How Simon Mitchell Made £44k From 40 Booked Mortgage Appointments

Watch the interview

I got Simon on a call to walk through his numbers properly. The full conversation is below (about half an hour), and the written breakdown follows if you'd rather read it.

"I've used and seen an awful lot of lead generation systems. The reality is, nothing will come close to this. My conversion rate is 70% both times."

Who is Simon Mitchell?

Simon Mitchell isn't a rookie chasing a shortcut. He's a working adviser in Cardiff at a directly authorised firm, and he came into mortgages the long way round.

That mix matters. A buy-to-let landlord rarely has one property, and Simon knows the limited company side cold because he's a landlord himself. So when a portfolio case lands in his diary, he isn't guessing. He's already lived it.

The £6k Facebook experiment

Before he found us, Simon did what a lot of self-generating brokers do. He paid someone to run Facebook ads, on the advice of a social media specialist, and the campaign was pointed at adverse credit.

"I made 260, 270 leads in about three months. I was on the phone from eight in the morning to ten at night, breaking down people's debts from their credit reports on a spreadsheet. The quality of leads was awful."

Awful in a specific way. People in IVAs, people with no income, people with 24 defaults and 25 CCJs who thought they could get a mortgage at 4%. A lot of dreamers, as he put it, who genuinely believed a 100% mortgage was coming while they were living on benefits.

"I ended up with six good clients out of 250, and £6,000 down the drain. Three months was enough for me on that basis."

So he looked at the pay-per-lead providers instead. LeadJet, Lead Crowd, the usual names. Every write-up said roughly the same thing, and it wasn't encouraging.

"Everything I read said the same thing. Five to ten percent conversion is what you can expect. That's a lot of money to pay for a very low conversion, so I was a bit reluctant."

The first 5 credits

He came across MortgagesBooked, decided to stop reading and just test it, and bought five credits. The very first call set the tone.

The chap he spoke to had moved in with his parents after a new baby, rented out his own house, and wanted to raise money to buy more buy-to-lets. A consumer buy-to-let remortgage, right in Simon's wheelhouse. Vida turned out to be the best lender for him, and the case came good.

"My first case, I ended up with something like three and a half thousand profit. I made ten times what I paid for the credit. So I thought, hang on, this is all right."

Here's how the five credits actually played out. He booked 12 appointments off them (no-answers get credited back, so he kept claiming), spoke to five people properly, and converted three:

The point he kept coming back to: that single sale already made the whole thing worthwhile compared to what he'd spent on Facebook.

Scaling to 20 a month

Five credits proved the model, so he went bigger. He bought 20 credits on the 15th of June and, in his own words, filled his whole week.

"I sat there for the entire weekend just clicking on appointments. People are going to hate me for this. I wanted to fill up my week, because I didn't know how big a success it would be."

He expected to properly speak to maybe eight of the 20. In ten days he'd spoken to 18 people and converted 14. And because his clients are landlords, those 14 conversations didn't stop at 14 mortgages.

"From that 14, I ended up with about 21 mortgages, because you'd hit somebody who wants to remortgage their own house but has got six buy-to-let properties."

July looked the same. He bought another 20 credits on the 1st, had two left by the time we spoke, and had spoken to 18 people. This time he was on 46 mortgages for his pipeline, because one client alone had 20 buy-to-lets and Simon won all of them. Once a landlord realises you actually understand limited company structures, the relationship tends to run for years.

The £44k breakdown

These are Simon's figures, not ours. Add up what he's actually stated and it comes to about £44,000 so far, and that's a floor, not a ceiling. Start with June, his first full month on 20 credits.

"June, my gross proc fees was £21,000, and my net will be something like £18,000. And that doesn't include the protection policies or the four wills I've sold as well."

Then July, the same 20-credit spend and if anything a bigger month. He'd spoken to 18 people and was sitting on 46 mortgages for his pipeline, more than double June's count, because one client alone brought 20 buy-to-lets. On top of the mortgages, one client took a relevant life policy and a Welsh power of attorney.

"The commission for that relevant life policy is £8,000. It's a crazy amount. And the power of attorney takes it up to ten, and I've still got his mortgages to do on top."

So where does the £44k come from? Four figures he stated, added up:

And a fair amount still isn't in that £44k. July's 46-mortgage pipeline was only part-submitted when we spoke, with around 18 cases left to file. The four wills he's written carry no figure here. Nor does a second protection policy, nor the two July credits he hasn't even used yet. He also haircuts everything for forecasting, because some cases drop off before they complete. So £44k is simply what he can already point to. Once July fully lands, the two-month total climbs well past it.

Worth being straight about the counting. Simon has bought 45 credits in total: five to test the water, then 20 in June and 20 in July, with two of July's still unused. No-shows and no-answers are refunded and the slot rebooked, so a credit is only spent on an appointment that actually happens. He spoke to 18 people in June and 18 in July. The £44k above comes from the two 20-credit months, so it's £44k off 40 booked appointments, with the original five-credit test (and its first 10× case) sitting on top of that.

Why 70%, not 5%

The number that stops brokers in their tracks is the conversion rate. Simon bought 20 credits in June and 20 in July, and both months landed at around 70%.

"My conversion rate is 70% both times. You compare that to something like LeadTrade or LeadJet where they're saying 5 to 10%, and you're spending all your time on the phone and a lot more money."

Two things drive that gap. First, these are people who booked a time and expect a call, not a name on a shared list being dialled by five brokers at once. Second, the risk sits with us, not him.

"With those other providers, if somebody doesn't answer the phone, you don't get that credit back. This is as good as it gets. It's built by mortgage advisors, for mortgage advisors, and that's what makes the difference."

He rates the support too. There's a broker WhatsApp group, and Simon's read on it was blunt and useful: post a question and it's answered fast, and any problem gets dealt with straight away.

The five-year plan

What I liked about Simon is that he isn't treating this as a quick win. He's building something with it.

"My goal is to obtain 250 clients a year for five years. Even if the average loan is £300,000, the product transfers alone should give me ten grand a month without much of a sweat."

That's the whole logic of a landlord-heavy client bank. Every case is a five-year relationship with a remortgage or product transfer at the end of it, and portfolio clients keep buying. At 50, Simon is stacking trail income now so he can wind down in ten years on the back of work that renews itself. Booked appointments are how he's filling the top of that funnel without sitting on the phone until ten at night.

His advice to new brokers

I asked what he'd say to a broker sitting on the fence. His answer was direct.

"The only thing I'd say to any newbie, and I know it's difficult, is buy more credits. Because the more that you buy, the easier you will find it."

His reasoning: volume smooths out the variance. Book a full week and the odd no-answer or time-waster stops mattering, because the good cases carry it. He's relaxed about the ones who go nowhere. Somebody who filled the form in late at night and says no when you ring? Put the phone down and move on to the next one.

The rest of his advice is about the craft, not the leads. CeMAP is only the start. Learn the criteria, learn which lenders do what, build a genuine rapport so clients refer you, and treat it as skilled sales rather than flogging double glazing.

If you want to see the kind of appointments Simon is filling his week with, the free preview shows this week's available appointments, buy-to-let and limited company cases included. Claim the ones that suit your business, the same way he does.

FAQ