In real estate, there are several ways to generate leads...some more effective than others. All approaches will usually fall into two categories. They are either proactive or passive at their basis. Proactive is defined as a person, policy, or action creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened. Passive is defined as accepting or allowing what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance. So, clearly, we are going to have more influence over the results when we're proactive in our activities. This would be a good time to take a look at what you've been doing to generate leads and determine which category most of your prospecting efforts fall within. What we often discover is many of the approaches we're using are passive, thus contributing to slow responses and lower quality leads.
Let's first look at some of the passive ways leads could be generated. They would be sitting open houses, talking up calls or sometimes referred to as floor time, buying internet leads, or running ads in various types of media. Keep in mind these are easily identified as we are usually waiting for something to happen and do not have any control over what will happen. This is where many agents find themselves focused. Some of the proactive approaches would be calling into your database for referrals, calling on for sale by owners, expired listings or knocking on doors. We can clearly see the difference here as all of these examples are direct attempts to identify a motivated candidate to buy or sell real estate. Obviously, it's easy to see why most agents find themselves drawn into the passive activities; they believe it will avoid a lot of rejection and confrontation, true! Unfortunately, there is a price to be paid either way...take on the rejection (be more proactive) and make money or go the passive route, yes, avoid rejection and in the process income opportunity is lost too. We want to be very aware of how we're going about generating business, what category we're spending most of our efforts in and manage our expectations accordingly.
As much as I am not a huge fan of any kind of passive approach to selling real estate, many agents do open houses on a regular basis. Especially when starting out in the business. When I first started, I would do an open house on Saturday and Sunday until I had enough buyers to show all day Saturday (10a 1p and 4p) then I would do one only on Sunday. So, if agents are going to them, there are some actions that we can take to increase our odds of having a more successful outcome.
Let's go over the four stages to holding a proactive & productive open house.
Stage 1 - The Selection Process - This matters, do your homework
The 3 L's - location, location, location. Simple, let's make sure the home is a desirable listing. Favorable curb appeal - if the house is ugly, people will pull up and drive off, priced properly, buyers' are educated… and good school districts are a big draw.
While speaking a location, In a perfect world, multiple access points to draw in traffic. Ideally, you will be able to pull from multiple major traffic streets that feed into the neighborhood.
If you don't have a listing to hold open, maybe check with your manager/broker to see if there is any reason you couldn't ask an associate in your office or company wide if you could hold their listing open (prospecting :) If you don't already know who the top agents listing homes are in your office, get to know them and let them know what you are looking to do open houses. Ask keep me in mind when the opportunity presents itself.
Stage 2 - Pre-Open House Activities
Pull all of your sales data and know the area inside and out. Also, it would be a good idea to know what is going on in the areas surrounding the subject property that would be considering the competition. The broader your awareness, the higher level conversations you will be able to have when you're meeting visitors to the open house. This will separate you from your competition as they will recognize you know your stuff - it will be a deeper conversation vs. the other agents skimming the surface and only able to make small talk. Simple idea and yet many of us go through the motions unprepared.
Make it an event - Yes, we want to do all we can to bring attention to the open house. If we are going to hold the open on Sunday
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