The Law of the Gate Keeper states: the business professional that refers out the most business will create the most reciprocal referral relationships in return. Translation: the business professional who controls the lead wins!

Joe McBreen is a Senior Loan Officer at The McBreen Group.

Regardless of your vocation, there will always be other business professionals that you should seek to align yourself with because they represent a potential increase in business for you through referrals. The easiest way for you to develop relationships with the people you want to work with is to start off the relationship by referring new business to them. This is the Gate Keeper concept in its truest form.

Start with knowing what your own clients need. Position yourself to refer out a significant amount of business by first knowing the needs of your own clients. When you begin working with clients, ask a lot of probing questions to get an idea of their needs. Are they happy with their existing real estate situation? Are they happy with their existing accountant, or their financial planner? Are they happy with their current insurance situation? Are they happy with their lender? Do they need to be introduced to people who provide these other types of services?

The more you position yourself with your clients as a conduit to professionals in other areas of finance and commonly needed services, the better off you will be in the long run. In your marketing material, you must continually remind your clients that you want to be in the forefront of their mind at all times when they have important decisions to make in their lives. Make sure they know that they should always consider you to be a resource in the future. Too often we leave our relationships with our clients open ended, and we fail to educate them on the role that we would like to play in their lives. The more you make your clients aware that you wish to be an ongoing resource to them, the more they will use you and, in time, they will provide you with more business to refer out to other professionals.

Learn more about the professionals with whom you want to have a referral relationship. One of the easy ways to go about putting yourself in a position to refer out a business is to sit down with the parties that you desire to refer business to and ask them to educate you on how they would like you to represent them in a conversation. Ask them to provide you with the proper scripting you will need to refer business to them. You will find this to be a very successful appointment with the prospective strategic partner that you are seeking to align yourself with. Use their wealth of knowledge on how they sell themselves and learn how to sell them.

Be the Gate Keeper of the lead, and the rest will take care of itself.

Let’s discuss ways we can refer business to one another!