Building a referral-based business is a five-step process that involves cultivating a network of strategic partners who are likely to refer business to you.

1 – Compile your contacts into a database

If you don’t already have a database of your current and past clients, your recommended vendors and service providers, and potential referral partners, start compiling that information into an easily accessible format. There are numerous programs out there to stay organized, such as Top Producer and Act! On the web, you can use HighRiseHQ.com. Or, if you are short on cash, use Microsoft Outlook to keep track of your information.

2 – Organize your contacts each day

Make a commitment to spend five to ten minutes each day adding any contact information you’ve collected to your contact database. Whenever you collect business cards or write details down on Post-It notes, make it a priority each day to input that information.

3 – Attend a networking event each week

The best way to meet new people is to join a business or networking organization and attend events. You will meet a lot of new people to add to your sphere of influence.

4 – Commit to personally contacting two people each day

If you only contact two people per day – through phone conversations, email, or mailing a handwritten note – that translates to ten per week or forty per month. The more you touch base with people, the more likely they will be to refer business your way. Other ideas for follow ups – send out an annual home valuation to past clients, endorse local business owners in your sphere, or send local real estate market updates (for instance, if their home gains value). You should also try to meet your top referral sources in person once or twice a year.

5 – Send monthly follow ups

A great way to follow up with potential referral sources is to add them to your monthly real estate newsletter. Each month, you can send out local market statistics, housing trends, new listings, and a featured article in your area of expertise. Only send this newsletter to people who have granted you permission first – it can be incredibly annoying to receive unwanted email. Before you end any conversation you have, simply explain you offer a monthly newsletter and would they mind if you sent it to them.

In each communication you have with clients, ask for referrals whenever you follow up. This is important because if you don’t specifically ask, it might not cross their mind. If you follow up by email, include a referral request in your signature. If you send mail, include a PS and a request for referrals. By implementing these five steps, you will begin to build your real estate referral business in just a few minutes each day.

Selling a home can be an emotionally draining experience for sellers. They often need to get a certain price to pay off their mortgage, put a down payment on a new home, and pay off any improvements they’ve done to the home. Because of this huge financial burden, sellers are often reluctant to reduce their price, though that is often the reason why their home didn’t sell in the first place – especially in a down economy.

Unfortunately, it is often the real estate agent who is blamed when the home doesn’t sell, so depending on the seller’s financial situation, he may choose to immediately re-list the home with a new agent. If you can adequately address his current concerns and frustrations through your marketing materials, while providing sound advice for making his home more sellable, you can tap into this profitable real estate niche.

One of the best ways to reach expired listings is to put together an expired listing guide that explains common mistakes and pitfalls sellers make when trying to sell their home and offers tips for promoting their home more effectively if they do decide to re-list. Here is a sample outline of what your guide might include:

• Common problems that led to the home not selling – If you’ve talked with a number of sellers, you’ve probably heard a few of them vent about why their home didn’t sell. Your guide should address these from the seller’s perspective, paraphrasing their words. The better you can get inside the minds of your prospects and look at the problem from their point of view, the easier it is to connect with them and build rapport. They want to work with someone who understands their frustrations.
• Reasons why they should re-list their home – Be understanding of the fact that if a home didn’t sell the first time, sellers will be skeptical that another agent can offer a better solution. Your guide should address reasons why if they re-list with you, they will get different results.
• A questionnaire or checklist – Put together a questionnaire or checklist that analyzes each aspect of the home selling process so the seller can analyze why their home didn’t sell. Your questionnaire should include questions on how the home was prepared, priced and marketed, as well as specific tasks the agent should have done during the process (like how often they kept in touch, what the commission arrangement was, the number of showings, etc).
• Tips for how to stage their home if they re-list – Include tips and advice for how to make each room more presentable, what to look for during the inspection, how to emphasize the home’s best attributes, and how to stage the outside of the home. You can also include a list of local contractors you recommend for minor home repairs.
• Tips for pricing the home if they re-list – Explain the criteria for getting top dollar for their home vs making a fast sale. Offer a list of local appraisers and give tips for getting an official appraisal.
• Tips for promoting the home if they re-list – Include your detailed step-by-step marketing plan for how you’d market the home, including listing in the MLS, on national real estate websites, as a single property home website, open houses and showings, any marketing materials such as brochures and flyers you create, if you hire a real estate photographer, publications where you will place ads, and so forth. Make sure to include samples of the ads and marketing materials you use, so sellers can compare how you would sell their home to what their previous agent did.
• Case studies and testimonials – Frustrated sellers will want proof that you can sell their home if they re-list with you, so include a few testimonials or case studies of expired listing clients for whom you successfully sold their home. Explain their reasons for why the home didn’t sell the first time (preferably in their words), what you did differently to sell their home, and the results.

