Referrals are the lifeblood of any business, accounting for as much as 65% of new business. However, your former clientele isn’t the only source of referral –you also have realtors! The value of connecting with real estate agents is clear –you share the same consumers and complement each other’s services. 

However, while it’s an obvious avenue for mortgage referrals, few pros know how to get referrals from agents. Fewer still know how to keep a steady stream of qualified leads flowing. 

(Offering to buy them lunch or coffee won’t cut it)

In this article, we’re going to give you three actionable strategies to help you build a robust network of real estate professionals that will enthusiastically refer their homebuyers to you.

Let’s dive in.

How to get more qualified mortgage referrals From Real Estate Agents

Drop The Sales Pitch. Build Relationships.

Realtors are excellent salespeople, so they’ll appreciate a good pitch when they hear one. However, coming off too “sales-y” will have the opposite effect you’re hoping for. You might start to sound like competition, making the agent resistant to anything you might have to offer.

Let’s also remember that realtors are not your end consumers. They’re your colleagues and referral partners.

Here’s how to have a “building a relationship” approach that effortlessly encourages more agents to give you leads:

• Learn about the agent. Research the realtor to know more about their business style, clients they serve, and strengths. Even info about associations, hobbies, or other interests could come in handy when getting to know a potential referral partner. 
• Make the first conversations light. Don’t always talk business. Agents often get approached by loan officers looking to take them out to lunch and explore how they can “partner up.” Don’t be that basic mortgage pro. Instead, keep the first meeting friendly and personal. Congratulate them on a recent accomplishment or other noteworthy bits of news. 
• Share your value (but don’t brag). Casually sharing how many referrals you’re getting and how happy those clients are is a subtle way to hype yourself up without pushing it. It’s also a way of letting them know that you are open to receiving referrals and are successful at seeing it through to completion. 

Partner With Them In Social Media Marketing

Here’s what we know: Real Estate Agents are some of the most active professionals on social media. In fact, an estimated 90% of all 2 million licensed real estate agents use social media for marketing their services regularly.

This fact alone underscores their ability to be powerhouse networkers and your most lucrative ally for getting more qualified referrals. 

The key to getting “in” is not to pitch them, to echo the above point. Instead, you need to focus on creating a reciprocating relationship that genuinely adds as much value to their business as it would to yours. Here are some ideas to get started doing just that:

• Help cross-promote special events like live virtual open house events. 
• You can also offer to participate in the event via chat or live stream to answer questions from participants about home financing. 
• Create real estate-related centered content such as articles, infographics, or videos that you can co-brand with the agent. 
• Better still, have them publish the original content on their site and link back to your site for an additional SEO boost.
• Continuing the spirit of offering free valuable content, reach out to their email list. If you’re not already aware, email lists have one of the highest conversion rates. So if your agent has a list of a few hundred emails that they organically grew, it can prove to be a white-hot lead source. 
• Engage with the agent’s social media. Go beyond just liking every post and take the time to comment with additional insight or echo their sentiment. 

Leverage Your Digital Mortgage Tools and Co-Branding Opportunities

Historically, the real estate profession has been historically an in-person profession –at least when it comes to doing open houses and showing properties to potential buyers. So when the industry was suddenly thrown into virtual-only, it posed a significant challenge. 

Fortunately, it seems that both the industry and consumers have embraced a virtual way of home buying as a welcomed alternative to traditional in-person. And much like in the mortgage industry, technology in real estate is proving to be a significant boost to revenue potential.

As such, real estate agents look to partner with technologically savvy mortgage professionals. Products like our co-brandable mortgage mobile app Loanzify are a popular and valuable tool that agents can easily share with their clients. It’s free for the agent and consumer to use, and it’s packed with resources, information, and interactive tools that lead all users back to you. 

Loanzify POS is another tool you can use to win over more real estate referral partners. Keeping every interested party informed is hard, and miscommunication is a major cause of delayed funding and unhappy customers. With Loanzify POS, the agent can have secure access to the loan file with a pre-determined level of access.  They can also be assigned to specific loans.

From the agent’s admin view can see where the borrower is in their journey to approval and can even download the borrower’s preapproval letter to submit with their offers. 

Real estate agents are a powerful resource for finding quality leads, but only you make a conscious and strategic effort. Remember that when you approach it from building lasting relationships, you make it a win-win for everyone. Make it personal, overdeliver, be social and genuine, and leverage your mortgage technology every chance you get. 

Want to learn more about implementing mortgage tech to win over more referral partners? Click below to try it out for free and schedule a live demo with one of our helpful account executives.

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