In his latest article for Inman News, Matt Kaestner wrote about the fundamental importance of daily, uninterrupted prospecting. Some may cringe at the very thought of daily prospecting but this Zutila realtor sees prospecting as a means of informing and educating people about the in’s and out’s of buying, selling and investing in properties specific to their needs and their goals.
Kaestner also sees prospecting as a means of building and keeping an agent’s business pipeline full of people who are either getting ready or ready right now to buy/sell/and/or invest in properties. Without prospecting, in Kaestner’s view, how else would people know you as a real estate agent, be aware of your expertise and access, and develop trust and confidence in you as a real estate professional?
Kaestner encourages all real estate agents to shoot for making 20 contacts a day or 100 contacts a week via prospecting. Here are Kaestner’s suggestions about making those prospecting contacts:
- Connect with your sphere of influence.
- Announce you are in business as soon as you have your license and you are working with a broker.
- Call everyone you know and trust and everyone who knows and trusts you and then send them a personalized, hand-written thank you note for their taking the time to talk with you. Of course, all of your business contact information is in that note.
- Categorize and prioritize property owners from non-owners.
- Email property owners a quarterly, customized, comparative market analysis of their property.
- If possible, send property owners a quarterly embedded video of all the homes in their neighborhood that sold.
- Send property owners a monthly text about neighborhood listings/sales/prices.
- Cold calling.
- Though cold callers get a lot of rejections, calls going to voice mail, etc. there is “…no more impactful way to have multiple, meaningful real estate related conversations daily…” than cold calling, according to Kaestner.
- Perhaps use a dialer and software from Mojo/Vulcan, Cole realty Resources or REDX to find numbers.
- Schedule non-interruptible blocks of time to cold call EVERY day.
- Try Tuesday – Friday from 8-10AM and 4-6PM.
- Door knocking. By the way, door knocking is free.
- Just like cold calling, the task here is to make as many daily contacts as possible.
- Determine your neighborhood by figuring out what/who is missing in that neighborhood.
- Once you are present in that neighborhood every day, every week, every month, locals will recognize you and you will become synonymous with that neighborhood,
- Set up your social media platforms.
- Create business pages with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat to promote yourself, your business, your listings and your successes.
- Plan/schedule your social media content in advance.
- Do NOT take time away from your money producing activities by “working on” your social media.
- Create a prospect/lead pyramid as a way to organize your prospect/lead categories and when/how much you contact those prospects/leads…The goal here is to educate and advance people from level a. to level e.
- Least important – the general population – prospecting is NOT about generating “likes.”
- “Might” do business in the future – property owners who have the potential and money to buy/sell/invest – contact a few times/year via mass text and/or e-mail.
- Your sphere of influence and neighborhood farming contacts – goal here is to foster deeper connections with personal communications 4 – 12 times/year via phone calls, drop-bys, event invitations, handwritten notes.
- People you know who are “getting ready” – provide resources/market analyses/strategies to fulfill their goals.
- Ready to act people – set listing appointments; show them properties as these are the people who are your clients and the people who fund your business with commissions and potential partnerships.
- Use CRM to use, categorize, take notes, set reminders and keep track of everyone your business touches in any way, every day.
Sound familiar?
