5 Essential Networking Tips for Real Estate Agents

Networking is important for any career, but it’s especially important for people in the real estate industry.

A crucial component of a successful real estate career is the ability to make connections and form strong, authentic relationships. People are trusting you to help them with one of the biggest decisions they’ll make. You need to be able to make connections (and keep them).

1. Attend networking events: Going to a networking event is an easy way to meet potential clients and professionals in your industry. Bring your business cards and don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to as many people as possible.

2. Engage in meaningful conversations: When it comes to networking events, quality is better than quantity. You may feel compelled to talk to as many people as possible, but it is actually more beneficial to talk to fewer people but have meaningful conversations with them. It’s much easier to follow up and create relationships when you can reference the conversations you’ve had.

3. Prepare in advance: Prepare your elevator pitch in advance. Know how to describe where you work, what you do, and any hobbies or interests that make you unique. Think about a few questions to ask if you run out of things to talk about. People love talking about themselves and it will show that you are interested in getting to know them.

4. Follow up: After meeting someone, immediately follow up by email to keep the conversation going. If you stay in touch, it’s more likely that you’ll be the first person they think of when they’re in need of buying or selling a home.

5. Participate in your community: Whether it’s joining your REALTORS^® association or going to a town meeting, it is good to be active and engaged in your community. Getting out there and making face to face connections will be beneficial your career. This will also allow you to become more familiar with your community, giving you an advantage when it comes to buying and selling in the area.

There is always room to improve how you network. Practice makes perfect. The more your network and make actual, in person connections, the better real estate agent you will be.

‘Power Networking’ for endless real estate referrals

If you’re like most real estate professionals, networking at meetings, ballgames or other events is a core part of your business. Typical agents pass out lots of business cards and seldom hear back from the people they meet. If you’re ready to change that, power networking is for you.

Passing out your business card is usually an ineffective way to prospect. Even if you use a digital version, people forget who you are or can’t find your card when they need your services. If you want to be more effective at converting leads from your networking activities, follow the eight steps below:

1. Your two most important accessories are a smile and your name badge.

Most networking events provide participants with name badges. This is not the case when you attend a sporting event, a luncheon or most social events. To make meeting new people easier at any event, wear your smile and your name badge. When you spot someone you would like to meet, smile and introduce yourself. If the person doesn’t have a name badge, ask, “And your name is?” Your name badge not only makes you more approachable, but it also helps people remember your name since they can see your badge throughout your conversation.

2. Target, question and connect.

Focus on meeting only five to six people at any networking event. Your goal is to build a connection with each individual by discovering what matters most to him or her.

Stand near where they are serving the food and drinks. Next, pay particular attention to the individuals who seem to be the center of a group. These individuals are usually the influencers in the room.

If there are 40 people in the room, how do you determine which five or six you want to meet?”

When an influencer eventually walks over to get more food or another drink, put a sincere smile on your face and introduce yourself. Ask for their card, but do not offer to give them your card unless the person asks for it. Follow up with a question about the person or their business. For example, if you introduce yourself as “John Agent from ABC Real Estate,” quickly follow up by asking questions such as:

• “How did you get into your business?”
• “How does your product (or service) differ from that of your competitors?”

This allows the person to talk about what matters to him or her. More importantly, you will stand out from everyone else whose sole focus is on themselves and their business.

If the person does express an interest in real estate, avoid pitching your services. Instead, turn the tables back around by asking the most important question: “How would I recognize when someone is a good client for your services?”

You earn the right to receive referrals when you have established trust and have demonstrated a willingness to help others build their business first.

3. Meet the wallflowers.

If there are 40 people in the room, how do you determine which five or six you want to meet?  Watch for the wallflowers, as well as those standing near the walls. Surprisingly, these individuals often prove to be the organization’s leaders or even the person who wrote the check for the event.

4. Break the ice at nonbusiness events.

If you find yourself tongue-tied about what to discuss, almost everyone enjoys discussing food. If the person cooks, ask about her favorite recipes. People also love sharing where to get the best pizza, burger or another special dish in town. Ask their opinion about what makes their choice the best.

