Prospecting is the backbone of finding business in most sales professions. Real estate prospecting takes many forms and methods. My preference, and the one I've always had success with, is direct mail marketing. There are agents who use the phone or door knock and that works well for them.
My direct mail has a candid, straightforward message and a call to action. I don't hold back with the message. It is frank and has a clear cut statement about what is being offered, a Free Market Analysis. I prospect for listings. It's prospecting, not farming, for me. I dig and search and I do find the leads. Farming is a long process whereby a seed is planted and within a certain period of time, after much cultivation and attention, a lead will surface. In my mind, that's very time consuming, and that works if you are young and have decades to find business. I, obviously, do not.
Some agents use direct mail postcards and newsletters that have a subliminal message. The feedback that I've heard from those agents is that the newsletters were acknowledged with positive comments, but no one understood the purpose. There were no phone calls or leads resulting from it. Obviously, I'm not an advocate of subliminal messages. If I have something to say, I just say it. Let the cards fall as they may!!
The point of this blog is to touch upon the fact that there are many methods of prospecting. Find the one that works best for you in your area. Select the one that is comfortable for you to do consistently physically, mentally, emotionally and financially. Prospecting is not a simple task. If there were only one or two methods, life in the real estate business would be easy. Work at it. It will be time consuming to find the right fit, but once you find it, prospecting will need nothing more than the discipline to continue to do it.
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