How To Find Real Estate Leads Via Referrals From Clients

How To Find Real Estate Leads Via Referrals
From Clients

Client Care Yields Real Estate Leads

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 homebuyers. 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

-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.