5. Three is an opening; four is even better.

If two people are having a conversation, it’s wise not to interrupt. If there are three or more people in a group, they are probably more in networking mode and more likely to welcome another person to the conversation. If you are part of a group and you see someone standing near you, invite that person to join your conversation. Many people feel awkward about interrupting. They will appreciate your willingness to welcome them into your conversation.

6. Avoid the roving eye.

A major mistake many people make is becoming distracted while they are in a networking conversation. Make sure that your attention is 100 percent focused on the person with whom you are conversing. Avoid looking elsewhere in the room or on your mobile device.

7. Master the art of giving and receiving a compliment.

Whenever possible, give compliments to others. When you do so, dig deeper by asking more about what you complimented. For example, “That was an excellent talk you just gave. How did you become interested in that topic?”

When someone gives you a compliment say, “Thank you.” While this seems obvious, many people brush off compliments from others. A simple acknowledgment is usually the best approach.

8. Know what not to do.

When it comes to networking, keep your focus on others. Avoid telling people, “I’m never too busy for your referrals,” as that puts the focus on you rather than on the other person.

To be more effective in your networking efforts, be curious about what matters to others, strengthen your connection by laser-focusing your attention on your conversational partners, and use a “give-to-get” approach to earn the right to do business with them.

15 Networking Secrets of Successful Real Estate Agents

Networking is only one element of your sales success. But it won’t be effective unless you have a system that reinforces your networking conversation; establishes yourself as an expert via your marketing, advertising and PR efforts; leads to further follow-ups, and ultimately to closing sales.

Ok, well, most of these shouldn’t exactly be secrets. But given how important networking is in the real estate business, it’s still amazing how many agents don’t make the most out of their networking opportunities. Here are some of the best practices  gathered over the years.

1. Be a card taker, not a card giver. You can have a fantastically successful network event or opportunity and not give out a single card.

2. Elicitation is the craft of gathering intelligence simply by getting people to talk, and by listening. It’s a skill, and intelligence, counterintelligence and law enforcement officials train hard to get good at it. Become a master of the art.

3. Don’t be talking on the phone during networking events and trade shows if you don’t have to. When you’re networking, network. Otherwise, the people who trust their voicemail or have staff taking care of routine inquiries will walk away with all the contacts you should be making.

4. Paid networking events are better deals than unpaid ones. People who pay to join a network are generally more serious. Unpaid networking groups are too frequently broke people trying to sell to other broke people. The only ones that will make money are the debt counselors.

5. See another real estate agent? Smile, say hello, shake hands, and move on. You aren’t there to meet other real estate agents.

6. Take the initiative. Be the first to follow up with your contacts. Just give them a call and get permission to “stay in touch.” That’s all you need at first.

7. Enter all contacts into your Market Leader or other contact management program immediately.

8. Have a plan. You should keep a list of people you want to meet – people you want to transform into customers, mentors and referral sources. These are community leaders, trusted professionals, and the like.

9. Try to create your own “events.” Seminars can take a lot of planning, but people will line up to speak with you after the event if you do it well – and the crowds will usually be relatively free of competing agents.

10. Have a marketing plan to soften up new acquaintances between your phone calls. Your marketing plan should establish you as an expert while maximizing your top-of-mind awareness. If you don’t have a marketing plan, you are wasting too much of your prospecting effort. Marketing is what makes your networking effective. And over time, networking is what will make your prospecting effective.

11. Give more than you get. Go into every event looking to help people. Give referrals. If you are a giver, you’ll get more than your share in return.

12. Don’t hang out with familiar people too much. Make a pact with them that you will both move on to meet new people after five minutes. Make an appointment to get together later, if you must.

13. Keep notes. Talk about their families, needs, professional concerns, etc. The more you know about them, the better you can serve them as an agent. For example, you will know if they have a baby on the way they may be looking for more space in the future. If they just moved into town they may be shopping. If your contact is shortly getting transferred to another city, they may soon be listing a house. If you have an idea when that will occur, you can deliver a well-timed mailer and phone call.

