How I Got 6 Awesome Real Estate Referrals Last Week

Last week was a really interesting week for me in the real estate business, as I got 6 awesome real estate referrals that I was able to share with the agents at my office. Lots of agents are seeking referrals in order to add more buyer and seller leads to their sales pipeline. So, I thought it might be helpful for me to review where these leads came from and how they were converted—perhaps this will give you some ideas for ways to generate more referral leads in your own real estate business.

6 Sources of Real Estate Referrals

1. Referral Exchange. If you are not a member of Referral Exchange, then you should join now. It’s a national network (membership required) and when an agent enters in a referral or when a buyer or seller goes on the Referral Exchange website, if the lead is for your area or community, you get an alert on your phone. Way to go Referral Exchange. This is the third Referral Exchange lead that we have converted this year, and we’ve manually entered about 8 leads into the system where we receive the referral fee once the out-of-area transaction closes. Referral Exchange takes care of the billing and the payments; this makes the whole process a piece of cake (or a piece of cheese, as my husband says).
2. My Weekly Email Newsletter. An out-of-area agent has a relative who needs to sell his home in my area, so she gave me a call to see if I wanted to accept the seller referral. I asked her if we had met before, and she told me that she had been reading my email newsletter for years and remembered that I was from the area.
3. Local Agent. An agent friend of mine from another brokerage is a bit under the weather and was about to take a listing. She looked long and hard at her recovery, and realized that she wasn’t going to be able to give her client the attention the client deserved. So, she called me to see if our company would take the listing off her hands.
4. Investment Company. A local real estate investment company that buys, fixes, and flips contacted me to see whether we would represent them in the purchase and sale of a property. What a no brainer. Always have a few investors in your side pocket in case you come across some properties that need “a fix.”
5. Former Agent from Our Brokerage. A former agent from our brokerage that works in another part of the county reached out to us to see whether we could help him with a multi-million dollar transaction. Our former agent is awesome, but has only been in the business a few years, so he felt it would be good if he were supported in such a large transaction.
6. Past Client. Lots of people get referrals from past clients; that’s not uncommon. We have probably received more than one this week from a past client. But, one that comes to mind is a family who referred their brother to sell his home and buy a bigger one.

Reflecting on this pretty awesome list, all I can say is that we, as agents, have to be able to spin lots and lots of plates at the same time. It is almost as if we are in the circus, since we seem to have lots and lots of things to balance and juggle. But, if you can do that effectively with good systems and tools, they hard work of the balancing act will pay off big.