24. My simple trick for handling agent referrals

It dawned on me that my referral process had room for improvement, and the missing piece was an efficient intake form.

Throughout my journey, I've realized that identifying small gaps in your systems can lead to significant improvements. For years, I relied heavily on networking and direct interactions to get referrals, but when COVID hit, everything changed. I had to find new ways to keep my business moving and realized the power of streamlining our intake process using forms.

In today's episode, I share how a simple intake form has revolutionized my referral system, eliminating the back-and-forth and making our process smoother. This isn't just about creating a form; it's about continuously refining it to meet evolving needs. From capturing key information to automating client outreach, I'll walk you through the entire journey and the impact it's had on my team and me.

Curious about how this could work for you? Join us as we explore practical steps to streamline your processes and make your work more efficient. The little tweaks can make a big difference, and I’m excited to share what I’ve learned.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Join our ongoing discussion in the Business Systems for Realtors Facebook group, and let’s keep optimizing together!

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Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Today we're talking about an intake form that I have not shared publicly, but it's something that I've been using in my business for probably the last I don't know two or three years now. Before COVID, I spent a lot of time networking in the community and that was how we got a lot of our referrals. And when COVID happened, that was when I really dug into our agent relationships and focused on getting referrals from them, because I knew that regular networking wasn't going to work during COVID. And so the way that I think about systems is always okay. Well, if we're going to need to collect all this information to avoid having to do a bunch of back and forth emails and all of that like this really just needs to be a form. So in the form, we capture the client's information, we ask when the client wants to be reached out to, we collect the agent's information, we ask for the referral agreement and the W-9. All of that information automatically gets synced into Orbit. It reaches out to the client on the date that the agent said to reach out. So if it's today, then obviously it reaches out immediately. But in some cases it's like the client doesn't want to be reached out to until Saturday or whatever.

Speaker 0: 1:06

And then there's a text that goes out that says hey, my name is Alexa, so and so, agent, just gave us your contact information about wanting to move in South Florida and wanted to see if you had a few minutes to chat, and so we can learn a little bit more about your goals, something along those lines. I don't remember the exact text template, but it's super simple and so, and then there's a second text that goes alternatively, if you'd prefer to schedule some time ahead, here's the link to my calendar. And so that's where the 15 minute discovery call comes into play. And so in a lot of cases they will never even reply. They just literally schedule a call on my calendar, and that way I know it's taken care of. But in the events that they do not schedule ahead, then I just keep reaching out to them until we actually get in contact. And so I would say that this has been one of those things where, from my team's perspective, they really appreciate, because they're not chasing me down for the agent's information right, like the email and phone number, and all of that because we have built into our automations and in our systems that when the client goes live, once they go under contract. Once we get the clear to close, we always update our referral partners, and so there's the reminder for the team to go and do that.

Speaker 0: 2:13

But making it super easily accessible by having the referral information in the contact record makes a world of difference in just the speed of my team not having to go digging for that information. These are the little things where this intake form probably took me about 20 minutes or so to set up, and then, over time, whenever there's something that comes up where it's okay, well, we could have done this easier or there's a better way to do this then we start building on the systems over time, and so this is one of those examples where a lot of people think, oh, you just start a system and then it just runs and you never have to do anything again. That is true to an extent, right, like I never have to ask an agent to email me the contact information or anything like that ever again. But there's always building that's happening.

Speaker 0: 2:57

There's always things that you can do to improve, and so starting with a form like this just makes the process super, super, super simple, and so I want you to start thinking about what are some of the forms or some of the ways that you can very easily consolidate information when you're getting referrals, when you're working with lenders, all of that kind of stuff, so that it makes your life easier and you're capturing all the information at one time. So that's the episode for today. As always, please join our daily discussion in our Business Systems for Realtors Facebook group and I will see you in the next episode.