POWER NETWORKING AT EVENTS FOR REAL ESTATE AGENTS - KEVIN WARD

Focus is on quality over quantity. I am more interested if I'm at a networking group and let's say there's a hundred people there, I want to meet more than one or two people, but I would rather have seven or eight people that I really connected with as opposed to collecting 40 business cards that I'm never going to talk to again. Hey there, it's Kevin Ward, the founder of yes Masters Real Estate Success Training. Helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life. And one of the greatest strategies for generating leads is the power of networking. And as the world has changed, networking has become even more effective and more powerful for a very simple reason. And that is that we are in a society where, where people are less trusting today than they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago and before, and that's been proven in Gallup studies and so forth, is that we're living in a society where people are becoming more and more distrustful. The cool thing about networking is when you're at an event and you're at a social gathering or a business gathering or whatever, you tend to be there with people who were invited, people who are there who are like you. And so when you meet people there, they tend to be more trusting, they tend to be. There tends to be less resistance because they're there to meet people, they're there to talk to people and so forth. Whether it's a social gathering or a party or it's a chamber of commerce meeting or some kind of a business meeting or whatever, you're there with people who because of the like mindedness are willing to talk and they're willing to engage you in a conversation. So learning how to take advantage of that and leverage that is so important. And the reality is most real estate agents do networking 100% wrong. And so in this video, I'm going to talk to you about how to do it right and get it correctly. Now I'm actually going to do two videos on it. This first video is on what I call the one night stand approach. Now what I mean by that, it's not how you approach it, it's the kind of venue where you're, the kind of networking venue that you're at. So one night stand approach simply means that this is a networking event. In other words, it's one time that I'm going to be with this one group of people as opposed to being a part of a group like a business networking group where you meet with them periodically, every week or every month or whatever. Where you have time to build relationships with a group of people. So this is an event or a party or whatever where you're going to be there one time with this group of people. So it's just a one night stand, a one night opportunity, a one time opportunity. So you got to be great at leveraging the opportunity to actually get business from it. So here are the five steps that will allow you to leverage this one time opportunity at a meeting to give yourself the best chances of actually using this as a lead generation strategy that actually will get you leads and actually get you deals. So number one, the first thing is, is you want to make sure you set your intention of why you're going to this party, why you're going to this meeting, what are you going there for? And the reason I say that is a lot of agents are introverts like me. And for me, if I just go to a party or a networking event, I'm really not a socialite. That's my personality. I'm not the life of the party, the center of attention. I'm not the one that goes around and just naturally meets everybody. I would just as soon stand there with my wife and talk to no one, just be there with her, have a drink, enjoy ourselves, or maybe talk to another couple, or maybe talk to another individual. And I could literally spend the whole evening talking to two people. And I'm totally cool with that. But if you're there as a lead generation strategy to build relationships and get business, just hanging out with people that you already know or people you're already comfortable with, or just talking to one or two people probably isn't going to get you the best results, right? Especially if you're in a room with a hundred people and you talk just to two of them the whole time. That kind of a wasted opportunity if you're using it for lead generation. So set the intention. Am I here just to have good, have a good time and relax, or am I here to, to generate leads? And if you're here to generate leads, it's a matter of learning how to meet and greet people, have a conversation, connect with people, and then move on to someone else, as opposed to spending 30 or 45 minutes talking to one person that you're in a connection with. Not a bad thing to do. It's just not going to give you as much opportunity to get as many leads as you could otherwise. So number one is, what is your intention? Just be clear on it. What do you want to accomplish by getting there? Number two, and is related to your intention. And that is focus on. I'm going to just put it this way. Connect versus collect. And what I mean by that is I want you to focus on connecting with people versus just collecting a lot of business cards. Okay? You've seen people like this. You've seen people, they go into a. They go to a meeting or a party or whatever function and they go like, I've got a stack of 50 business cards and my goal is to hand out all my business cards and, and I'm going to see how many business cards I can get. It's also true if you go to another. A real estate conference and you're trying to meet other real estate agents for referrals from all over, from different areas and so forth, the goal is not how many cards you can collect, the goal is how well can you connect with some people that you can build enough of a relationship with that one, they'll remember you and two, that they feel good about you. Okay? You've seen people that are just out and literally they're walking around from person to person, hey, here's my card, here's my card. Here's my card. And that immediately is just kind of like, really? That's junk mail. You're just spamming me. Please don't do that. So the focus is on quality over quantity. I am more interested if I'm at a networking group and let's say there's 100 people there. I want to meet more than one or two people. But I would rather have seven or eight people that I really connected with as opposed to collecting 40 business cards that I'm never going to talk to again. And they're going to. The business cards are going to get stuck with a rubber band around the stack of business cards going to be laying on my desk for the next six months, not really sure what to do with them. Just have them there and someday I'm planning to do something with them. We'll get to that on strategy number five. But that's not the goal. Right? The goal is I want to connect with people that will remember me so that I can get business from them. Number two. Number three is this is where the magic is right here. And that is the magic is in the five follow up. And I'm going to tell you, the follow up is what you do the next day. It is critical, it is imperative that this happen either if it's a daytime event and you can literally do it that day, that's cool. But it must happen by the next Day. And that is what you do after is where the magic is in networking. 