A referral for life

Many top performers in our industry rely on one or two exceptional relationships to provide a significant proportion of their new prospects.

That said, many new and developing businesses struggle to establish relationships and try to employ expensive and often futile tactics to generate new business.

To establish a new professional relationship, a broker may need to meet with up to 20 prospective professionals before finding the right business to ‘attempt’ to partner with.

The hard work commences once you have determined who you would like as your professional partner.

Here are some factors you may want to consider when identifying the right professional partner for your business:

• Are they looking to grow their business like you are?
• Do they deal with clients who need your services?
• Do they have other professional relationships that work?
• Have they dealt with a mortgage broker before?
• Are they also looking for a professional relationship?
• Do they have similar business values to you?
• Are they successful in their field?

If the answers to the above questions are mostly ‘yes’, you might be able to proceed to the next step, which is about establishing the relationship.

The right approach to a new referral partner would be to try to establish the relationship over a series of meetings. More time invested in establishing the relationship will lead to better results.

Consider the following approach:

1. After agreeing you both want a profitable relationship whereby clients will be referred between each other’s businesses, you need to identify how this will happen.
2. Ideally, you take your partner through the process you would take your clients through. This way, they can understand how you operate and see some of your ‘selling points’ first hand. Then your partner should take you through how they look after their clients. This could be done in a ‘role play’ or in reality.
3. Identify who are the ideal clients your professional partner deals with and how you could assist them.
4. Agree on how you will promote each other’s business. When is the right time to introduce the professional partner and what will you say to promote them?

Once you have agreed on how you will work together, you then need to agree on what you specifically want to achieve and how often you will review your results.

Like any relationship, the more often you see your business partner, the quicker the relationship will be established and the better you will know the referrer. Many top performing brokers have located their office in the same office as their referrer.

When you are able to give open and honest feedback to each other, you will know you have every chance of creating what you want. The key is to invest the time up front and continue the momentum for as long as it takes to maintain the relationship.

You will also need to agree on the scripts to use to introduce each other’s services, so start by giving each other three selling points for the referrer to use.

There is not a correct or incorrect way to establish professional relationships. Like friendships, sometimes you ‘click’ with someone and the relationship starts, other times relationships can take years to establish. Hard work and patience will pay off.