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Private Lenders: How to Use Professional Networking Groups to Attract Private Money

By Michel Lautensack

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 01Aug2009 Word count: 715 Viewed: 234 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Another component you should be using as part of your private lending marketing plan is to join professional networking groups. This is almost the REI club elevated. Networking groups can be things like Toastmasters. It could be your local government organization. It could be any sort of professional organization that allows networking.

I think a lot of networking to a certain extent - these networking clubs and groups - has gone out of favor over the last 5 to 10 years. I don't see that much of it any more.

Interestingly enough, just today I got a postcard from a local business that's doing a meet and greet networking event. I am going to go to that just to get a sense of what people are doing and what's happening out there in the community.

That's precisely what I'm talking about here. Here's an opportunity and I have no clue how many people are going to be there.

Let's say there are 50 people at this meeting. Let's say I can talk to 20. That's 20 people in my local area that I get to spend 5 to 10 minutes with. I can get my message out to them. Remember, it's a numbers game.

Get Your Message Out

Get your message out and talk to people. Use networking groups. If you're seeing some of these in your local community, go and participate in these events.

If you have to, go find the groups. Don't wait for them to come to you. You can look up local networking groups in Google. Put in your zip code and I'm sure several networking groups will come up.

Join BNI

One of the big groups, called the BNI Group, is an international group. It's all over the world. Within the United States - and I'm sure everywhere - they organize networking groups and each local community has their own group. Within Philadelphia I believe there are 20 or 25 different groups.

Join Your Local Group

What you do is try to join your local group. They will only allow one profession per group. So if they have a group of 30 people they will allow only one accountant, one attorney, one doctor or real estate investor. They do not allow a second person to come into that group.

These groups generally meet on a weekly or bi-monthly basis. Typically every person in the group gets to do a one or two minute spiel about what their product or service is.

What would you do in your one or two minutes? You would deliver your elevator speech. That's precisely what you'd be doing during those one or two minutes.

The concept is you get to meet 30 other professionals and you get to see what they're doing. They also get to hear what you're doing. So you get to network with approximately 20 or 30 different people.

Making Referrals

The concept is that the accountant and the lawyer, when the opportunity presents itself, will refer people to you as a real estate investor. Conversely, when you have a chance to refer somebody to an attorney or an accountant you will return that favor to that other person.

So there's a sense of community within these groups and you do have a sense of obligation to try to make referrals within that group. If you start giving out referrals within this group, you'll get a reputation of somebody who can help people and generate business. Obviously then other people are going to want to refer business back to you.

You can type into Google the BNI Group and the local chapters will show up. You'll have the opportunity to put in your profession and see if it's available within your local group(s). I think its well worth doing that.

It doesn't take a lot of time. It's an hour maybe twice a month. If it's not working two or three months down the road you haven't committed a lot of time.

Again, networking of any kind is extremely important in developing private lender sources. It is a relationship type of product. It is making sure that you're developing a relationship and referrals can be an important part of that.

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