Real Stories of Real Estate Success.

In case you haven't seen the new http://www.mailprint.com/ yet, I want to encourage you to check it out... especially the Case Studies page. This is one of my favorite parts of the new site because it shares real stories of real estate agents and other business people who we've helped overcome their challenges and achieve real results. I want to share some snippets from just a few of the case studies:

Beth Franklin is a broker and office owner who came to Mail Print for help with her prospecting efforts. Within just a couple of months of using one of our monthly mailing programs, she was already seeing results... two listing and a sale. Over the following months, she continued to see similar results.


Scott Thompson came to Mail Print as a newer agent who was trying to establish himself and target an up-scale audience. We created a personal branding package for Scott that gave him a professional logo, look and a bevy of marketing materials with his unique design. Within six weeks of starting to use his new materials, Scott had seven listing, two sales and two referrals as a result.


Teresa Grindinger is a successful real estate team leader who found herself spending too much time on her Just Listed/Sold mailings. When Teresa came to Mail Print, we helped her out by creating a custom postcard template and automating her mailings for her. No more applying stamps and lables! Within six months, the new program had already generated three listings for the team.

Why Quality and Quantity Matter in Marketing

You’ve heard the old adage: in order to make money, you have to spend money. And it’s certainly true when talking about real estate marketing. More and better quality marketing sent out means more and better exposure that results in a greater return on your investment.

Ask Important Questions

It’s important to keep in mind what you really want out of your marketing dollars when you plan your campaign. Then market and budget for your desired response.

Ask yourself:

• What unique services and benefits do I provide?
• Who will see my message?
• What image do I want to project?
• How much money do I need to spend to meet my goals?
• How much are my competitors spending?
• What are my goals?

Marketing is an Investment

One of the most important things to remember when budgeting for your marketing plan is that it’s an investment. The majority of the cost for any marketing plan is spent up-front, which can be daunting. However, the effects of your campaign are long-lasting and spread out over the life of your marketing piece.

It’s vitally important to any marketing plan to stick to it once it’s been implemented. As with any long-term investment, you have to be prepared to let the plan do what you intended it to do. Research shows that a campaign can take two to four months to really show results. When you're marketing to people with no prior relationship with you, such as a farm area, it may take 1-2 years to see real results. Repetition and patience is key.

Be Seen and Be Seen Often

Bottom line: It’s about quality and quantity. Your marketing budget is a critical part of your business growth. And there’s a viable marketing plan for you no matter how much money you have available. You just have to budget wisely to meet your marketing goals:

• Know your target audience and market to them.
• Create and use a consistent campaign.
• Be clear and concise with your information and offers.
• Stand out with quality design and copy.

Using Customer Stories to Sell

Testimonial marketing is a powerful tool for any business or entrepreneur. It is the most effective way to build credibility in the eyes of your prospective customer. There are two principal applications of this concept that every business should utilize:

1. Geographic target market
2. Customer category target market

Suppose ABC Real Estate Team has helped many people with their first home purchase. A good strategy for the ABC Team would be to target renters and recent college graduates in their market with a mailing telling them success stories from first-time home buyers who used their services.

They could include pictures of their clients, lists of the services provided them, and direct testimonials from those clients. The ABC Team can provide compelling evidence that they know how to handle the needs of first-time home buyers, so they should use it. This is customer category marketing. One first-time home buyer leads to another.

Now let’s also assume that ABC Real Estate Team has a number of loyal clients from the same neighborhood. Wouldn’t it make sense for ABC to contact the other residents in that neighborhood and show them what great work ABC done for their former neighbors? Often, prospective clients can best judge you by the customers you already have.

This doesn’t mean that telling a prospect that you have 200 or however many clients and that you do over a million dollars in business every year will be effective. Simple facts and figures will be forgotten quickly. What you need to do is give specifics. Tell your prospect the true success stories of your business. More importantly, tell them the true success stories of your clients.

So if ABC Real Estate Team sends mailers to their geographic target market detailing how they’ve helped their clients sell their homes 20 days faster than the competition, and they send mailers to all the residents of the neighborhood ABC specializes in, they should see some high-quality leads generated.

