Real Estate is one of the easiest industries to grow a database. You are meeting new people every day! Sellers, buyers along with locals coming and going from open homes. But are you getting the most out of these contacts?
Are you getting the most out of this advantage?
Looking at cold calling as lead generation can be a slow process. But look at a database of contacts that already know you it becomes a warm call as lead generation and suddenly you are already one step closer to closing the deal!
Lose the mindset associated with where these contacts have come from – ‘They have already sold, ‘They have already bought now’, or, ‘They were just having a look at next door’.
Instead, think about these contacts as future referral systems! They might have sold their property, but what about their friends and family? If they valued your assistance in selling their home they might know family that could use that same assistance.
If you assisted them in finding and buying their dream home then don’t they become a perfect advocate for you assisting someone else needing help in this area!
If a family takes time out of their day to come and look through a home there is every chance that while they might not be on the market today, they might just be thinking about it in the near future…
Thinking about the extended reach for referrals that comes from your already existing database maintaining these relationships is the key to ongoing return and referral business.
Over the years we have had many conversations relating to this with not only real estate agents but many other businesses. The main obstacles that seem to be faced with maintaining these relationships are consistency and time. If your thinking ‘Who has the time to make contact with people that might not lead to anything in the near future?’ What you need to be thinking is ‘Who has the time NOT to turn contacts into leads!’
Be it 30 mins a week or 30min a day very bit helps. Using a wide range of medium’s to maintain the relationship is not only important in keeping fresh it can also assist with the time management of the whole process. Utilising emails, text messaging, letters (yes snail mail) along with phone calls, time maintains your brand in the front of mind for all your contacts.
Adminlink Plus assists our clients in doing this, the steps we go through with our clients are:
- Take the time to look at your database workout the 3 or 4 main groups that you want to foster, sellers, investors, referral potential would be a great start. Think about each group, how many people are currently in each group? How many do you want in each group? How much time will need to be invested to achieve this? How much time do you have to invest?
- Next look at each group on their own, look at what you are doing now to foster relationships with these contacts, how can you grow on that? Put together a plan for each group that allows you to maintain the required contact and what forms of contact are going to be the most effective. By the end of this you should have a plan of action for each group you want to target.
- One step that is often forgotten, monitoring the results! Before you even start the plan in action take the time now to know what you are wanting to achieve in 1month, 3months, 6months… once you know what you want to achieve you will be able to work out what you need to be monitoring to achieve them! Have it written down so you remember why you’re doing this.
- Now you have your plans, you know what you want to achieve and you have your process for monitoring. Now you’re ready to get started! But first one important step! Take your calendar out and block out time to complete each task and when it is going to happen. Not just this week, every week! Make it a reoccurring task so it doesn’t get forgotten.
- Once the process is started you will have fine tuning needed and changes as you find what does and does not work, but the biggest thing of all is that you are doing something! Your database is now an active form of marketing and not a pack of dead leads and useless names.
- The biggest piece of advice we can give you would be KEEP GOING! When you are busy slow it down a little, when your quiet ramp it up. But don’t stop! Once you stop you will have to start again with only material, and you will lose all your hard work.
With the Do Not Call Register (DNC) affecting how many cold calls are able to be achieved in suburbs your database and ability to generate leads via past contacts is more important than ever! A prime example of this a database we completed for a client recently, it was a cold database so was required to be washed with the DNC, the database was 1000 phone numbers and from this only 526 were able to be called. If you have an active database of 1000 clients that you maintain relationships with your chances of success is much greater!
One of the most popular services Adminlink Plus offers our clients is our client contact, through Call ‘n’ connect. We complete countless calls for clients every week, as a part of their team. Maintaining that relationship on a 1 on 1 basis to ensure our clients are free to use their time wisely. Our clients can then focus on the leads that are being generated without having to be bogged down with the maintenance of the process. If you are finding maintaining these relationships is becoming too much, don’t give up on it! Instead, contact us today for some tips on how to make this process work for you.