This week’s post appears originally on this blog as a two part post in April and May of 2010. I have updated them and consolidated them in to one post. If you want to read the original posts, you can find them here:
I have long held the belief that in order for me to be happy in my business life, that I really need to work with people that I like and to avoid those people who seem to make it their mission in life to grind down my soul.
I discovered that working for other people as an employee makes it difficult to avoid the people I don’t like. After all, if I become an employee, then my employer gets to dictate who I work with. When I became an employee in the real estate business, I soon discovered that I needed to be a manager, in part because I could then hire the people that I wanted to work with or at least compartmentalize the ones that I didn’t like.
As an independent contractor though, this process can be very easy…or extremely difficult. The choice is yours. The path to easy lies in a solid, effective plan for prospecting for the type of client that you want. Such a plan needs a few components:
- It needs to be actionable
- It needs to be realistic
- It needs to be done with reasonable frequency (Everyday!)
- It needs to be effective
- It needs to be enjoyable
- It needs to be inexpensive or free (Especially if you are starting out)
If you can implement such a plan, finding the right people to work with can be an easy and enjoyable process. If you don’t have a plan, then you get to work with whoever shows up wanting to work with you! And that will bring you turkeys as well as eagles!
Wouldn’t it be nice if we always had a steady stream of prospective clients moving towards us as we move towards them? Well, wouldn’t it?
Why is it important to have clients that we like? Because life is too short to put up with people that grind our souls. You know who they are…you’ve even had a few in the past. You may even be working with one now.
Time to get off of that bus, now. Fire the turkeys and look for the eagles.
So much for your side of the story. But what is it like for the prospect trying to choose someone to “hire”?
If they are looking for a REALTOR®, they can look at magazine and newspaper ads, they can ask friends for a recommendation, they can visit open houses, they can rely on past transactions, they can visit web sites or they can use social tools.
Although all of the above methods work, the one that I believe benefits both the REALTOR® and the consumer is the social tools method. And here is why:
For the REALTOR®, the social tools method covers every one of the requirements of a good prospecting plan (see above).
But the consumer also benefits if the REALTOR® has done a good job of filling out their social graph.
The consumer can interact with the REALTOR® long before they are ready to transact. That interaction will give them the time to study the REALTOR’s® past performance, response time, marketing plans, resources and other tools that a REALTOR® uses to practice their craft.
You as a REALTOR® also get to examine the potential client as they interact with you! You can spot a turkey a mile off by using the social tools to look at them as well! Over time, birds of a feather will flock together!
Here’s how I suggest that you go about it. First, let’s start with the premise that in order for people to want to do a transaction with you (assuming that they have choices) they have to TRUST you. They have to trust that you are the right person for the job, that you have their best interests at heart and that you will help them get to the goal they are seeking.
In order for people to trust you, they have to LIKE you. I can hear some of you say that you have trusted people that you didn’t like. Really? Really trusted? Maybe so, but for most of us, trust comes from liking.
In order to like you, people have to get to KNOW you. How do we do that in everyday, face to face life? By finding them, meeting them and interacting with them. By sharing things about our lives and being interested in their lives. And over time this leads to liking … or not. Liking leads to to trust and trust, for us, leads to transactions.
The good news that I bring you today is that social tools make all of this a reality and do it in a way that hits every one the points made above.
Here are the social tools platforms that I think a REALTOR® should consider adopting:
Have a website or a blog. The blog is preferred over a website because it gives you the ability to update it with current information, showcase current listings and past transactions, solicit feedback, have private areas for clients where you can provide information relative to a transaction and more. You could do that on a website, but you’d be contacting or paying a webmaster every time you wanted to make a change. You’d also miss out on the fact that blogs generally rank higher in search engines than do static web sites, the fact that a blog can be totally free or trivially inexpensive, the fact that blogs can be subscribed to and the fact that blogs can foster community by eliciting comments and feedback. On the downside, you have to continually “feed” a blog…it needs fresh content to remain relevant and to keep people interested.
Have a presence on Facebook. Facebook has three faces. It has the personal profile and it also offers Facebook Groups and finally a business has the opportunity to create a business (fan) page. The personal profile is where you can connect with family and friends, to share items of personal interest and to reconnect with people that you may have drifted away from. The Group is where people sharing a common interest can interact with each and share content. Think of this as a neighborhood clubhouse. The business or fan page is where you connect with customers and potential customers. It operates much like a personal profile page in that it has a “wall” where you can post things that spark conversation and where others can contribute to the conversation. You can do so much more with a Facebook business page. Things like share listings, showcase past sales, describe your services, show videos and photos and much, much more. Think of your business page as your blog or website inside of facebook.
The Facebook group can do many of the things that a Business/fan page can do, but has the advantage of letting members interact with each other!
Build out your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn started out as a place for headhunters and job seekers to connect with each other and has grown from there to be a place where professional people congregate. If you imagine Facebook personal profiles to be a backyard barbecue, then you can imagine LinkedIn to be a Chamber of Commerce Mixer. LinkedIn gives you the perfect venue to showcase your past accomplishments (think very detailed resume), as well as a place to search out people that you’d like to meet…like the HR Director of that company who is moving people in and out of your market area.
Start using Twitter. Twitter offers you the opportunity to have short conversations with many people in a very compact period of time. There are tools available that allow you find and connect with people based on demographic criteria that you choose. You may wish to find people in a zip code, or community. Perhaps you’d like to find people who are talking about moving or buying or selling a home. Twitter gives you that ability.
The next thing that comes up is time. Where will you get the time to do all of this? I’d like to trivialize this, but the truth is that you will have to expend some time. But, instead of dismissing these tools because of time constraints, why not take a good hard and honest look at how you allocate your prospecting time now. What is working for you? What is not working for you? Take the things that are working and continue with them. But stop doing that which isn’t working and start looking for ways to fold social tools into whatever you are currently doing that is producing results.
And if after you have honestly evaluated your time expenditures and find that you really aren’t consistently prospecting for new business, why not start now? The social tools that I outlined here can all be used, or you can select the ones that resonate for you. Anyone one of them can fulfill the criteria that I laid out above. If you can do them all, I believe that you will be able to be selective about the clients you work with sooner rather than later.
If you need help in setting these up, strategizing how to utilize them, or just need some help in getting your business up and running (or back on it’s feet), feel free to contact me. It’s what I do these days!