By utilizing testimonial marketing and specific stories of client success, ABC shows a real value in their service. And that’s what will bring in the new clients. Use this strategy in your marketing efforts and watch the business come in!

Gina

8 Tips for Effective Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with clients and to keep your name fresh in their minds. A good newsletter also builds credibility, image, and relationships. Follow these 8 guidelines to have an enjoyable newsletter for your clients.

1. Have a Plan

Your newsletter should have a purpose. Set objectives and have a defined audience. These will help you frame the type of material to include.

2. Stick to a Schedule

Decide how often the newsletter should be published. Be realistic. It’s better to increase the number of issues than to decrease it. It is wise to begin with a quarterly or bimonthly piece.

Stick to the schedule you’ve decided on. Set deadlines and make sure you hit them. Give yourself some cushion time just in case. After just a few issues, your audience will start to expect and look forward to your piece.

3. Choose Your Offering

There are two ways to produce a newsletter. You can produce it yourself, or you can hire professionals to do it for you. Doing it yourself of course gives you more direct control over content, but also takes up more of your time. You will need to balance the benefits of time saved using professional quality writing against costs.

4. Gather Information

If you are producing your own content, there are numerous sources for material. Solicit information from customers, suppliers, consultants, and employees. Look in business, trade, professional, and government publications.

5. Have Relevant Information

Don’t waste your clients’ time with puffed-up sales hype. Include useful facts and advice that will help your clients be well-informed consumers.

Things to include: case studies on clients using your product or service (get their permission first), trends in the industry, new product/service information, quizzes, humor or cartoons, quotes, quick tips and information on how to obtain a free consultation or more information.

6. Stimulate Feedback

The newsletter is a one-way communication tool. It is important to stimulate feedback to help make the piece more useful. Write about items that require people to call you for more details. Offer free advice. Make it easy for them to respond. Have an 800 number to call, an easy to use fax form, or e-mail and web addresses.

7. Keep It Friendly and Brief

Your writing style should be personal and relaxed. Keep stories short at less than half a page each. If the reading is easy and enjoyable, your customers will read the newsletter.

8. Make It Mandatory

Make sure any staff members read the newsletter. They need to be current with any information written, especially when customers may call for more information.

Newsletters are most successful when they offer practical information. They should not be viewed as advertising pieces. Keep the newsletter’s purpose in mind: building your image and causing people to want to work with you.

At Mail Print, we have several types of newsletters so you can decide the amount of time you want to devote to your newsletter. Our bimonthly Home Talk newsletters have an eye-catching design and content focused on home maintenance and beautification. We also have many newsletter templates that allow you to insert your own text for more involved newsletters. Please give us a call at 1.800.660.0108 for samples or more information.

Gina

Three Steps to Successful Niche Marketing

I'd like to pass along some great advice from Bill Miles. You can click here Determining a Niche Market Is As Easy As 1, 2, 3 to read the article in its intirety.

"All too often real estate agents focus their marketing efforts too broadly, and with little success or return on investment. The solution? Determine and develop your niche market.

Niche marketing is the process of focusing on a defined segment of a much larger market. Within Real Estate, there are thousands of different niche markets a real estate professional can identify and serve.

Take for example, a specific neighborhood, horse farm owners, first time home-buyers or beach front properties. As a real estate professional, you run a very small business in comparison to the entire real estate market, so it is critical to your success to identify a niche and serve it properly. Alternatively, attempting to market yourself to an entire geographic region is the fastest way to waste money in real estate because you will never sufficiently differentiate yourself to any one market to be top of mind when the consumer looks for an agent.
So, how do you develop your niche?

Step 1: Identify your niche. Write down all the possible niches you could serve based on your location, expertise and interests. For instance, if you choose to focus on a neighborhood, write down the 20 or 30 neighborhoods (with approximately 500 homes each) closest to where you live and work. Consider your expertise. Do you speak a second language? Do you understand a new home owner's issues? Are you also a mortgage broker? Do you love animals? Do you have a connection to senior citizens? What are your hobbies (music, cars, sports, traveling)? Every one of these things can evolve into a powerful niche for you.

