business networkingLike all local business people, successful real estate agents know that their entire business depends on referrals. Referrals from clients, friends, associates, casual acquaintances. And referrals from other real estate agents.

That means you have to constantly do networking.

Here’s an example of a networking tool that has great potential for local business. We’ve just developed a site called AgentMapIt.com aimed at providing real estate agents with a place to network with other real estate agents across Canada and the US – real estate agent networking.

AgentMapIt uses Google Maps to locate agents. Search for your town, state or province and you’ll see where the agents you’re looking for are located right there on the interactive map.

Click on an agent marker and you’ll be taken to the real estate agent’s profile featuring all the important information about this agent – testimonials, contact information and in some cases even a profile video.

To help subscribing agents network with other agents, AgentMapIt.com has networking tools built right in. Click on the “Contact” link and you can send an email message. No hunting around for contact information. It’s all right there. In fact you can do this without even logging in – a big hassle with most social networking sites.

And in the next revision of the program you will be able to click on the “Network” link and start building your own private network with agents of your choice. You’ll even be able to send a special email message to every agent in the sytem. Now that’s networking!

Now just imagine the application of this set of tools to local business networking. Say there was a similar website for your town where local business people could join and create profiles for themselves. You need to find an accountant, so you just go to the map, do a search for accountants and up comes the locations of several accounts in town. Same goes for lawyers, real estate agents, financial advisors, mortgage brokers, marketing people, web designers, restaurants, home renovators, etc., etc., etc.

Now say you want to form your own local business network – a circle of acquaintances with the same business objective: to share business opportunities and referrals with each other. So you do a search for members in each category, and as you find someone you think you’d like to network with, you invite them to join your little private network.

Say you want your private network to include just one member in each relevant category: one accountant, one lawyer, one web designer, one printer, one financial advisor, one insurance agent, one real estate agent, one restaurant owner (for dinner meetings of course)…

Can you think of an easier or more effective way of doing it that with a program like Agentmapit.com – I’m not talking about AgentMapIt.com itself. I’m talking about an adaptation of this program just to local networking.

Now wouldn’t that be a great tool for local business? Well, with any luck we’ll have just such a tool available over the next couple of months. Contact me if you’re interested.