The transitioning market has been difficult for many real estate agents, add the annual third-quarter slowing, and it’s time to rethink how you approach post-boom home buyer and seller leads. The first item you need to re-invent is how you handle and market to leads that you used to give sixty days to and then optioned your kick-out clause, much like home-sale kick-out contingencies in real estate contracts. Consumers today are looking for an agent that has more on their mind than the clients commission check in the bank in the next couple of months.
An experienced eighteen-year agent recently came to me for consultation. After the headiness of the hot sellers market, she bottomed out, business-wise. She didn’t even know what hit her, the last four years she pumped out closed transactions. In 2006,she has closed next to nothing through the first half of the year. This story is the marketing story of the year being repeated with many more experienced and new agents, in many markets.
What happened? Number one is that many agents in the gravy days didn’t have time to market, didn’t think they had to market, or didn’t want to market their real estate practice. Order-taking real estate contracts worked just fine, and yes they proudly admit they never showed more than seven homes to any buyer. Second, the Internet grew as the first point of entry for the majority of home buyers and sellers to find relevant home information before selecting a real estate agent or brokerage. If you thought the Internet was going to go away before the boom years and decided to put off having a presence on it during the boom years, you need marketing intensive care, ASAP.
The prescription is; reconsider that today’s real estate consumers are looking for local market information from a real estate resource, not a salesperson. You must be in the path of the consumer when they are looking for information. The path has grown to include many forms of technology; the appetite for information is 24/7. Consumers might not be consuming today, but industry statistics show they move every five-point-seven years, plus if you’re a resource they might know someone who is looking sooner than they are, a two-for-one.
It’s easy to get in the path of today’s real estate consumer, go where they are. But you have to know who your consumer is. Put aside your old habit of thinking everyone is your consumer. Focus on a specific segment, multi-family buyers and sellers, first-time buyers, relocation. Once you focus it will be easier to formulate a marketing plan. For instance, you decide to focus on first-time buyers. They are more likely to be large technology adopters as a demographic, than empty nesters, who still make up the largest base of newspaper readers. In addition to a web site to get in their path, you need to consider blogging and pod-casting local real estate tips and trends. Don’t forget the drip email, they love the follow up news and information. Use print and direct mail to announce big events that they can access from their PDA’s or I Pod’s. Have a website, and a value-added one that offers MLS access, neighborhood comparables, and mapping. Content is king, so the more local and deeper the information, the better.
Relationship selling is what all the big consumer product companies do. They find a target audience and reinforce their resource to them on an ongoing basis, knowing they will consume at a point in time. This is contrary to the I-need-a-deal-today habit of real estate agents. When you need a deal today, you’re not a resource you’re selling, and today’s savvy real estate consumers will sell themselves, they look to you to be a resource to their selling or buying decision. Find ways to develop deeper business relationships with your current and past clients through sending small denomination gift cards in place of refrigerator magnets and calendars this holiday season. Don’t forget the new post-boom real estate consumers think it’s all about them, and they’re right.
The rising inventories and scary media headlines have slowed buyers and have greater anxiety in sellers. Buyers take longer to commit and sellers need to price-right. Your consoling skills should be well honed today, because your clients look for it as one of your resources. Order taking, sixty-day client buy, sell or good-bye, invisible agent marketing, spell doom for agents in 2007 and 2007.
Today"s Buyer And Seller Leads Merit More Than 60-Day Kick-Out Clause
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