Local school parents could be another great niche. For example, lets assume you have three kids in the local schools. The needs and concerns of parents with kids in the same school may be a great niche. It narrows down your focus from the whole town, to 500-1,000 families. You can easily get involved with the school and your target consumers by starting a parents newsletter or being active in school functions. Over time, the community will begin relying on you for this information and understand you are a real estate agent with their best interests in mind. When these parents (consumers) consider buying or selling a home, or giving a referral, you will be at the top of their mind.

Step 2: Define your niche market as specifically as possible. Ideally you should be able to generate a list of addresses, resident names, phone numbers and emails for your niche market. In addition, you should write down as many of the niche market attributes as possible.

For instance:
What are the homes like? (new, old, expensive)
What are the residents' concerns? (safety, a new park)
Where do buyers come from for these homes?
Where do the residents get their information? (TV, magazine, HOA newsletter, online)
Where do they go to school? (private, parochial or public)

This detailed description of your niche will help you reach them in an efficient, effective manner. If you don't know them, how can you deliver value? Additionally, by working on this definition, you will know what areas to educate yourself on to be effective. Remember, your goal is to add value to everyone in this niche through every interaction you have with them.

Step 3: Develop A Marketing Plan. Before taking action, develop a marketing plan to serve this niche. Initially, you may ask yourself ?what do I have to do to become valuable to this niche?' Maybe you need to attend HOA meetings, learn about local politics or learn about the tax advantages of a second home. Whatever it is, become an expert.

Next, determine how best to reach this niche. Where does this niche get its information? Is it through meetings, via email, with a targeted website or postcards?

Third, develop the specific marketing materials that will appeal to this niche. You have to cut through the clutter, so be specific. Talk directly to their needs and concerns. Don't go for typical real estate marketing collateral and content. Be creative, push the envelope, give them something to remember. If designed successfully, your read and response rates will be much higher than anything you have sent out previously.

"Over my 18-year real estate career and 5 years as CEO of Myneighborhoodagent.com, when a real estate professional designs a postcard with an image from the community or on a topic relevant to the community, we typically see response rates ten times higher than those pieces that are more generic," Randy Ginn, CEO MyNeighborhoodAgent.

Finally, commit to two to three contacts per month for at least 18 months. Reach different segments of this target by varying the types of collateral and the messaging. Continue to educate yourself about this niche. Write down your plan and stick to it. Be in it for the long term.

Conclusion. Taking the time to work through these steps will pay huge dividends as you begin to execute. Your focus will help you clarify what steps you need to take, who you need to talk to, what you need to learn and how to improve your communication to this audience. You are on the right track when consumers begin to react positively to your messages. They will thank you for the information, pass it along to friends and, best of all, they will be happy to refer you to others for their real estate needs."

RELATED POSTS: Find the Right Prospects with the Right List, Cost-Effective Marketing Techniques, 8 Tips for Effective Newsletters

Selling Without Selling Out: 10 Tips

Competing for clients without compromising your professional image and self respect can be a challenge. Here are 10 tips from author Lenann McGookey Gardner. You can read her article in its entirety here.

"1. Know who you'd like to have sending business your way. A Prospect List is not a list of organizations; it's a list of human beings who could send clients to you, but are not currently doing so. Do you have such a list? There is data saying that writing up a list of those with whom you would like to be doing business, and reading the list daily, increases the likelihood that you will actually establish those relationships!

2. Work your Prospect List. Don't let a single week go by without completing a minimum of two activities related to your Prospect List. Sometimes you can attend a meeting that is likely to put you face-to-face with targeted prospects; failing that, you may have to send an article of interest, and suggest an in-person meeting to discuss matters of mutual concern. Aaron chose to suggest coffee with the cardiologists he encountered when doing his rounds at the hospital with which he was affiliated.

3. When you speak with your prospects, use the word "you" often, and the word "I" (or "we") seldom. Making the conversation more about your prospect and less about you will make conversations longer - perhaps long enough for trust to develop.

