If what you have planned this week does not include prospecting and marketing for new leads, then you should rework your plan. Nothing you do during your business week is more important than adding new names to your contact management system. The ways to generate real estate buyer and seller leads have not changed very much over time. Floor duty, open houses, just listed and just sold cards and letters, calling expired listings, calling FSBO, calling family and friends, advertising in the newspaper are several of the tried and true ways to increase your business. Today savvy agents are also taking advantage of the internet through blogging, personal website and lead generating companies to increase their business.

Make this week less about the non important stuff and more about lead generation and you will reap the benefits!

The initial training was so successful Watson Realty will be offering agents a chance to attend a second training scheduled for January 12, 2012.

Ongoing training is essential for real estate agents who take their career seriously and seek to to increase their bottom line.

You may want to try writing about something else. People go to the internet to find things, places, or events in their community. These are the same things, places or events that you already go to or have found.

• Where can you get take out Chinese?
• Where can I find a cheap used car?
• Where can I find a clothing donation drop off box?

Those are 3 examples that showed at the top of my Google search when I typed in; “Where can I find Kissimmee”. It just so happens I know where there is good Chinese take out in the area, I know a couple of honest reliable used car salesmen in the area and I can point you to 2 or 3 different drop off locations for your donations.

With this local information, I can write a short, informative blog post that others will find useful. I’ll provide directions, perhaps post a picture or two, offer a review and anything else that matters to me, because there is a good chance it will matter to the reader of my post as well.

“Helping people find things” blog posts are a good way to brand you as a real estate agent who knows the local community. Over time people who visit your blog will see you as a great source of information, not only about where to find things, but about the community in general, including the real estate market. The next time you are stuck on what to write, give this a try. I think you will find that sharing of this type of information is much easier to put on paper.

•  How about spending the morning uploading your most recent contacts to your contact management system and then create a new drip email campaign or newsletter? 
• The early hours are a perfect time to add something new and interesting to your Facebook business page. 
• Blogging in the a.m. is a perfect time to let people starting their day know how the market is or where the best coffee can be found in town. 
• Thank you cards can be written while the sun is rising, just remember to ask for the referral. 
• Visit Twitter or local community forums and see if there are area specific questions from the night before left unanswered. 
• Finish up your neighborhood newsletter while eating your bagel.

Any of these task could result in a new buyer or seller for you and can be accomplished at the crack of dawn.  It is a great way to get a head start on  your competition and will set the course for a productive day!

What are some of your suggestions for prospecting at the crack of dawn?

Safe is for sissies.

The Florida Bar Association has a program that allows you to request attorneys to speak at group meetings.  I took a look at the different topics available and noticed that there were attorneys available to discuss intellectual property rights and laws. To me, that was a perfect topic that would go hand in hand with my goal of getting more of my agent’s marketing and prospecting online.  It could also seriously backfire and I could end up having agents falling asleep and out of their chairs or worse, boycott any future meetings on principal.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Stephen Luther, a Patent Attorney with Allen, Dyer, Doppelt, Milbrath & Gilchrist, P.A. in Orlando was our presenter recently and he did an amazing job!  His presentation lasted a little over an hour.  He kept it easy enough for the agents to understand, encouraged them to ask questions and did a good job relating the material back to what we experience in our day to day real estate business.  Some of the key points for me were:

• As independent contractors, agents own the pictures they take of their listings.
• Agents need to carefully choosing slogans they want to trademark making sure they are not too general.  For instance the “best real estate agent” would not hold up well as a trademark.
• The usefulness of a DNCA takedown letter when someone has posted your real estate pictures or content without permission.
• The difference between a ® (federally registered)  and a ™​  (no registration required)

I would encourage Brokers to have similar speakers at their meetings especially as more agents venture online.  Having a basic understanding of what can and cannot be done as it relates to copyright and trademark laws could prevent bigger problems down the road.

I encourage the agent to select a house from one of our many office listings or to use their personal house as the subject property. By doing this “homework” ahead of time, the new agent will become familiar with the contracts and related addendums. This will serve to their advantage when meeting buyers and sellers during the beginning of their career.

Some of the best ways to draw attention to a listing are;

• Hold an open house and invite everyone in the neighborhood and surrounding apartment complexes.

• Send information flyers to agents that have sold houses in that neighborhood over the past 12 months.

• Take full advantage of Realtor com. Upload the maximum number of pictures allowed and provide a detailed description of the house.

• Advertise the house on Craigslist Orlando

• Place information flyers in the mailboxes of your office agents.

• Talk with the seller about weekly price adjustment or enhancements.

Pricing is a huge part of why homes sell today. Take a look at sales and new listings within the past month to confirm your price and then make corrections as needed.

Using the information you have provided me, I am attaching a list of homes that match or closely match your criteria. After you have reviewed the homes on the list, let me know which ones you would like to visit.

The majority of sellers in our market require that buyers, who will be financing their home, provide them with a letter of pre-qualification or pre-approval. Please send me your letter of pre-qualification or financing approval for my file, if you have yet to speak to a lender, I can arrange for someone to call you today.

Thank you and do not hesitate to call with any question or concern.

Hello Mr. Distressed, My name is Greg Staker and I am with Watson Realty Corp. I will assume that you are busy so I will be brief.

I am calling homeowners in our area to talk about the benefits of short selling their home.

Are you familiar with how a short sale works? I have found that many people are not aware of this option when they find themselves upside down on their mortgage. Simply put, a short sale is the process where the owner can sell their home for less than what is owed to their lender.

Is this something you would be interested in learning more about?

Keeping it short and to the point on the telephone reduces the stress the home owner might experience talking to a complete stranger about their personal financial situation. Getting to the point and offering to explain a potential option for them, should result in more face to face meetings with distressed homeowners in your area.

 Once every other month or so a 4^th quartile producer in my office will tell me about a contact they made through some form of print media they are using.  Their update will almost always include them telling me the new contact proves that print advertising still works.

 But will it lead to success?

 The 2010 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers completed by NAR reports that only 2% of buyers use print media when starting their home search.  2%.  The same amount of buyers who utilize the very productive “home buyer seminar”. (Insert sarcasm)

 It is important to identify and learn how to use the right tools if you wish to succeed in the real estate sales business.  With the majority of home buyers starting their home search online, an obvious tool you should be using is the internet.  You do not have to be an internet celebrity to enjoy success through your efforts.  You just need to know where buyers and sellers are and then be there.  That sounds similar to the way this business has always been done successfully, even prior to computers.