Marketing With A $0 Budget With Referral Groups Part 4

January 26, 2010

The worst thing you can do is have 2-3 meetings and give up because you haven’t gotten any referrals yet.  Remember, you’re not spending any money here, so don’t expect overnight results.  Rather, stick at it and change things about the group if you’re not getting the results you want soon enough.  If people are giving you referrals but they aren’t turning into customers, re-educate your club’s members during one of your presentations about the exact types of prospects you’re looking for.  Give them handouts so they can remember this information better.  You want to tell them these are your ideal prospects:

-    live not too far from the neighborhood
-    plan to move either in the next 6 months or within the next few weeks
-    whether they currently own a home or rent
-    any other information on your best prospects

Be sure to get their email address once you call these people you’ve been referred to.  If they’re not moving for a few months, they may not be that interested in talking to you.  Don’t take it personally.  It just means they’re not yet ready to begin seriously looking at specific properties, and that’s your job.  When the time comes, they will be interested in talking.  Simply ask if you can add them to your mailing list and that you’ll be sending them valuable real estate information on the local area periodically.  It’s difficult to say no to that.  Your email database will bloom.

As with BNI, you do want to make sure people are serious about joining the group, but more importantly are serious about staying with the group for the long term.  One way of doing this is charging money for each meeting.  Don’t charge an up front annual fee because many people will balk at that.  If you make people pay to attend the group, not only will you be making money but you’ll weed out the people who aren’t serious about building relationships and helping others.  If you charge a token amount (say $10 per person per meeting) and some people balk at this, do you really even want such a person in your group?  They are the types who don’t understand the value of referral groups, and if they’re not willing to come to the meeting and try to learn it for themselves or read up on the topic, what are the chances they’re going to be open, helpful, insight members of your group?  Not great.

Filed under: Attracting Buyers/Sellers With Email,Networking Tips

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