Watch the video…and then listen to the podcast!

Marketing Monday 1–3-2011

Hello and welcome to the Marketing Monday.com live podcast.

My name is Dean Jackson and I am very excited about today’s podcast, you can probably tell from my video how excited I am. I’ve been working literally on this for months and working specifically on an easy way to automate the process of getting referrals and I’m very excited about this because I know that this is going to make you a lot of money this year.

It’s good timing right now, first week of the year – you probably spent a little time reflecting on last year and if you look back and you have a category of your business for repeat and referral business…you start thinking and looking at that and saying “how much referral business did I actually do in the last 12 months?”

If you look at that what we’re calling your referral business we’re including your repeat business because even that is an accomplishment – because according to NAR 80 plus percent of people say they would use the realtor that they used to buy the house that they’re in when they sell it, or they would use the realtor again, but some small percentage like 11 percent of them actually do. So just being enough on somebody’s mind that they would consider you again when it’s time for them to sell is an accomplishment and that’s not something to take lightly, you probably did something to keep in front of your clients so that at least you get that repeat business.

But here’s where when we really start taking it up a level and start looking at that group of people in a strategic way that you see where the real opportunity is.

If I were to ask you of the last 10 people who referred you… if you looked back at those and you told me the story about how that referral came about and if it’s a repeat that’s fine too, but it’s going to have come about in one of three different ways and these are the three types of referrals that we talk about.

1. PASSIVE Referrals
Passive referrals are the best kind to get, those are the ones when people call you up and say my friend Bob told me that you could help me sell my house and we need to be in Poughkeepsie by April.

That is a wonderful call to get because you weren’t expecting it, you didn’t do anything specifically to make it happen and it can brighten up your day whenever it happens and everybody gets those calls. Or your client who you sold a house to four or five years ago calls you up and says “hey we’re looking now to buy a bigger home when can you come over and get together with us?”

That’s another form of passive referral – they’re calling you up and presenting themselves as business to you. That makes up about 80 percent of all of the referrals that you get are that passive type of referral.

2. REACTIVE Referrals
Now the next type is what we call the reactive referral and that’s where your client calls you up and says “hey my friend Bob is going to be moving you should give him a call I told him about you.” Now we call that a reactive referral because you still have to react to that phone call and you have to do something now to make that connection so you have to call their friend, introduce yourself or you have to get that friend to arrange somehow for you to meet that person but you have to react to that circumstance.

And if you look at the remaining portion of your business that’s how it happened. If we do this exercise and I’ve done it hundreds of times you end up with an 80/20 situation where 80 percent of the referrals you get are passive, 20 percent are reactive and what that leaves is the most strategic type of referral…

3. ORCHESTRATED Referrals
An orchestrated referral is when you ask for and get a very specific type of referral. And that’s what I’m really concerned about here that’s what I’m focused on is how can we orchestrate that referral process?

If we apply all of the Direct Response principles that we know and use in your before unit to attract people who don’t know you, don’t like you, don’t trust you yet they’re even more effective if we can apply those same direct response strategies to communicating with people who already know you, like you and trust you.

So in order to make that happen, in order to orchestrate those referrals, we need to look at first the dynamics of how referrals happen.

All referrals happen as a result of a conversation.

If you think about this it’s absolutely true for any type of referral whether you’re referring a movie or a book or anything like that and I’ll give you an example.

Last year I was at lunch with a friend Josh who had twisted his back and I had just come from my massage therapist Jenna and he was complaining about his back and how tight it was and I had told him “I’ve just come from my massage therapist Jenna let me give her a call and see if she can get you in right after lunch because I had the same thing and she got right to it for me.”

So I called Jenna, passed the phone over to Josh, they got an appointment arranged for that afternoon; he went to her and next time I saw him he couldn’t thank me enough for setting that up with Jenna because she fixed his back and he was feeling great. And that made me feel good.

You think about that same thing for you, you think about any time that you refer somebody the thing that always makes you feel best is the next time you see them if they took your advice and they thank you for recommending that movie or recommending that restaurant or recommending that book that’s what’s very powerful.