14. Have fun. Seriously. If you’re having fun, people around you will too.

15. Don’t get drunk. You don’t have to be that much fun. Save it for after the closing. With people who aren’t prospects.

In closing, remember that networking is important, but it isn’t the only link in the chain of activities that will make you successful. Everything you do should combine in synergies to make everything else you do more effective.

How to Build a Powerful Professional Network

It is important to know the two Q’s as you build out your network: quality and quantity. But have you considered the importance of having a well-rounded network?

In this job market, having a strong network is critical to your professional survival. There are plenty of tips and articles on where to find people, how and when to connect to them and even what you need to say to attract and maintain your network. This article focuses on who should be in your network.

Here are the top 10 people that should be in your network:

1. The Mentor: This is the person who has reached the level of success you aspire to have. You can learn from their success as well as their mistakes. Heed their wisdom and experience. This relationship offers a unique perspective because they have known you through several peaks and valleys in your life and watched you evolve.

2. The Coach: The coach is someone who comes in at different times in your life. They help with critical decisions and transitions and offer an objective perspective with no strings attached.

3. The Industry Insider: This is someone in your chosen field who has expert-level information or access to it. This person will keep you informed of what’s happening now and what the next big thing is. Invite them to be a sounding board for your next innovative idea.

4. The Trendsetter: This is someone outside of your chosen industry who always has the latest buzz. It can be on any topic that you find interesting. The goal in having this person in your network is to look for those connections that spark innovation via the unconventional. It will also help you keep your conversations interesting.

5. The Connector: This is a person who has access to people, resources and information. As soon as they come across something related to you, they are sending you an e-mail or picking up the phone. Connectors are great at uncovering unique ways to make connections, finding resources and opportunities that most people would overlook.

6. The Idealist: This is the person in your network you can dream with. No matter how “out there” your latest idea is, this is the person who will help you brainstorm ways to make it happen. Without judgment, they are focused on helping you flesh out your dreams in high definition, even if you don’t have a solid plan yet on how to make it happen.

7. The Realist: On the flip side, you still need the person who will help you keep it real. This is the person who will give you the raised eyebrow when your expectations exceed your effort. These are not people who knock down your dreams, rather they challenge you to actively make your dream happen.

8. The Visionary: Visionary people inspire you by their journey. They are similar to the Idealist, but the visionary can help you envision an actual plan to reach your goal. One personal encounter with this type of person can powerfully change the direction of your thinking and life.

9. The Partner: You need to have someone who is in a similar place and on a similar path to share with. In fact, partners do a lot of sharing. This is a person you can share the wins and woes with. Partners will also share resources, opportunities and information.

10. The Wanna-Be: This is someone you can serve as mentor to. Someone you can help shape and guide based on your experiences. One of the best ways to tell that you understand something is to be able to explain it to someone else. And sometimes, one of the best motivators for pushing through obstacles and hardship is knowing that someone is watching.

Obviously you will want to have more than 10 people in your network. The trick is to make sure you are building a diverse network by adding people from different industries, backgrounds, age groups, ethnic groups, etc. … that fit into the roles listed above. Building a deep network by only including people from your current profession or business focus leaves too many stones unturned, limiting potential opportunities.

Serious about building a strong professional network that can actually provide the leverage you need to make progress at work or in your business? Evaluate your current network and get started filling in the gaps.

Happy Networking!

4 Stages for Successful Business Networking

Here are four stages I discovered for creating and maintaining relationships for productive business networking. There are times that you can go through all four stages quickly but more frequently, they just take time.

1-Acquaint: To have a relationship with anyone, you must know them. You can’t miss this stage. You have to know they exist, who they are and what they are about. This step is so important that you will never have any relationship unless you master this step. Most people try to skip this step and they wonder why business networking does not work for them.

Take a moment and think about the person who walks into a networking event, just hands out business cards and waits for the action to start. The action never starts because they missed the first stage. They cry because the only people who contact them are people who want to take advantage of them.

Even if this stage seems obvious to you, there is a lot to improve when you get to know someone. For good reason, we judge people by how they look and we seal that judgement very quickly. In fact, it takes about seven seconds to assess someone and decide whether we will have a relationship with that person.

