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Prospecting |
Oct. 12, 2008
Categorized in: Moving Past Good to Excellent!
Tagged with: prsopecting
Probably the most important question you should be asking yourself right now is how can you stop or prevent the wasting of your valuable time. Many articles and blogs are quick to tell you what you should do; i.e. write a blog, join and post to Facebook or My Space, join and post to LinkedIn and Twitter. But then how do you spare some time for calling current clients; or heaven forbid past clients? Or marketing your listings? Or seeing your transactions through to closing? Never before have there been so many options from which to choose. So which prospecting tools do you choose? Which ones actually work? The choices boggle the mind.
Here's where I think you should start when budgeting your time: first split prospecting activities into two categories i.e. activities that are considered to be "active" and those that are considered "passive." Active is designed to put you face to face or voice to voice with those that may want to "do" real estate (buy/sell/rent/lease) or may know someone who wants to. An example of active prospecting is setting aside time each and every day to call 5 people who have used your services in the past or who are friends to see if they or someone they know may need your real estate services. Passive is where you are keeping your name and expertise in a public forum while allowing visitors to get to know you on a personal basis - the best examples of this are the social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space.
Active prospecting will always be more important and with faster results compared to passive activities; but passive activities consistently applied (and that is the key) are vital for the long term continued success of your business.
My mixture for success is 80/20 (where have we heard that before?); 80% of your time should be spent actively prospecting and 20% of your time should be spent on passively prospecting.
So how would that lay out in your typical week? Here is what I believe you should look at scheduling.
Active:
· Monday through Friday at a specified time each day, set aside 30 minutes and call at least 5 people who have used your services. These are fairly quick calls. Check in with them to see how they are doing, give them an interesting fact about the market today, and remember at the end of the conversation to remind them that if they know anyone who needs your real estate services to please pass your name and contact information along (or ask them for the information so you may contact them directly) and say "thank you" for their business. Rotate through all your past clients. Ideally you want to contact them at least once a quarter, or better yet once a month. And yes they love to speak with you and yes they love getting "inside" information on the current real estate market. Who wouldn't!
· Saturday is the day to spend one hour, the same time each Saturday, walking through your "farm." If you don't have one set up (next time I will make some suggestions on how to set up a successful farm), start with the neighborhood in which you live. Say "hi," give them some information about their neighborhood that they may not know, leave your card or some other advertising piece (how about information on a listing that is in their neighborhood! Or market facts!) Say "thank you" and move on to the next home or property.
Passive:
· For residential REALTORS®, I recommend using the REALTOR.com Blog (which you can get for FREE!). http://solutioncenter.realtor.com/Agents/FeaturedBlog.aspx Yes, there are all sorts of Blog sites where you can get the software for a fee and for free, but which ones get you business? If you are a residential REALTOR® why not get a Blog at the site where the clear majority of home buyers and sellers start their agent/home purchase search? That's a no brainer for me. Now to add it into your schedule: spend 1 hour every week and write a brief factual article (remember those high school English classes, please and why not use what you came up with for your past client calls!) on a topic that is pertinent to your market place. Posting an article no less that once a week keeps your Blog fresh and provides the people who visit REALTOR.com an interesting tidbit to read and a way to see what you know and care about on your market. It also helps to drive traffic to your website and moves you up in the search engines - cool! Remember to add your Blog address to your business cards, your e-mail signature, and a link on your website plus add it to all your advertising pieces.
· Join Zolve.com; a referral site for agents. Spend 1 hour once to fully set up your profile and to invite other agents from areas where you have or might send or receive referrals, into your "sphere of influence." Then respond promptly to e-mail notifications that will come over time to your inbox from Zolve. Zolve is also a fantastic place to receive information on a variety of topics through its "Coaching Corner."
Notice I did not recommend that you join a social networking site. I do not believe at this time it is worth your valuable time. Call me crazy but you know there are only so many hours in the day etc.
That is it for the moment. Send me your comments and your thoughts. I hope you find my comments useful.
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