The simple answer is that buyers can be found everywhere.

Potential home buyers can be found all along your daily schedule. The clerk at the local convenience gasoline store could be a buyer or know of a potential home buyer. The person busy making you your morning bagel may be thinking of buying a home. The teller at your local bank taking your deposit or cashing your check may have thought about purchasing a house. How about the waiter or waitress at lunch? It is possible that they are now ready to buy. As you pull back into your drive way at the end of the work day, the neighbor you wave to as you enter your home might have a name of a relative looking to purchase a home.

Home buyers are scattered all through your busy day. The question you should be asking yourself instead of where can I find buyers, is do the buyers I encounter daily know I can sell them a home?

Did you hand your card to any of those potential buyers mentioned above? Did you invite them to check out you business Facebook page? Do they receive your monthly email newsletter?

My answer to new agents is that they already know hundreds of buyers; they just need to know you.

What can you do to not have this happen to you? Reintroduce yourself.

Reintroduce yourself to your family and friends

One of the first tasks I assign a new agent in my office, which may seem odd to them, is to mail out a handwritten card to their circle of friends and family. This is such an important step at my company that we provide cards to the new agents. This simple note is great way to say hello and to introduce your friends and family to their new real estate professional. Notice I said, “…their new real estate professional”? They already know and hopefully like you. People like dealing with people they know and trust so as long as you do your part and regularly remind them that you are a real estate agent, they will view you as theirs when they need one.

The note should be hand written. It should be short and sweet and include a business card. You might want to write a note similar to this:

Hi Uncle Jim,

If you have not already heard let me be the first to tell you I am now working as a full time real estate agent! The good news is I am working with a company that provides great training and education plus I can help anyone sell or buy a home anywhere in the world!

I am really excited about the future and would like it if you keep me in mind should you hear of anyone wanting to buy or sell a house.

I’ll call you in a few days to say hi.

All the best,

Mary NewAgent

It can be that simple. This note is going to people who already know you so there is really no need to cram many details into that first “professional “contact. You can share all of the exciting things you are learning about the services you provide in the follow up phone call and subsequent letters and emails.

Reintroducing yourself to your family and friends and maintaining contact with them on a professional level is a must if you want them to think of you as “their real estate agent”, otherwise you may find out, well after the fact that they never knew or forgot you were a real estate salesperson.

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Agent: Ok, that was 111 Main Street and who am I speaking with?

Customer: This is Mr. Just Looking.

Agent: Thank you Mr. Looking for calling our office. I am going to gather all of the available information for this home. This will take several minutes so instead having you remain on hold I will call you right back with 30 minutes. What is the best number to reach you?

This script is focused on getting the main information; why they have called, who are they and how can you reach them. Arranging to call them back within 30 minutes will allow you to also look for other property in the area of 111 Main St. in case the price of the home they called on is too high or the home is to big/small.

With this in mind I would  encourage everyone who has not been satisfied with their closed business to seriously consider enrolling in an industry related course or take some additional training offered by your board or office or pick up a DVD from an industry leader. You will pick up something new or have information refreshed in your mind with each course, training or DVD you attend or watch.   This will result in additional transactions, more money and a new level of success for you!

I asked the agents how they determined who the cards would be mailed to and discovered very quickly why the agents were meeting with the wrong home owners.  The bottom line is these agents were sending the cards out without researching the area first.   They were leaving their success completely to chance instead of increasing their odds for success by sending the cards to the right houses.  What are the right houses?

If you are sending a CMA card out to someone who purchased their home within the past 2-3 years you are probably going to be meeting with owners who have little or no equity.  If, however, you do the research and only send your cards to home owners that have owned their home for let’s say 10 years or longer, you have a better chance of helping these potential home sellers and obtaining a listing that can be sold.

So before you send out your first piece of direct mail ask yourself, are you reaching the right houses?

To those agents who would try and pass off their mistakes as just an old school way of doing business I would say, WRONG. Instead of old school the correct description would be wrong school. You were not properly taught or you ignore the instruction you received early on. The fact that it is the way you have always done it and nothing bad has happened as a result, does not excuse the fact that you are doing it, whatever it is, incorrectly.

Real professional old school agents have good reason to feel insulted when compared to sloppy, unprofessional agents who just do enough to get by and do so under the flag of being old school. There is a right way to do this business and it falls on both old school and new school agents to see that their business is being handled correctly.

Consistent role playing will have a huge impact on the success of our careers.  Practicing what to say and when to say it when dealing with buyers and sellers will give us the confidence and skill to handle the issues that arise during the course of our doing business.

Agents tend to shy away from role playing because of how uncomfortable it makes them feel.  This should not be a reason to not participate.  Experiencing a loss of comfort in order to pick up valuable tips, receive constructive criticism and improve your communication skills, from our peers, is better than freezing up or not knowing what to say when faced with the real situation.

Grab yourself a partner or ask your manager to work with you and role play.  You will find in time that practice does indeed equal production and success.

Having this knowledge will help you make adjustments to your business plan when needed.  For instance if your primary source of business is your center of influence, you may want to amp up your marketing and prospecting efforts increasing the number of times you make contact with those in your COI.  At the same time if you find that you are not receiving leads or you are receiving very few leads from sign calls, you may need to increase your listing efforts in order to have more signs out in the community.  You may also find it a benefit to broaden your market area in order to list and have signs in areas where there is higher visibility.

All of these steps will help increase your business but none can be accomplished unless you have systems in place that keep you aware of where your business originates from.  There are many products available to help you track your source of business.  Start tracking your source of business today in order to keep business flowing tomorrow and beyond.

Photo by anyjazz65
What you accomplished or failed to accomplish in 2008 will soon be history. 

 If you are not satisfied with your real estate career accomplishments in 2008 then you have a choice.  You can spend all of your energy in 2009 repeating what was unsuccessful for you or you can choose a different course of action. 

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” George Santayana

Will you spend 2009 repeating what you did in 2008?  Is it time for a good long hard look at your current business plan?  Combing through your existing plan adjusting, tweaking and improving those elements that produced results and trash canning those areas of your plan that did nothing but waste your valuable time and failed to produce a single client.

Is it time to ask for help, guidance and assistance from your Broker?  Can you really afford to put off adding to or improving your skill set?  Is it time to hire a coach?  Attend a conference or seminar?  Find a mentor?  Perhaps you need to take another look at the internet.  Do you have a website that you never work on?  Have you been meaning to get around to blogging?

2009 will have its own set of challenges on a national economic and housing level.  You can control how you respond to these challanges.  There will be successful real estate careers started and continued in 2009 just as there were in 2008.  Will your career be one of them?