90% of your results are going to come from right here. Not from here or here. And even down here and here. It's really right here. It's in the follow up. It's what you do the day after. And here is the magic after you're done with the event. Let's say that I got seven people that I really connect with. Seven people, I got their cards, maybe 10, 12, maybe 20, whatever it is. And what I want to do is I want to immediately that day is I want to shoot a quick video on my cell phone and I'm just going to hold up my video, my cell phone, just like this, turn on the video and I'm going to say, hey, Bill, Kevin Ward here. Hey, listen, it was awesome to meet you at the networking party that we had last night. I just wanted to shoot a quick video to thank you for taking the time to talk to me, tell you what a pleasure it was to meet you and also let you know if I can help with anything or anyone that you know, I can help as a real estate agent or if I can help you with your business, please reach out to me and let me know. And I look forward to talking to you soon. Boom. Done. It's a 15 second video, 20 second video. And then I text it to that person. Text the video to them now. What does that do? Well, does several things. One, they were at this party, they met a lot of people. You're just another. If they didn't know you before, you're just another person in the crowd that they'll never talk to again. They'll never remember. You're just lost in the crowd. You're lost in the stack of cards because maybe they took a stack of cards and they're going to sit on their desk for six months and then they'll throw them away because they're not going to do anything with them. But when you did that, number one, now they're going to remember you forever. They met you one time last night. You were the first person they met. They then talked to 10 other people. One of them was a girl that he had a crush that he got a crush on. So he's really not thinking about you. He's thinking about that girl he met last night. You know what I'm talking about? That kind of stuff can happen. So they're not thinking about you. And then they get this text message from you with this video. They play the video and they're Going like, that was nice. Guess what they're going to do. Number one, they, they're going to text you back and say, awesome to meet you too, and so forth. Number two, they're going to remember you forever. Number three, they're going to keep your video. And now, even if they don't save your cell phone number in their phone as one of their contacts, they're going to keep that text message. So when the day comes that they do need a real estate agent, they're going to go like, oh, I met that guy. Oh, he sent me the video. And guess what? They're going to go back through those text messages and find you. You're easy to find. You're going to stay there. They'll never delete that text message. So now they'll never forget you because you've become a real person to them. Among the masses they met, you're going to be the one that stands out in their memory of who they met that night. See how powerful that is? It takes a little bit of time, but if you met 10 people and it takes you 20 seconds per and plus 10 seconds to type in a quick text, send it to them, let's say it takes you a whole minute, they then it takes you 10 minutes. If you met 10 people, piece of cake. Okay? And for the amount of return you can potentially get from that, that is awesome. The fourth thing that you want to do is in that relationship is you want to focus on adding value. Focus on adding value to them. What can I do for you? So as John F. Kennedy said about patriotism, he said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. So same with here. Ask not what your contact can do for you. Ask what you can do for your contact for the person you connected with for that new connection. Ask not what they can do for you, ask what you can do for them. Find out what their business is, be interested in them. What can I do to help your business? And one of the things I train my real estate coaching members is in what we call the real estate vortex, is literally on your website to have a tab called Local Business Favorites, where you can literally have a directory of other businesses that you promote and you put them on your website as one of your local business favorites and you put them there. It's just, there's more to that strategy, but it's very, very powerful strategy just by asking them, hey, what can I do to help your business? When you shoot the video, text the video that you're going to text them, hey, if there's anything I can do to help your accounting business or if I can refer people to you, if I can, let me know what I can do to help. I'll be happy to help you. Okay? Focus on adding value because when that works, you get the law of reciprocity. When you give, you will receive very, very powerful. And then number five is you want to immediately put them into what I call your personal circle system. And your personal circle system, otherwise known as your sphere of influence. Some people call it your database. I don't like it being a database because it's just full of data. But when it's your personal circle, it's your relationships. And the key word here is that you have a system so that you're consistently touching them, reaching out to them. So, so that you're maintaining top of mind awareness. And now that you've connected with them, you want to continue to position yourself in their minds as their go to realtor. So this is how you connect. This is how you begin to position yourself over time as their agent of choice. So that when they never forget about you because if they don't remember you, they won't refer you. Right? If they don't know who you are, they're not going to use you. And so this is how you build and maintain top of mind awareness so that whenever they know somebody looking to buy or sell real estate or when they're needing to buy or selling real estate, they're going to call you. It's that simple. It's that powerful. If you have any questions or you got comments, what other strategies or ideas do you have? When you meet people at groups that you use, make sure you post those down below. Give the video a thumbs up if it's helped you subscribe to the channel. If you haven't done that and I'll see you on the next video.