Marketing With A $0 Budget With Referral Groups Part 2

January 22, 2010

BNI started the concept of the referral group and many copy-cat groups have started as well.  (Your area may have some right now.  The Toronto area has plenty).  Each week a BNI chapter meets at the same location and time, usually either for breakfast or lunch at a local establishment.  People tend to live near the chapters they attend, so these chapters can be a prime way of getting referrals to prospects in the neighborhood.  Each chapter has only one person from each profession to prevent competition between members (a good thing and a bad thing as I’ll explain later).  I once looked at some research on BNI chapters in Ontario and real estate professionals were one of the top three most represented professions in Ontario.  So you may find it difficult to join a BNI chapter because most already have a real estate professional.  Of course, you can always start your own chapter.  It’s especially good to start a chapter if your neighborhood or greater area doesn’t have one.

Now joining a BNI chapter is not free – you’ll pay about $500-$600 per year to join (BNI can tell you the current cost for annual dues) plus the cost of food/drink each week if you choose to eat at the venue.  You also can’t miss more than a handful of meetings or you risk being kicked out of the group.  If you join, you should always attend unless you’re on vacation, and even then you can get a substitute to attend on your behalf.

The main benefit of these groups is that they’re great relationship builders, usally far better than the mingling type events.  When you attend these events week after week, you’ll really get to know the other group members.  One member each week has the opportunity to do a 30-45 minute presentation to the chapter on what their business is and what kinds of prospects they’re looking for.  This equips the other members to know what types of prospects to look out for and refer for each member.  Now some chapters have only 5-10 people, but others have 30-50 people.  Imagine having 40 active people from your neighborhood continually looking to refer you business because they want to get the same from you!  That can be very powerful.

A key consideration for which chapter to join is what types of people are members.  In real estate, we all know anyone can be prospect or can refer us to one, but some referrers are better than others.  So be on the look out for chapters that currently have real estate professionals of different types in them.  Especially look for chapters that have mortgage brokers, lenders, or lawyers.  It’s beneficial if people like contractors, home stagers, or anyone else involved in home improvement are part of the chapter you join.

Filed under: Networking Tips,Using Email For Attracting Buyers/Sellers

Tags: BNI, email inquiries, email newsletter, email prospects, email subject line, email training tips, network, networking, networking event, referral group