Building Better Referral Partnerships

Better Referral Partnerships

As a Real Estate Instructor and Mortgage Banker I want to share with you an observation.

Most lenders don't understand the real estate business.

They don't really understand the challenges and obstacles of being a Realtor.

They may not recognize that when you refer a client to them to get a mortgage, you may have been working with our customer for 6 months, or longer, showing 20-30 homes, low offers that weren't accepted and accepted offers that got into bidding wars and were out bid, buyers who just changed their mind about buying at all, customers who bought ended up buying privately......

And finally after the long hours, frustration, undone laundry, missed weekends, phone calls during dinner and hundreds of hours driving all over creation...a signed contract.

This may be their only contract for the month.
It means everything to the customer and to you.
It's that important.

Someone at home may have said, “if you don't sell something soon you're going to have to get a real job."

The Real Estate business is tough, demanding, changing and requires a vevery flexible focused person to succeed beyond one market cycle.

If you're a Realtor, maybe you can relate to this.

Most Realtors don't understand the mortgage business.

The learning curve for a lender is longer, complex and very detailed. Most mortgage companies have over 100 loan products, a fluid and ever changing interest rate and programs subject to Wall Street, compliance requirements and penalties that makes our industry look like grade school and an internal work system that generaly go from a person that opens the loan, another processes the loan, another underwrites the loan and another that closes the loan.
That's a lot of people working on one loan.

Of course Direct Underwriting makes this a lot easier and streamline, but for most Realtors you may not know what Direct Underwriting is and the benefits to the consumer.

For the average lender the frustration of doing pre-qual after pre-qual and not getting the loan because the customer found a rate that was, on the surface, 1/4% lower only to find out that it wasn't quite as advertised.

My point here is simple.

Understand your Referral Partners business.

My observation is this:
The lenders and Realtors whose relationships transcend time and market cycles, based on long standing trust and confidence have a better understand of each others business dynamic.
They can talk about sales, marketing, referrals, industry changes, and market cycles as Partners.

As real PARTNERS.

My tip is this.

Get to know your Referral Partners better.
The understanding leads to a stronger and more effective business relationship.

Here are a few questions that will get the ball rolling.

• What are the obstacles and challenges you face in this changing market?
• What do you see happening?
• How is this affecting you and your company?
• What do the other sales people say about the business when they get together?
• What can I do to better understand your business?
• Is there one thing I can do to improve my service that will immediately improve yours?
• What is it that you dislike about your industry as a whole?
• What is it that you dislike about our industry as a whole?
• How can we work together better to increase your referrals?

You get the point.

We are working together.

Thanks for spending 3 minutes with me.....
the best is yet to be!

Jeff

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Pass it on to one agent that you like and respect.