Loan Officer Marketing to Realtors? Check Out These 7 Insider Tips for Skyrocketing Your Referral Business

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Loan Officer Marketing to Realtors? Check Out
These 7 Insider Tips for Skyrocketing Your
Referral Business

• Are you a loan officer marketing to Realtors?
  Heres how to position your mortgage business so
  that real estate agents actually enjoy sending
  clients your way.
• Every loan officer knows that real estate agents
  can be a goldmine of client referrals. In fact,
  up 21 of all mortgage referrals come from
  point-of-sale advisors, including real estate
  agents.
• Problem is, its not easy to get a steady flow of
  Realtor-generated referrals coming your way.
• Taking real estate agents out for lunch and
  exchanging business cards just wont cut it
  anymore. The competition is too fierce, and
  agents are getting tired of the same old generic
  approaches.
• So how do you attract referrals from Realtors who
  get approached by dozens of loan officers every
  week? 
• In this article, weve gathered the most
  actionable and effective strategies to attract
  referrals and build a network of agents who are
  actually eager to refer you to their clients. 

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Weve also reached out to the original ace of
referral business, best-selling author and coach,
Stacey Brown Randall. In her first year of
business, Stacey attracted 112 referrals. Today,
she helps dozens of businesses do exactly the
same thing.  If you want to create a steady
stream of loan referrals for your mortgage
business using the most actionable advice to
date, then this article is for you. Lets dive
in!
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How to Get Mortgage Referrals from Realtors In
this article, well reveal both specific tactics
and broadly applicable tips to help you build a
referral network that is Sustainable. Getting an
avalanche of referrals one week and then getting
almost nothing for months is not something you
want for your mortgage business. You want your
stream of referrals to be steady and reliable no
matter where the market is. Business-appropriate.
Not every referral will work for your company,
and not every real estate agent will be a great
referral partner. This article will show you how
to gain referrals that are the best fit for your
mortgage business. Scalable. If you want your
mortgage business to grow, you need to make sure
your referral network can grow with it. The tips
in this article will help you identify
opportunities for referral growth and create a
referral plan for the whole company.  Here are
seven tips to help you build a sustainable and
scalable referral network of real estate agents
who love to consistently send new business your
way.
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Tip 1 Generate Loan Referrals From Realtors
Without Asking When a loan officer applies the
prospecting hustle mentality to their referral
efforts, it's a recipe for disaster. Stacey
Brown Randall, a best selling author, a national
speaker, and a coach-founder at Stacey Brown
Randall Coaching
Stacey Brown Randall is a mortgage marketing
genius. Shes helped dozens of businesses and
hundreds of professionals build referral
generating plans and triple their number of
referrals within mere months. She calls it the
referral explosion. The jaw-dropping twist? 
audible.com
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Stacey attracted these referrals without even
asking. Loan officers are constantly prospecting
for new clients. But when you apply the same
approach to generating referrals and start
chasing down Realtors for more business, the
results are often underwhelming. The hustle for
business, always be prospecting and closing
mentality is stronger than ever which puts us in
a particular frame of mind when it comes to lead
gen and sales, Stacey explains.  Instead, Stacey
advocates for building lasting relationships with
your referral partners. My philosophy and
methodology shifts the way you think of
referrals, Stacey adds, It gives you a roadmap
to follow where you focus on the referral source
(or partner) relationships for long-term
success. Here are just a few tips that will
allow you to build deep, lasting relationships
with agents and get a steady stream of referrals
without even having to ask Research agents.
Before you initiate a convo with any real estate
agent, try finding some information about them.
What are they good at? What do they like? What do
you have in common? How can you help them? Drop
the sales perspective. Realtors are not your end
clients, and youre not making a close. You are
building a relationshipagents send referrals
your way when they like you. Strive to find
things in commondont talk business all the
time.
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Make it about them. Every agent knows why youre
