Referral First

Option #1

Agent: “Look, I'm more than happy to work with you. I'll work with any lender, actually, but I just require if you send me a client first and we help them with a purchase, we'll send you a client and we can have a really great relationship.”

You: “First of all, I would love to do that, right? Can I ask you a question, though?”

Agent: “Sure.”

You: “Do you have a current realtor lender partnership right now where that is where the majority of your business comes from?”

Agent: “No. I have a really great lender partner who does send me some deals from time to time, but the only reason I would really change is if somebody gives me a deal.”

You: “I totally understand the reason your current lending relationship isn't proactively sending you more deals than they are is because as mortgage professionals, as you probably well know, the majority of our business comes from other real estate professionals. And it comes from people who will come to us who, more often than not, are already attached to a real estate agent. So there's two commitments that I promise that I can make to you. One is that if we create a really sound partnership, which I'll go over with you, you have my commitment that as we get clients who are not already tied to a real estate professional, I will absolutely refer them to you. That will be something I can commit to, but that's not going to be incredibly often. The thing that will happen in your business that I don't think is happening now that I can commit to every single time is that for every one client that we have the opportunity to work with of yours, I can refer you four clients in the coming two years at a minimum. Is that happening in your current partnership or relationship today?”

Agent: “Well, no. How do you do that?”

You: “Well, it's simple. So, if you refer me a client, we are going to do a very in-depth intake. We're going to do a discovery call.
We're going to really understand what that client needs and wants. And I'd love to show you that process because I think knowing what happens in the lending process is incredibly important for your business, but we can do that later. Then as that transaction closes, we're going to have our team follow up with the client, and we're going to ask, "Do you have a CPA, financial planner, an estate planning attorney, a contractor? Because you're going to need all these things." The client's going to say one of two things, either, "Yes, I have them," or, "No, I don't." If they say no, they don't, we're going to start to refer them to your CPA, your financial planner, your estate planning attorney. "Do you have that list of people already in your database?"

Agent: "We have a couple of them, but not really. We don't really refer a lot to them."

You: "Well, do you get much business from them?"

Agent: "No, not really. We don't get much business from those channels." You: "Well, that's probably because you're not referring often to them, but we're going to do that on your behalf, which is going to create a massive amount of reciprocity for us to then get leads from those people, which are obviously going to go directly to you." Another way we're going to do it is if the client says, "Yes, we already have a CPA or financial planner or estate planning attorney." We're going to say, "On a scale of one to 10, how valuable have they been to you and your family?” “And if they say eight or above, I'm going to say, "Awesome. I'd love to connect. Would you mind putting us in touch? Because we have a lot of people who do not have those service providers that would love them. We're going to connect with them and create a relationship, start to get those referrals, which are all going to go back to you because it came from your client. And then, ultimately, we can put you in touch with those people as well. For the clients that say anything from a zero to a seven, we're going to then try and redirect them to your existing group of people, which again, creates reciprocity. So that's just one channel that will bring a lot of business. And if that's not happening today, I apologize, but it absolutely should.”