Living Large On Referrals – 3 Must Have Lists for Your Real Estate Business
If the Money is in the List than 3 Lists Must be Better Than One!
How many times have you heard about the importance of referrals and taking care of your past/existing clients?
More times than you care right? So are you doing “enough” about it?
Check out these referral stats and tell me if you don’t all of a sudden feel motivated to step it up a notch.
4 Significant Stats on the Power of Referrals
- It takes 4 to 10 times more money to get a new client than to keep them.
- Doing business by word of mouth and referrals is proven much more profitable.
- N.A.R. (National Association of Realtors) reports that 67% of business comes from Referrals
- Top 50 real estate agents in North America report 80-90% of their business comes from personal referrals
Were you aware all top producing real estate agents maintain 3 separate databases or lists of clients?
How many are you maintaining?
List 1 – Current and past clients
This list is created from your email addresses, social media sites, cell phone contacts, listing files, sales files, prospect files, friends and family address book.
List 2 – Agent Co-Op
You will create this list from the Top 5 cities buyers come from and the Top 5 cities sellers move to. Locate and contact any cooperating agents situated in the cities that buyers and sellers regularly come from or go to. Create that agent to agent referral relationship.
List 3 – Demographic
For this one create a farm, niche, targeted client list by demographic, neighborhood, property type, income levels, or any other specific census data category.
One of my mentors Bill Barrett said to contact each of these databases using the “12 – 2 – 1″ system.
It is as simple as…
…12 mailings a year
…2 phone calls a year
…1 face to face time a year
Bill also recommends the following information for each of these databases.
Form 1 – VIP Client Form – Name, email, phone number, cell number, address, work number, hobbies, birthday (month and day), Anniversary (wedding, home purchase), Children (name, age, birthday), Pets.
Form 2 – Could we quote you? Form – Asking for a testimonial of your experience doing business with you.
Form 3 – Would you help me form? – Of all the people you know, who would you think would be moving next? May I call them?
So what do you send to these databases?
- Annual success letter – January… Paragraph one about the market activity. Paragraph two about your business and paragraph three just saying thank you for their continued support.
- Annual home value reports – send them the listings, sales, expired inventory from the last year, without a suggested value in hopes to generate appointments with clients.
- Post cards – Small, Medium, Large that are laminated or glossy, good quality with listings and sales. Full Color. Use multiple property photos, prices, testimonial, % of asking price, days on market as well.
- Market reports.
- Items of value such as tips, facts and helpful information they might find interesting and valuable. Doesn’t even need to be about real estate.
How do you manage and systemize all these referral systems? By using a CRM or Client Retention Marketing system.
Some of the top rated systems today…
Top Producer
Property Base
Referral Maker
I xact
The best CRM system I always say… is the one that you use!
Top producing real estate agents in North America are sending a minimum of 5 thank you notes a day…. 5,000 mailing pieces a month and making a 100 calls a day.
What are you doing?
Strength and courage,
Wade
Speaking of “referrals” would you please pass this on to someone else for me?