Thread: Need some advice.....

Try advertising your broker's listings. Most likely your broker has a bunch of his/her own listings and no time to work on them. Ask for permission to treat those listings as your own (my inderstanding is, you are doing open houses on your broker's listings). And business will come to you.

1. Make a sign in sheet with an optional free home search on it.

2. Tell everyone that comes in the door that you need to document everyone that comes into the home. If they do not want to sign the sheet tell them they must leave.

3. If you have a laptop with a wireless connection I would have the mls available to show people other homes in the area.

4. Be personable with everyone that comes in the door. They will be more willing to talk with you.

5. Make sure that everyone that walks in the home walks out with your business card!!!

One thing I see too little of is genuine public education.
The average person knows very little about real estate agency laws
and many people have had bad experiences or gotten their info
from the media.
Offer free seminars (or change a nominal fee to make it seem more
valuable). Let people know the value of having a real estate professional
work for them for free as a buyer's agent or reveal the value (services
rendered by a listing agency). Speak in front of groups at churches,
etc. If you know someone in the group, it will lend credence to your
presentation.
I would also recommend old fashioned door to door neighborhood
canvassing. Drop by flyers (it could be to announce your seminar
or services) and strike up conversations. People do not get enough
person to person contact. Think of modern day customer service
over the phone and the interactive voice response systems we
all get. Give em a real person.

Make sure you are doing consistent mailings to your soi. You need to constantly be in front of them so that they won't forget you.

Are there any top agents in your office that you could be a buyer's agent for? Most top agents have leads coming in left and right and can't handle them all.

I feel your frustration and have been there myself. You stated you're not sure what to do other than go door-to-door. Iggy mentioned that it wouldn't be a bad idea and I agree, but he also provided you with a way to do it so you and they don't feel awkward. Have a reason to meet people even if you have to create the reason.

In my early days I attended a "boot camp" for Realtors. Spent about $1000 that I didn't have, to learn how to generate leads. They started us off with cold calling out of the phone book (don't forget to scrub the list against DNC lists). I know this sounds horrible and people don't want to do it, but you know what? I generated a listing from the cold calls. We only did the cold calls for about a week, and the main purpose in the training was to start from the ground up- if you don't have any other ways to generate the leads...then do what you have to.

I became successful converting FSBO's , but didn't do so great on expired listings- everyone is different. Not sure if you're trying to focus on buyers or listings, but listings will normally find you buyers and in the past I have found that many would be buyers are actually sellers in hiding (they can't afford 2 mortgages so need to sell their home before they can actually buy a new one).

I also recommend that you wear a uniform, and by that I mean wear a shirt or name tag that instantly shows people you are a Realtor. You'd be surprised about how many people will notice.

As some of the members told that you should ask everybody to sign-in or leave. That may backfire as you may annoy some of your potential clients but also, lot of people will sign-in and give you wrong information. Wrong information is even worst than having no information. Even if somebody have given right info, they will not entertain you as they were annoyed. Information collection have to be fully optional and visitor should have no pressure so to provide their personal info name , phone email etc.

But yes, you can request the users to leave their information. IF somebody leaves you can trust it. If someone don't leave still its good (that person would have left wrong info anyway)


Hope this help. For you listing promotions use iHomeX.com. You can post your listings for free. Build the Flyers and Email and Print the flyers. Handout the flyers to everybody who comes to your Open Houses. All for Free.

Hope this helps

I agree about making people sign in at the open house. Tell them the owner requests a list of who's been through the home for security purposes. However, I've found that many people just sign with false information.

Buyers give wrong info on the sign-in sheet? Wow... that's unusual. Never happened to me (I do an open house every weekend). Why give wrong info (unless a realtor looks intimidating)?

What did happen to me often is when I follow up with an email or a call, people tell me they are not interested in buying anymore... Perhaps, they never were? Fine by me