A couple of months ago, two engineers dropped by our office to talk about a lead generation program for their consultancy business. "Things are slow," said one of them, "and we might have to lay off some of our staff."

So we asked questions and learned about how they made their money, got an idea of their budget and they went away while we went to work developing a program for them.

I called them a week or so later to set up our next meeting and they asked if we could postpone for a while because they were up to their elbows on a new project that had just come in.

"Sure, we can wait," I said.

I wanted to add "But I don't know if you can" and then ask if he'd ever heard of Howard Ruff.

Howard Ruff was one of the first of those financial self-help authors. At one point, back in the ‘70s, his newsletter "Ruff Times" had 175,000 subscribers. If he still has that many, all those $149 subscriptions bring in about $2,600,000 a year. He had his own syndicated TV show for a while and he's written a lot of books. One of them was on the NYT bestseller list for over two years.

I remember him for one great line he came up with back in 1975. He wrote "It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark."

Maybe now is a great time to start filling your ark (database) with prospects and clients and build relationships with them now. If your pipeline is full when this market turns around...you my dear friends will be ahead of the curve and be making sales quickly.

Marketing your real estate practice is about building friendships. So, begin today.