A good expired listings kit should get sellers thinking about why their home didn’t sell in the first place (which is the purpose of the questionnaire), ways they can get their home in top shape if they do decide to re-list, how you would market their home differently so that it will sell if they list with you, and proof that you’ve gotten results for happy clients.

Great real estate agents have a feedback system in place that allows them to collect information from potential buyers and can uncover any red flags that may be making the home less attractive.

Method 1 – Survey the Buyer’s Agent

Call, email or fax a follow up sheet to the agent who viewed the home with the buyer. Ask them a few simple questions like:

• What attracted the buyer to this home?
• What did the buyer think about the price?
• What didn’t the buyer like about the home?
• Do you have any suggestions for improving the home?

Method 2 – Survey Buyers After an Open House

When buyers come to an open house, greet them by asking them to participate in an email survey about the home. Not everyone will agree to participate, but for those who do agree, you get their contact information and permission to follow up with them about the home. The questions you can ask are similar to what you’d ask the buyer’s agent after a showing.

• What attracted you to this open house?
• What did you like best about the home?
• What didn’t you like about the home?
• What did you think about the price?
• Do you have any suggestions for improving the home?

You can also ask the buyer if they would like any additional information about the home and invite them to join your mailing list. (If they don’t respond, don’t automatically add them to your mailing list! You want to make sure you have permission to follow up with them.)

By collecting information about what buyers do and don’t like about the home, you will have hard data to present the seller about any major turnoffs buyers have with the home and leverage to convince the seller to make any changes that might be made. After all, buyers don’t make offers on homes they dislike, and if there are any major issues, it could lead to fewer or lower-priced offers.

1. Local market statistics – If you specialize in a local market, most of the people on your mailing list should live or work within that area. Keep them up-to-date on home values, housing trends, and interest rates.
2. Unique listings – While you probably send out a list of your real estate listings regularly, choose one that is unique or special in some way and tell the story of the home in an interesting way. For instance, perhaps the sellers are prominent members of the community – can you write about their lives and why they are choosing to sell the home? Does the home have specific features that make it stand out among the rest of the homes in the area?
3. Unique buyer requirements – If you are working with buyers who are looking for specific features, highlight their story. People are fascinated with other people’s lives so tell a good story about who the buyers are and what their motivations for buying a home with this unique feature. Then ask for help – do any of your readers know of any homes like this?
4. Featured articles – Think of your newsletter as a magazine or newspaper column and send 500-word articles to your clients about various aspects of home ownership such as landscaping, home improvement, or refinancing.
5. Helpful resources – If you find an interesting article or website that your readers might enjoy, write up a quick summary or review.
6. Special events – Are you or members of your community holding a special event like a seminar, office open house, special dinner, or fund-raiser? Highlight the details of the event and why your subscribers should attend.
7. Local business profile – Sit down with a local business owner in your community and do a quick interview. Then, write up your interview, along with why your readers should be interested in this business.
8. Joint ventures – Partner with local businesses to offer your readers a special discount, coupon or additional perk if readers patronize their businesses.
9. New neighbor introduction – Have you just helped a buyer find the perfect home in a neighborhood? If they give you permission, write up the buyer’s story along with a testimonial from them about your services.
10. Current events – Do any current events happening nationally impact your local market?
11. Holidays – Send holiday greetings or gifts. Include information about how your local community will be celebrating the holiday. For instance, when your city is lighting the Christmas tree or when the fireworks are taking place for the Fourth of July.
12. Offer personal announcements – Offer a tidbit about yourself in each newsletter – what has been happening with your life? About to get married? Have a baby? Teen is going off to college? Going on vacation? Keep people updated with short excerpts about your personal life. People love personal stories, so when you keep them up-to-date, the next time they see you, they will have a conversation topic.
13. Run a contest – Offer a cash prize, free movie tickets, a restaurant gift certificate, an IPod or other perks for readers who participate in a contest you hold. You can offer incentives for people who send in their favorite recipe, vacation photos, or crazy pet stories. Tie in your contest to a local community event or holiday. For instance, if there’s a local community BBQ, ask people to send in their favorite summer cookout recipe. For Christmas, ask them to send holiday cookie recipes. For summer, ask them to send in their best beach photos. Tell them you will publish the best entries in your newsletter along with winning a nice prize.

