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Tips for Building Referral Relationships
Choose quality over quantity. Seek out only the most successful people as referral partners, whether they are real estate agents, attorneys, financial planners or contractors. Building relationships with stars may take a little more initiative and imagination on your part, but in the end they will create far more value for your business.
Build rapport. Before you meet potential partners, learn all you can about them. Are they passionate about a sport, art, animals or civic events? Get them talking about their passion and your first conversation will begin warmly. They will be flattered by your interest and regard you as a first-rate person and top-flight professional.
Ask and listen. Resist the temptation to talk about yourself. Focus on your potential partners by asking numerous open-ended questions and genuinely listening to the replies. This process will uncover numerous opportunities for you, and showcase your relationship skills.
Learn the plan. What's important to your potential partners? Growing their staff? Finding new markets? Building affinity relationships? You can't begin to add real value to partnerships unless you understand their goals and game plan.
Deliver value. All successful business relationships are built when both parties perceive value. To expect referrals, you must deliver referrals (or rapidly closed loans) as well. You also can create value for partners in other ways, such as providing ideas, introducing them to other referral partners or co-marketing.
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