Build a solid referral pipeline

Everyone seems to agree that a referral is the best kind of business to get. In the case of financial services, referrals not only come from satisfied clients, but from a wide range of related industry professionals - real estate agents, accountants, financial planners and even fellow professionals who do not quite have the product or service to suit the client's needs and are happy to recommend you.

But most CRM systems don't make it very easy to organise and build this kind of referral network. They tend to expect you to shoe-horn your referrers into a database that was designed for client-type records, not other businesses. As a consequence they rarely work efficiently.

LinxCRM takes a different approach. It dedicates a whole area just to industry referrers, with fields and terminology that's appropriate, rather than those more suited to clients. And it goes a lot further, too, with dedicated marketing options and even payment processes for those to whom you wish to pay commissions.

Dedicated referrer records

The Referrers section in LinxCRM lets you build up an unlimited number of firms and individual contacts.

Records are organised by firm, with each of the individual contacts at the firm with their own record. You can even store their photograph (often available from their web site) which is invaluable in remembering their names when visiting them or making a presentation to them.

Each contact has a full diary so you can keep records of every discussion. You can also diarise follow-ups, store their correspondence in their FileStore, and even find them on Google maps.

Keep referrers in the loop

Referrers usually like to know what's going on with a deal. Particularly with time-sensitive matters such as mortgage finance, third parties like real estate agents or builders need to be kept up-to-date. Lawyers and conveyancers also need to know that deadlines will be met.

By using the Third-Party Notification system in LinxCRM you can SMS or email them with updates, straight from any entry you have made in the client's diary.

Such prompt and professional service keeps your referrers and other third-parties happy - and much more likely to refer you again in the future!

Never forget a follow-up

Keeping in touch with referrers is sometimes forgotten due to spending all our time with clients. But referrers are the tap which you need to keep on turning to keep your pipeline full of fresh leads. Turning it off is like running out of water.

Fortunately LinxCRM handles that with ease - just set a proposed follow-up date and you'll get a management report which shows the calls due, and by whom - with overdue tasks clearly highlighted in red.

Market directly to referrers

LinxCRM has a special mail-merge function just for referrers.

Rather than send them your normal newsletter - which is probably consumer-oriented - you can send a special newsletter or email focusing on their particular area of interest.

Think how much better it would be to send a newsletter to real estate professionals that talked about how you had recently helped other real estate people get a sale across the line by your quick action on finance.

Or how much more appreciated your message would be by an accountant if it talked about how you were able to free up someone's cashflow through strategic financing, or perhaps provide for their financial future through proper insurance protection.

Using LinxCRM to help you focus your marketing in this way will undoubtedly produce a higher level of referrals for your business.

Read more about marketing.

Automated commission payments

If you have a formal commission arrangement with your referrers there's nothing worse than forgetting to pay them. Sometimes people don't like asking for money - but you could find your referrals drying up if your payment processes are lacking.

LinxCRM Professional makes it easy to establish formal arrangements with your referrers - and keep accurate records to help with compliance. You can setup up default splits for all loans, based on upfronts or trails, vary them on a loan-by-loan basis if necessary and then use the LinxSplitx module to generate the commission statement.

If you have a less formal arrangement - or you want to pay referrers for other sales types such as insurance or financial planning - LinxECP will allow you to record an entitlement to a payment of commission or in kind (such as movie tickets, wine, etc) so that you don't forget to pay your dues and thereby potentially jeopardise future business.

Read more about commissions.