Q. If you had to share one idea with our members for gaining purchase business this year, what would it be?

A. Make EVERY Birthday important! Birthdays are the one day a year that you can deepen the relationship with your clients, database and referral partners and genuinely show them appreciation.

Why not use that as an opportunity to gain partners? This is a meaningful way for you to ask for NEW referral relationships!

Q. What is the time commitment required?

A. You will need to commit approximately five hours to prepare the action items outlined down below. Most of the time will be spent gathering or creating your target list.
You will only need to commit approximately fifteen minutes per day, per one thousand people in your database. So, if you have two thousand true contacts you should spend no more than thirty-minutes per day. Again, this strategy is centered on a meaningful reason for contact or communication (birthday).

Q. What action steps would LTB Members take to execute this idea?

PHASE I: Phase I is designed to open doors to new referral partners, solidify mediocre relationships or to just plain thank your really good referral friends.

Step 1: Create a list of your entire database of referral partners.
Make sure this list contains the partners' names, BIRTHDAYS, addresses, home phones, cell phones and email addresses. If you do not have their birthday see STEP 2.

Step 2: Open a Facebook account if you do not already have one. Start requesting friendship from ALL agents, title reps, insurance agents, CPA's financial planners and any other referral partner you would like to target. Facebook already tracks and shows you your Facebook friends' birthdays for the month, week and day on a separate page. This is your target list. Add these to your spreadsheet or start a list so you keep the data. Remember anyone can delete or change their Facebook page at anytime, so you'll want to create a spreadsheet or list for this very reason.

Step 3: Sort the list by birthday from January 1 through December 31 so you can see the natural groupings of clients.

Step 4: Purchase or create birthday cards or post cards that you can send out. Or, leverage your LTB membership by printing and sending the Birthday Post Card! See "Step 7" for timing.

Step 5: Create a birthday email to go out on the contact's birthday. If you're a Platinum Plus member then this can be set up to go out for you—just be sure your database is loaded up in Platinum Plus. This is what I love about my Platinum Plus membership—once I set it…I can forget it!

Step 6: Look at the spreadsheet you created and/or your Facebook account daily to make sure you are tracking the birthdays.

Step 7: Four to seven days before your referral partner's birthday, send them the print version of LTB's Birthday card. If you keep the stack of cards/postcards in your drawer or on your desk along with stamps, this should take less than 2 minutes each.

Statistically 1,000 partners would be just about 4 per day, knowing you will not be sending them on the weekend.

Step 8: The day of their birthday send them a happy birthday email or if you're a Platinum member and you've done what I mentioned in Step 5 then this will have already been sent for you! Note that I never have to stop what I'm doing and do this manually—LTB's Platinum Plus does this for me!

Step 9: On their birthday, post a nice note to acknowledge the day or wish them well on their Facebook wall. If you do the BIG STEP 11, outlined below, then you might get some great feedback!

Step 10: Also on their birthday, call them to wish them a Happy Birthday. If they answer the phone, your script could be:

"Hi Client, this is Derek Egeberg with Academy Mortgage. I just wanted to call and say happy birthday to you and see how you and your family were doing. How is your birthday going so far and do you have any great plans today?"

You can also ask them how their most recent holiday was if it is timely or suitable.

Do a brief amount of small talk, find out if they have any needs and then close by saying, "If you have time next week, I'd love to get together for a cup of coffee."

The law of reciprocity says they will more than likely say "yes" since you are "GIVING" to them on their birthday.

Your call and close will go MUCH different if you do STEP 11 below.

If you get their voicemail, you can use the script above, but make sure you also say, "I'm sure you have a ton of other phone calls from friends wanting to wish you a happy birthday-- so if you don't happen to call me back today, I would love to hear from you sometime this week."

The average person gets less than five calls a day. More than likely you will get a returned call.

Step 11: THIS IS THE KEY FOR REFERRAL PARTNERS

Send a cake to their office. Let other agents in their office see that you are recognizing them and making them feel important. Other agents will wonder why they don't get that kind of treatment from THEIR LO. Take a listen to Robert Cialdini's Gift of Knowledge interview to learn more about this approach!

I personally send cakes to every referral partner I can possibly gather information on.

I have negotiated with a caterer here to make and deliver cakes for me. We just call and tell them who and when. Most bakeries can get you a 1/4 sheet cake for under $15.

If you target the right businesses and referral partners the "top of mind" awareness can be HUGE!

I follow EVERY cake up with a call for a lunch or coffee appointment and 100% of the time I will get the appointment.

This gives you the opportunity to develop a relationship and open the door to business. Agents will appreciate this as they will have little other recognition at their office except from their co-workers. You will make them feel a sense of obligation to you. You will absolutely get appointments and referrals by showing you are not a commodity and you actually care.

Q. What results can be expected, or if this is something you are doing in your own business, what results have you achieved?

A. As a result of this strategy, I have personally experienced new referral partners giving me their business.

Call reluctance is HUGE in our business. I still have days where I need to get a bit motivated before making outbound calls but this strategy makes it SO easy to want to speak to someone because you are honoring THEIR birthday.

We are always told our volume is determined by how many people we speak to daily. Just by doing this I average nine outbound calls daily between agents and clients. This may not seem like much, but my business plan says I must talk to ten people daily.

Truthfully, my birthday contacts should be enough to sustain my plan for the entire year. My business has become much more referral based from adding new agents since beginning this approach.

If you do this all year, these actions will make a big difference. You will certainly develop more referral partner relationships.

I have had several Realtors take pictures of their cakes, post them on Facebook, link our names to them and then thank us publicly. Check out my Facebook page for some examples. My referral partners have loved the cakes. I have even had a broker call me and thank me for the cake that was sent to one of his agents. This strategy is all about opening doors.

Stay tuned next week for Phase II of Derek's powerful strategy!

Derek Egeberg has been very active in the LTB Community and is one of the newest additions to our Contributing Faculty. Visit Derek's Faculty Focus page to learn more about him–and take a listen to his short interview with Sue Woodard.