How To Create Cash From Your Competition...

bonus Hey Moguls, Doug Van Buskirk here… with Part 2 of my lesson about strategic partnerships to do deals.

Make sure you go back and check out Part 1 of this 2-part lesson to get caught up.

Here’s a quick recap…

In the first part, we dug into the basics of the Strategic Partnership that you’ll use to grow your business without coming out of pocket for leads or marketing. Yep. It’s true…

You’ll be reaching out to folks in the real estate industry (investors, wholesalers, hard money lenders, Realtors, etc.) to set up a referral relationship.

Here’s how it’ll work…

They refer their “dead” leads to you in the hopes that you convert them, at which point your referral partner gets a piece of the profit. These dead leads might be people who they were never able to reach. Or, they could be leads that weren’t a good fit for them (i.e. lease option buyer isn’t a good fit for a Realtor, typically).

We also went over the simple follow-up system you can use to rescue these leads from the dead and turn them into profit.

You Refer Me, I Refer You

Now, let’s pick back up for Part 2 and go over the strategy for attracting referrals partners who want to send you their leads. Your relationship with any referral partner is going to be based on 2 things: desire and trust.

They have to WANT what you’re offering. That’s fairly straightforward in this case, because who wouldn’t want someone to do all the work in reactivating their dead leads AND pay them a fair piece of the profit on closed deals?

That’s why it’s crucial to structure true win-win agreements when you’re putting a JV together.

Let’s talk about trust, which is absolutely essential. Your partners need to trust that:

You can execute on your commitment. In this case, that you can truly bring these leads back to life with your follow up.
You’ll pay them according to the agreement.

Trust is a lot harder to build than desire. So you’ll need to put a lot of effort into being trustworthy and communicating that to potential partners.

A great way to get perspective on this is to take out a piece of paper and pretend that you’re a potential partner… What would make you trust someone who just offered you this Lead Referral Program? Go ahead, write down your thoughts. Really, go write…

Here are a few things to get you started:

Testimonials/Success Stories
Proven System/Formula for Success
Industry Experience
Being Referred by Someone Else Trustworthy
Keen Understanding of Their Problems
Similar Background/Experiences

Now what would make you immediately NOT trust them?

A few examples here might be:

Cheesy or Salesy Pitch/Dialogue
No Plan or Procedure
Lack of Specifics
Lack of Accountability

(Side note: If you want to dig deep on the topics of influence and trust, I highly recommend these books: Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Trust Based Marketing and Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.)

Reaching Out

So, with these things in mind, you’ll want to finalize the list of people who you already know in the industry who may be interested in partnering with you. Since you already know them, there will be a built-in level of trust, and you’ll be ahead of the game.

Now it’s time to create an email or a rough outline of a conversation that you’d like to have with these people to let them know what you’re doing and invite them to partner with you.

Then set a schedule for reaching out to each person.

Don’t expect they’ll just say yes because they know you, though. And do expect that you’ll likely need to have a few conversations before getting to the “yes.”

Keep the conversations focused on benefits (to them) of the proposed relationship, namely that they can create income from their database without having to spend any extra time or money.

They’ll likely want to know a few additional things about the partnership:

How will you keep track of the leads and make sure they get paid when they’re supposed to?

For this, you’ll need some type of database to designate the lead source, manage your follow ups and document your outreach. There are free and cheap options online that you can investigate. (Check out our Web & Tech lessons for some choices.) Insightly may work well to keep you on a strict budget.

Once you get a partner locked and loaded, it’s as simple as getting them to send you an Excel spreadsheet file of their list. You upload it into your database and mark the Referral Source.

Then it’s time to get to work!

One Last Helpful Referral Reminder

Before we finish up, in the first part of this lesson, I mentioned a strategy you can use to increase your ROIT (Return On Invested Time) exponentially with this approach…

Referrals!

That’s right, you should be asking every one of these leads that you contact if they know anyone else who needs help buying or selling real estate.

This is a FREE way to build your database with hot leads who automatically trust you because you were referred to them by someone they trust.

You may be able to help these referral leads directly, or – to bring the lesson full circle – you could create a symbiotic relationship with a Realtor or other investor who’s better-suited to help a particular lead.

In essence, you could have a 2-way referral partner for any of your “dead” leads or leads that aren’t really in your wheelhouse.

The possibilities with Strategic Partnerships are only limited by our imaginations.

There you have it… a blueprint for growing your database and closing more deals without ever spending a penny of your own money on leads.

Stay Strategic,

Doug Van Buskirk