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In sports, we often hear the adage “it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game.” In real estate, however, the analogy needs to go a step further – it’s not only how you ‘play the game’ that matters, but how you win by sealing the deal and serving the needs of your clients. One of the best measures to judge how the game is going is by looking at how referrals in the real estate business add up to repeat business.
It’s no secret that real estate is a connected, word of mouth business. Looking at data from the 2011 Member Profile, we can see that in 2010 18 percent of all Realtors®’ business was through referrals from past consumers and clients. Although this is down 2 percent from the 2009 number, across the board the percentage for all specialties reported below shows that referrals continue to be a significant generator of business for real estate agents.
Referrals also motivate buyers seeking a real estate agent, particularly first-time buyers. In the table below, we can see 41 percent of all buyers found their agent through referrals from a friend, neighbor or relative. Nearly half of all first-time buyers found their agent this way. Compared to other methods used to find an agent below, we can see that referrals blew them all out of the water.
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