There are two main reasons why some of our greatest agents aren't achieving the completely realistic benchmark of 40% for referrals from their active clients.
First, Most of us assume that our clients know what to do and understand our love for referrals. What we forget is that our clients are not in the Real Estate business and need to be educated on how to recognize the "referral moment' and what to do when it arises. If we incorporated a simple dialog at our first meeting together saying - "Now that you have made a decision to buy or sell, you will notice a strange phenomenon, much like when you bought your last car (got married, had a baby, etc). When you were looking at that car and first got it, weren't you amazed at how many others you saw around? The same thing happens in real estate. As you begin looking and throughout this process you will start seeing other people that are looking to buy or sell. All I ask is that when those situations come up that you remember me."
The second is that we do a great job minimizing the great job we do. Our standard of excellence is a part of our service package and has become old hat to us. The challenge is that our clients have no idea that our service is exceptional because they don't have a standard to measure it against. Overcoming this is easy, especially since the service is there. We need to start weaving opportunities to tell our clients the truth. Drama happens in every transaction, and while I am not advocating dragging your clients through the drama, I am simply suggesting you communicate it to your clients with how you saved the day. If we can also enlist our strategic partners (escrow, title, mortgage, inspectors, TC's, etc.) to simply drop a note, phone call or comment to our clients to the effect of "I work with a lot of different agents, and I have to tell you how fortunate you are to be working with one the very best." You clients feel like a million bucks and it creates an atmosphere for them to say "wow" and tell a friend, or two or twenty.
Carpe diem,
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