Trusted Referral Partners

One key piece of Home Pro Partners is the concept of “Trusted Partners”, we currently have a basic foundation in place to help you build out a mini-network of partners you know and trust, but what does that mean?

There are several terms that you may hear that all basically mean the same thing… “Trusted Partners”, “Referral Partners”, “Sphere Group” and so on. We will use the term Trusted Partner going forward.

Let’s imagine you own a flooring company, you do all things flooring. You recently refinished a floor but had to remove the baseboards first, finished the floor and then reinstalled the baseboards. During the process of removing and installing you scuffed the paint job, left new nail holes, broke a piece and had to install a new section that isn’t painted at all.

The client of course isn’t going to like how the baseboards look, you are a flooring company, not a painter. So what do you do, you bring in a trusted partner.

1. You could have someone on your crew fill holes, caulk the edges and paint. The problem with this is you pull one of your flooring people off of a skill they are great at and move them to something they are only “ok” at, which wastes time, money and the job isn’t done very well.

2. You could tell the client it’s their problem, you had warned them ahead of time they would have to deal with that on their own. This leads to terrible customer service and likely a grumpy client.

3. You call the really good painter you know to come do what they do best, paint. The floors are brand new, so you don’t want some terrible painter coming in and screwing up the floor, so instead, you bring in a painter that you know very well and trust will do a high quality job. This painter is one of your Trusted Partners.

It’s likely you know many trusted partners, plumbers, electricians, roofers, HVAC, landscaper and countless others. Home Pro Partners becomes powerful when you add all these partners to your profile, it gives you a way to connect your clients with other service providers that you are confident won’t make you look bad.

When you and your network of Trusted Partners all connect with each other on Home Pro Partners, you build a strong referral network that helps all of you grow.

Every time one of your trusted partners shares their profile on Facebook, Nextdoor, Twitter and countless other locations. Your company will be seen by all those potential clients as well when that profile is viewed.

Imagine if you had 30 partners and those partners share their profile once a week to their friends, family and social connections. That leads to potentially thousands of views a week, you now have a network of partners acting as your marketing team and you are doing the same for them. The cost for all this extra marketing is essentially nothing.

Compare that to using a service like Home Advisor, it’s not uncommon for home pros to set a monthly lead fee budget of $1,000. Plus, if you accept opportunity leads for an additional $75-$200 per lead, your marketing budget explodes in cost. You could easily spend $10K – $15K per year, just with Home Advisor and remember you are competing with 5, 10, 15+ competitors who also got those same leads.

Work smarter, not harder with your marketing budget. It’s just like teaching, do you teach one person per class or 30 people per class? Do you get your leads from one source or 30 sources? Which is more efficient, more lucrative and more powerful?

As members of several local “community Facebook groups”, we are constantly seeing requests like the one you see above by homeowners. There are easily 2-3 requests like this across each group every day, is your company being referred? Are your trusted partners being referred?

Imagine being able to post a link to your Home Pro Partners profile and saying “I have the perfect person, check out “123 Cleaning” in my Trusted Partners list.

Think of all the people that will visit your profile and not only see you, but also your partners. You are marketing your company while also providing value to homeowners and adding value to your partners. This is a powerful combination of networking, marketing and sales.

As you have read above, the goal of Home Pro Partners is for us to add value to you, and for you to use our tool to provide additional value to your customers.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, your company may offer roofing, or flooring or plumbing or any number of other services (same as all your competitors); but ultimately what you are truly offering is value. When you add value and your competitor doesn’t, you win every time with higher quality clients and better paying jobs.

Are you ready to provide more value to your customers? Publish your profile on Home Pro Partners and encourage your trusted partners to do the same and help each other grow and succeed.