calling. Youre not the first loan officer to
take them out for lunch. Your only objective
during the first meeting should be to learn how
to help this particular agent. Dont make your
ask too soon. Plant referral seeds. Never
directly ask about referrals, but send soft
signals that you're open to them. For example,
instead of asking How many referrals can you
give me? you can share how many referrals youre
getting and how youre helping those clients. As
Stacey shares, the relationship-based approach
can have a profound effect on your entire
company. The more you spend time focused on
building and maintaining relationships, your
whole perspective changes on how you want to run
your business, she says. You can learn more
about generating referrals without asking, plus
get specific workflows to engage real estate
agents and plant referral seeds from Staceys
book Generating Business Referrals Without
Asking A Simple Five Step Plan to a Referral
Explosion or through her referral generating
coaching program.
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Tip 2 Utilize Private Facebook Groups Many
loan officers use Facebook pages and groups to
market their brand. In recent years, more LOs and
brokers have opted to make their pages or groups
private to boost engagement and trust by making
the information you share feel exclusive and
community-oriented.  Here are some tips to turn
a private Facebook group into a referral
generating machine Provide unique information.
Your posts should be both highly relevant to
agents business goals and unique. Create content
that is hyper-focused on your location or niche,
or join real estate groups to learn about the
industrys hottest topics. Follow a regular
posting schedule. No one likes dead-weight
Facebook groups. Make sure to stay on top of
agents minds by regularly popping up on their
Facebook feed with new updates and posts. The
best way to do this is to develop a content plan
and stick to it. Tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and
MeetEdgar are also great options for automating
your social media updates.
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Show some personality. Your goal is not to sell
agents yourself. The goal is to do business with
agents that like you. So dont be afraid to
record videos, take stances on something
important to you, and be yourself! Its all about
building up that know-like-trust factor. Engage
with everyone in your group. Make a point of
replying to all comments in your group. This
allows you to develop deeper, more meaningful
relationships with friends and group members.
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Tip 3 Teach Continuous Education
Classes Education is one of the best ways to
provide value to Realtors upfront, while
demonstrating your loan expertise to agents in an
organic and non-intrusive way. And you dont
have to look too far for success stories.  Just a
few weeks back, we interviewed Brian Sacks, a
nationally renowned mortgage expert and speaker
who also happened to close 38 loans in just one
month after getting referrals by teaching
seminars and webinars to real estate agents and
helping them understand the current market
trends. But if you want to take it to the next
level and have a steady stream of agent
referrals, why not let the system help you?
Become an NMLS-accredited continuous education
(CE) provider.  By teaching CE classes you get
regular access to an audience of engaged real
estate agents who need to learn in order to keep
their licenses.  There are many CE providers, so
heres how to make sure your CE classes stand out
and attract more referral-driving agents for your
business
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• Change your program periodically. If you keep
  teaching agents the same thing over and over,
  they wont regularly get back to you and you
  wont have a chance to build a lasting
  relationship. 
• So add a twist to your classes from time to time.
  You can 
• Invite new presenters
• Change the format
• Hold a QA session
• Or simply add new information
• No one will supply you with referrals simply
  because you teach CE classes. Make sure your
  courses are engaging and full of valuable
  knowledge, and never use them as a selling
  platform.
• Work on your branding and marketing. Treat CE
  classes as a strategic business investment,
  rather than an obligation. Track your attendance
  rates and conversion. Make sure to follow up with
  your attendees to nurture the relationship and
  maximize your conversion rates. You may also want
  to take some time to work on your branding in
  order to stand out from a myriad of other CE
  providers. Establish an online presence, work on
  your logo and slogan, and convince agents why
  they should attend your classes and not someone
  elses with a strong marketing message.

