How many countless Sundays have you spent sitting in your open house and either reading or using that time to "catch up" while individuals stroll through your listing? I know that we always jump up when we hear the crack of the door to make sure that we provide a friendly face to greet visitors - but what do we do after that initial greeting? Typically if it's like most of the open houses I've walked through without my "agent hat" on, most agents will greet me upon entry, hand me a flyer and let me know to look around and feel free to let them know if I have any questions. Once they've made that introduction, they'll scamper back off to the living room or kitchen where they have established their "open house camp" (that area strategically set up as a work area/greeting/pivot spot) and wait for the visitor to make their way back in order to take a temperature of the buyers' like or dislike of their listing. At this point, following typical protocol, they'll give a smile, ask how everything is going and then wait for the buyer to see the other half of the house before hurriedly making small talk as the buyer is leaving.
How many opportunities do we squander by doing this repetitive routine? One of the most successful things I do to help increase the awareness of my visitors is to have my XSite on my laptop open and running. I also open my contacts folder in my XSellerate to capture information about the buyer when I've engaged them during their visit. After their walkthrough and before they head out, I will engage those buyers not working with an agent already by letting them know that I have a full virtual tour of this listing I can send to them so that they don't have to drag around 100 flyers from all of the open houses they'll be visiting today. At this point, I'll ask them if they've planned out their route to look at open houses or if they're just driving through neighborhoods. No matter what their answer is, I will let them know that I have my website up and can quickly show them a list of open houses today and even e-mail a driving map to them so that they're not driving around aimlessly. Our MLS will let me narrow searches for open houses and even provide printable or e-mail centric directions. I find that over 80% of my visitors carry a SmartPhone that they can use to check e-mail or receive messages. I think I've been turned down a handful of times in the whole time I've offered this.
When we go over to enter a visitor's information, I will have my website up with the contacts information available. I'll then type in their information, save it to my contacts and tell them to expect the open house driving directions e-mailed to their phone shortly.
For those visitors that take me up on my offer, what I've done is capture their information so I can follow up with them later. I've also completed two things: 1) I've provided another level of service that they're not used to seeing; 2) I've again established my website by telling them that they can find a lot of information about the various subdivisions in our area.
Face it - how many people like filling out a blank sign-in sheet when they walk into an open house? I'll bet I've met more "Mark Jones" and "Michelle Smith's" than I care to imagine -- because they don't like feeling that they'll be spammed to death. But with a simple suggestion to help them plan a route to help them ease gas consumption, I have people that appreciate the effort to help them instead of them thinking I view them as another faceless visitor of my open house. All of the information that I send to them is branded with my website address and the follow up e-mails that they'll receive in the coming days announce other properties that match their search criteria.
I've picked up more than 10 new buyers and sellers - directly or indirectly from their referral -- using this method that normally would have just resulted in another person walking through my open house. With air cards being offered by almost every major cellular carrier, the return on investment that could be had by simply having your laptop "always on" is immeasurable.
Comments(2)