More than most, the real estate industry has been disrupted through the growth of technology. The market has become so sophisticated and knowledgeable we have to meet it with a similarly targeted and complex approach.
Management guru, Jim Collins, surveyed behaviours of great businesses in his book, Great by Choice and concluded that three behaviours marked great businesses: fantastic discipline, creativity driven by data and productive paranoia which is discipline in the face of a world that is out of control.
To be successful in real estate therefore, we need to be disciplined, driven by data and be productive amidst the chaos we find ourselves in. We need to replace the word and ideas around the word prospecting. We don’t just sit on the phone, making random phone calls or sending SMS’s. We do so much more.
As real estate agents, we are engaged in the quest to find potential sellers.
We create and engage sellers with sophisticated marketing strategies.
In a structured and purposeful way, we creatively employ the tools we have at our disposal - our calls, our sendables, our time management, our understanding of the market and we find those sellers, engage them and create ongoing prosperous business relationships.
Marketing is a far more accurate and helpful descriptor of what it is we do and it is driven by a prospecting interface.
The foundation principles of great marketing:
1. Plan Everybody is time poor. You have to make a commitment to devote time to the things that will drive your business. The world and the market have become too complex for you not to have a sophisticated and disciplined approach.
2. Know your audience. Big business. Small business. All businesses will fail if they don’t know who their customers are. Who are you talking to? Who is your community? Who are the tribes that make up your community?
A scattergun approach will not cut it. It's a common mistake to keep chasing people that you don't know, hoping we may jag an appraisal that becomes a listing. This kind of thinking leads to failure.
There are 2 types of people we speak to.
1. There is the registered data of our database. We have their consent and they're made up of multiple groups of people.
2. The other is the prospect data who are people who own real estate in your area - they may not live in your area - but they may own real estate in your area and they do not know you exist. These people are true prospects. It is your job to activate them.
3. Group your data and target accordingly. One size does not fit all. Spraying the same marketing materials to one large group of people, crossing your fingers and hoping that something sticks is unacceptable.
This is a cardinal sin of marketing. The buyer will switch off. They will conclude you don’t know what you are talking about – that you don’t understand clients or real estate which is a disaster. All people are not equal. You can over follow up, and over prospect and you can be shut down. Marketing effectively requires a high emotional IQ, panache and strategic sense.
At the Real Estate Academy we teach you to break a database into four groups that are:
a. Gold - A landlord or a previous vendor - someone who has actually paid you money to sell their home. They bought you. b. Silver - Purchasers and tenants who may be prospective purchasers. Silvers have some overlay with Gold. c. Bronze - A potential seller who is looking to buy in the next 80 months. For example, it could be someone you met at an open, who may live two streets away but who is not selling right now. d. Prospect - Anyone who owns a dwelling in your turf is a prospect if they don't know you.
Once you know whom you are talking to - then comes the how. Each group requires different types of contacts. You contact with sendables and phone calls and texts. The sendables are: Anniversary cards, Christmas cards, Calendars, A market review/ postcode book, Thank you cards, Client night, VIP night, Street report, Knowledge books, Just Solds and Referrals.
Each group is contacted differently. For example Golds receive Anniversary cards and Christmas cards, calendars and market reviews whereas Bronze members receive market reviews.
The Five Elements Of Marketing
Once you know what to send and how to contact, what you need to do then is to master the Five Elements of Marketing.
1. A yearly, monthly plan of activities.
From January right through to December, you need to see and know what's going to be going on in those months. It's a confirmed and registered plan.
2. A library of confirmed sendable items.
There are so many things we do, but they need to be sendable by email or post. Only relevant items go to the particular tribe in your database you are communicating to.
3. The art of targeted phone calls.
Phone calls are critical. We are engaged in the art of persuasion. We have to like talking on the phone. But phone calls are targeted and part of your sendables and yearly and monthly plans of activities.
4. Have a handle on costs and budget
You can’t operate in the dark - you should know the precise cost of everything you do and work within your budget.
5. Stake out the time
You can't go to all this effort of getting your sendable items and putting your plan together, but never make time bookings for your productivity blast to do the calls connected to the effort. Make the time.
This is the plan. These are the secrets to success - now you just have to activate them.