streamline communication
• Effective team dynamics and leadership strategies
• Engaging clients through consistent education and updates

Be sure to follow Atif Muhammad on all social media sites and register for the superstar summit in March 2025 where yours truly will be presenting on stage.

Follow Atif on instagram here 
Email him for all your mortgage needs 
atif@atlasmortgagegroup.ca

For more information or to connect directly with Scott visit www.tacticalagent.ca. Also follow and send Scott a Dm on INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK OR LINKEDIN. Scott is also active on TIKTOK and YOUTUBE.

If you're currently stuck in your business and need advice, looking for mentorship or want a FREE coaching session contact Scott at the links above or send him an email at scottzrealtor@gmail.com


Speaker 1:

So you call yourself an entrepreneur. Are you really a business owner or are you just an employee? Do you have processes and systems in place to scale your business and free up your time? On today's episode we have Adav Mohamed, mortgage broker out of Regina. He walks us step-by-step through his client journey, some of the software and some of the systems that he uses to scale his business. It's an amazing episode. So set your speed to 1.5 or 2x and let's get tactical software and some of the systems that he uses to scale his business. It's an amazing episode. So set your speed to 1.5 or 2x and let's get tactical.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Tactical Agent, your real estate coach, in a box. I'm your host, scott Ziegler, and if you're looking for no nonsense, straight to the point real estate training, you're in the right place. Each episode we'll dive into expert interviews and break down step-by-step strategies you can start using right away to level up your real estate game. No fluff, no filler, just real world advice and practical tools to help you succeed. So get ready. This is where agents come to get tactical, tactical. Welcome everyone, so glad to have you with us on the podcast. Today we have a guest out of Regina, saskatchewan, adav Mohamed. He is a mortgage specialist, a team leader and a entrepreneur that I admire a lot based on what I see in his work ethic, and I'm excited to get into some of that today.

Speaker 2:

Adav, welcome to the podcast to getting into some of that today. Adaf, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, scott. That was a good introduction man. You know I should introduce you to my wife sometime. Amazing, actually. I love your work. I've been watching you for so long and you're the one of the account I follow and I actually listen and watch every single video, so you've done an amazing job.

Speaker 1:

Iron sharpens iron, so I appreciate that, oh thank you so much so, just uh, just as a brief introduction out of um, as I mentioned, you're a mortgage broker, you run a team. Um, maybe just give us a little bit of a uh you know snapshot of who you are and why people should listen to you today yes, so first I'm a father.

Speaker 2:

Uh, that's like me first. My daughter comes first before anything else. So I have a daughter. She's 13 months old. I'm a husband, amazing wife. I love her. Without her, what she has done I wouldn't be eight years. I did mortgages with them for like a year and a half and then I found that again, nothing against the big banks. I love big banks, I still work with them too, but I wasn't able to provide service and wasn't able to help clients in so many different ways and left the bank came to this side as a brokerage channel, for it's been 2019. So yeah, five years, a solo agent for three years, three and a half left. Now I own Atlas Mortgage Group. We are almost 12 agents in the team. We are in Saskatchewan, alberta and Ontario.

Speaker 1:

Awesome and you know I've watched your success. I've watched you build this team, and nobody builds a team Nobody, you know expands into other provinces without providing good service, and one of the things we're going to talk about today is your. You know, your your onboarding or your you know your client journey process and I wonder if you can sort of take us through that and obviously this will be from a perspective of a mortgage broker, but I think that you know any real estate agents or or even just entrepreneurs that are going to be listening to this can have some key takeaways on how you actually start to finish process your clients and um, which obviously drives your success. So tell us a bit more about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one of the things is, scott, I tell everybody mortgage broker, realtors, we're all the owners of a business that we run. We have a business that we run. That's what we do. Now we can run businesses different ways where you can get up every single day and work 12, 14 hours a day. Some people have systems in business where they don't do that much that many hours. Some people have people running the business so they don't even work or they work, but they work not that many hours. Right, running the business, so they don't even work or they work, but they work not that many hours. So I call myself as a business owner. That's what I am mortgage broker after. Because every time I want to look at something, I look at what if I'm not there? Can that happen without me being involved?