Stop yourself from deciding so quickly and have a conversation. You will be right most of the time but when you are wrong, that is where business networking works at its greatest. Most of the people who made the greatest impact in my networking journey have come from my persistence to fight off the prejudgment and keep an open mind. I was shocked and surprised by the doors that this first opened and continue to open.

2-Ally: Once you acquaint and you break the ice, you can decide if you want to go to the next stage. It’s often wise not to take too many steps at the same time. It is worth letting things sink in and allowing the relationship to simmer for a bit. There is a chemical reaction every time you put two new things together; imagine what happens when you put two new humans together. I like to walk away and return to the the relationship at a natural second meeting, like another networking event. If I am out of town and I don’t see this happening, I move forward right away, but it’s a judgement call you need to make.

The key to forging an alliance is to find common ground. No matter how different this person may be to you, you might both enjoy coming to networking events and meeting new people, you might both be entrepreneurs, you might even be both human. You never know, though–sometimes I meet people at networking events and I swear they are aliens.

Asking a lot of questions will get you a lot of answers. Talking about your passions after they talk about theirs will build that rapport you need to see if they are interested in your hobbies. Try to stay away from religion and politics . I apply that advice to business networking events as well. Do talk about sports, wine, relationships, business, cars and anything else that excites you! My favorite topic to talk about: ideas. Hit me up with your big idea and we will instantly be allied.

3-Trust: Trust is the foundation of commerce. Every form of exchange needs to have a component of trust.  Trust should be the number one value. A business consultant explained to me that trust is essentially “permission to play”; you need to have trust to be in the game.

When you trust someone you want to do business with them. If you just know someone and you like them but you don’t trust them you probably won’t want to give them your business. Who wants to be let down?

How do you build trust? That’s not easy for everyone, especially those people that have low integrity or are not organized. Yes I said it, when you are unorganized you have a problem with promise management. If you say you will introduce someone and you don’t because you forgot or you are disorganized then your integrity erodes and you don’t have the same level of trust.

There is also a component of trusting others. When you trust others, they tend to trust you too. But the main things is that you want to keep your word, be on time and show people that you mean business. Trust is complex but if you take it seriously you will get people to trust you.

Now you know the person, you like the person and you trust the person. The feelings are mutual but for some reason there is no action? What is missing? The fourth stage is the final key that unlocks the goods.

4-Allow: For some people giving is easier than taking and for others taking is easy and giving is impossible. For you to pass the fourth stage of successful business networking you need to give and take. Allow yourself to give referrals, make introductions and help others. Be open to accepting the help of others. Be prepared and understand your needs so people can connect you and help you in your journey.

Being able to give and take without feeling guilty of accepting or without feeling resentful when you give but don’t get back as expected is the key to unlock the fourth stage of business networking. When you are at this stage you will look around you and feel confident that business networking is a viable key to growth.

Now it’s your turn. In the comments below, take a moment and describe your biggest challenge with business networking. What is working, and what is not working? Let’s have a conversation and grow together!

6 types of people you’ll meet at networking events

Before going to your next networking affair, read on to learn more about the different personalities you’ll encounter and how you can prepare yourself to interact with them.

If you’re a frequent attendee of networking events, you’ve likely started to notice that the same types of people pop up at each event. Some you may enjoy getting to know, while others you try to avoid at all costs.

Before going to your next networking affair, read on to learn more about the different personalities you’ll encounter and how you can prepare yourself to interact with them.

1. The Wallflower

You know those people you see at events who keep their head down, avoid eye contact and will make any excuse to leave a conversation (do they really need to take an important call)? Those are the Wallflowers. Wallflowers come to networking events and spend most of their time hugging the wall . They rarely meet anyone new except for those in the group charged with getting Wallflowers to mingle. Once encountered by another, Wallflowers quickly leave, because they find the entire experience so uncomfortable.

There’s not much you can do to engage with a Wallflower, so your best bet when encountering them is to be friendly, make them feel as at ease as possible and not get offended if they suddenly take off.

