When you first begin operations as a freelance broker or consultant, you will have a lot to do. Most of it will focus on beginning to network with other and subsequently building relationships that result in referrals. Don’t ignore necessary time you need to spend on LinkedIn and other social media beginning to build such relationships with bank lending officers, accounting professionals, and others. But constructing an expansive network of “bird dog” referral agents should be right at the top of your “List of Must Do Priorities”.
Setting Up Your Agent Prospecting / Management System
Just as you will be prospecting for new clients, you will also need to prospect for your sub-agents. And to manage both these tasks, you will need a CRM like Pipedrive. We will show you exactly how to do it in Pipedrive and if you are using another CRM, you will need to use our suggestions to program it similarly.
You have several important items to configure in Pipedrive to run your “Agents Program”.
- Agent Identification: This is simply the agent’s name and contact information set up in “CONTACTS” but your contacts info section will need to include information such as your agent’s website domain (WordPress Landing Page)
- Leads Identification: When one of your agents submits a lead or a lead comes in from a form field on the agent’s landing page, that lead needs to be accounted for as belonging to that particular agent. That configuration is a “customized data field” for ORGANIZATIONS and is set from the “settings” area in Pipedrive.
- Lead Forms: Each one of your agents will need a Pipedrive form for collecting leads form his/her landing page. The form dispenses the FREE offer of a booklet: “When Banks Say NO!…The Small Business Guide to Factoring” and at the same time, sends a notice of the guide request to the agent and sends it as a “Deal” to your (the freelance broker’s) Sales Pipeline in Pipedrive. When a deal comes in, you need to be able see exactly which sub-agents form resulted in the lead submission.
- Agent Marketing Automation (MailChimp): A fourth configuration is in your email marketing program. We will focus on MailChimp which is our recommended resource for email marketing. If you use something other than MailChimp, simply configure yours similarly. In your email marketing system, you will need two (2) tags for identification…
- Active Agents: These are agents that are active, have a landing page set up, and are in your program.
- Prospective Agents: These are individuals that have professed an interest in your program but have yet to sign up and create their landing page.