4. Begin every conversation with a prospect by adopting a "Clean Heart Position"- a sincere desire to see your prospects get what they want, whether or not they get it from you. Try to understand their practices/businesses, and what they're trying to accomplish; ask questions about that rather than turning the discussion to the fact that you want them to refer people to you. Once you feel you understand their objectives for their practices/businesses, restate their objectives, and be sure that the prospect agrees that you understand. If they do agree, then you can introduce the notion that you may be able to assist them in achieving those objectives, if you legitimately feel that you can.

5. At all stages of the process of cultivating referrals, be sure you are focused on the prospect, rather than on your objectives, your message, or your agenda. The way to make meaningful connections is to understand what your prospect is trying to achieve, and the extent to which he or she has PAIN that you may be able to alleviate.

For example, if you are an accountant seeking referrals from attorneys, you would want to focus a great deal on an attorney sharing with you that she has just had a bad experience referring one of her valued clients to an accountant who failed to return phone calls, thus angering the attorney's client. If that's the PAIN, then talk about that: "Oh no! The accountant you referred your client to didn't even bother to return your client's calls? Gee, that can't reflect well on you! Unbelievable!" Let the prospect know that you HEARD, and that you understand how this behavior works against what he's trying to achieve, rather than talking about yourself and saying something like, "Well, I always return MY calls before sundown." Of course, if you are asked your own protocol for returning calls, answer the question.

6. Keep your voice at the same volume level, and speak at the same pace as your prospect does, to build rapport. Research from Dr. Genie Laborde suggests that these may be the most powerful things you can do to help others to like you, quickly!

7. Express continued interest in your prospect. As Brian Tracy has said, listen as if he could speak for the next eight years, and you would still be here, listening attentively - rather than trying to make your point.

8. When speaking with prospects, make an effort to avoid using words that are rooted in the word "no", such as not, won't, can't, don't or aren't. There's evidence that such negativity will drive prospects away from you.

9. If the conversation gets to the possibility of working together, express enthusiasm for that, without going overboard or losing your professional demeanor.

10. Don't forget the people who ARE currently sending you referrals. In addition to conveying your thanks after every referral, have a regular program of base-touching with them, and put it into your scheduling program so you're reminded when to make the calls monthly, quarterly, or, at minimum, twice a year. And be sure to send business to them whenever you can - the best referral relationships are two-way!

Developing relationships with those who can refer others to you is possible, but it requires thought about whom you'd like to serve as referral sources—and action to cultivate these relationships. Follow these principles, and develop the referral sources who will support your organization's growth for years to come!"

RELATED ARTICLES: Finding Your Niche, The "P" Word, Keeping Clients For Life

Do You Stalk Your Prospects?

Prospecting can be difficult, especially when your phone calls and emails seem to drop into a black hole. I'd like to pass along excerpts from an article by Meryl K. Evans and Hank Stroll that give tips for converting these leads, without annoying or scaring them in the process.

"We’ve all been there---you send an email or leave a voicemail for a customer/potential client and never hear back. So you try again…and again. You don’t want to be a pest, but why aren’t they responding? Did they receive the message or are they deliberately ignoring you? Where do you draw the line to avoid becoming a "stalker" or "that crazy person who keeps calling and emailing?"

Try the following suggestions to encourage prospects to call you back:

1. Give the person a reason to call back.
2. Customize the message.
3. Try a different approach.

The first thing you want to accomplish is to make sure you will get a response. You want this customer/potential client to return your phone call or answer your email. To do this, go for short and enticing.

Adam, a consultant with MonteConsult, provides the following tips: “Give a hook for prospects to call back, with enough info for them to be interested and curious. But don't give too much so they make a decision not talk to you about the idea. Script out your message and practice with a colleague or yourself. Say exactly what the prospect should want to hear and the call's purpose and goal”.

Another source suggests keeping the message to about 30 seconds or 75 words. Ask a question that gets prospects thinking after they listen to your message.

The second approach deals with customizing the message to fit your customer/potential client. First, do your research before calling anyone. Researching helps identify prospects' needs so you can focus on those when contacting them.

Next, make sure you're calling the right person. The prospect may be too high or too low on the ladder or may be the wrong prospect completely. After you’re confident you’ve made contact with the right person, ask them about themselves. A source suggests the line, "I'd like to learn more about your situation." Something about the words, "your situation" gets people talking. Most important: Be friendly! You want this person to feel comfortable when talking to you. Also, they’ll be more enticed to forge a business relationship with someone they like.

