- Building a solid client fan base takes time.
- Sometimes real estate agents tend to network with one another or go to networking events to meet potential new clients but often overlook connecting clients with one another.
- Think beyond the transactional, and focus on the relational.
We’ve all seen the hashtags #squad and #squadgoals, but squad mindset is about more than an Instagram pose of smiling people. It’s about creating a group of people who have your back and who you would do anything for.
This is true in our personal lives, and it can also be true in business.
Getting clients is hard; keeping them over the years between transactions is even harder. It’s easy to want to hoard clients, to not interact with them openly online or connect them to one another.
You know your clients are getting bombarded by other real estate agents all the time.
A different approach
What if you take a different approach? What if instead of keeping your clients isolated, you instead use a squad approach and introduce them to one another? What if you think of them, not as your list, your sphere or your farm, but as an interrelated group of people?
When I started my company, my squad connected me with their people, and not just to bring me business. They were excited by the opportunity of bringing great people together. They trusted me professionally and personally.
Trust is the core of human relationships; it’s how we can go deeper more quickly. When I met Matt Beall of Hawaii Life, it was through Marc Davison of 1000watt, a mentor and friend I already knew and trusted.
I knew anyone Davison respected that much would be someone I could learn from. I already was predisposed to like and trust him, and a working relationship naturally sprang from that.
I’ve written before about how my vision for Lion & Orb was realized at Worthshop, the annual conference that Hawaii Life hosts, this year at the Four Seasons Oahu on Dec. 9-10.
It’s where I return for clarity and focus for the coming year. Relate is the theme of this year’s Worthshop. Why relate? Because we are all interconnected and because our lives get better, on both a personal and a business level, when we focus on our relationships.
Matt Beall explained to me how the culture in Hawaii intensely values relationships. The conference is designed to explore the distinctions between relationship-driven cultures and other value systems.
When we network, we tend to do it from a place of wanting to get something from the other person; Worthshop is notable each year because people truly leave that behind and just relate.
Love, respect, honor
Sometimes real estate agents tend to network with one another or go to networking events to meet clients, but the greater power might be in connecting your clients.
You start to build a VIP list rather than a marketing list. What do VIPs want? They want special treatment; they want invites to special things; they want customized service. They want to be included in something special, not opted in to something mundane. And they want to meet other people who are at the same level.
You’ve created a guest list of your life and your business.
We call our squad “the pride” partly because that’s what you call a group of lions but also because that’s what we feel about our clients.
We only work with people we love, respect and honor. Part of that is simply because we enjoy finding like-minded businesspeople, but it’s also strategic.
If you truly trust and revere your network, then you can intermingle them freely and trust that no one will have a bad experience.
Audie Chamberlain is the founder of Lion & Orb. You can follow him on Instagram or LinkedIn.
