Business is everywhere. Phone calls make it happen!!!!

Potential sales are everywhere.  I don’t care what kind of sales you are in.  There is always the possibility of obtaining a lead from your everyday life.  A rookie asked me today,” How do I get more leads.”  I guess when you are a rookie, leads seem so hard to come by.  Well, you can’t  sit and wait for it to come to you.  You have to go get it.  I make propsecting phone calls everyday.  I go through my list of people I know and I call them.  For agents who have been in the business a few years, they have become use to having old customers and clients call them.  I do.  I stay in touch by my mailing campaign.  But when you need to drum up more business, you have to call them or go see them.  You want these people in your sphere of influence to help you find more business.  “Hey Rick how is it going.  My freind Bob is thinking about selling his house”  That is the kinda lead I want.  I want a personal referral.

When the market is slower you have to prospect more.  Period.  Prospecting means talking to people.  Calling them.  Seeing them.  Talking about the real estate business.  Yesterday I was making calls in the morning to my list of people I know and leaving messages about properties I have for sale.  One guy called me back and offers to take me to lunch.  Well it turns out that he is in the market and we went to look at a home after lunch.  Another guy I had called, contacted me back and said his father wants to sell his property.

Bottom line.  I was not sitting in the office waiting for the phone to ring.  I was calling.  Make those prospecting calls each day.  You have to.  So if you find yourself just sitting at your desk doing nothing but waiting for the phone to ring or killing time.  Pick up the phone and call.  Call freinds, family, old clients, old prospects, For sale by owners, expired, vacant land owners, and investors.

Good Luck and remember if you have a referral for the Lake Norman area please contact me.  We will take great care of them.

Rick Knight

ERA Wilder Realty   1-888-892-7373 Ext 105

Lake Norman, Cornelius, Mooresville, Huntersville, Charlotte, Troutman, Denver NC

Virtual Tours should be mandatory

I love Virtual Tours on listings.  But what is surprising to me is how few agents use them.  I am putting them on all my house and condo listings.  Also I will be adding them for each land and lot listing.    I just got a listing that was an expired.  The previous agent had not used a virtual tour.  In the first 24 hours of taking the listing there were over 20 views of the tour.  Most tour vendors have traffic tracking that can be viewed and emailed to your clients.  What a great way to stay in touch with your seller.  Also on REALTOR.com you can use the traffic reports to see how many page views and how many times someone clicked on the tour.

So, it seems as web site traffic goes up the showings go up a week or so after.  And vice versa.  Another point is that when you are getting no showings but plenty of web traffic you have to discuss with the seller that the market is making other selections to go see and eliminating theirs.  I think REALTOR.com is a great tool for tracking web traffic of out of town buyers.  Most of the buyers I have spoken with that use REALTOR.com,  have started there but ended up changing to a local broker’s web site.

I just sold a condo site unseen except for the virtual tour and a youtube.com video.  So why not put them on every listing?  If you are a new agent, take the advise that you are going to put this in your budget for each listing.  The company I use is Visualtours and they charge $29.95 a month for unlimited tours.  The company I used before sent a photographer out and did everything for $75 a pop.  Either way I think our clients deserve the best Internet exposure.  It also help other agents preview the home for potential buyers.  I do that all the time.  When available.  I wish they were mandatory.  Set yourself from the pack and do tours on all your listings.  Most companies brag about tours but when you look at your mls you will see that most agents do not have them.

Good Luck.  And remember if you have a referral for the Lake Norman, NC area.  Please give me a call.  We will take care good care of your referral.  And use a virtual tour.

 

Rick Knight

1-888-892-7373 Ext 105