- It creates strong new referral relationships
What we need to do with all our referrers is to build their businesses. They want to look good to their clients and they want more clients, just like we do.
The Brokers that work with me use the book to create new referral relationships by passing all the benefits of being a contributor to a book to their referrer, with none of the hassle of writing the book.
We all know that Real Estate Agents have one top priority, and that is to sell more homes. Our role is to help them do that if we want to have an impenetrable relationship with them. So we create versions of the book, branded to their real estate agency that they can hand out for free to their buyers and sellers. So not only is it promoting us, it is promoting them (and passing on all the benefits having your own book provides) — which is of course what they really care about. Unless another Broker can do even more for them than we are, our relationship is very tough to break.
The same holds true for other related businesses, such as Accountants, Financial Planners and Builders. We have ‘Bonuses’ in the series that educate their clients specifically about each of their businesses, to help them get more clients. As I’ve said, marketing needs to be tailored to your market, so The 7 Easy Steps to Mortgage Freedom is tailored to theirs.
The Bonuses we have included:
“Thinking of Selling? How to get the best price when selling your home”
– to promote the interests of Real Estate Agents to help them get listings.
“Investment properties and tax: Get it right or pay too much” – to promote the services of Accountants to their clients.
“How to choose the right builder for your next home” – to help builders win more clients.
“A plan to make you financially healthier, wealthier and wiser” – to promote the services of Financial Planners
What we then do is to highlight the relevant bonus chapter on the cover of the book to really tie it in with the interests of the referrer we are worsking with.
This is possibly the most powerful use of this write ups — because it gives our real estate agent partners a clear point of difference to the other agents around them and builds their profile in their local area. We have fully ‘flipped the script’ and now the agent is wanting to work with us and promote us. I’ve had to turn down real estate agents who’ve wanted to use it and had them chasing me up — because they want to be the only agent in their area who has the book. I’ll talk more about the exact methods of this strategy
in Module 9 of the companion course to this book (the Mortgage Broking: Lead Generation and Sales Mastery Course).
Also, I’ve had situations where we have changed real estate agents in an area because a competitor has offered us more support in return for using our books than we were getting from the initial agent.
One of our early Real Estate Agents has gotten such a good result using our book that he is in the process of writing his own. But as I’ve reminded him, even better than giving out your own book is giving out your own and another you’ve contributed to, so it doesn’t need to be just one or the other.
Before I had even finished writing the book you are reading right now, Mortgage Broking: Lead Generation and Sales Mastery, I used it to create a new referral relationship for the Mortgage Australia Brokers who work with me. A first home buyer’s website that sees thousands of visitors per month was speaking to a number of broking firms to decide which of them to send the resulting clients to.
I initially sent them a copy of the The 7 Easy Steps to Mortgage Freedom to show them how we could create a ‘First Home Buyer’s’ edition of the book to help them with their conversion rates and lead generation, but I also sent them a rough draft of this book to demonstrate the extra value I felt I could provide to them.
To quote their response to me: ‘Thanks for sharing this! This does indeed look great, it covers all the bases and goes further to show how Brokers can set themselves apart. It is great to see people like yourself introducing these initiatives to improve your Brokers.‘