I need help and I'm hoping another agent reading this blog has an answer.

Our team has grown to the point that approximately once a month we have someone ask us for an agent referral in another market (sellers that are relocating, friends and family that are moving in other markets, etc.)

The problem we have is that our franchise's referral system keeps giving us crappy agents that either don't secure the business (so we don't get paid a referral fee) and/or makes us look bad by being incompetent (so I wish they hadn't of secured the business).

The last referral we gave out where the other agent won the business was in January 2006- over a year ago!   After losing two referrals last month, we've decided to stop using the Prudential referral system and instead just interview agent we find off of the web.

We are currently trying this new strategy for the first time right now to find an agent in Tennessee, and we're having a hard time getting someone who will even return our calls!

What's really frustrating is that I'm not only loosing revenue by not finding a solid partner to give the leads to, but I know there are other agents in other markets with leads that they could be sending to me which I would LOVE to have.

The other problem we're having is finding agents that match the level of technology we offer.  I don't mean they need to build their own website or blog a lot (because most of that is irrelevant to my lead).  But what I do want are agents that check email more than once a day, have mobile technology to stay in touch with clients when they're out of the office and offer advanced client web-based tools for searching for properties, managing contracts, etc.

For example, the Scouting Report is such an important tool for us in assisting relocation clients, I'd like to only be referring out buyer leads to agents who have implemented it (or a similar tool) into their daily business as well.  I also believe other Scouting Report agents should know how to incubate and successfully capture a lead- thus improving my chances for a payout.

If anyone knows a place to find such agents, I welcome your suggestions.

(Editor's note:  Original comments to this post were lost when we migrated blog platforms.  However to follow up, an outcome to this problem is that we joined CRS and CyberStars in 2007.)