This education blog content comes from an interview with Stephanie Preston. The group she is in (Lex9) has tripled in size and referral volume has increased 4.5 times in the last 18 months. Stephanie is a market leader with BB&T in Lexington, KY.
Question 1(Bart): Stephanie you told me at a meeting last year that you’ve gotten a lot of […]
Face-to-Face meetings are the #1 driver of referrals in our groups.
We want busy successful people in our groups. The ability to attract and retain talented business professionals is one of our main goals. I’ve observed over the years that some of our busy members struggle with scheduling enough face-to-face meetings to participate at the level that they want. Their […]
I often get asked by members, “What can I realistically expect from my The Referrals Group membership?”
I believe you get out what you put into anything you are involved in. I also believe you should have realistic expectations. It is a tough question to answer, but I start by saying that our program, when worked properly, creates an opportunity […]
Question #1: (to log or not?)
I changed all my property and casualty insurance over to (Member Name) three months ago. At that time I “referred myself” to him in the system. Now I’m buying another rental house and I’ll be getting another policy from him to cover it. Should I “refer myself” to him again? Or since I’m already […]
Time for another mailbag! Questions in BOLD.
I wasn’t sure if I logged this referral correctly. I don’t always specifically log each referral for closings. Example: I had sent 6 closings in October (with list of family names in notes). Is it ok if at the end of the month I total up all the office closings and send them […]
This blog’s format: mailbag questions that have come in over the last month. Questions in bold.
Bart our speaker no called no-showed at our meeting. What should we do with the time block? Also, we’d put a lot of effort into having guests and we had 3 that day. Our member (Name removed) made us look really bad. What should […]
Building relationships is critical in developing relationships with referral sources/center of influence relationships. The first step in referral relationships is often trust. In order for people to refer to you they need to be able to:
1- Trust you. People refer and do business with people they know, like, and trust.
2- They need to know your target market.
Let’s […]
A- What is your ideal membership size? _____
B- Factor in attrition (20% annually) * 1.2
[…]
A few best practices I’ve observed the last few months at The Referrals Group meetings:
Speakers:
1-Share specific targets. Recently, I saw a member share a list of 175+ specific targets he had wanted to meet. He then focused on why he wanted these targets and how to introduce him. It made it easy for the group to create referral opportunities […]
When I was in college I was part of a fraternity. It was one of the best learning experiences for me. My freshman year the fraternity fell apart and went from 90 members down to 40. A few of the upperclassman stayed and focused on helping build it back the right way. Our consultant told us we needed to […]
Almost always the conversation with our new, existing, and struggling groups comes back to “I want to build (or be part of) a really good team.” I think starting with the why and the how is very helpful and for this post I thought I’d let one of my friends Nigel Green share some of his experience and […]
A large portion of our groups meet twice a month. A common question that comes up when we are building groups is what we do if there are 5 (insert day: ex: Wednesdays) in the month? Well if you meet the 1st & 3rd Wednesday of each month then you simply have a 3 week gap on those […]
What is the difference between a lead and a referral?
Often times in our meetings. I will hear someone ask for a specific contact. I love it when people are specific. You are much more likely to get a referral.
I recently heard a member in a group in ask for a specific introduction to a real estate broker that they […]
Building a great team
In the first meeting when we work with prospective new groups we tell them several things. The first thing we tell them is that building a strong group will be harder than you think, but in order to have success we have to have 3 things in place to have a shot at success.
1- Get good people […]
1- Set a goal and have realistic expectations
-a good ratio to expect is that 1 out of 7 prospective new members will be a good fit for your group.
-guests who were pre-registered showed up to 88% of those meetings last year.
-set a target: ____visitors per month= ____ invites per month or ____ invites per member
2- Select a “Recruiting Coordinator” […]