Answering Your Referral Questions

What’s the real difference between a referral and a lead? In this special episode of the Think Bigger Real Estate Podcast, I'm answering your top referral questions—from how to become truly referable to why most professionals unintentionally repel introductions. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Justin Stoddart

What is Think Bigger Real Estate?

The road to success for real estate agents is well-marked. The road to significance is not. Here, we help you to Think Bigger than just your business. We inspire you to seek success AND significance, income AND impact. We do that by interviewing the biggest thinkers and highest achievers in the real estate industry, extracting the secrets to having it all.

Justin Stoddart (00:00.814)
Hey, what's up everybody? Justin Stoddard here. Very excited about today's episode. It's gonna be a bit of a unique one in the sense that it's gonna be a solo episode and it's simply Q &A. You know, I get enough questions asked about really how to build a referral-based business, specifically one that is focused on getting referrals from other professionals and I never get a chance to answer all of them. And so in today's episode, we're actually gonna go through and give you a chance to ask questions. If you are watching this live, feel free to ask them. Otherwise, I have some pent up.

demand questions that we're gonna get to today. So I'm excited to share that with you all. It's gonna be a great episode. Thanks for tuning in. And let's go ahead and get started.

Justin Stoddart (01:12.718)
All right, welcome back everybody. My lovely co-host is out at a national event in Miami today while I'm here in the cold in Oregon. It's actually beautiful here today. So don't feel too bad for me, but we're gonna dive right in and start to answer questions about referrals. First question that came up was what's the real difference between a referral and a lead and why does it matter? I think the reason why this question comes up is because if you're in the real estate industry, it's not uncommon for you to have on a daily basis solicitations for referrals. When you look into that,

Is it actually referrals? No, it's actually like online leads disguised as referrals. So what's happened, and excuse my language, is that much of the term referral has been bastardized. Like people, when they hear it, they think, it's not really a referral. It's not really a client introduction, right? It's just a lead camouflaged as such. And so my definition that I think should be yours as well is that a...

An introduction is when, a referral is a client introduction. Okay, let's just start to call it that in fact. Should have maybe renamed the episode, client introductions. But really, difference is a client introduction is when somebody makes an introduction to you and that person has trust established already. Okay, now the internet and an online lead form would not qualify as being somebody who's transferring trust. So it's somebody who has a relationship, who then makes an introduction.

that trust is transferred. The reason why a referral is better than a lead is because you start way ahead of the game. If you haven't read the book, The Speed of Trust written by Sean Covey, the son of the late Stephen R. Covey, it's a good one to read. It's called The Speed of Trust. When trust is in place, so much happens so much faster. So that is the difference, okay, is that a referral again is when trust is transferred.

What makes someone referable in the first place? This is a question often comes up, how do I make myself referable? I would say that people who are referable, it depends upon who, right? I might be willing to refer somebody to this particular client, but I wouldn't be willing to refer them to that client because they're different. So that's a little bit of a jaded question because it depends, right? You're looking for, of course, a competency match, but you're also looking for a personality match.

Justin Stoddart (03:33.26)
And so in order to be actually referable, which is the question, is that you need to be somebody who is authentically yourself so people know to whom they can refer you. Because the last thing you want is to be referred to somebody and for it not to be a match for you. Like who wants to work with clients that suck, right? Or who wants to work with clients who think that you suck? Like just be yourself, right? That's the beauty of it. Just be yourself and watch what happens. Because when you're yourself, then guess what? Life gets a lot more fun. You get to be just simply authentically you.

And so start off by being authentic and then in addition to being authentically you, be really good at what you do, actually care about people. And I think that's a big component in today's world where there's such a heavy emphasis on transactions. Excuse me, got a bit of a frog in my throat. I'm not getting choked up on this topic. I do love this topic, but I'm not getting choked up on it. But a big difference between some of this referable is they actually care. They care beyond.

the timeframe that they get paid or not just enough to get paid. That's to me somebody who's referable as they actually take a genuine interest in finding out what the person actually wants, not just what they want, which is to get paid. That's to me who's someone who's referable and can be authentically assigned to somebody or introduced to somebody that is the right fit. Okay, so how do professionals accidentally repel referrals without realizing it?

