As a new agent back in the 80's I made plenty of mistakes.
I thought I'd list the top four, in hopes of helping today's new agents avoid them:
Mistake # 1 - and this was a BIG one - not following up and staying in touch with customers and clients after their transactions closed.
Those files went into a drawer and the people were forgotten. What a waste!!
Mistake # 2 - Never asking for feedback - AKA Testimonials. While it's true that we didn't have the Internet and a place to post those testimonials, they could have gone into our listing presentations.
Mistake #3 - Thinking that prospecting meant sending only one letter. Those of us who bothered to write generally only wrote to absentee owners - and then we sent just one letter. Eventually I started writing again every few months, and once in a while followed up with a phone call.
Since no one else was doing even that much, those phone calls often resulted in a listing.
Mistake #4 - Sending really lame, awful prospecting letters. I knew only what I had learned in college - to always address people by their names, spelled correctly, and to never, ever, begin a letter with "I" or "We."
But I had no clue about how to immediately capture their interest and entice them to read the whole letter.
Many of my early letters began with "County records show that you are the owner of..." Ugh, awful... but at that point I didn't know any better. I didn't know how bad those letters were until later, when I started studying about marketing.
So now...
Now that the Internet has invaded real estate, new agents have even MORE opportunities to make mistakes.
So I'm hoping that you'll share some of your own early mistakes. Then I'll post a link to this blog post on my New agents' website.
Perhaps our combined experiences will help someone new avoid some of our early errors.
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