Are you a Real Estate Agent? Do you offer Referral commissions to other Agents. You could be missing out on a great source of free leads.
There is big business in real estate leads. Some companies charge thousands to real estate agents for quality leads. Why buy leads when you can generate them yourself through referrals.
Leads are leads at the end of the day. You can pay a lot of money for a lead, but it will not guarantee that you will close a sale.
Referrals on the other hand are different. A referral is much more likely to turn into a sale because generally its a more qualified lead.
Usually referrals come about when a client has contacted an Agent (maybe through recommendation) for a particular type of property in a particular area. If the agent does not have a suitable property to offer the client they can do one of three things. They can either let the client walk away (and maybe the client will find a suitable property through another Agent). They can try and sell the client something that they do not want (never a good idea that). Or they can refer the client to another Agent who does have a suitable property, and receive a percentage of the Agents commission if the client buys the property.
Referrals can be a great way of generating free qualified leads, that you only have to pay for if they turn into a sale. On the other hand they can be a great way of earning sales commissions for very little work. In my experience referrals are something that every Agent needs to be involved in at some level. Many Agents base their entire business around generating and supplying referrals.
Its as easy as that really.
Tell other Agents about your company, tell them what sort of referrals you are looking for, and tell them how much of your commission you are prepared to pay them if the referral turns into a sale.
There are two Forums I can recommend where you can post all you real estate referrals. The links are below. The Find Property USA site is mainly for USA referrals, but the World Property Links site covers everywhere.