The Referral Myth is that people refer things as a favour to YOU.

Your clients don’t refer you as a favour to you – they refer you because it’s going to make THEM look good, it’s going to make them feel good about themselves when their friend tells them “wow that was a great experience” so they refer because it makes them feel good.

And on a real primal level it raises their STATUS and we’re all wired subconsciously with this need for approval and status and we look at when we do something for somebody, when we do something and introduce something to somebody that makes a positive impact on their life we feel good when that person thanks us.

So think about how YOU refer and even if it is something like a movie or a book or a restaurant you want to know how that worked out because you want to feel good. And when they say did you go see that move oh yeah we loved it; I told you you’d love it.

So you have that same thing where now you’re feeling good because you brought that good thing into somebody’s life.

So if all referrals happen as a result of conversation then how can we use that knowledge to orchestrate referrals?

In order for a referral to take place within a conversation three things have to happen.

1. They have to NOTICE that the conversation is about real estate.

2. They have to THINK about you and…

3. They have to INTRODUCE you into the conversation.

So, those three things all have to happen in order for a referral to take place…and it’s happening all the time.

Your clients are surrounded by conversations at work, at the golf course, at the bowling alley, at their kids’ soccer games, at school, at church, at lunch, everywhere they go that’s what we do – we are a conversational society.

You go you run into people and you talk you have conversations.

So while we’re surrounded by all these people talking the odds are very high that in the next 30 days every single one of the people you know are going to encounter a conversation about real estate.

They’re going to run into somebody talking about buying their first home or they’re going to run into somebody talking about selling a home or buying a bigger home or looking for an investment property or moving out of town or somebody getting a job transfer or a divorce or somebody is getting married or somebody’s kids are going off to college and they’re considering buying a house for the kids while they’re away at school.

So all of those conversations are very high probability conversations and so many of them are about real estate and your clients and your sphere and the people who know you, like you and trust you they may not even notice that that conversation is about real estate.

Or they may notice that it’s about real estate but they might not think about you, that might not immediately trigger that thought about you and they may notice it, they may think about you and they may not say anything or they may think about you and they may introduce you into the conversation by saying you should call my realtor Julie and maybe they will call you and you’ll get that passive referral that we really love.

But for every time that happens there are probably three to five times as many more occasions where they didn’t call you and you find out about it months later when you run into your client at the grocery store and they say “hey did my friend Bob call you?”

“No, no he didn’t”,

“Well I told him all about you I wondered what had happened I saw that he’d listed with Humpty Dumpty Realty instead of you” – and that happens all the time.

But if you could implant a listening device in all of your client’s ears and just like homeland security you could monitor all of their conversations for the next 12 months and when you heard a conversation about real estate you could take over the conversation and you could tell them exactly what to say, you’d probably do a really great job of getting you introduced into the conversation 🙂

But since you don’t have homeland security’s technology or their budget what would be the next best thing?

The next best thing would be to use the power of suggestion and the subconscious mind to stimulate their awareness of those conversations and let them know in advance exactly what to do when they notice a conversation about real estate.

So that’s where I had the idea for “The World’s Most Interesting Postcard”

It’s just a super-easy way to keep in touch with the people who know you, like you and trust you each month to raise their awareness of a conversation to look out for and exactly what to do when they hear it.

So The World’s Most Interesting Postcard is a combination of a great client newsletter and a direct response referral getter.

So each month the front of the card is packed with really interesting fun and entertaining facts and things that are easy to read and then the back of the card stimulates their awareness of a specific conversation and inviting them and telling them exactly what to do if they hear it.

For instance this month is about what to do when they hear someone talking about selling their home or getting their house ready to sell in the spring and what we want them to do instead of passively telling their friend to call you what we want is we want for your client to call YOU so that you can give them your new report on “How to make your house look like a model home in one weekend –for less than $200”.

See they already know you, like you and trust you and your clients are not going to have any kind of reluctance to call you.

PLUS: we’re giving them total control of the situation by offering to give them the report to give to their friend which is often a very easy way for them to introduce you into the conversation.