I think this oftentimes comes down to having a bit of short-sightedness, even commission breath. What I mean by short-sightedness is that oftentimes when we go into a referral type relationship, it's very much about, me tell you about me, let me tell you about why you should refer me, let me hand you a stack of my business cards. When you come in and give the aura, aura, I'm not sure how you say that, when you give off the impression,

that you're there to get something, it's very much a repellent. Like your job should not be to try and step in any relationship to see what you can get. That doesn't work in romantic relationships, at least ones that last, and it doesn't work in family relationships. It doesn't work anywhere where you want a long-term relationship. So I think being somebody who comes in to say, what can I learn about you so that I can figure out how I can serve you? That is attractive, right? That's not a repellent. So.

Justin Stoddart (05:54.252)
Be careful when you're in those situations. Of course, we're all there for self-interested, trying to grow ourselves and our business, but just know the best and fastest way to do that is to actually genuinely care about other people and see how you can help them. All right, we're moving pretty fast through these, so this is good. I love these questions. Well done to those who have submitted these. Okay, how do professionals, we already asked that one. I'm getting behind myself. What are the biggest myths people believe about generating referrals? One of the biggest myths is that your clients,

are the source of referrals and everything else is a lead or that just the very best source of referrals are your clients. And while I say that yes, that should absolutely be the case that you should get referrals from clients. And by the way, it's a great litmus test to see how good your client experience really is. What I would also encourage you to realize is that if you want to 10X that model, find a professional who serves

your same ideal client, because when you do that, they can refer you weekly, right? It's not a 10X, that's a 52X, right? Once per week versus once per year. So, generating referrals, I would say, of course your client experience needs to be tops. Of course you need to find every possible way to earn the referrals from your clients and remind them that you want those referrals, but I would also encourage you to focus a lot on having a professional network around you of those who serve your same ideal clients.

Question number five, why are referrals slowing down for many professionals today and what can be done about it? I think ever since we moved to a remote and virtual space, meaning after COVID, we all went to our own little cubbies, we started getting out less. Like we more infrequently see each other. We see each other less often, that's a better way to put it. And I'm not saying that you can't generate referrals virtually, but oftentimes people have taken

almost a virtual approach to a relationship. In other words, you can have a great relationship. Some of my closest friendships and at least in the business space have come completely over Zoom, right? But just because you're on Zoom doesn't mean you need to act transactionally, okay? You can still care about people. You can still call them on the phone. You can still send them handwritten notes. Like a Zoom call should not be the end of the conversation. You need to do things, even try to get together with people in person. But I do believe that referrals are down because people are

Justin Stoddart (08:19.97)
doing less things that create a relationship. They've outsourced that to technology. They've leaned too heavily on automation. And when we do that, it gets really hard because people know who truly is a relationship and those who aren't. So again, if you're not spending the time to actually generate a deeper connection with people and actually when you show up to actually care, by the way, here's a tip.

when you're on a Zoom call with people, people know when you're multitasking. They also know when you're like dead on giving your all to that particular event. So my encouragement to you is don't try and multitask. Like if the Zoom event is not good enough to give it your full attention, then don't go, don't go. Right, if you actually have too many other things going on, don't go. But don't kid yourself thinking that you can kind of be present.

because it doesn't work. That doesn't deepen relationships and I think that's why you end up spending a bunch of time doing things without getting the results that you want. Now I've got a bunch of other questions that have come in about building referral partnerships. We're gonna do that on another episode. I just wanna start maybe with these that were categorized based on like, tell me about referrals as they stand right now. But I hope this has been valuable for you. We'll be doing more of these. I enjoy these questions. If you have questions, please submit them to me on any of the platforms where we're connected.

And I think this will allow me to really share some of the things that I'm learning. And again, as the CEO of ProInsight, I'm in contact with people all day, every day, talking about how to get them more client introductions, AKA referrals. So I'm just exposed to a lot of what people's thoughts and questions are. And so I'd love to share those with you. So please stay tuned for next solo episode where we'll be answering these questions. And please submit them to me on whatever social platform we're connected on. Just give me your question and we'll not only...

answer them for you, but we answer them for our audience. So again, I wanna thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for listening to the Think Bigger Real Estate podcast today, sponsored by ProInsight. And we look forward to seeing you on the next one. And my final request is this, regarding referrals, regarding client introductions, having professional partnerships around you, go think bigger. Thanks folks, talk to you soon.