Finally, vary your approach tactics. Sales pros rarely rely on phone calls alone. They also add emails and direct mail to their prospecting toolbox. Anna Barcelos, director of marketing with OpenBOX Technologies, recommends a follow-up email: “If you have their email addresses, follow up with an email after the call. Some people are phone communicators, and others are email communicators (that's me). Persistent sales reps who communicate the value they can provide me, always win in my book. Persistence helps too; and remember, don't ever take it personally. People are so overwhelmingly busy these days; it's tough to keep track of phone calls.”

Remember to avoid the whole "Did you get my email/fax/voice mail?" fixation when doing the following up. That gets the conversation off on the wrong foot. Give prospects a reason to follow up by customizing the message and using various communication methods, since everyone has different preferences."

RELATED TOPICS: The "P" Word, Is Door Knocking Dead?, Five Reasons Why Direct Mail Postcards Work

Become Massively Successful Through Specialization

What is the one quality that most massively successful people share?

Specialization! Think about it. Doctors specialize in every part of the body imaginable. Podiatrists, cardiologists, neurologists, and many more specialized doctors pursue successful careers. Attorneys also practice a multitude of disciplines within the profession. Many lawyers make great livings dealing with only one narrow area of the law. By doing one thing extremely well, all these people make their careers. They use their strengths to full advantage.

Businesspeople are really starting to take on this concept, particularly in real estate. Today, many of the top agents are specialists in one field or another. One markets luxury homes only. Another spends her efforts helping people buy their first homes. They take time to gain certifications and other ongoing training in their specialties. They focus their marketing efforts on one to three niches, around which they center their business.

The benefits of a highly specialized mindset are far reaching. First and foremost, as a specialist, you are able to provide the very best available service in your specialty. Great service leads to repeat business, which leads to less effort spent on prospecting. Marketing costs are also lower when marketing a niche rather than city-wide mass marketing.

Of course, there may be aspects of business that an agent just doesn’t care for, but are necessary. That’s where teams come into play. Great team leaders learn to delegate the duties that they are weaker at or simply do not enjoy. A smart agent will spend their time doing the tasks they are strong at, like dealing with clients and negotiations, and will delegate escrow or some other task he or she doesn’t enjoy to a team member that excels at it. By funneling tasks to the team members who enjoy or are skilled with them, the team maximizes its strengths. Its energy and enthusiasm is raised, too, because everyone is working on the things they enjoy.

Life is short. Why not make the most of it by creating a business that nurtures your skills and desires? Hire and train a team that complements your skills. You’ll have more success, more happiness, and more time for your the things you care most about.

-Gina

Related Posts: Finding Your Niche, Strategies for Brand Development, Find the Right Prospects with the Right List.

7 Keys to Making Money with Postcards

To be successful, your real estate direct marketing plan needs two essential things. First, it must get attention. If it doesn’t catch the eye, it won’t work. Second, the mailing plan must ensure good profitability.

Using postcards is a smart marketing strategy that is both affordable and attention getting. Since postcards don’t need envelopes, they get a head start. Your message is in front of your customer right away.

Postcards are far cheaper than regular mail. And if you follow a few basic rules, you can generate great results with postcards.

1. Mail to Appropriate Lists

Save yourself a lot of frustration and money by mailing to realistic customers. Mail to the areas where your clients live and to the demographics that match your current client base. Targeting your audience will get you better response rates and more ‘bang’ for your buck.

2. Write a Great Headline

Begin with an action word. Promise a main benefit customers will get when they work with you. Cut out excess words.

3. Write clear copy

Make sure the main message of your postcard is clear and direct. Don’t try to pile too much information on a postcard. If your message is complicated, it might end up in the trash.

Focus on one objective. Your card might double as a coupon, thank customers, advertise a listing, or simply remind people that you’re still there. Stick to that goal and do not deviate from it.

4. Be 100% Honest

Make sure everything on your card is completely true. This is relatively simple to do, and can save a lot of potential headaches.