2. The Dealmaker

The Dealmaker is another personality you’ll find at these events. The Dealmaker is the salesperson with an agenda, whether it be a recruiter, an entrepreneur trying to close contracts or signups or the service provider. The best response in this situation is a friendly openness to the potential ‘offers.’ No need to decline anything so early on, but feel no pressure to take any action immediately either. Always take some time to think about an opportunity, to leave breathing room to make an informed decision before you close on the deal.

3. The Hand-shaker

While the goal of networking events is usually to make genuine connections and ultimately find business leads or employment opportunities down the road, some people favor quantity over quality. The Hand-shaker is someone who goes around, passing her business card to as many people as possible, trying disingenuously to meet everyone. Your best response: a polite introduction and, likely, that’s all, because that person doesn’t go beyond surface-level interaction .

4. The Social-lite

“We call him the Social-lite, because he’s heavy on the social aspect and ‘lite’ on the networking aspect. Social-lites are interactive, moving from person to person in an effort to get to know as many people in the room as possible but always spending the most time with the people they already know. This is how cliques in networking circles are formed.

He may also be the person who tends to loiter around the bar or food table, taking advantage of the “perks” that come along with such events. If you’re there to have a good time, the Social-lite is your best partner in crime. However, if you want to take the event a little more seriously, you may want to steer clear.

5. The Power Networker

The Power Networker could be considered the “poster child” for what a good networker should be. They attend these events because they genuinely want to make connections and are buttoned up in their approach to networking.

“Power Networkers understand that networking events are for meeting perhaps three to five quality connections in the hopes to find a way to help them expand their network . The Power Networker knows that when she helps others, she helps herself. She’s equipped with the Million Dollar Question: ‘As I go through my day, I meet a lot of people; tell me, how will I know when I’ve met a perfect referral for you?’ She connects with people and asks the question of most she meets. She asks for a card from each person she meets and jots notes on the backs of the business cards she receives so she can make connections of value later.

6. The Connector

You know those people who seem to know everyone at an event, and you can tell from across the room that they’re confident in who they are as a professional? Those are the Connectors . This person likes to help others – they are the best person to find at a networking event. They have been in the space for a very long time and are confident in their business. They are attending because they need to but don’t plan on doing any business today. They will listen to what you do, ask intelligent questions and introduce you to others that may be relevant.

10 Tips for Successful Business Networking

Want to make your business networking more effective? Here are ten tips to keep in mind.

Effective business networking is the linking together of individuals who, through trust and relationship building, become walking, talking advertisements for one another.

1-Keep in mind that networking is about being genuine and authentic, building trust and relationships, and seeing how you can help others.

2-Ask yourself what your goals are in participating in networking meetings so that you will pick groups that will help you get what you are looking for. Some meetings are based more on learning, making contacts, and/or volunteering rather than on strictly making business connections.

3-Visit as many groups as possible that spark your interest. Notice the tone and attitude of the group. Do the people sound supportive of one another? Does the leadership appear competent? Many groups will allow you to visit two times before joining.

4-Hold volunteer positions in organizations. This is a great way to stay visible and give back to groups that have helped you.

5-Ask open-ended questions in networking conversations. This means questions that ask who, what, where, when, and how as opposed to those that can be answered with a simple yes or no. This form of questioning opens up the discussion and shows listeners that you are interested in them.

6-Become known as a powerful resource for others. When you are known as a strong resource, people remember to turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. This keeps you visible to them.

7-Have a clear understanding of what you do and why, for whom, and what makes your doing it special or different from others doing the same thing. In order to get referrals, you must first have a clear understanding of what you do that you can easily articulate to others.

8-Be able to articulate what you are looking for and how others may help you. Too often people in conversations ask, “How may I help you?” and no immediate answer comes to mind.

9-Follow through quickly and efficiently on referrals you are given. When people give you referrals, your actions are a reflection on them. Respect and honor that and your referrals will grow.

10-Call those you meet who may benefit from what you do and vice versa. Express that you enjoyed meeting them, and ask if you could get together and share ideas.