How to Effectively Network at a Real Estate Event

A common question I receive is, how do I approach networking at real estate event?

Create One Relationship Per Day

My answer is simple: I focus on building one friendship. I don’t see how many business cards I can hand out, nor do I try to meet as many people as I can. Rather, I focus on creating one solid, personal relationship. If I’m attending a multiday conference, I’ll focus on one person per day. If it’s an event, meet-up group, or one-day conference, I’ll form one friendship.

Most Important Question to Ask

When approaching it this way (building one relationship as opposed to many relationships or handing out business cards), we are playing the long game. We’re taking the time to actually learn about what this person has going on, in both their business and their personal life. We’re spending the majority of our networking time learning about their goals, and most importantly, why they are there in the first place.

That is the money question: “Why did you come to this event (or meet-up, conference, etc.), and what are you trying to get out of it?

Personal Message on LinkedIn

It’s important to ask this question and remember the answer they provided because after the event, we’re going to follow up with them on LinkedIn, and we’re going to send them a personal note. That’s very important. I don’t simply add them as a colleague. I take it one step further and send them a personal note based on why they attended the event and what they intended on getting out of it.

The reason why I send this personal note is two-fold:

• 1.It stands out in the sea of basic colleague requests
• 2.If I go back to their profile years later, I’ll remember how I met them and what we talked about

Personally, I usually forget how I initially met someone, so this personal note technique acts as my external memory bank. LinkedIn algorithms do an amazing job keeping track of messages that people send back-and-forth to each other, even the message from the initial colleague request.

How Can I Add Value to Their Business?

Once I’ve added them on LinkedIn and sent them a personal note, based on our conversation, I determine if I can add value to this person now (if we’re at comparable phases in our businesses) or should I just stop at the personal message and that’s that. If it makes sense for me to help them now, I do so by connecting him or her to someone in my network who is focused on whatever they’re trying to accomplish. And that person may be someone I met at a previous event, which is where the personal message comes in handy again.

That’s it! It is such a simple thing to do, yet most people don’t do it.

Next time you attend an event, try this technique out. Again, it’s a long-term play, but based off personal experience, I’ve gotten a ton of value out of it.

If you have any comments or questions, leave a comment below.