Speaker 2:

So the reason I say client journey is one of the most important is that's where our clients feel welcome and they come to us and they find so much value that they don't even pick up their phone and call someone else or go online and look at the rates online. Why? Because we've given them such a good value. So the reason I'm so proud of my client journey is I sat down. I locked myself for four months and I was like I'm gonna create a client journey where every stage that when the client walks into my door to leave my door, not even that after that, for for lifetime, they will get some value from me, right? So give you example if somebody comes to us a pre approval, we'll make sure in our client journey we have a set up where they get the budget sheet they'll get okay.

Speaker 2:

What's going to happen next stage, when things not to do? And the thing is you'd be like, but that's so common, everybody can do it. But do people do that if they're busy? And if I ask you, if you have 50 clients and you're dealing with them every month, are you going to be providing service to every single one of them the same way? And the answer will be no, unless you have a system and people or people who's running a system. So you know, I always say that to people. So the reason is anybody who's listening? Client journey is so important to make your clients feel welcome, but we don't want to put too many hours because we have so many other clients to take care of. So we have automation set up in every single stage, from the clients walking to our door Right now. We just started something that's called Strategy of the Week. Every Friday, I send out a video to my client. They got mortgage from me or they didn't, doesn't matter, but they'll get email from me teaching them something.

Speaker 1:

Right, and so I know we're going to get into sort of systems and software in a second. But can you give us or I mean if you're able to sort of you know point form, because obviously you don't need to go through every every you know step of it, but you know, from the moment you get a referral or an email can you kind of just give us a snapshot of what that might look like for you as far as how you communicate with them and how you move them along that path?

Speaker 2:

I push everybody to our emails and the reason is because I want my clients to. First of all, we have a calendar link. That is so important to have that. But the reason I do it is because I want my client to watch a one minute video, every single one. I want them to know who I am before we just start working right.

Speaker 2:

So what I do is if, let's say, if you call me, hey, if I'm looking for a mortgage, I'm like, oh perfect, thank you for calling me, scott. And then I'll ask you where you got my number from and the first thing I'll do Scott, do you have your? Can you just send me an email address and what I'm going to do? I'm going to send you an introduction video, that video and then there's a calendar link where you can click and book anytime. That works.

Speaker 2:

There's a video of one minute I would love you to watch that. It just talks about me and there's at the bottom there's some Google reviews that you can actually look through if you want. But I'm super excited to help you with my client journey. The reason I do it is because I'm not on the phone looking for the time with my client when to book it. I'm actually taking time on Zoom to explain my clients everything they need to know when it comes to a mortgage Right. Instead of rushing it, taking application through the phone, I pushed everybody to my that intro email and then I let them book a time that works for them.

Speaker 1:

And do you find that most of your client interactions, or at least the initial ones, are done via Zoom?

Speaker 2:

Every single one. Okay, you don't do a Zoom with me, I don't proceed further now, if you're calling me like atif, I'm looking for a mortgage, I'm losing my deposit and you know I need two days. Sure, I'll do it, because that's something that I'll do a favor, but everybody goes through, because I want to get to know who scott is no, you know, I really like that because the the picture that I have in my head is just the word that comes is professional.

Speaker 1:

You know you're not just run and gun, and I know that. You know, even for myself as a realtor. You know our businesses are symbiotic but they're also a little bit different. As far as you know, we're more in the field versus, you know, one-on-one on Zoom. But I love the fact that you have like, hey, if you want to work with me, these are the steps we push you to the Zoom. We have that discovery call. It also, I think, shows commitment on the client side to say, hey, I've watched the video, I've booked the link, I've attended the call and what ends up happening is now you've solidified that relationship. As you said, why would they go talk to somebody else when they've now committed three or four steps and a discovery call? So I like that a lot. To me. That just screams professional. And then, from the discovery call, obviously, you then proceed with the collection of documents or offers and working with their agent Once they lock down a property. What does that kind of client follow-up look like once they're under contract?

Speaker 2:

We're really aggressive on that. And the reason I say really aggressive is if Scott gives me a live deal for his client, I want Scott to have a coffee like this, like drinking right now, and not stressed. If there's a time that Scott calls me and says Atif, what's the update? I've missed something. So the reason I took you to that path because that's where I had to sit down and understand what are the steps I need to look at. So when the deal goes live, you will get three text messages as a realtor from me.