5. Go Full Color

A colorful image makes your postcard stand out from the other mail, and is proven to generate a better response rate than black and white. While this used to be expensive, advancements in printing technology have made it much more cost effective.

6. Send a Series of Cards

By sending a series of cards you can repeat your message and build familiarity with your clients. Most people won’t respond to an ad they’ve only seen once. Repeated exposure makes your postcard much more effective.

7. Include Your Personal Photo and Contact Info

Including your name, contact info and full-color photo adds a personal touch to your mailings. When people know the name and face of the person they will be calling, they tend to be more comfortable. This is an easy way to increase your response rates.

-Gina

RELATED POSTS: Double Your Response Rate With Color, Five Steps to Creating a Winning Mail List, Five Reasons Why Direct Mail Postcards Work.

Becoming a Billion-Dollar Agent

What does it take to become a billion-dollar real estate agent? Logistically, it requires you and your team selling 50-million dollars every year for 20 years. However, the systems and mindsets such prodigious success requires are somewhat easier to achieve.

Bernice Ross lays out some of the key traits of real estate's biggest earners in her Inman News review of Steve Kantor's new book, Billion Dollar Agent -- Lessons Learned. Let's look at some excerpts from the review.

"What does it take to sell a billion dollars worth of real estate? Steve Kantor's new book, Billion Dollar Agent -- Lessons Learned, contains a revealing series of interviews with elite agents who have sold a billion dollars worth of real estate or are en route to do so. What's particularly intriguing is how forthcoming the agents were in terms of how they built their businesses, what their ratios were of referrals to new business, and most importantly, what they actually did to achieve this level of success.

A key theme in the book is to build your business on your passion and to delegate everything else. You cannot succeed at this level without a strong support team. Another important theme is that the billion-dollar agents wished they had hired their first assistant sooner. A sizeable majority saw an immediate increase in their business when they hired their first assistant.

Another shared trait is having written goals. According to Brad Korb at RE/MAX in Burbank, Calif., 'Ninety-seven percent of those who have written goals achieve them. Only 3 percent of those without written goals achieve their goals. Write down your major definite purpose in life every day and write 10 ways to get to it. … I have business goals, workout goals, spiritual-time goals, family-time goals and financial goals.'

Billion-dollar agents also take time to 'work on' their business rather than just 'working in' their business.... This process is especially important in achieving high levels of production. Taking time to plan allows you to create systems that save time, create order in your business and improve efficiency.

Kantor draws an interesting distinction between what he calls 'hunters' and 'farmers.' Hunters actively prospect for new business by calling on expired listings, for-sale-by-owners and door-knocking, and continuing to call Web leads until they make personal contact. In contrast, 'farmers' rely more on regular contact within their sphere of influence. Based upon the interviews, a sizeable majority of the billion-dollar agents were hunters. As Kantor puts it, 'Almost every billion-dollar agent is a hunter -- an extreme hunter. You would not go hungry on an island stranded with a billion-dollar agent. If there is meat running around the island, they will hunt it down, close the deal and bring home the bacon.'

Another shared characteristic is that these agents are voracious learners. They are always hunting for the next idea that will improve their business. Many of them also have both personal and business coaches. A high percentage attributed their success to the coaching they received.

It's not all business for these agents, however. Over half are actively involved in charity or in other events that allow them to share their abundance with those who are less fortunate than they are.

What holds ordinary agents back? According to Billion Dollar Agent -- Lessons Learned, the most commonly cited reasons were:
1. They fail to follow-up.
2. They lack negotiation skills.
3. They don't put the clients' interests first.
4. They lack listening and communication skills.
5. They don't stay in regular contact."

Related Posts: It's About Speed, The "P" Word.

Build Your Business with Postcards

Using postcards in your 2007 marketing plan can greatly enhance sales. They can be sent out in search of new contacts, to follow-up, or to maintain and build relationships with referral sources. When a postcard is used properly, no other marketing tool can compare to it. Effective design and copy will grab your reader’s attention. Your postcard should also motivate consumers to action. Postcards are extremely effective and considerably cheaper than other marketing methods, and allow you to target specific contacts and areas for high return on investment.

