Some real estate professionals think they have to constantly spend thousands of dollars on advertising, computer equipment, and the latest technology to keep a steady stream of prospects coming in. Many don’t realize their very best prospects are right under their noses. It’s your built-in network: people you already know. And there are a lot more of them than you think.

Here are some sources for building your email database with people you already know:

Your Friends: an obvious source, but you may not have mined it for all it’s worth. Think back to friends you had in college, university, high school, primary school. Think about friends you had on sporting teams or clubs you were a part of. A fraternity or sorority you partied with during university. A great way to find these people is through alumni clubs. Consider volunteering for one.

Your Family: don’t just think brothers, sisters, parents: think aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, second cousins, in-laws, cousins of parents – the list goes on. I’ll bet if you look hard enough you’ll find relatives you’ve never even met!

People You’ve Worked With: the longer you’ve been in the workforce, and the more companies you’ve worked for, the greater the number of people. It could be past customers, partner companies, suppliers, manufacturers, and so on. Do some sleuthing through business associates you’ve kept in touch with and find out where these people are today. Get their email address if possible from these friends. It’ll be a lot of fun catching up with many of these people too!

Neighbors: get out and get to know your neighbors better! Garage sales, dog parks, community associations and open houses are great ways of developing relationships with them.

Here a couple of other great places to meet prospects:

Industry Associations: a great place for networking is industry associations other than real estate ones. Research trade associations of other professionals involved in real estate transactions: mortgage brokers, lawyers, accountants, home inspectors, etc. Not only will you build your knowledge in these areas and become a greater asset to your clients, you’ll also be sowing seeds for valuable partnerships. Whenever possible, take the initiative and give these people a referral. You’ll probably get one back from them soon enough.

Referral Groups: referral groups are a great way of meeting other real estate professionals and getting referrals. The biggest referral group is Business Network International (BNI). They have some impressive statistics:

* Number of Chapters Worldwide: over 5,000
* Number of Members: 105,000
* Number of Referrals: over 3.3 million (2006)
* Total Value of Referrals: $2.4 billion (U.S.) (2006)

Each chapter is composed of various business owners and sales professionals. Only one person from each profession may join. The chapters meet once a week at the same time and location every week. Real estate professionals are the second best represented profession within BNI.   Because the group meets so regularly and the same people are at each meeting you can develop quality relationships with other real estate professionals (lawyers, mortgage brokers, accountants) who are prime sources for great referrals. Here’s a list of Ontario referral groups very similar to BNI:

Le Tip

Midtown Business Alliance

Peel Referral Association

Referral Quest

Star Networking

Unless you collect business cards as a hobby, then I highly recommend avoiding ‘mingling’ type networking events, especially ones with a generalist (IE non-industry specific) membership. The relationships resulting from the people you meet at these events are usually shallow and fleeting and expire even before the event ends. These events are more about quantity of contacts, exchanging business cards, posturing, preening and air kisses than developing meaningful, profitable relationships.  If you are a REAL business card aficionado and want to take your collection to the next level (but not your business), I especially recommend the networking events held by the many municipal chambers of commerce and boards of trade throughout Ontario. These events are very expensive relative to referral groups such as BNI and have been thoroughly stagnant in their basic structure for years, if not decades. Each chamber/board strictly adheres to an event planning model given to them from the province and little innovation has been seen in these events over many years. The greatest crime of these chamber events is that they usually amount to wasteful government make-work projects that are kept when it comes time to trim government fat because of their important purpose: bringing economic development to their respective areas. Their events do anything but.

You can get even more prospects coming your way by having your website and listings search engine optimized. I teach real estate professionals how to do this in my RECO approved The Internet and Real Estate E-Commerce course.