If you want your subscribers to actually read your newsletter or regular updates, make sure to ask for permission before following up. Too many agents get contact information at networking events and immediately add people to their mailing list without asking. When you just meet someone and exchange business cards, it can be incredibly annoying when you start receiving their newsletter and haven’t asked for it.

The better way to follow up with prospects is to use permission marketing. Before you add anyone to your mailing list, let them know that you publish a regular newsletter and ask if they would be interesting in receiving updates. If they say “yes,” and many of them will, then add them. If they say “no,” they won’t make a good prospecting candidate and you will be wasting time and resources marketing to them – not to mention annoying them – if you add them to your list.

The key to follow up is to make your communications useful to readers. Ask yourself – if you weren’t a real estate agent, would this be interesting to you? Don’t simply promote your services – look for ways to help people or appeal to their interests.

To effectively convert potential buyers into clients, put yourself in your prospect’s mind. When they call you up or walk through your door, they have a number of questions on their mind: What should I expect from the agent? What homes will he show me? What forms will I be expected to fill out? What types of questions will I be asked? Above all else, they expect to receive a sales pitch about your services, so their initial resistance is high.

From your perspective, you don’t want to waste your time showing homes to unqualified or defensive buyers, so here are a few tips for improving your presentation and building rapport during the home showing process.

1 – Make a good first impression

When you first greet buyers, make sure you are smiling and look professional. First impressions matter.

2 – Educate the potential buyer about the home buying process

If a potential buyer is already in your office, then you can easily take a few minutes to ask them about their home buying needs and provide them with a brief overview of how you work. If they are calling you, it is best to ask them to come to your office for a few minutes before you spend time looking at homes.

3 – Qualify buyers by asking questions about their home search

Before you take buyers out to search for homes, find out if they are both ready to buy and have the means to do so. Ask them questions about:

• Their ideal home – What area is it in? What features and amenities are they looking for? How long have they been searching for a home? What have they been doing to find potential homes? What price range are they looking at?
• Their financial situation – Have they spoken with a lender? Do they need to sell their home before buying a new one?
• Making a purchasing decision – Have they ever purchased a home before – and if so, how long ago was that? Who is involved in making a buying decision?
• Their readiness to buy – Are they prepared to move forward if they find a home that meets their criteria?
• Working with a real estate agent – Are they currently working with another agent? What are their criteria for hiring an agent? Do they have any questions about the home buying process?

4 – Decide whether to help the potential buyer

What happens if a buyer isn’t yet qualified? You can either refer them to another agent in your office (and potentially get paid if they buy in the future) or turn them away. It is up to you to set up criteria for whom you will take on as a client. Sometimes it is best to turn prospects away if they don’t meet those criteria – or ask them to postpone their real estate search until they are both ready to buy and can do so. If you do decide to refer business to another agent, put the referral agreement in writing – and make sure the agent to whom you refer business is professional and will communicate promptly with clients.

5 – Present an overview of the buying process

After you’ve decided to work with a potential buyer, give them a short presentation on the home buying process, including a basic timeframe, financing options, how to search for and visit homes, how to choose the best home, how to negotiate the best terms, how to present the offer, and how to open escrow. The home search process can be a stressful and overwhelming time for buyers, so clearly explain it in a simple, easy-to-understand format.

6 – Sign a buyer representation agreement

Finally, at the end of your buying process overview, present buyers with a written buyer representation agreement that states they agree to work solely with you as their real estate agent. If the “fee” is an issue, clearly explain how that fee is almost always covered by the seller and in most cases, no fees are due at closing. By having buyers sign an agreement, you ensure you will get paid for your services.

