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LeTip International Networking Group

By Alice Ponti Lori Hagge, GRI, CRS, ASP Century 21 Diablo Valley Realty

Real Estate Agent with Accredited Staging Professionals

March 16, 2007 09:43 PM

Are you familiar with LeTip International? This is a group of professionals that meet each week so that we can place more dollars in our pockets. Our group is a newly formed chapter named the Diablo Valley Chapter. We meet on Tuesdays from 11:31 a.m. to 1:01 p.m. at Marie Calendars on Diamond Blvd. in Concord for lunch. We are looking for other business professionals that would like to join our chapter. We only accept one professional in each professional category. For example, one lender, one Realtor, one Real Estate Attorney. There are over 100 categories to be filled. If you live in the Contra Costa Area and would like to find out more about this organization, feel free to email us and/or contact us via telephone.

Alice and Lori

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Christopher "Chip" King

FAIRCLOUGH REALTORS - Sparta, NJ

ABR, R, QSC, BMF

Hello Ladies,

I have recently joined a LeTip group in Rockaway, New Jersey.

It is basically a networking/referral type of group and I feel that it is going good.. although the number of referrals is small due to the nature of our business.

An interesting note on one referral I received... I was out one day on a hike and the cellphone rang and a gentleman asked me to come and give a listing presentation on his 2.5 million dollar home. The referral came by way of a LeTip memeber's secretary that had seen me in the office and knew me to be an agent in that particular area! The member was not in the office at the time and the secretary took it upon herself to give out the referral... nice job!

Any ideas on how to use the system to my better advantage or any help for receiving more refferrals would be greatly appreciated.

P.S - We did not get the listing but it was close!(Nepotism!)

Chip

May 28, 2008 02:48 AM

Alice Ponti Lori Hagge, GRI, CRS, ASP Century 21 Diablo Valley Realty

Accredited Staging Professionals - Concord, CA

Hi: Congratulations on joining LeTip. It does take time to get those referrals going. Over the past years, I have been in two different LeTip groups. It is extremely important that the members get to know you and most importantly you need to be giving the members referrals. I was the top referring person for many months. Read some books on how to network. I also went onto the Internet and looked for articles that were about networking. Bring in your power partners,as I believe this is extremely important to get referrals, it just is easier for you to give referrals and visa versa. Give it at least one year of your time and then you can evaluate whether this particular group is working for you. If not, try another group or start your own group.

A few months ago, I left LeTip and started my own group called B2F (Business to Friends) and we are more relaxed with our rules, not so strict and we meet twice a month. We already have 12 members in our group and we are building our relationships first. We encourage referrals but we do not force people to provide referrals. Our goal is to become friends and trust each other first and then the referrals will come.

Whatever group you belong to, remember that it is important for you to go to the Chamber meetings etc. so that you can meet other professionals and invite them into your group. Ask them first how do they do their business, if they say through referrals, there is your opening.

Also, I always did something funny when I did my elevator speech so that they could remember me. And since I was the membership chair (Taking a position on the Board is quite helpful), I had the opportunity to educate them about networking. This of course, made me more recognizable to the members. So get involved in the group. We put on a BASH and gave away raffle prizes and worked real hard to get new members to attend this great function that we had a restaurant, we also raised money to help pay for our advertising etc.

Good luck and hope this helps you.

Lori Hagge, Realtor, GRI, CRS, ASP, SRES Designated - Century 21 Diablo Valley Realty, lori@lorihagge.com http://www.lorihagge.com

May 28, 2008 03:15 AM

Anonymous

chip

Hello!

Thank you for your immediate and eloquent reply!

The ideas you have are very good and I was wondering how and where you do your advertising and publicity?(I am the new Publicity chair for the group!) I have not had much experience with advertising. I love "bashes" and did you have any extracurricular things to go along with the bash... like gambling?

Any and all ideas will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

May 28, 2008 03:39 AM

P.S. - I always try to be funny when I give my speeches, also!

Once, I imitated the guy I was giving the commercial about... a closet designer... needless to say there was much humor about "closets"! People coming in and out of the closets... you get the picture.

Thank goodness, he wasn't there!

Chip from LETIP

May 28, 2008 03:44 AM

LeTip International Networking Group

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Alice Ponti Lori Hagge, GRI, CRS, ASP Century 21 Diablo Valley Realty

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