Real Estate Leads Via Referrals From Clients

The following article includes pertinent information that may cause you to reconsider what you thought you understood. The most important thing is to study with an open mind and be willing to revise your understanding if necessary.

Starting a real estate sales practice could be quite a risky business.  Commonly, one would go days without closing a sale, receiving a phone call, and all the time the expenses and bills keep coming. However, success at real estate generally results out of maintaining fundamentals, such as:  knowing all the information about your area or property, getting sales leads, and developing referrals.

One of the key aspects of real estate sales is the sales referral.  Most prospective property buyers looking for a new home, office or any real estate, usually approach family, friends, and colleagues to ask for recommendations for a good broker.  Also, most property owners or homeowners selling their real estate will go to the same network to ask for brokers who can help them sell a property.  Unlike blockbuster lawyers or specialist doctors, there is no ready information available that calls out the skill and experience of a particular broker.  So traditionally, referrals are done person-to-person and by word of mouth. 

At first glance, it would seem like an unreliable way to build a business.  But, if a broker knows his business and his properties well, all it would take is a few successful real estate sales to “referred” customers, and his sales would start to pick up momentum.  Referrals to brokers are more significant because they could give direct contact to someone seriously considering buying a property.  This gives a real estate practitioner access to his main target market, whereas regular advertisements through the media would have a very wide audience, but not the actual people wanting to buy homes or properties.  In terms of marketing, a referral is like a slam-dunk promotional lead. 

It is good that real estate referrals are such a “direct-to-market” lead.  Because there is another aspect to the business:  Property acquisitions are almost always the one most expensive purchase that a family would make.  So, although referrals give you persons interested in buying a home or property, buying decisions are not always quick or a sure thing.  The sheer cost, location, design, need for repairs or renovations, ease of mobility or transport, and a multitude of other decisions are considered before a buyer commits to a house.

But then, after all this consideration, when a broker manages to deliver a satisfactory sale to a buyer, then the broker will be awarded with a wider and perhaps more enthusiastic referral to other potential home buyers.  This would widen your referral network, and expand your file of potential contacts for referrals.

The high price of your product also means that even if only a fraction of your referrals translate to actual sales, the income and commission from these sales are already considerable.  Maturing in the business will teach a broker the ways of cultivating and screening referrals to further improve sales and growth.    

Therefore, we should understand what most successful realtors and brokers know -- that Real Estate is a business of relationship.  Regardless of the current external or economic conditions, the most adaptable method of generating ready revenue is through building a real estate business by developing relationships to cultivate referrals.

Several strategies or techniques can be used to build a strong referral-based sales business.  But when you look closely, all these require that you stay in touch with your network regularly, preferably once a month.  
 
It would be most helpful to plan out different methods of maintaining contact with your network on a monthly basis.  The different ways of keeping in touch are:  personal visits, telephone calls, handwritten notes or short letters, periodic newsletters, news and updates through email, client thank-you cocktails or parties, sending postcards, sending birthday/special greeting cards, organizing house-warming events, promos or contests.
The best practice is to try combinations of these contacting techniques, tailor-fit to your personality and the background of the particular contact.   
 
As well as staying in touch, you need to be mindful of the following aspects of your referral business:

-Organizing contact files by priority 

If your real estate leads facts are out-of-date, how will that affect your actions and decisions? Make certain you don't let important real estate leads information slip by you.

-Creating and maintaining a network management system

-Studying the best way of asking for referrals

-Not using standard all-purpose solutions

-Setting your goals and planning a budget

-Memorize figures and numbers

-Organize your time

-Hire an assistant

-Engage a business coach

The real estate business is also a customer care business: take care of all your referrals and grow your real estate business by getting more real estate leads. 

As your knowledge about real estate leads continues to grow, you will begin to see how real estate leads fits into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how something relates to the rest of the world is important too.

James Mahony is the founder of Real Estate Guide - A site dedicated to Real Estate Buyers and Sellers information

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