Marketing With A $0 Budget With Referral Groups Part 6

January 28, 2010

It’s said that more business is done on the golf course than in the board room, so why can’t the same be true for breakfast, lunch or dinner meetings?  Breakfast meetings would be particularly good for executives as they’re often known as early risers.

Now things can get even more interesting and fruitful for real estate professionals who use technology to facilitate their meetings.  Imagine what you could do with a local online based referral group.  This too could be done on a shoestring or non-existent budget.  There are free teleconference providers available, one of which can host upto 200 people on a call.  People simply dial a phone number at the given date and time, enter the access code, and then they’re part of the meeting!  People could even attend meetings when they’re on vacation!  In fact, I spoke with a prospect this past summer who was vacationing in Greece, and he was calling through his voice over IP phone.  The phone connection between us was superb, even though he was thousands of miles away from me.

Another great thing with teleconferences is that the sky’s the limit with who can attend and listen but (more importantly) who can speak.  It wouldn’t be hard to get the very best people in real estate business and other walks of life to give up 20 minutes of their time to speak during your meetings.  And what a great way of attracting new members to your club!

It’s probably worth spending the meeting fees on paying for a reliable teleconference provider as free teleconference providers have been known to be unreliable.  People have reported static on the line during free teleconference calls and even have had the host fade out to the point where the attendees could no longer hear them.  The beauty of teleconferences is that people could listen to them live even while they’re driving to the office or driving the kids around with a hands-free cell phone connection.

You could take things a step further by having video conferencing.  This too can be done inexpensively, and the expenses could easily be covered by the meeting fees you charge.  You could then post your meetings on your website for people to re-listen to or for new or prospective members to listen to.  It’s not difficult or expensive today to buy a great quality web cam, hook it up and get it working.  You could also be using the camcorder for a myriad of other purposes for building your real estate business.

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