Ep #358: A Realtor’s Referral Hot Seat

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, and welcome to the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, a show that proves you can generate referrals without asking or manipulation.

I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. I’m a card-carrying member of the Business Failure Club, have taught my referrals without asking methodology and strategies to clients in more than 14 countries around the world. And my mission is to help you unleash a referral explosion by leveraging the science of referrals and respecting your relationships.

Okay, real quick, before we dive in, it starts next week. Are you signed up? It’s a big question. Join me for three days of mini training, about 30 minutes each day for three days, as I help you tackle referrals as we move into the summer.

Each day I’m gonna go live, again, only about 30 minutes, and I’m gonna teach you what you need to think, and what you need to do to become a referral master. You can sign up and join me again. It’s free at StaceyBrownRandall.com/springtraining.

Alright, let’s dive into today’s episode. So following last week’s episode, which was episode 357, I shared a hot seat that I did back in March from a live workshop.

So we just went in, we snipped it out, this hot seat that I did, and we did it for an attorney. last week, and this episode for this week, we’re actually gonna do one for a real estate agent.

So again, I asked the attendees who were coming to the workshop to answer five questions if they wanted to be considered for a hot seat. Then based on their answers, and particularly the ones that were completed, based on their answers, I picked two people to do hot seats for them live during the workshop.

Never done it before, loved it, totally gonna be doing more of it in the future. So the questions that I asked them, which you’ll hear me ask Alex as we go through his hot seat, is what do you do? So like, what’s your business? I have to have context, right?

Then how long have you been in business? The third question was, on average, how many referrals do you receive in a year? And then the fourth question was, how many people do you have referring you? So how many referral sources do you have referring you? And then what’s your biggest frustration with referrals?

So you’re going to hear me go through those five questions and the answers that Alex submitted and then watch as I build out what I would have him do for his first 90-day strategy stack.

Which means looking at his results from just those five questions, I’m going to tell him exactly what I want him to do and what I want him to put in what order so that we can get the fastest ROI and get referrals moving in his real estate practice.

Alright, so let’s get right to the video. Or if you’re listening to this on the podcast, let’s get right to the audio. You’re going to hear me walk through these questions, walk through Alex’s answers, and then give you the 90-day strategy stack.

Then Alex will come off mute, and he will be able to share with us his thoughts on if I hit the nail on the head with what he needed to do, of what I recommended and what I recommended to do in what order.

And again, if you didn’t see the video for last week’s episode, little disclaimer, I do come off screen share inside that workshop when I get to the hot seats, which means you’re gonna see a sea of people.

And you may be like, wow, there’s a lot of people, why didn’t Stacey spotlight the hot seater? Well, lesson learned, we’ll do it next time. Okay, let’s dive now into Alex’s hot seat.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay, Alex is a real estate agent. He’s been in business for 12 years. He believes he receives about six referrals in a year. He did say, I sometimes get introductions that aren’t Stacey’s definition of a referral from that perspective, but about six referrals on average a year.

He has about 30 people referring to him and his biggest frustration is just there’s just not enough, right? There’s just not enough volume. Six in a year is great but it is not where he wants to be.

So when I’m looking through what I would ultimately do for Alex and what this looks like the very first thing I would say is, I want to make sure that the average number of referrals of six is a true number.

So as I did with Christine, I would want you to go through the process of identifying your existing referral sources. And if you have six or more, that’s usually where I have people start with, build a plan, get more referrals from them.

Because you’re getting six referrals in a year, but you say you have about 30 people referring you. So I want to know who is active versus who’s inactive. Because if we have active referral sources, we’re going to build a plan, take care of them. That’s a foundational green box.

Then we’re going to look at our inactive referral sources. That’s a blue box, situational. Then we would put that in. We’re like, OK, now let’s look at our inactive referral sources.

Because if you’re only getting six a year, 30 people aren’t actively referring you every year. Because you’d be getting 30 referrals, right? And not everybody refers every year. That’s fine. But we want to know the difference between active and inactive. That’s really important.

Then a lot of times when people do that, they realize people I thought were referral sources aren’t, so their number sometimes shrinks. So usually what I would look at here is, depending on where Alex wants to go, we probably need more people referring you.

And getting really clear on another green foundational strategy of how do we get new people to start referring you. Of course, like with everybody, we’re going to do intake, we’re going to do tracking, we’re going to make sure you’ve got that process in place, and you’ve got all the processes in the back end set up.