Speaker 2:

The clients get about seven different emails updating different things. Everything is a value, nothing is just going out. But we will talk about deals get approved. But there's condition. So you'll get a text message saying hey, scott, deals look really good. We have an answer there with a positive, but we're still waiting for a couple of things. So we don't say too much to realtors or partners because we don't know if clients are okay or not. But then we want our clients to understand that okay, you know what Things. But then we want our clients to understand that, okay, you know what Things looking good, let's jump on In a day. If we don't give any update to one of you guys. Then it goes to a red. It's like, basically we have like a thing in our CRM and then we have to give some kind of update to Scott right. So now every stage from there is about 12 stages. I have all the way to funded from live deal that gives update, different stages.

Speaker 1:

No, again. The word professional just came to mind and I think that for anybody listening realtor, mortgage broker, entrepreneur I think that we leave way too much and I'm literally speaking to myself when I say this I think we just leave way too much to a jotted down note, literally speaking to myself when I say this I think we just leave way too much to a jotted down note memory. You know a reminder app, you know something like that where you know we're on the fly, we'll get to that later and I really appreciate you know, not only from the, you know from the realtor side when I know that my deal is hinging upon you doing your job and getting those updates. But, um, you know I appreciate that that there are things that, as professionals, that we should be doing to make our businesses actual businesses. You know, we're not just not just running around like chickens with their head cut off and and you know the market gets busy sometimes and you got to do that.

Speaker 1:

But uh, no, I think, uh, I think that that's super, super professional of you and you said something. So I want to, I want to dig a little bit deeper and this is probably what I'm most excited about. You know talking about your systems and your processes and you know some of the software and tools that you use, but you said that you kind of locked yourself away for four months and really broke down. You know the journey of the client, you know the tools that you can use and I wonder if you could maybe just talk about that for a second.

Speaker 1:

Or you know, to the realtor or to the mortgage broker or entrepreneur, listening, what did that process look like for you? Like, was it kind of just, you know, brain dump and then start to piece those things back together? Did you use like some chat GBT to kind of brainstorm with you? Because I think that agents and business people oftentimes were so in the deal, whatever that deal might look like that we don't have time to step back and say, okay, how do I figure all this out and streamline my process? So what did that look like? That we don't have time to step back and say, okay, how do I figure all this out and streamline my process. So what did that look like for you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the thing about, like you know, running a business, you have to understand the pain points on your business, right, like what is the things that you need to fix, that you're not doing it. But you have to be realistic to yourself means like, can I fix it? Or in our mind we always say, oh, that happened, but why did that happen? But I need to have a system. So now we have two text messages that goes out to our client saying, hey, call the call the lawyer right now, call the lawyer now, 10 days before. So now they're in urgent calling the lawyer making sure. Okay, I need to meet you before. I'm not going to stay till two days before possession because you know what? What if the things don't work out on time right. So now what I did.

Speaker 2:

When I locked myself, I started understanding okay, from the deal coming in, right, the deal leaving my door means like leads come in, stays the deals when you're doing approval, now funding, after what stages should I add? And what software? So I'll tell everybody. I'm like open book, I teach everybody what I do. I have BombBomb that I use every client that walks into my door. And what is BombBomb does is I have automation created that. Every client that comes to my door I want to teach them something. So what happens is for one year they get one video from me to their inbox teaching them something about mortgage. So that's the automation I already set up. Now that's BombBomb. So every time now I do a pre-approval I feel good because I know for one year they're getting something from me.

Speaker 1:

So, if I can, if I can jump in there for a second, so your your bomb. Bomb automation are those pre-recorded emails that are set to go out, or it's. Or you, you record the email this wednesday and it goes out on on the friday so that's with any deal that comes in, there's a pre-recorded videos.

Speaker 2:

That was done about like again long time ago, but yeah, that was my first step that I added in mind like eight months ago. But now every time clients come in they get that video for one year and it goes out every. Every one month it goes out.

Speaker 1:

So it's like a, like a drip campaign that goes out exactly, okay, okay so now I can teach my client.

Speaker 2:

Do you know the difference between deposit and down payment, right, right. Do you know the difference between fixed and variable? Right, again, I am doing a pre-approval and I'm doing other things, like you know, but nothing wrong with just sending them a reminder in their email, right, right?