By taking time initially to qualify buyers and getting them to sign your representation agreement, you will work with only those buyers who can buy, are ready to do so in the near future, and will be loyal to you.

The absolute worst way to market to FSBOs is to call them up and explain that most people who try to sell their home themselves either eventually work with an agent or get a much lower selling price for their home. The better approach is to offer them educational resources that can aid them in selling process.

You might wonder why you would want to help someone sell their home without paying you. There are a few reasons this can be a great marketing strategy. First, if the seller isn’t successful at selling his home, he may use you when he realizes trying to do everything by himself isn’t working. Second, if he is successful at selling his home himself, he may use you to buy his next home or allow you to refer him to another agent in a different area. And finally, by helping the seller, you may land additional business – either because he refers people in his network to you or because he has an interested buyer who needs representation.

Here are some ideas for informational and educational resources you can offer when marketing to FSBOs.

• Free home selling guide – Create a guide that walks FSBOs through the process of selling their home by themselves. In the guide, provide helpful tips and advice on how to make sure their buyer’s finances are in order, how to stage their home for showing, and how to make sure their property is in the best possible condition.
• Free competitive marketing analysis – Put together a competitive marketing analysis to estimate what their home is worth.
• Lists of recommended vendors – Compile lists of appraisers, lenders and contractors in your area.
• Free marketing materials – Print up a few flyers or offer the seller a “For Sale” sign. On the back of each, you can print “Compliments of Your Name” to further market your services.
• Sample real estate ads – Put together a kit of your most successful real estate advertisements to show sellers how to write a great ad for their home.

You can market your For Sale By Owner kits on your website, in advertisements you place in local publications, in mailings you send, or during phone or face-to-face interactions. If sellers ask why you are providing these resources for free, tell them you’d like to be the first agent they interview if they do decide to list their home.

By following up with FSBOs and offering sound home selling advice, you build a relationship with them over time, so if they do decide to list their home with an agent, you are the first one they call.

No matter where you live, there are people who hold political, financial and social power within your local community. These people usually have great connections and make business and political deals happen because of the people they know. If you can tap into their network, you can become the go-to real estate agent for your local community. Here is a six-step approach to targeting the influential people in your area.

1. Build a Personal Brand – Building trust and credibility in the eyes of highly influential people starts with how you present yourself – including how you dress, what car you drive, what your office looks like, how you speak, and how you present your services. You must convey professionalism and success in each interaction. Take time to define how you want people to see you by thinking about the strengths, talents, and passions that make you unique. When you meet people, what impression should they walk away with?
2. Specialize for a Real Estate Niche – Highly influential people often are business owners, so they appreciate and respect when you can clearly define what types of prospects you want to attract. Pick a real estate niche and create your unique selling proposition so you are ready whenever someone asks “What do you do for a living?”
3. Target Referral Partners – Make a list of people within influential social circles who would make great additions to your referral network and start looking for opportunities to meet with them.
4. Participate in Business Organizations – Join and regularly attend at least two local business organizations like your Chamber of Commerce branch to get to know the influencers at these organizations. Volunteering or speaking at events can help you rise through the ranks to gain status.
5. Attend Town Halls and Local Community Meetings – If your local community holds town hall or community meetings, start attending to see who is voicing their concerns and presenting ideas. While the meetings, themselves, may be boring, you can meet highly influential people just by attending and listening to their concerns.
6. Get Involved with Local Charity Fund-Raisers
   Find a charity in your area that you strongly advocate and get involved with fund-raising activities. You will not only meet high-power donors, but you’ll have the opportunity to give back to your community.

When targeting highly influential people, make a list of all the events they attend, associations they belong to, and businesses they own. Then, find ways to meet and network with these people. If you can become one of the influencers, it could take your real estate business to a new level.

The best listing presentations are ones where you’ve created and memorized a planned presentation that concisely explains the selling process and any frustrations, concerns, and problems sellers may face. But they go beyond that.

