We all know there are some significant changes happening in the real estate industry. It’s more important now than ever that your vendor and affiliate relationships become a cohesive extension of you. Whether you have a team or not, you should think of vendors and affiliates as an extension of your team.
If you consider your vendors and affiliates part of your team, do they know that? You should sit down with your vendors and affiliates and have a conversation about expectations. What do they expect of you? How can you do a better job as you are handing off clients and customers to them? If needed, this gives you an opportunity to be able to say, “You know, I have a five-star expectation and here’s some gaps in how I feel you may be delivering that, and they need to be improved.” Or to just simply thank them for the five-star service that they were providing. If you have a great group, you can give them your loyalty and in return, they owe your customers a five-star experience.
Now, people make mistakes, sometimes things happen, but you are looking for them to be as close to flawless in their delivery and execution of what they do as possible.
I would recommend meeting with your vendors and affiliates at least a couple of times a year to have this deep dive conversation.
Questions to ask:
- How are we doing?
- How are we working together?
- Are we meeting each other’s expectations?
- Is there anything that you could or would do for me that would make my burden a little bit lighter, provide a better experience for the customer?
- Is there something we’re missing?
As an example, I remember talking to a termite company I had used for years. They were very good and dependable. The owner of the company said to me, “Well, you know, Debbie, when it comes time to do the termite inspection, you get in the way. You call the client, then you call me to arrange it. I do the inspection. Then you have me explain the report to you. Then you explain the report to the clients. We could save everyone a lot of time if you’ll just allow me to call that customer. I will arrange the inspection. I’ll go do the inspection. I will explain what has been discovered and I will make arrangements to do the work.”
I knew he was honest. I knew he’d go do a good job. I could extract myself completely from that loop. That’s called leverage.
Sometimes we think we must control every piece and only we can do it well. What about when it’s not our job and they know it better? Let them do it. If you trust them, and you’ve groomed them to live up to your expectations of that five-star service.
Put your list together
Let’s talk about referrals. Sometimes agents will say to me, “I have a great lender, but they don’t give me referrals, or they don’t give me very many referrals.”
What I’ve always said to my affiliates is, “I get it, you work with a lot of different real estate agents, and I also understand you probably only have a limited number of potential referrals in a year. I’m certainly not demanding or expecting that you would give everyone to me. Here’s what I would like to ask each month. What if we work together to say, what is one thing of value that we could do for each other? So maybe I can introduce you to a group that I work with, and you can create some business from that group for yourself. Or maybe you are conducting an event and you can feature me at that event? Or maybe you do have a friend or family member that needs my help that you could refer me to. Or possibly you’ve met some other awesome vendor during the deal, you think I would like them, and you’ll introduce me, and I can get that connection going.”
Train, train, train
Call your lender for 15 minutes on Monday for an update. Ask what’s happening in the market? They can give you talking points to use when meeting buyers, doing prospecting calls, or at an open house. Then you are prepared to say, “Here’s what’s happening in the mortgage market. Here’s a new cool program that you need to know about. Hey, here’s what we think is going to happen with rates in the next month or two.”
Generate leads
For example, you could have a tax attorney come and do an educational forum. Ask them to invite their database and you invite yours. You both present in that zoom or in that in-person meeting. Now you’ve met each other’s people.
I would recommend you create the registration link and marketing for these events. When people register, they’re registering on your link. Now you can opt them into your nurture campaigns. So that gives you control of the list so you can follow up and make sure they’re confirmed. Even if they don’t attend, those can still be awesome leads because they raised their hand and they said, I have an interest.
Educational events are a great way to leverage vendor and affiliate relationships and provide value back to your vendors and affiliates. This is important because the relationships can’t be one-sided.
It doesn’t cost a penny to do a virtual event. It doesn’t cost a penny to put together a great networking group with the vendors and affiliates you already like and respect and introduce them to each other. It’s all about relationships.
Assignment for today:
- Create your list of all the great people that help you serve your clients.
- Identify who you need to have a heart-to-heart with because you don’t feel they’re delivering that five-star experience. (Hopefully there are not too many of these). For the rest of them, schedule either a call, a coffee, or a lunch, within the next few weeks. Let them know during this time with all the changes in our industry that you are going to need some extra support. You can say, “So tell me what is it that makes sense inside of the service you provide, that you could do a little bit more for me? Take a little burden off my plate.”
With your lender, you’re probably going to want to spend some time with them to be discussing how you are going to have conversations about the fees and helping the buyers figure all of that out.
You need those partners. You need those people in your world that will help you and take great care of your clients!
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