18 May 2008

Don’t read this at the office!

Posted by Jerry Kidd under: Sales Tips .

In fact, don’t do anything in the office at all!  Except to meet your clients who want to meet in the office, attend office meetings and other management required office attendance.  Other than that, you need to be spending your time where the clients are…and I have a news flash for you…they aren’t in your office.

If you have attended my Tech tools, Mobile Office or business development classes, you have heard me tell you that you might want to consider working from Starbucks or Peets or the Mall or some other public place. I’ve even devoted large portions of all of my GRI training classes to this topic.

I have spoken of an article that appeared on the front page of the Sunday San Francisco Examiner a little over a year ago that went on, at great length, about the new wave of business people who actually operate entire companies, as well as those just starting companies, from local coffee shops.  Here is a link to that article.  Go read it and then come back, because we have some work to do after you do.

Interesting article wasn’t it?  After I read that, I spent some time thinking about how we could best take advantage of that phenomenon and here is what I think that you should do:  STOP SPENDING TIME AT THE OFFICE.  Your future clients are NOT at your office.  Instead, they are out and about, busy leading their lives.  It seems to me that we need to be where they are.  In order to do that, you need to set up a mobile office.  I have many posts on this blog that cover the ways to do that, just go up into the upper right corner and use the search feature to find what you want, or browse the Archives.

Basically, the scenario is this, you show up at Starbucks and set up your laptop, portable printer and portable scanner and do what you would normally do while in the office.  The research, the paperwork, the return calls, writing personal notes, file maintenance and so on.  If you need to make copies, do it at Kinkos… there is always a ton of people there. This works even better if you have the nerve to wear your name badge, or company logo wear or even set out your desk plate with your name and the company logo on it.

Why does that make this work better?  Because it will invite someone to come up and ask you if you are in real estate.  Your answer will be “why yes, thank you for asking.”  As we know, in most cases they will then ask…”How’s the market?”.  And if you’ve been to any of the classes I mentioned above, you will know that I like the old Tommy Hopkins line “Unbelievable!  Are you thinking of buying or selling?”  From there you are off to the “races”.

How much time, money and effort do you spend chasing after new business?  Wouldn’t it be better to also be available for the chance encounter with someone who might be in the market?  So, get up and get out of the office.  Figure out where people are congregating and you be there too with your portable office so that you can show MLS information, write and print contracts and generally be the neighborhood real estate resource that people need and want.

See you at Starbucks!

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