If you’re frequently asking for recruiting referrals from your agents and other network contacts, you may find that some of your referral sources can’t think of anyone on the spot.

Your simple request:

Do you know anyone I should be talking to about joining our office?

May be met with a blank stare or a brush-off comment:

I can’t think of anyone but if someone comes to mind, I’ll let you know.

It may not be that they don’t want to help you, but many people get a little brain paralysis when they’re asked to pull information like this out of the air.

To initiate some additional thoughts, you may want to take the extra step of showing your referral contact a copy of your recruiting warm list.

I get it—it’s hard to think of agents on the fly. Do you happen to know anyone on this list? These are some of the agents I’m trying to connect with.

Seeing some names on a list sometimes jogs the memory of a referral source, and it keeps the conversation going.