Speaker 1:

And from the realtor side of things, where I think that those video emails go a long, long way. Obviously it's building rapport, but I do all of my market evaluations through a screen record on BombBomb where I walk them through the photos, all the different listings, so that when I get there to talk about price they already know exactly what I think the price is, how I came up with the price and now hopefully it's just a short conversation. So bomb bomb email video marketing is super, super powerful. I don't think hardly anybody does it, so that's a great piece of advice. You had mentioned Calendly as well. It's something that I've started to implement more. But how have you found that piece to sort of streamline your, your availability, or getting a bunch of random calls and random texts and and versus, just hey, we have a set time, let's let's go for it so now you like.

Speaker 2:

You know people always ask me. They're like oh, but if you send out link, people want to talk to you right now. I don't have time right now. My day is preset with the people who want to. If you can give me 30 minutes of your time, maybe we shouldn't work Right? What I mean by that is I push everybody through my Calendly because I work with my schedule every day. So now I push everybody to Calendly because two things. One, I have my fixed schedule and fixed time that I do every day. Second is I want to be sitting in a place where I can teach you everything when it comes to real estate.

Speaker 1:

I like that and I know a couple of agents that use Calendly the same way you do. It's like oh, you want to see a house, here's my availability. Oh, you want to meet for a listing appointment, here's my availability. So I like that a lot. What else are you using in the background for tools and systems? I heard you say that you had some assistants. Are they local, are they virtual or what does that look like?

Speaker 2:

oh no, they're all local. We have like one office that three of us sits and, uh, just do deals every day. That's all we do. But um, for what I did first is I created a system right, basic system and stuff. Then I hired help. Now they run my system in the back, so when we're going through deals.

Speaker 2:

When they move the stages, that goes out to my client. So right now for live deals, we use this called zoho and we added text message in there and I think the company called twilio, twilio, something like that. Um, and then now again when I was adding text message, I'm like my client's gonna be upset their text message coming from one 800 number. We have sent out more than 300 clients. Not even one client told me why this number is texting me then. Then email comes back to me and I'm like, wow, they're not even just liking the text message service they're getting, they're actually. But now we can say the same thing.

Speaker 2:

Why don't you just pick up your phone and do all those things again? Is there's so many things you can do in a day? Right, I still want my people to feel relaxing hey, deal deal has submitted and stuff like that. So live deals we do a it's called a Zoho CRM and then after that we use MailChimp. Mailchimp is our like marketing, like you know, hub, where we do everything in using MailChimp, um, because I find that people can unsubscribe, because I'm like all about giving value, but again there's, people don't want to see me every week, so MailChimp does a really good job of people want to unsubscribe or like they don't want to see the emails again and things like that, but all people want to engage back. It does a really really good template stuff.

Speaker 1:

So you use MailChimp as your CRM and as your weekly newsletter, and then you connect your BombBomb account to that as well.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, so how it works is it's called Zapier. It is so tough to work with that. I've always paid somebody to do it. But when I send out that email and people book a time with me through Calendly that timing the booking, the email goes right away to those three platforms. So now I don't have to go and enter emails in BombBomb, zoho or MailChimp. That email would throw people in there.

Speaker 1:

For anybody listening, zapier is kind of a website. It's like if this happens, then that happens. So when, when adif gets a, a booking, zapier triggers this, that and the other thing to happen. And I would I would encourage everybody go to go to youtube, just google zapier.

Speaker 1:

Um, I'm looking at implementing it in my business as well and I I think that linking all these little things will make a big difference. And the other thing I think out of you know, maybe corroborate this or correct me if I'm wrong is that I think and I'm going to bring it back to what we talked about I think agents just really need to spend some time, turn their phone off, spend just an hour and just think, think about what could this look like, what tasks don't I have to do, what tasks could I push off to somebody else and what sops can I write? I have a business partner here in the city who's all about sops. Um does a fantastic job with those and I think that as things grow, those sops become so important because you can. You can duplicate yourself by passing off those tasks to zapier, to assistants, so that you can eat, like you said, become a father or um, just get more work done in a day and you again.

Speaker 2:

If I take you, like again, if you, if I take you out of scott from the system, can your system runs without you, right? So what I'm trying to say is, if I don't answer my call and my team does it for now which I still love doing the first call, but let's just say we talked about in my team I said like look what if I'm sick for three, four days, do I push my deals? I won't why, because I have two um people that's sitting in there. They can take one of the call and be like you know I'll be sick, but I'm going to take you through and they will still get the same service they have to because it's a system right, Like if the system you're taking the through the system, they all will get the same service.

