Real estate conventions can be an amazing place to connect and learn. To get the most out of anything, some planning and forethought are helpful.
Have a goal. What area of your business do you need to work on? What change in your skills, mindset, or tools can cause the greatest effect? If you are just there to party, there are cheaper ways to do that.
Review the agenda before the conference. Match the agenda towards your goals.
Find colleagues that are going. You can divide and conquer sessions, introduce each other to more people, and split some costs possibly.
Meet as many people as possible. Don’t just take their card. Have a conversation, see if you gel. If you have some people that you are specifically trying to connect or reconnect with, make it part of your goals. At one event, the most impactful conversation came when I shared an UBER to the airport with a leader.
Modify your phone’s contact information. Add your city and “Realtor” after your last name. Share your phone’s contact info instead of a business card. Right now my focus is coaching but before I had “Portland Realtor.” We lose business cards but we don’t often lose our phone contacts.
Avoid the Frankenstein Model. This is a trap a lot of people including myself have fallen into. One team says Open Houses are the main way to create a business. Another one says hammer the phones and don’t waste your time with Open Houses. One says the best time to do lead gen calls is Saturday and Sunday. Another says they had a guy call for one month 7 days a week and they found no correlation on time of day and contacts made. One says they don’t need to use in-house admin. It’s all virtual. Another will say that you have to have an in-house admin for culture and better continuity.
If you try to meld these models together you end up with Frankenstein’s Monster and it is not alive. You will be frustrated with these incongruent systems. Pick your lead gen paths and stay in them for now.
Remember that the speakers are talking about best practices and even they aren’t likely following them 100% of the time. Right after I became Director of Sales for Beltran Properties Group, I went to a huge conference. An agent with a team talked about how he sold 500 homes and this very strict lead system he had. I was hooked. This sounded perfect and it worked for him. I got a chance to chat with him afterward and then the truth came out. It wasn’t as strict as he laid out. It didn’t work as smoothly as he was saying.
Another time I was talking to another high-producing team leader about an even bigger team leader who had this “system.” Apparently, that was not really the system he followed. It was once again, best practices and likely how they wanted to be or a front they wanted to show to set expectations with new teammates. Either way, over and over I have found there is wiggle room in these stories. Don’t take them as gospel.
The 1-Month/6-month Rule. It’s easy to get excited for whatever you see and hear at conferences. That’s why you’ll see so many discounts on products and services. The Rule is to wait for at least 1 month and then agree you will take on something consistently for 6 months before you agree to do it. The Shiny Object Trap is real and this will help you avoid it. Also check out the Toolbox Fallacy before you go.
Take notes. Seems silly but even I still trick myself into thinking I will remember what is said. Take the notes and review them each day. You will forget 90%+ of what happened within a week if you don’t review your notes. That’s just science. 97% is gone in 30 days.
Follow-up! If you haven’t already grasped that fortune is in the follow-up, embrace it now. Follow-up with the people you met and build real relationships. Trade notes with other attendees as we all get something different out of these conferences.
Wherever you are, be there. This is true for work and home, as well as the conference. So try to stay off your phone when you are with other people. You don’t know who might be the person that could change your career, or even better, maybe you can change someone else’s!
Bring these items. Portable charger. I like to bring an outlet extender. This way even if they are all being used, I can still get a spot. Water bottle. Multiple pairs of shoes (learned this one the hard way). Mints or gum. Earplugs.
