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Reality for mortgage advisers at the moment is falling volumes, lower lending rates and downward pressure on procuration fees. In order to maintain income levels in a downturn, advisers are going to have to look at other strategies they did not consider when the market was good.

This is going to mean working their client database harder, taking a holistic approach to their business and examining the appeal of their proposition.

In the good times advisers generally took the view that the best course of action was to make hay while the sun shone and do as much business as possible. Conveyancers are 10 a penny, all of them promising the best service at the lowest cost, which can be confusing.

Despite various misconceptions, referral fees are of little consequence when set beside procuration fees. Consequently most advisers have made the mistake of measuring their performance on customer feedback from the last case.

In the new, leaner world of falling procuration fees and smaller volumes, an adviser would be well advised to review key relationships such as the conveyancer he recommends.

How the last client felt is important but it needs to be put in context. What proportion of all clients were satisfied? It is all very well just thinking about the last case but a conveyance is a complex process with a number of parties involved.

Maintaining 100 per cent client satisfaction throughout is a tough target to meet. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water. If the conveyancer is generating an overall 90 per cent customer satisfaction rate then why would you break this relationship over one case?

Efficiency is crucial so an adviser needs to look at the average speed that all transactions were processed. Completion is when the procuration fee is paid and the quicker this is achieved then the better your cashflow in a slow market.

If the average time to completion for one conveyancer is slower than another then does it not make sense to put a higher proportion of your work through that conveyancer?

Also, what proportion of cases fell through? If you look carefully at this question you will see that there is a definite correlation between extended exchange time and the number of deals consequently falling through.

On average one-third of cases are in this situation. If the time between agreement and exchange goes beyond 30 days over 70 per cent do not make it to completion.

Communication is essential between the adviser and the conveyancer. They need to have infrastructure in place to ensure case information is transmitted to the intermediary in a timely and efficient manner.

The conveyancer may be providing top-notch service to the client but if the adviser is left in the dark about what is going on then it is not an equal or fair relationship.

In the current market of declining volumes an adviser has purchasing power and this should be reflected in the referral fees. A savvy adviser needs to find out if their conveyancer is prepared to increase the referral fees to reflect the number of clients the broker has referred.

Duncan Samuel is founder and managing director of Convex.net, an online conveyancing company.