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• Leverage technology to boost attendance rates.
  Almost all loan officers utilize a CRM to work
  with their leads, so why not use the same
  approach to boost your referrals? The right
  mortgage CRM will help you automatically follow
  up with your participants and keep in touch with
  them after the course ends. But above anything
  else, a CRM can help you boost attendance
  rates.NMLS-accredited CE providers have access to
  a local database of Realtors, including their
  emails. Simply import the contact details into
  your CRM and schedule a drip-campaign to go out
  anyone who is interested in your courses. From
  there, all you have to do is keep the
  conversation going!

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Tip 4 Define Your Perfect Referral Sometimes
you get referrals that simply dont workthey
take too much of your time, or theyre not ready
to do business just yet. For whatever reason,
they dont feel like a referral at all.  You
might call them bad referrals, but the thing is
there is no such thing as bad referrals.  But
there are poorly defined referrals.  Lets boil
it down to the essentials. There are two defining
characteristics of a referral A referral is a
client directly introduced to you. Either through
a shared email or conversation. In this scenario,
a real estate agent introduces you to a potential
client directly. A non-direct introduction, such
as giving out your business card, is not a
referral. Its more like a warm lead. A referred
client has a specific problem that you can solve.
Ideally you should be presented as a solution to
someones problem. If a prospect has no specific
problem that you can help with, again, its more
of a warm lead for your businessnot a pure
referral. 
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When you have a clear vision of what your ideal
referral looks like, you can inform your partners
of the best ways to refer you to others. Take
time to crystalize the definition of a referral
as it pertains to your particular mortgage
business. Who are your ideal clients? Whats the
service that youre best at? Identifying your
ideal client will help you communicate to your
agents and other referral partners the type of
clients youre after, and why youre the best
option to help them.  This approach benefits you,
the agent, and the customerwhich results in even
more referrals. 
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Tip 5 Host Custom Events For Realtors When it
comes to building relationships with real estate
agents, many loan officers think only of a
20-minute lunch, a handwritten postcard and then
a series of neverending emails. Of course, every
now and then a great opportunity comes through
the traditional waylike a shared community event
or local masterclass. But why wait for an
upcoming community event when you can host it
yourself? Knock your competition out of the park
with custom events created exclusively for your
real estate partners. Done right, you wont have
to spend  much money on these events. In fact,
some of them will cost you nothing but your
time. Heres how to earn extra points with
agents through custom events Provide unique
value. If everyone is writing about the 3 hidden
challenges of underwriting a loan, how about
spicing things up by inviting an underwriter for
an interview and then live streaming the event in
your Facebook group?
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Make events memorable. The best way for agents to
remember you is to create something theyll never
forget, and a face-to-face client appreciation
dinner is much more memorable than a handwritten
note or a generic email newsletter.  Engage your
agents. Whether its a webinar, a party, or a
masterclass, make a point of engaging with your
guests and audience. Reply to comments, spark
conversations, and always look for ways you can
help agents with their current struggles. 
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Tip 6 Identify Your Top Referral Sources Not
all your partnerships with agents will be equally
beneficial to your mortgage business inevitably
some agents will refer more clients your way than
others. Identifying your top referral sources is
important for two main reasons Real estate
partnerships dont last forever. Real estate
agents engage with many loan originators and are
constantly being poached by new ones. Thats why
you should never rely solely on existing
partnerships. Consistently work with your top
referrers to develop new ways to benefit their
businesses in order to keep the partnerships
fresh and mutually beneficial over a longer
period of time. Scale partnerships that work.
After you identify your best referrers, you can
understand what kind of agents youd like to
build relationships with going forward and how to
build new relationships that are just as strong.
Additionally, learning what works for you and
your team allows you to save time and resources
on building relationships that you dont want.
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Tip 7 Building Referrals As a Team People
refer people, not companies Stacey Brown
Randall, coach and best-selling author of
Generating Business Referrals Without Asking
Referrals are a great way to grow your business
and build up a clientele, but can you use
referrals as a business strategy for your whole
company? Stacey's reply is a resounding Yesbut
with a twist
You should have a company referral plan but it
should be created to support your individual loan
officers and their referral generation
efforts. Simply put, each loan officer on your
team needs their own referral plan and referral
source relationships. The company plan starts
with educating them on how to generate referrals
without asking, Stacey explains, then having
them create their own referral plan to follow.
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• Here are a few tips on building a sustainable
  referral network for your whole company
• Support your loan officers with resources and
  accountability. Share your connections, use your
  CRM system to help your LOs identify their best
  sources of referrals, and follow up by setting
  clear accountability workflows and referral
  targets.
• Get your team members in front of Realtors. Dont
  be a bottleneck for your company. If someone on
  your team is great with certain tasks, dont
  hesitate to introduce them to your partners to
  demonstrate their value. 
• Market your team to real estate teams. Indicate
  that as a mortgage team you provide complex
  services with many people working together to
  help every client. This is something real estate
  teams can directly relate to, and thus feel more
  comfortable sending clients your way. 
• Agent referrals can be a powerful source of
  clients for your mortgage company, but dont
  leave this stream of business to a chance. Make a
  conscious effort to build lasting relationships
  with agents by providing excellent service,
  giving value up front and planting referral seeds
  along the way. 

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If you want to see how an easy-to-use mortgage
CRM can help you attract referrals in a
systematic and consistent way, try
Shape. Through smart automation and lead
distribution, Shape reduces the amount of time
loan officers spend on routine tasks and allows
them to spend their time on whats really
important helping clients and building
relationships. Try Shape free for 14 days and
see how our smart CRM can help you grow your
mortgage business on autopilot. Article
Source- https//setshape.com/blog/loan-officer-ma
rketing-to-realtors-check-out-these-7-insider-tips
-for-skyrocketing-your-referral-business