There are some good arguments for meeting people face to face. I’m sure you know them all: when you speak to someone in person you get a far greater sense of what they are all about through their body language, eye movements and gestures. You also have a better opportunity to make your point to the people you meet with because it is harder for someone to end a discussion person to person than it is over the telephone.
There are also reasons why personal meetings are not as important as they once were. We live in a new world where people need to grasp the idea you are speaking of quickly. The best way to do that is either over the phone, sometimes with accompanying charts and illustrations that you can send over the Internet to that person’s computer. Even if you are just chatting on the phone, you can easily see each other by using Skype and other technologies and make your points complete with gestures and eye rolling.
The one place where travel expenses and time spent are still truly justified is at a real estate conference or trade show. A conference is a place where you can meet people from your own community face to face. Issues can be discussed, common problems can be thought through and regulations can be debated. Professional enhancements are taught at conferences. Motivation is available to those who need encouragement and new developments can be learned from good teachers and guides, who are often the very authors of those advances.
By attending just a couple of trade shows per year you will see new products and services that will make your job easier and make you more productive than you are today, guaranteed. If you walk through any real estate trade show in Canada, either at your local board or at a national conference and you do not find at least one idea that will make you more efficient or more successful, then you weren’t paying enough attention to what’s being offered.
Stop and talk. Start with, “What is this? How is this going to help me?” If you don’t have five minutes to hear the answer to those questions at a trade show booth, then you shouldn’t have come because you are missing the point of the whole show. You wasted your time and money.
Trade shows and conferences are the life blood of a real estate career. Just by going you are making a statement to yourself that you are not going to be one of those people who waits for others to tell them what’s new or how things have changed. You will be the person who knows. You will be the person who tells others about the leading edge rather than the person who is told about it.
Would you like to meet someone who does more business than you in a non-competitive setting? You can do so at an industry trade show and conference. Here is the place to have a casual conversation with people who are making more money than you because this is the place they go to find out how to make more money themselves. This is the place where people are willing to share their knowledge freely and casually. This is where you can share your sales methods with peers who will give you honest thoughts and evaluations.
A real estate trade show and conference is electric with new ideas, new ways, new styles, new services and new products that will help you work brighter, faster, efficiently and professionally.
I know people who refuse to go to trade shows yet will easily spend hundreds of dollars on dinner and learn nothing but the price of beef. Which kind of person are you?
Heino Molls is publisher of REM. [email protected]