If you simply memorize a pre-written script, you will sound mechanical and fail to build rapport with your prospects. You will be focused on what to say next, rather than focusing on your prospect, listening to his concerns, and observing his body language. To become exceptional at giving listing presentations, you must practice your script over and over until you are so familiar with it, that it becomes second nature to you. Once that happens, you can walk into any situation and customize your listing presentation to your prospect’s biggest issues and concerns.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of your listing presentation.

1 – Build rapport initially

When you first meet with your prospects, include a few minutes of small talk and potentially get your prospect to laugh at a joke before you launch into the heart of your material.

2 – Ask questions

If you’ve internalized your listing presentation, you should have specific questions you can ask sellers that will allow you to hit each point in your presentation without sounding like you are giving a sales pitch. The person who asks the questions is the one in charge of the appointment, so make sure for every point you want to address, you start with a question and let the seller do the talking. Some ideas for questions to ask include:

• Questions about the home – How long they’ve lived there. What they like best about the home. What aspects of the home caught their attention when they first purchased it?
• Questions about their selling motivations – Why they are now considering selling. Their timeframe for moving. When do they plan on putting out the For Sale sign? Where they are moving to. Which is most important: fast turnaround or a top selling price? What questions do they have about the selling process?
• Questions about the home – Have they made any improvements? What price range do they have in mind? Will they be leaving any items in the home? Can they offer any buyer perks or help with financing?
• Questions about hiring a real estate agent – What are their criteria for hiring an agent? What kind of marketing do they expect?

3 – Actively listen

The best presentations involve actively listening to the seller for the majority of the time. Your presentation should be 80% listening to the seller and 20% asking and answering any questions. Let the seller do most of the talking!

4 – Have visuals

While you don’t need a PowerPoint presentation to be effective, you should have samples of your advertising and marketing materials, as well as testimonials and case studies from happy clients. Show your prospects exactly how you’ve helped your clients sell their homes and what they can expect if they list with you.

By actively listening to your prospects and demonstrating your expertise through samples of marketing materials and case studies from happy clients, you can increase your prospect-to-client conversion rate and start taking more listings.

• Strangers – These people have never heard about you. They don’t know who you are, what you do, or how that is relevant to them.
• Suspects – Suspects are individuals who might potentially need your service. They have seen your ad, website, or other marketing materials and found some helpful information, but they still aren’t ready to move forward hiring an agent. Their mindset is “I’ll think about it…” or “Tell me more, I might be interested…”
• Prospects – Prospects are individuals who are considering buying or selling their home and may potentially hire an agent to help them. These people have the mindset of “I’m definitely interested in buying or selling in the near future. I’ll consider you…” It is at this stage when prospects contact you to set up an initial consultation and move closer to signing your working agreement.
• Clients – Clients, obviously, are those people who have signed your agreement and are ready to buy or sell their home. This stage involves negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement for everyone involved in the real estate transaction and closing the sale.
• Advocates – Advocates are those clients who are extremely happy with your real estate services and tell others about you. They actively promote your services.

The goal of marketing is to take people who are complete strangers, or at least suspects, and convert them into advocates. Marketing is a numbers game. The more people you make contact with, the more people will eventually become clients and advocates down the road. To improve your conversion rates and turn more people into clients and advocates, you must have a marketing system in place that reaches people at each stage. Below is a five-step marketing system.

Step 1 – Marketing to Strangers

The first step is to build awareness that your real estate services exist. At this stage, people don’t know anything about you, but they are starting to consider buying or selling their home, so they are interested in learning more about the real estate transaction.

To market effectively to strangers, your ads, website and marketing materials must be focused on their problems and concerns. A great way to do this is to provide education-based marketing materials such as a free report or audio program on how they can solve a particular problem they are facing (like buying their first home or selling their home for top dollar.) You offer this free information in exchange for the stranger’s contact information, such as a name and email address if you send the information electronically, or their physical address if you send them a free CD or DVD.

Step 2 – Marketing To Suspects

Once you have someone’s contact information and permission to follow up with them, the next step is to build rapport through ongoing communication. You want to establish credibility by educating your suspect on their key concerns, problems, and frustrations, while building in information about who you are and what you do.