This way they look good because it was really thoughtful of them just like if they were having that conversation and then they saw an article in the newspaper and they clipped it out and brought it into work with them the next day for them.

Of course when your clients call you you can figure out the best way to get you and their friend connected but the purpose of that card, the purpose of planting that thought was to get them to call you so that now instead of just depending on their friend to call you on their recommendation we’re letting them be in control of this, we’re encouraging your client to call you. And after just a few months of this pattern your clients will really start to notice these conversations and they’ll know exactly what to do when they hear them.

Now another element of the back side of the card is a little dialogue box just above your picture… and you saw that in the video there and this is a fantastic place to ask for EXACTLY the kind of referral that you would like RIGHT NOW.

Maybe you’re working with some buyers who are looking for a particular type of home just like the example I gave of “I’m working with a couple from Atlanta who are looking for a three-bedroom house with a pool so give me a call if you know anyone who has one.”

Or, maybe you just got a brand new listing and you’re excited about that.

Or, maybe you’re having a home buyer workshop in a couple of weeks and you want people to tell their friends about that;

something specific that could stimulate a quick call from your clients something that might be on the top of their mind. They might say “I know who has a pool house that they want to sell” or “I know who should go to that home buyer workshop”, those kind of things we’re getting at the TOP of their mind.

Now I think you can tell I’m pretty excited about this and I am because I know that this is going to make you a lot of money this year and I’ve really got an easy way for you to implement the strategy

so here’s what I’ve got for you…

I’m going to write these postcards for you every month, The World’s Most Interesting Postcard on the front with lots of fun stuff each month and then I’m going to write the referral getting notes on the back side and the free reports that you’ll be offering.

For instance this month’s free report is the report called “How To Make Your House Show like A Model Home In One Weekend for less than $200” so I’ve already written that for you and this is to stimulate referrals of people who are going to be selling their house – And we’re planting that seed NOW to be ready for the spring market when those conversations are really going to kick into high gear, your clients will already be on alert to be looking for those kind of conversations and they’ll know what to do.

So each month we’ll talk about something different.

Next month we’ll talk about move up buyers so we’ll plant that seed of getting the ability for your clients to notice a conversation about people talking about maybe buying a bigger house…and then one month we’ll talk about first time buyers and then we’ll talk about people who may be talking about investment properties.

So I’m going to write these for you every month and I’m going to provide them for you in a format that you can edit to include your contact information and your picture and your company logo just like it looks in the video there.

You’ll be able to put your picture, your contact information and then you can either print or mail these cards yourself or you can just email us your card once you’ve edited with your picture along with your mailing list and we’ll print the cards, we’ll address them and we’ll mail them for you cheaper than you could do it yourself.

You can mail as few or as many cards as you like, there’s no maximum on these you can mail these to just your top 100 clients, you could mail them to all 500 of your clients if you wanted to, it’s very affordable to do.

So each month also you can join us for a Referrals Every Month Coaching Call where we’ll talk about each month’s offer and I’ll explain a little bit about how everything works with that and we’ll share some new Referral-Getting ideas and then you’ll also get access to the Referrals Every Month Members Forum so that you can share your results, you can exchange ideas, you can have conversations with all the other agents around the country who are doing this.

So that’s what I’ve got for you!

“The World’s Most Interesting Postcard” subscription and the Referrals Every Month membership is $199 for the full year or $29 a month.

Our Grand Opening is going to be on January 11th at 1.00 pm, that’s going to be our kick-off call and of course all of our calls will be recorded and transcribed and then they’ll be available for you to download in the members’ area.

So here’s what to do right now…

Just click on The World’s Most Interesting Postcard button below or go to TheWorldsMostInterestingPostcard.com and make sure that you’re one of the first 100 people to join me on Tuesday.

I can’t wait to get started!

I know this is going to make you a lot of money this year and I’m really looking forward to working with you.

So go do that right now and then I’ll send you an email this week with all the coaching call details and what to do next.

This is going to be a great year!