Building the Ultimate Real Estate Referral Business

Building a successful referral business in real estate is all deep relationships. In this article we will cover the essentials to deepen the relationships you have with your peers and your strategic partners which are essential to building a successful referral business.

What is a Support Network?

Many people refer to a network as a sphere of influence. We call it something a bit different for good reason. Referring to a network as a group that we are trying to influence is a bit short-sighted. First, we don’t have as much influence over people as we would like to believe. Second, it misses the point that our primary job is to serve & support our network. Hence, we call the network of people we interact with a support network.

Building Deep Relationships

Gary Vaynerchuck says it best as “Jab, Jab, Jab, Hook”. The goal with any relationship-centered business is to deepen the relationship. The jabs that Gary Vee talks about reflect providing value that is important to the audience/network. You start by giving, and giving, and giving. Once you’ve delivered value to your network you can then ask for business.

There’s no easy or automated way to build a deep relationship. It takes significant and consistent investments of time, energy, and money must be placed in order to successfully build a deep relationship with someone.

One way to start building a deep relationship with someone you just met is F.O.R.D.

F.O.R.D stands for:

• Family
• Occupation
• Recreation
• Dreams/desires

Your job is to focus on asking questions around these topics to get to know someone.

You can ask about their family with questions like:

• Where did you grow up?
• What was your childhood like?
• Where have you lived?
• Are you married?
• Do you have any kids?
• What’s your favorite thing to do with your family?

The F.O.R.D. acronym is only a guideline and doesn’t have to the in order. For some occupation may be a great place to start since it starts off a little more common.

Some questions you can ask to start the conversation about their occupation include:

• What do you do for a living?
• How did you achieve your job as a [current role]?
• What do you love about your job?
• What are some of the biggest challenges of your job?

When we start asking questions about recreation and dreams the core of a person starts showing. Many people are used to talking about their jobs and family, but it’s rare that people talk about their dreams and passions.

Some great questions to ask about recreation and dreams are:

• What are you passionate about?
• What do you do to unwind in your off time?
• What’s your favorite hobby?
• What is one big dream you want to accomplish in life?
• If you could quit your job tomorrow and do anything you want, what would it be?

Asking questions, similar to those above, cut through the noise when you’re meeting someone for the first time. Typically people will remember you because these questions require the asker to pay attention to the answers. It will help increase active listening skills and the person you’ve just met will feel like you have a genuine interest in them (because you do).

Once you’ve created a great rapport and started down the path towards a deep relationship it’s time for follow up. Remember the answers to the questions you asked and then send them a hand-written note card mentioning some of the things they said. It will reinforce the feeling that they are important (because they are).

Continue down this path with people.

Some great ideas for deepening relationships include:

• Unique gift giving (centered around something they said or enjoy)
• Coffees/lunches
• Events (sports, parties, etc)
• POP-By’s (see Brian Buffini’s Peak Producers class)
• Random calls/ handwritten note cards

Don’t forget that once you’ve developed the relationship you still have to maintain it. Regularly check in with those in your Support Network to see how you can support them.

Building a Business Around Your Network

Once you’ve built those relationships up to the point where people in your Support Network know who you are, like you well enough to answer the phone and trust that you will do what you say you’re going to do it’s time to start asking for business.

An easy to way to ask for business as a referral agent is this: “Hey [insert name], I operate a real estate referral service where I match buyers and sellers with the right real estate agent anywhere in the country. If you know anyone moving from or to anywhere in the US, would you introduce me as a resource to help them get the right agent?”

This can be done whenever you feel you’ve built enough of a rapport with the person you’re talking to about business, but the deeper the relationship, the better this works.

Once you’ve built that relationship and you start getting referrals, you simply log in to your account at www.keepmylicenseactive.com and submit the referral to our network, or download the forms to send the referral to any real estate broker across the us that you choose.

Once your referral has been made, you should check in with the agent servicing the client to monitor the progress regularly.

If you’re not already a member of KeepMyLicenseActive.com then click Join Now below to start the process of making your referral business come to life.