Speaker 2:

They will get the same videos, the same updates, without me even being involved.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and, and, and, and. As we wrap up here, take us through. You know, briefly, how you like. You've mentioned your team a couple of times. You've mentioned the different people you've hired for different roles. How do you, you know, motivate your team, structure your team and lead your, your team? You know as a, as a team leader, as a business owner so that's again.

Speaker 2:

That's where getting coached from other coaches help, because I bring so much value to my team. But we have a monday meeting that we do every single Monday. If you don't come to my Monday meetings for three weeks, you're not in the team. That's just me. So I will basically let you go, because if I don't bring enough value for you to give me an hour to a week, just don't be in the team. So that's the first thing that I added. That was last year and then since then, when we basically come on that call for one hour, we don't talk about mortgages. We talk about how to grow a business. We'll talk about strategies, we'll talk about tactics, we'll talk about how to actually run a business. So the way to actually tell people, hey, do these things, no, you've got to show them how this thing's done. Now they have fire or they don't, because not everybody is going to be the same way. So I've learned that, but I hire, or they don't, because not everybody is going to be the same way so I've learned that.

Speaker 1:

But I want everybody to be at the same place in the same time, so now I tease them. Hey, you want to do it? No, if you don't, that's okay, let's hire someone. I want to be on the next call anytime. Send me the link.

Speaker 2:

Make sure you're on the calls after that three mondays or I'm gonna have to let you go no, man, I appreciate that.

Speaker 1:

That's great advice. I I think and I hope that anybody that listens to this episode, you know again, is picking up that we have to run our businesses like businesses. We have to seek out people that can teach us how to do that. We need to seek out software that can teach us how to do that. And and you know, you've kind of hinted at this a couple of times, but it's not to be, it's not to, it's actually to provide better services, actually to make our client's journey easier. We think that if we're not handling every aspect, that they won't appreciate that, but I think that you've, you've really shown us that that's. That's not the case. Before we wrap up here, for any of the local Saskatchewan realtors or mortgage brokers that are listening, you do a. Yes, it's called Superstar Summit. Superstar Summit in March. Tell us a little bit about that and also tell us where people can, because I think people should follow you on social. So tell us about the Superstar Summit when it is where people can find information and where people can find you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we do it once a year. We started two years ago and now what I do? I bring all the local realtors to come and speak for the other realtors. So we're trying to grow to Regina and Saskatchewan but hoping this year we'll be able to go out to every realtor in Saskatchewan. We had about 140 realtors showed up last year.

Speaker 2:

A lot of realtors talk about their success, what they've done, how they build a business, so we keep it to three hours. It's nine to 12. We don't want to keep it longer than that. People come learn something and they go home or they go back to work. It's going to be on March 6th this year. We are hoping, and so we are bringing somebody from Calgary this time we are bringing a local business from regina. We're going to have three realtors. We're going to probably add some saskatoon realtors too. Um, and our goal is to make a local event, free event to realtors. But um, thought about adding costs. But you know what. This is just my thank you to you guys. So it's a free event. You come have a coffee. Snacks on me. It said always a hotel. Um atlas in regina. Um, that's where we're going to be having it, but link will send out to everybody in saskatchewan, probably by next week or the week after.

Speaker 1:

Please rsvp, and we would love to see you there cool and if you're listening to the podcast, check out these show notes. I'll drop the link in there. Um adif, I appreciate you, man. Thank you for sharing with our guests, thank you for sharing with the listeners, thank you for doing what you do and, yeah, I'm stoked to work with you in the future.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me, Scott, and so, as you do, keep doing this, the things you're doing, I'm a big fan of yours, thank, you Thanks again.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to Tactical Agent, your real estate coach, in a box. I hope you're leaving with some actionable steps to take your real estate business to the next level. If you're ready to go even deeper and want personalized mentorship, accountability or coaching, head over to tacticalagentca or slide into my DMs to schedule a free coaching session with me and let's build your success step by step. Until next time, keep it tactical and keep pushing your business forward, because I believe in you. We'll see you next time. Outro Music.