Keeley Macaulay picked an unusual moment to leave a 17-year career in social housing to become a self-employed mortgage and protection adviser at Mortgage 1st. It was August 2019. Within months, a global pandemic would upend any notion of business as usual. “It wasn’t the best timing,” she admits, with dry understatement.
But it was a risk that paid off.
Seven years on, Keeley is one of the long-standing success stories of the VouchedFor Top Rated Adviser Guide, featuring for six consecutive years in the Guide’s Top 100 Mortgage & Protection Advisers published in The Times.
Success of course has depended on her advisory expertise. But it is also testament to her ability to establish grounded, repeatable habits that have ensured her abilities stand out.
A recommendation before day one
Keeley’s introduction to VouchedFor came before she had even started her new career. Her parents’ financial adviser, himself a VouchedFor user, recommended it for building and promoting recommendations, Keeley recalls.
It made a real difference because, starting from nothing, she had as yet no established lead sources. A quarterly quota of leads via VouchedFor gave her an early way in, allowing her to “build credibility and generate enquiries” from a standing start.
Building visibility
Her mindset also proved invaluable. Having spent nearly two decades building her career in social housing, Keeley understood something many new advisers can underestimate: you cannot afford to be invisible. She set up a Facebook page, an Instagram page, a LinkedIn profile and a Google Business page almost immediately.
She also made her VouchedFor reviews a permanent fixture of every client email, adding them in a bold box at the bottom of every message, and including a link to her profile in her first email to a new enquiry.
Timing has been critical, as Keeley has always carefully and deliberately chosen her moment for sending requests for client feedback. When she has successfully given mortgage advice, for instance, she doesn’t wait until the client moves into their new home to ask for a review; instead, she will follow up at the point they receive their mortgage offer.
“That’s when they’re excited and they still have time,” she explains. “Once they’ve got the keys, they’re so busy settling in, life takes over.” It is a small piece of process engineering that she has refined over the years but never abandoned.
Ask everyone, not just the easy wins
Some can find it uncomfortable to request client feedback, but not Keeley. She traces her confidence back to introducing a customer survey process in her previous housing role. Her rule is simple: don’t just ask those you expect to leave a glowing review. “It’s best to ask everybody,” she says, “because then you know if you need to tweak any processes to improve the service you offer.”
She has also resisted the temptation to keep her Top Rated recognition purely corporate. Instead, she shares it in a livelier, more personal style across all social channels. “If it is overly corporate looking, people don’t seem to like it as much,” she notes. In her experience, the human element, tied to reviews and genuine client feedback, consistently gets more engagement and shares.
A compounding effect on trust
VouchedFor’s impact is not always immediate, adds Keeley. “But people remember your Top Rated posts. And when they do need a broker, you’ve got the sustained, trusted visibility that means it’s your name that’s more likely to come to mind first,” she says.
Prospective clients regularly tell her they chose to contact her because of the quality and consistency of her reviews, meaning there’s a level of trust already built into the first conversation.
Recommendations for advisers starting out
For anyone beginning their own VouchedFor Verified journey, Keeley’s advice is straightforward: embed it properly, and don’t be shy. “Put review links in every email footer, ask every client at the offer stage, and shout about milestones like the Top Rated Guide across every social channel you use,” she says.
It is that consistency, applied patiently since launching her business, that has taken Keeley from a career change in the shadow of a pandemic to her well-established place as a VouchedFor Top Rated Adviser.