But that is really what I would see for you, Alex. It’s let’s know what’s inactive versus active referral sources. For our active, let’s build a plan. For our inactives, let’s re-engage them, see if we can get them back to the active land and put them through our plan.

And then start looking at new people to start referring you, plus fixing your intake and your tracking, your thank you process, all that stuff to make sure that’s tightened up. That is where we would go.

But that doesn’t mean that’s the only things we would do. That’s just what I would have you focus on in your first 90 days. So Alex, I know you’re here with me. Can you unmute yourself for a second and tell me what that felt like, what that sounded like for you?

Alex: It sounds very accurate. I mean, I do feel like that. Yeah, I mean, if I go back and look at all the referrals I’ve gotten over the years, I have a good number of people that have referred me and I kind of go in spits of activity where if somebody will refer me three people in 18 months, and then I’ve got other times where I haven’t gotten anything from them in years.

Stacey Brown Randall: Right.

Alex: Right. And then I’ve got people, you know, the one thing that we talked about earlier, that it’s the, you have one referral source that’s giving you a bunch of business and then they kind of stop and it’s like, oh, crap. We need more people like that.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yes. Power referral sources are amazing when you have them. Losing them is actually super, super painful. I worked with a client who was actually out in Colorado and got about 20 of her 40 referrals a year from this one person.

And then that one person left town. And there was like this sucking sound of like a vacuum of half her referral’s gone. And I told her, I was like, we’re not gonna try to go find you another power referral source. That takes a lot of time.

What we need is enough people to fill the gap of 20. And we’re gonna do that by a number of people, not looking for the one person.

If we find it, great. But nobody walks around with a neon sign that says, I’m a power referral source, love me. Nobody does that, right? It just doesn’t exist like that.

So we got her there. We covered her 20 gap, but we had to get a number of new people to start referring.

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey, I hope you enjoyed that hot seat with Alex. What’s interesting is that Alex is a real estate agent, and Christine, who we did the hot seat with the week prior, the episode before, she’s an attorney.

Alex has been in business for 12 years. Christine has only been in business for five years. But did you notice that even though they’re in two different industries, an attorney and a real estate agent, one in business for five years, the other in business for double that, more than double that, 12 years. But did you notice the similarities between their first 90-day strategy stack?

That’s because with almost every client I work with, no matter what level you work with me at, whether it’s my VIP, Referrals in a Day experience, my Building a Referable Business coaching program, or my two day in-person Referral Accelerator that we host in Charlotte, it doesn’t matter which way you work with me.

When we are starting with a client, we are looking to get you as fast as possible to the ROI, as fast as possible to get things going and moving with referrals. Which means we have some proven strategies that have been working for longer than a decade to produce results.

And we always start with those proven foundational strategies and put them in place regardless of how long you’ve been in business or what your referral results look like, or what you do.

Now, of course, there were some differences between Alex and Christine. They have some different needs. And of course, their strategy stacks would address that.

But things like intake process and tracking process and the thank you process, basic. Everybody’s going to have that in place. Then as we look to our foundational strategies, do you have a lot of people referring you? Good. Let’s capitalize on that and get more referrals from them.

Or do you not have a lot of people referring you? So you need people. OK, that’s fine. But there’s a different strategy we deploy to help you cultivate new people to start referring you.

We look at what you’re coming to the table with, what you and your business are showing up with. And we work within that.

But in the beginning, there are some proven processes, some proven strategies and tactics that I want you to put in place, because I know we have the best shot from an ROI perspective and start doubling, tripling or quadrupling your referrals.

So even though we’re talking about two different industries in business for two very different amounts of time, there are still similarities in their referral strategies. And of course, there’s some differences as well.

But all businesses I work with typically start very close to a similar baseline of getting those basics and the foundation strategies in place. Which you heard me talk them both through in their hot seats.

If you just listened to this episode, you can go back to last week’s episode, episode 357, and you can listen to Christine’s hot seat as well. Alright. The resources mentioned in this episode can be found in the description below the video. I wonder if I’ll do that every video pointing down.

And of course, on the podcast show notes page as well at staceybrownrandall.com/358 for episode 358. And don’t forget, Stacey has an E.

We’re back with another great episode next week created with you and your needs in mind. Until then, you know what to do my friend, take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.