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Strategic prospecting is the first step on the path to the closing table.
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Wednesday, January 21, 2015
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Lynn Olson
Prospecting. Does simply seeing the word make you cringe, envisioning hours of aimless cold calling or having doors slammed in your face? It shouldn’t. The fact is, to grow your real estate business, there’s no substitute for putting yourself out there to find new clients and customers, says Jared James, CEO of Jared James Enterprises, a real estate coaching firm. But working strategically and creatively, you can put a modern, even fun, twist on old-school prospecting techniques.
“Payday” for Expired Listings
Successful prospecting enables you to stand out from the pack. But you need to find a way to attract the interest of potential clients, especially the owners of expired listings who may question what you can do for them that another listing agent couldn’t.
James’s coaching clients send expireds a Payday candy bar with a letter or a video clip on a thumb drive, explaining the importance of distinguishing the property from the competition. The message concludes with the hope that the next time they contribute to a “payday,” it will be when they help sell the home.
The approach is simple, sweet, and effective. James says that for every ten people they approach with this technique, his students generally get three listing appointments.
Video strengthens the message by humanizing agents, getting them one step closer to working with the client. Video is underused, says James, because we tend not to like how we look. “I’m going to break a little news to you: Everyone knows what you look like,” he says. “So you’ve just got to get over that and start leveraging this tool to be able to separate yourself from the competition.”
Something Old With Something New
Predictive analytics—using past and present data to predict future behavior—turn old-school direct mail and door hangers into precision instruments. Consider an area where data show that for every property listed, another listing comes up within 30 days. “If I was going to cold-call or send out a particular mail campaign,” says James, “wouldn’t I be better off targeting specific areas where I know a listing’s going to come up in the next 30 days?” SmartZip Analytics Inc., a 2014 member of NAR’s REach® accelerator program, uses proprietary algorithms and information such as census data to help agents zero in more efficiently on potential sellers.
If You Build It, They Will Come
When she saw a need for a social network for young professionals, Crystal Webster, crs, green, a sales agent with Keller Williams’ Heritage Home Team, started one herself. Seven years later, Kansas City Young Professionals has 5,000 members from a variety of fields. It’s been great for prospecting—20 percent of her business comes from contacts made at KCYP—though she maintains that’s a happy coincidence, not her intent.
KCYP offers happy hours and “speed networking” get-togethers. Participants have five minutes to share who they are and what they do with the person across the table before starting anew with the next person. Webster typically gets two to three leads at these events and ends up closing one deal.
“Build” Your Market
To prospect for new-construction buyers, Nicole Lopez, a buyer’s agent with the Doug Erdy Group in Kingwood, Tex., goes directly to the source—builders.
Lopez approaches builders and explains how her years working on the builder side can help facilitate sales. Builders make available her marketing materials and those of others to give buyers a choice in who represents them.
She and her colleagues also offer home construction workshops to potential buyers, featuring lenders and title companies. “That’s been very beneficial for first-time buyers because a lot of them don’t know to get preapproved before they start looking,” says Lopez.
The builder program, one of only a handful in the Houston area, is lucrative. “Over the past two years, I closed 26 new-construction properties,” says Lopez. “And my brokerage did $25 million in new-construction home sales through our builder program.”
Lopez goes the extra mile, at times paying buyers’ moving or closing costs or selling their old home at no cost, depending on their circumstances. If a buyer is downsizing from a $500,000 home to one at $125,000, she might take a reduced commission listing to make the deal happen. If the situation is reversed, she might sell the old home for a flat fee that covers costs only, and take a full commission on the new construction. While the “lost income” might deter some from this approach, it’s worth it for Lopez to distinguish herself in Houston’s highly competitive market. “I’d rather have a piece of the pie than none of it,” she says. Her “pay it forward” approach also helps garner business. “We don’t have to do marketing outside our builder program because it creates such a referral base,” says Lopez. “Clients have been so pleased that I went into my own pocketbook to help them that they’re referring me to their friends and family.”
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