How to Grow Your Referral Base

How to Grow Your Referral Base

Growing your referral base is easier than ever thanks to the advantages of the internet and social media. The larger your referral base, the easier it will be for you to scale your business and do more deals. Here are six simple ways on how to grow your referral base.

Investment Clubs: Joining your local real estate investment club provides you with a valuable number of referrals for your business. Here, you will find real estate investors, lenders, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, and more. Given that most the people there are involved in real estate on a daily basis, the real estate investment club brings people with various niches and referral sources. The focus is on real estate investing but you will get access to those who have a considerable number of outside contacts in the real estate industry like contractors, title companies, attorneys, etc.

Email Newsletter Campaign: Newsletters are one of the oldest methods to reach out and retain customers, clients, and prospects.  The email newsletter offers ways to stay in touch with those you associate with on a regular basis and does not cost you anything to send out. The emails can focus on previous deals, upcoming deals, testimonials, and how you can help the person getting the email.

Craigslist: While Craigslist is no longer the powerhouse it once was for investors in real estate, it is a great place to find wholesalers and landlords.  You can quickly get on several real estate wholesalers buyers list by responding to ads and also add them to your buyers list.   You can also find potential buyers for your wholesale deal by looking at homes for rent.  There is a good chance that if a landlord owns a rental property in a particular town, they may be looking for more rental properties to purchase.

Social Media & Blogs: There is little doubt that social media offers you a real chance to connect with large numbers of people. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, and more are wonderful outlets to post all types of information that generate leads and referrals for your efforts. The more active and consistent you are with social media and blogs the better results you will receive.

Networking: Arguably the best way to grow your referral base is from shaking hands and getting out there. You’ll find that most cities have regular meetings of local professionals where you can interact like a Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, or a B2B networking group. While you might get lucky and strike a deal quickly, in most cases it will take weeks, if not months before you create the right impression and start getting more deals.

Contacts in Your Community: You can always stop by your local real estate offices, mortgage brokers, and other related professionals and get to know them personally. Have a brochure or some short literature about properties that are available or just how working with you can benefit them. Keep the meetings short and to the point because they have busy days as well. The goal is to grow your profile to the point where they will start contacting you when they come across something that you would be interested in.

In the end, how to grow your referral base will come through one or more of the methods that have been mentioned. In all cases, the goal is really to build up your own status and allow the referrals to gravitate towards you but realize it takes time for that to happen.