Buying a home is a stressful process for everyone involved. As a real estate agent, part of your job is to keep everyone calm and collected as your clients sign on the dotted line. Good news: with effective real estate networking, you don’t just form strong connections with businesses in your community. You also start relationships for your potential clients, helping them move into a community that is ready for them, thus helping reduce the stress of buying a home.
The Community Benefits of Real Estate Networking
Community-minded real estate transforms an agent from a salesperson to someone offering a valuable service. Real estate agents who embrace a community-minded platform bring the following to the table:
- knowledge of the local market
- expertise in real estate transactions
- relationships with professionals and local business owners
- resources such as your time, website, additional staff, etc.
Being an agent who embraces a community-minded approach with real estate networking allows you to shift your focus from you and your business to community members.
The Residents in Your Community Want to Embrace Local Businesses
Real estate agents who embrace a community-minded approach begin to build a sphere of influence around them. They do so by reaching out to local businesses, charities, and community members. Then when your client becomes a homeowner, they will have a built-in network as soon as they move in. They won’t have to search for the best place to buy a latte or figure out who can help them deal with snow removal once winter comes.
Now more than ever, the residents in your community want to support and lift up local businesses. As a local leader, you can use your platform to consolidate all the important information about who the local businesses are and what they offer. The residents in your area will have everything they need to know at their fingertips. They will learn where they can spend their money locally, which puts money back into the local economy.
The bonus of supporting local businesses: when the economic health of your community is on the upswing, everyone wins!
You may be wondering how you can help to connect your new-home-buying clients with local businesses.
Try some of these strategies:
- Promote: Use your social media platforms and website to begin to promote and connect local businesses to customers.
- Interview: Local businesses owners are super interesting, and they usually have great stories about how they got started in the first place. Your community needs to hear about these leaders and you can show them off by interviewing them and featuring them on your platforms.
- Visit: Whether it is a coffee shop or a jewelry store, begin visiting the businesses in your area. Business owners will be proud to show off their “baby” and customers will be happy to hear who you recommend.
- Share: The business owners in your area need to be noticed by your customers. When you share their social media posts and content, you will be highlighting what they stand for and what they offer.
If you are wondering about how else you can reach out to your community, the 7 Ways to Stand Out in Your Community system may be right for you!
Even the Busiest Agent Can Fit This System Into Their Day
You may be wondering how you could ever fit anything else into your already busy schedule. There is a platform for real estate agents that gathers great information for you. All of this information is curated for you online, so that no one has to hunt it down.
Afterwards, instead of spending time prospecting or cold-calling, you will be spending your time giving value to local business owners. Many real estate agents like you have already made the change to start building relationships by interviewing businesses and profiling them on social media and on their websites. If you want to keep up with the real estate agents who get the most referrals in your neighborhood – check to see if your neighborhood is still available.
With your sphere of influence, customers will trust you and move into their neighborhoods with connections that have already formed.