At this stage, you aren’t making a hard sell for your services. The focus of your marketing materials and communications is still on your prospects, with some soft selling of your services mixed in, so you follow up with articles, audio recordings, case studies from happy clients, any awards you’ve won or media mentions, and so forth. The more you follow up with great educational materials, the more likely suspects will be to contact you when they start considering hiring a real estate agent.

Step 3 – Marketing To Prospects

At some point in your marketing follow up, your suspect’s mindset will shift from “I’m interested. Tell me more…” to “I’m ready to take steps to buy or sell my home and I’ll consider hiring you as my agent.” This is when selling begins.

If your marketing has done its job and you’ve successfully educated suspects about the benefits of solving their problem through repeated follow up, the selling process becomes much easier. Selling starts when a suspect begins one-on-one communication with you – such as by sending you an email or requesting a consultation – and ends with a signed working agreement.

Selling is a delicate process that works best when you actively listen to the challenges, concerns, and frustrations of your prospect; uncover their motivations and what is holding them back; and together reach a mutual understanding about how to best meet their home buying or selling needs. This isn’t about pitching your services to your prospect and expecting him to listen intently to your full sales presentation. Rather, it’s about letting your prospect do most of the talking and leading your prospect towards a mutually beneficial working agreement.

Step 4 – Marketing to Clients

Marketing doesn’t stop when prospects become clients. Now that your client has agreed to work with you, it’s time to help them find their perfect home or get the best price for their house. It’s easy to forget that every interaction you have with your client is another opportunity to market to them. Delivering exceptional client service is only one element. Asking for feedback during the process and quickly righting any wrongs or disagreements that come up during your working relationship is essential.

Step 5 – Marketing to Advocates

If your working relationship goes well and your client leaves happy, he will be a good candidate to become an advocate for your service. Advocates are people that tell others about you and refer business to you. Consider putting a referral reward system in place where you provide incentives to actively encourage any referrals your advocates send your way.

Prospecting for new clients must be one of your top daily priorities, as people do business with those they know, like and trust – and only after they’ve decided the time is right to buy or sell their home. That means continually being in front of people and building relationships so when they have a need for your real estate services, you are the first agent they think of calling.

Writing articles doesn’t have to be difficult or painful. Even if you hate writing, you can create great website content with the following article writing template.

1. Research keywords. To maximize your traffic to your articles, research the keywords people are actively searching for. Two great free tools you can use are Google’s Keyword Tool and SEO Book’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. Which keywords do you want to rank for? Make sure to use those keywords in your article.
2. Start with a focusing statement. Before you start writing, think about why you are writing this article. Who are you writing it for? What is the take-away message?
3. Decide what type of article to write. How will you structure your content? Several common article types include how-to articles (i.e. How To Sell Your Home in a Bad Real Estate Market), top lists (i.e. Top 10 Ways To Increase The Selling Price of Your Home), reviews, and commentary on current events or trends.
4. Write your introductory paragraph. What makes your article interesting? Why should people read your article? What’s the problem it addresses? Find a “hook” that arouses curiosity and entices people to keep reading.
5. Write your main thought. How does your problem impact your reader? Is a change taking place? A new trend or technology? Something your reader needs to know to complete a task more effectively?
6. Write 3-5 main points. These points will form the main content of your article and will serve as the themes for the next few paragraphs. They can also be tips, a top 10 list, or how-to steps that describe the solution to your reader’s problem.
7. Write your content. For each main point, write a few sentences that explain and clarify your message. Consider adding a quote, a link to a website, or a brief anecdote that illustrates your point.
8. Write your concluding paragraph. Summarize your main points. What conclusions should people draw from your article or what actions should they take?
9. Give your article a headline. Your headline is the most important part of your article, so take time with it. Ask yourself, “If I saw this headline while doing an internet search or in an email, would I click on it?” Your headline should ask a question or promise results or information and make readers curious enough to read the article.
10. Proofread. Finally, once you’ve finished writing your article, proofread it. Spell checkers often miss words, so put the article away for an hour or two and come back to it. You can also try reading it aloud or ask someone to read over it for you.

Writing articles is a great way to demonstrate your real estate expertise and build rapport with site visitors. By following these 10 steps, you will speed up your web content writing and turn your website into a valuable resource for your real estate niche.