How a Frisco or Collin County Realtor Should Refer a Lender to Their Buyer

Do what is best for your buyer and the seller on the other side of the transaction.

Over the years, I have studied and researched the different ways in which to get business or generate leads.  Generating leads the By Referall Only way, instructed and coached by Real Estate mentors/coaching icons like Joe Stumpf and Brian Buffini, have been the route to go for me.  Although it is against the By Referral Only way, cold calling is a way to get business.  The reason I mention this is because it seems like every great Referral Key Note speaker, mentor, or business coach within the industry has at some point experimented with cold calling.  You can not be a omniscient person in your way of thought/study without being omniscient in “your way of thought’s” opposite…cold calling is to by referral as black is to white.  So, I tried cold calling Realtors and found an obvious difference in how successful Realtors refer a lender/lenders compared to some lesser successful Realtors.

You are serving your client, but not a servANT to your client.  Serve them by delivering advise for success.

I believe that a person administering or delivering a service should refer business to control the outcome that best suites him and his client.  A professional should have a very tight, reliable system that produces the same or similar outcome w/out fail at the highest rate every time.  How do you do that?  You make sure that there is the least number of moving parts in your system/machine/business as possible.  You have heard of the phrase, “we are working here with a moving target…”.  When you hear that phrase, you are about to find out that what ever outcome you are involved in or expecting is less likely to have a definite value in respect to what your hopeful value is.  This means that if you need variable #1 to land on a time scale at point B exactly, you are very likely to see it hit in the continuum between point B and point C or between point A and point B rather than “on the nose” at point B. 

One way to assure that you have less moving parts in your business plan in Real Estate as a Realtor is to try to replicate a perfect transaction by using the same system and the same system parts in every transaction.  So, you find a lender/loan officer that brings the greatest value to your business, and you do your best to guide and advise your clients in that direction in a very consultive and persuasive manner.  Hello?!  You are doing it for their best interest.  Feel free to disclose that the home purchase transaction is not and will never be a perfect science and explain why you are trying to get them to follow your advice.  Be the fiduciary person you are suppose to be by law as a Realtor to your client this way.

Why am I explaining to tell the buyer about the transaction not being a perfect science and all when you are trying to persuade the right lender/loan officer to use?  Many team leaders at the local large Real Estate offices advise that their new Realtors to refer 3 lenders, so that if the lender makes a mistake, they can say that they did not pick the lender…”we are not liable, because we gave you 3 and you chose them” (scape goat).  If 98% of all the transactions go right, you have 98% happy buyers referring you.  This means you can spend more time on apeasing, winning and dining, and wowing clients, rather than implementing accountability plans to keep the “stranger” lender/loan officer accountable for turn times.   The other option where you tell your buyer to go out and find their own lender/loan officer or you refer 3 from a list where you have only worked a very few transactions with 2 of the 3 is like playing roulette…you never know what to expect a transaction to look  like.

If you need to make your office manager happy by referring 3 lenders, give them a list of three, and advise on the one you put in that 3 that you really need them to use.  It will be one of the first breakthrough steps you make in growing your turnkey transaction process.