Send something with monotonous regularity
One of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is to mail something at the same day and time every single week. We do this at Residential Settlements and in nearly every course I run someone will say how much they look forward to receiving the email every week. Make no mistake, sending a weekly email is hard work. My colleague Emily Murphy spends hours researching and interviewing and making sure of her facts before pressing the Send button. But every Tuesday morning at 10am the email is sent and every week a crop of new deals come in as a result.
Apply the rule of Ten Feet
The Rule of Ten Feet is simple: if you’re within ten feet of someone you should be asking if they’d like to join your email list. Applying this rule gives home opens, door-knocking and telephone canvassing a whole new level of intensity. The purpose of both of these activities should be to build a database of people who are keen to hear about what you have to say.
Have something worthwhile to say
Sadly, most agents equate email marketing with sending out their latest listings to an unsuspecting public. Don’t get me wrong, that has its place. In fact, if that’s the only thing you have to offer then go for it – but do it smarter. But there’s a better way to build credibility and relationship and that’s by writing some informed, insightful market commentary. In the short term target sending a monthly local market wrap. People who own property in your area will love your deeply nuanced understanding of what’s happening in your area.
The difficulty most agents have with sending a monthly market wrap is the time it takes but it’s an easy problem to solve. The answer? Think of the FAQs you get at your home opens or from your friends at a a barbecue. You know how you handle the “how’s the market?” question so now you just need to capture your thoughts and words on paper (or in a Word document). It will take you literally no more than 30 minutes to sit down and write your response and now you have something to send to your database.
And forget trying to sell. Focus instead on answering those FAQs. Imagine writing to your favourite customer. Give it all you’ve got. Pretty soon you’ll have something amazing to say. Keep sending this out to people in your local area and you’ll start building some serious credibility as THE person to know in the area.
Forget cold calling and start prompted calling
Many agents I know get their new people to tele-canvas. If there’s one job that’ll break a new kids heart and fill their day full of meaningless activity it’s this!
There’s a much better way.
Most good email marketing software provide lots of stats about the performance of an email campaign. These stats include the number of people that opened the email and the number of people who clicked on links contained within the email. These stats are just gold. So, if you’re sending out a weekly email your tele-canvasing activity should come from following up people who have opened or clicked the most. Choose the top 10 or 20 (or whatever number you want) and make a a follow up call. Use a simple script such as “Hi, it’s Sally Jones from Sally Jones Property. I sent you an email earlier today and I just wanted to quickly follow up to see if you had any questions.” No need for hard sell just give people the opportunity to tell you if they have an interest in what you sent them in the email.
My experience is that people will open up to you if they’re interested.
