What Do You Do When You're in a Slump? Get Out!

What do you do when you are in a slump? A provocatively titled post My Broker Su@&s by Ken Speer recommends a book called Attitude. While I am all for good attitude, and could certainly use a slug of it on most days, I would recommend something a little different: Get Out!

The best way to get out of a slump is to get out and see people. People who like you, people who owe you, people who like your kids, spouse or dog. You have to stand in front of them to look them in the eye and say "Thank you for buying last year/washing my dog/cleaning my teeth and now I need your help to grow my business". Arm yourself with a snappy 3 minute elevator report on the market, hand over a snappy flyer "to give to someone else" and ask for referrals.

Regardless of what you call them, pop bys are easy at Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is non-denominational and so it's not too terribly weird to just show up. Leave the car running so you don't get stuck for an hour (like me), slap on a smile and go knock on that door.

Office pop-bys are great....Tuesday afternoon at a dentist's office when school is out? I'll bet the waiting room will be crammed and the staff will love a tray of healthy treats (of course it helps if you've done business with the dentist, but not precisely necessary).

I'll bet you could get out and do 50 pop bys in the next 3 days, even if you only get started tomorrow. I give bottles of wine, kid treat bags, cute sacks of fruits and nuts, tins of cookies and coffee cakes. My car looks like an over-stocked gift store: 2 cases of wine, tins of cookies, sacks of inexpensive decoration thingies, plus cute bags to fill up at each stop. Walgreens had tons of great stuff today for gift bags: lots of 2 for 1 treats, holiday decorations, and little gifty things. Tuesday Morning was jammed full of inexpensive stuff for gift bags including the actual bags.

What else can you do to get out?

Do as many open houses as you can: try for 4 to 6 per month when in a slump. I did an open house last year on Thanksgiving weekend. The neighbors came because they felt sorry for me. As we were chatting away a couple "just driving by" came in because there were so many cars in the driveway. That couple closed on new house in March.

Make phone calls to everyone who's name you have ever written down and ask them if they know anyone buying or selling a house. I hate the phone, but I always, always always get leads when I make calls. (But I really hate the phone). Take floor and if it's quiet, that's actually good, sound busy and call people. Make the phone call a verbal pop-by.

Don't get me wrong, I know how hard it is to dial up some 'tude and go talk to people. I would happily spend all of my time on setting up my wordpress site (my most current techy love interest). I would happily spend hours in webinars and in video tutorials learning about what I could do to set up to market to maybe get some business.

My broker, bless her heart, is pretty simple about the whole thing when someone is a little stuck: "get out"!

 

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This post was written by Leslie Ebersole of Baird & Warner Real Estate.

(630) 945-7935

leslie.ebersole@bairdwarner.com