The Key To Your Million Dollar Agency?
Excellent people working within world-class processes and systems – then simply promote the heck out of it! One of the best places to start is with a referral program. In a previous post, we talked about the Acre of Diamonds and how each person that is a current customer knows at least 150 people that they would invite to their wedding or funeral. That’s a ton of referrals!
When I started my agency from scratch, I learned about Social Proof, wrote a guarantee, and then I started a referral program. There was magic in social proof, with testimonials & reviews proving to potential customers that the experience with my agency was awesome. There was magic in the guarantee. So much magic that after showing them our written risk reversal guarantee our closing ratio went up by a whopping 31%! I knew that a third piece of the magic was a referral program.
In the beginnings of my agency, like many of you, I was attending networking meetings like crazy and was out there hustling for new business. I hustled every day to write, get more deals, get more leads. One of my buddies, who was a loan guy, was sending me all his leads and I was closing them right and left. Of course, I wanted to repay him for giving all these leads. What could I do for someone who was referring me right and left? I sent him an envelope of scratch-off lottery tickets – the lottery was really big back then. I saw him a couple of weeks later and said “hey man, thanks for the lottery tickets!” I replied “no, thank you for the leads.” And then the magic… he won $116 with those tickets!
8:1 ROI - First Year...
Of course my marketing mind spun and I knew I needed to take another step with this. I asked Jim if he would be willing to take a picture with me and hold up some money so I could tell his story. Marketing is all about telling a great story, and that visual was a reminder of the magic. He agreed, and we were off to the races. Every great accomplishment in the world starts with an idea and action. I designed an entire referral program around that picture and that story. I put it on green paper and put a headline on it. Remember, a killer headline is 67% of our response mechanism, and I started sending it out with the testimonials and guarantee. A trifecta of promotional magic that really, truly works.
Here we are many, many years later, and not only do we have a formal referral program, but now it gives back to our communities. We give back to charities, we profile charities, and we get close to charities. We have grand prize drawings and publishers clearinghouse style grand prize drawings. We have themes for our referral programs. We have unique websites that drive people to a specific site with our referral programs. And it’s all designed around a single simple 4-step checklist that your team will follow. Even better than a 31% increase on closing ratio, the simple 4-step checklist you will have a ROI for your first-year commission 8 to 1 or better, simply by implementing, executing and taking action on a referral program. We teach this all to you and so much more in our coaching programs – I can’t wait to help you start!