Only 2% of sales are made on the first contact, so create a direct mail campaign that will send postcards to your customers several times a year. The more you send, the more likely they will remember you when they, or a friend, are ready to make a move. Here are some postcard ideas that will keep your customers interested:

Anniversary: These cards can be used for client wedding or home purchase anniversaries.

Birthdays: A simple birthday card can be a delightful surprise to unsuspecting customers.

Farming: Build recognition in your farm area by mailing a series of postcards that carry your name, photo and contact info.

Holiday Greetings: Send holiday wishes to your customers year round. There are holidays practically every day of the year, so pick one and create a contact around it.

Invitation: Invite frequent referral sources and current clients to an open house or "customer appreciation" party.

Just Listed/Sold: When you list or sell a home, let everyone in the surrounding neighborhood know you're the agent of choice. Great for getting the word out to key referral sources as well.

Promote New Service: Use your postcards to notify potential clients and referral sources about new services you now offer your clients.

Regain Lost Customers: Send out a series of postcards to customers who have not purchased from you in over a year.

Thank You: Send to clients to thank them for their past business or referrals.

Web Site: With so many web sites out there, a postcard can remind consumers of your site and boost Internet sales.

-Gina

The "P" Word

What's the key to building your real estate business year after year? Prospecting. Unfortunately, many agent's suffer because of their fright of prospecting. Jerry Pujals describes "the p-word" phenomenon and identifies key prospect groups in his article in Broker Agent News:

If there were one word to describe the ability to produce at higher levels, it would have to be "the p-word." That's right? Prospecting! Unfortunately, prospecting is probably the one task 95% of real estate agents avoid. Why? Because they're terrified of it.

We've all seen it: an agent who spends the majority of his time wondering what to do next, walking the halls, making water cooler talk, and babysitting the one or two deals he has in escrow. Deep down he knows he should be prospecting to generate new business, but he's just too scared to do so.

Whether you are a new agent or a veteran who wants different results, you must learn to love prospecting. Answer this: If you could earn an extra $200,000 per year by spending a mere two to four hours per day prospecting, would you do it? For most people, the answer is a resounding "yes."

However, most agents do anything possible NOT to create additional business. As simple as prospecting is and as handsomely as it pays off, it's still the single most difficult thing to get people in the real estate industry to do. But when done effectively and efficiently, prospecting can change your career.

Who to Prospect

Prospecting is actually simple when you know what to do. Following are some suggestions for focusing your prospecting activities.

Past Clients. The first category of prospecting should always be your past clients. That's obvious, yet many people neglect their past clients, even those they had incredible transactions with. This leaves the client with a negative impression. They think all real estate agents care about is getting the prize (the check), and then they're done. The ripple effect of this negative impression is huge. Therefore, you must prospect past clients on a regular basis.

Current clients. The second category is to call your current clients. Most agents forget to call their current clients even though they're talking about client loyalty all day long. But you must call your current clients, especially while they're happy with you. Sometimes, at the end of the transaction, they might not be happy with you anymore. So why not get a referral out of them when they're happy with you?

SOI. The third category is your SOI, which stands for Sphere of Influence. These are the people you refer business to who should be referring business back to you, like the lender, the title company, the insurance person, the home warranty company, etc. You refer these folks a multitude of transactions every month. Have you ever prospected them and asked if they would refer people to you? If they do not refer others to you, maybe you need to consider hiring somebody else who might reciprocate.

FSBO listings. The fourth category is FSBO listings. Any property that has a For Sale By Owner sign is being sold directly by the seller. We know that over 87% of properties that are for sale by owner will eventually be listed with a real estate agent. Therefore, you must call these people, show the value you can offer, and get the listing.

Expired listings. The fifth category is expired listings. Any listing that's expired becomes open season. If you have a lot of expired listings in your area, you must call them. If their property didn't sell and they didn't re-list with their current agent, it means one of two things: Either they decided not to sell for some reason, or they have a reason not to re-list with their current agent and are actively looking for a new agent. Why shouldn't you be the new agent for them?

Just listed/Just sold. The sixth category is those people who live in the same neighborhood as a house that has just sold or listed. On these calls you're just letting the person know that a neighbor's property got listed or sold, and you were calling to find out if he or she was thinking of moving.