Tips for Planning a Lender-Sponsored Event for Real Estate Agents
Here is an action plan to help a lender form a “things to do list,” while planning a real estate seminar. Our goal is not only to have the most successful real estate seminar your area has ever seen but also to produce more business for you! Top real estate agents love Sanford Systems seminars. This is the action plan that we recommend and has proven to be successful for others across North America.
- Call executive officers of all real estate boards involved in the area. Let the officers know your plans to hold an exclusive seminar. Let them know that you will be bringing in a well-known speaker. Ask for their participation and feedback on the date, location, and marketing techniques. They love helping to bring even more value to their REALTOR® members.a. Real estate boards may market a seminar for free, if they get credit as a service provider to their members. The marketing techniques used by most real estate boards to promote a seminar are as follows:
1) Broadcast email
2) Inclusion on board’s website
3) Direct mail
4) Inclusion on various social media outlets
5) Announcements at all board meetings
6) Announcements at all board functions
7) Stage time for you at board eventb. They may also provide a short list of all top producers, brokers, and managers in that board so a special promotion program can be aimed at those “high yield” agents through your company. This special promotion may include:
1) VIP mailings (invitations)
2) VIP seating
3) Direct phone calls and visits from your individual loan officers (great for business building)
4) Direct phone calls and visits from your management (also great for business)
5) Email drip system
6) Social media effort
- Solidify a date with a local hotel or another reputable meeting facility.
- Solidify the date and time with Sanford Systems. Ask to make an appointment with Walter to discuss a custom-designed topic for the area, market, and demographic.
- Prepare marketing materials that include a great promotion for the real estate boards to use, flyers for loan officers, and other sponsors to hand out and mail. A one-page information sheet is great. Personal invitations are wonderful touch, too. Don’t forget tickets with a value on them! Can you be a 5-minute speaker at a few of the top offices? I can provide the high-value talking points for you.
- Think about additional sponsors who would not cause dilution of the sales message of your firm but would help defray costs and promote marketing to fill the room.
- Include me in a conference call with all loan officers. In this call, it would be good to discuss the marketing options, techniques to form alliances with top producing real estate agents, and follow-up procedures after the seminar to make it most profitable. I will also help your loan officers overcome any objections they may receive and propose methods for getting the top real estate agents’ assistants there, too!
- Sanford Systems will develop a pre-event email for the attendees to maximize attendance. We will provide ideas for follow-up so the lessons of the seminar are not quickly forgotten and relationships with your firm are built.
- I can record an audio promotion on your IVR system or a video for web and email that can utilized in various marketing efforts.
- Check and approve facilities…once again. The date of the seminar should be confirmed with the facility. The facility should easily handle the expected number of attendees figuring a 20% no-show rate. The facility should be clean, have plenty of parking, be air conditioned, and have audio-visual requirements that allow the attendees to see 10-point print from the back of the room via a projector. It would be very nice to have a house system CD player to play motivational music before and after the seminar.
- Prepare for a last minute telemarketing blitz. This will remind everyone of the seminar, ask everyone to recommit his/her attendance, and remind him/her to bring his/her assistant and/or friend to the seminar. If he/she cannot make it, ask for their ticket to be returned so that it may be given to someone else. This builds perceived value!
- Design your presence at the seminar. This could be a trade show booth or you could prepare handouts including items that differentiate your company and provide value. Also, provide note-taking material and even a possible discount certificate for their next loan. It would be great for you to have a short talk on the benefits of your company, to handle my introduction, and to give a short promotion of any other sponsors. I will promote your value proposition throughout my presentation as well.
- The best attended seminars are from 9AM to 12PM. The real estate agents are less likely to be “entrenched” in putting out fires in the morning.You should expect 200 to 600 agents in metropolitan markets. I can get commitments from 60-70% of the room for a loan directed to you in the next 30 days. Your loan officer’s fear of approaching top producers will be diminished because I will clear the way. I will get the agent’s “OK” on each of those commitments to meet with you in writing on the back of their cards.
Let us help you arrange, coordinate, and plan this profitable, relationship-building event. Call us today at 815.929.9258.