Blog / Prospecting
Out of the Box prospecting
Prospecting can take many forms, but some methods just work better than others. While using very different methods in their prospecting, these four real estate agents have the same results - success.
Gone Fishing
Lucas Harwood from Highland Property in Miranda, NSW, introduced a price drive letter to his agency and in just eight months it became its most successful - and cost effective - marketing strategy. Mr Harwood and his colleague drop around 200 prospecting letters four mornings each week within their area of almost 4000 homes. This drop is followed up by a call that evening between 5pm and 7pm.
"We call them crab traps, like when you’re out fishing. You’ve put a letter out right before you go in to work and you pull them in at the end of the day. It is the most effective way to get all these appraisals. It’s probably the cheapest too," Mr Harwood said. The letter explains that the pair will only be offering appraisals in the street for a few days and as it only takes 15 minutes, it won’t be an inconvenience to the resident. Once the appraisal is done, the prospect receives a property report.
The duo is currently approaching 900 contacts using this strategy and is aiming to make that 2000 by the end of the year. Around three sellers are generated for each agent every time they send out the report. “I want to turn that into about six or seven each time this report goes out,” Mr Harwood said.
“We’re really trying to make sure we get as many as we can. We’ve been more dominant in the last couple of years.” Mr Harwood and his colleague populate their database with information collected from doorknocking if they can’t make phone contact, and when the area reports are ready to go out in the mail he sends an SMS that morning to let prospects know they should be expecting a report in the next couple of days. He calls again once he knows they have received the report.
Vote for me
All the attention focused around the recent Queensland election gave ReMax Ultimate real estate agent Ham Hassen an idea. Tying in with the election theme, he produced ‘Vote for Ham’ A1 signs, banners and leaflets which became so popular the entire agency has adopted the idea for the next local election.
“It was all about brand imaging and just putting the brand out there,” Mr Hassen explained. “I stood outside, like a [political] party on the pavement waving, and I got lots of comments - and someone called me a ham sandwich - but, it’s good because I still got people who’d come into my office and say, ‘There’s that guy; we’re going to vote for him’.”
Mr Hassen uses his voting campaign as one part of a raft of prospecting strategies, including market reports, newsletters, price drive letters, banners, branding his car and telemarketing. “It’s all about branding. Ham is my brand, so I’m trying to brand my own name saying, ‘Call the Ham’. It’s getting momentum, and I’m always thinking of creative ways to prospect. I think the secret is just do it,” he laughed.
Time Machine
A trip back in time has paid dividends for Felice Cotroneo of Innercity Property in Sydney, NSW. The agency started a quarterly campaign highlighting four historical buildings on flyers to gain appraisals.
Each flyer profiles a local property with the address and price it sold for decades ago. The text for one reads, “447 Riley Street, Surry Hills. Sold for £410 in 1915. Valued today at…” on the front. On the back it lists the three steps to securing an appraisal with the agency. This campaign also includes 5 Hunt Street, Surry Hills as it was in 1929, plus 295 Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst in 1932, and 246 Palmer Street, Darlinghurst in 1936. Mr Cotroneo said the campaign had been so popular the agency was about to start on the second drop with new properties.
"We have had a great response from the residents. One man told us he’d been researching his property and found out it was a button factory. We’re now talking to him about future campaigns," he said. "This is the first time the agency has tried a prospecting campaign like this and has had some very positive results," Mr Cotroneo added.
Breaking down the walls
Stefon Bertram and Michael Dowling from Starr Partners in Ryde, NSW, developed a “no walls” prospecting method for the property management side of the business. The sales and property management teams share the same database, hence the “no walls” tag. Landlords are kept updated in the same way other sales prospects are, and sales prospects are offered property management advice.
Anyone who owns a property, whether they live in it or lease it out, receives a CMA (comparative market analysis) report based on that property. In addition, the agency is seeing a sales spin off from property manager visits each Wednesday afternoon. “Our property manager goes out between 12pm and 4pm and sees a list of about 30-40 people who have been flagged as investors or as first-home buyers who are buying property to rent out. He sees if there is anything that has caught their eye and if it has, he will offer a CMA on that property. If they want any more details, he offers a call back from a sales agent to give them a second opinion, even if they’re not buying through our office,” Mr Bertram explained.
This strategy continues if the prospect wants an appraisal for renting the property out. “Most of the time the rental agency is slow to come back to them, so by staying in touch with these people weekly, when they actually exchange on that property there is no question about who they want to give that property to, because [our property manager] has built a relationship with them over the past 4-6 weeks,” he added.
While this prospecting only started in January 2012, Starr Partners Ryde is averaging 7.5 listings a month from just one strategy.
“We don’t have a property management meeting; our property manager sits in on the sales meeting. We all have the same mentality, not a sales mentality and a property management mentality,” Mr Bertram said.
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