Last week I talked about buying leads, https://realtytechbytes.com/is-it-luck-hard-work-or-skills.
This week I want to take a different approach.
If you take a look at the graphic you’ll see that 51% of Buyers found the home that they purchased on the Internet. Only 30% found them via the agent they previously used!
If you look at the stats below, you’ll see that 89% of sellers used an agent to help them sell their home.
If we look at how sellers found their agent we find a disconnect:
67% of Sellers say that they would definitely use the same agent again, yet only 23% of them used the agent that had previously helped them!!!
41% of them found their agent via a referral from family or friends!!!
Home Seller Statistics
- The typical home seller in 2016 was 55 years of age, had a median household income of $103,300, and lived in their home for 10 years.
- 89% of sellers were assisted by a real estate agent when selling their home.
- Recent sellers typically sold their homes for 99% of the listing price, and 22% reported reducing the asking price at least once.
- The typical home sold was on the market for 3 weeks.
- 41% of sellers who used a real estate agent found their agents through a referral by friends or family, and 23% used the agent they previously worked with to buy or sell a home.
- Sellers who definitely would use same agent again: 67%
Source: 2017 National Association of REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers
This is disturbing to me because of the lost opportunity it represents. Even if we account for corporate relocations, inter family transfers and other reasons, we still have a huge missed opportunity for us to leverage past clients and family and friends.
Why? What are we missing here?
Here’s my take on the issue. Many of the agents that I come into contact with on a daily basis are transactional. That is, they concentrate on getting that next transaction from people that they don’t yet know. Open house, mailers, buying leads etc.
A few of the most successful agents that I know (and after 31+ years in the business, I know many of them) are relational based for the most part. They concentrate on building a referral based business. I think that they have taken the NAR research to heart and have recognized the opportunity there.
So, it seems to me that the opportunity lies in being mostly relational instead of being mostly transactional.
Here are a few pointers on how I see us fixing this issue.
- Create a database of all of your past clients, even if they moved away. Include as much contact and personal info as you can
- Add in your friends, family, past co-workers from when you were another industry. Include as much contact and personal info as you can
- When you add someone to your database, include tags so you can sort them later. For instance you might want to track how you know them, what they bought from you, what you sold for them and so on.
- Start contacting them!
- You can use an email newsletter if all you have is an email address!
- If all you have is a mailing address, start writing hand written notes!
- If all you have is a phone number, call them!
This isn’t rocket science. You can get email newsletters from many sources…just do a Google search here: Real Estate Newsletters Search
A handwritten note could be holiday greetings, birthday greetings or something as simple as “Hi John- I was thinking of you and your family recently and wondering how you were doing. Let’s get together for coffee sometime soon to catch up. Please give me a call and we’ll set something up” include a few business cards and you are done! Pro Tip: DON”T use the company provided note card and envelopes. Instead buy some notecards that “you” and hand write them and hand write the envelope. Use a real stamp. Doing so increases the chances that it will actually get opened!
If all you can do is to call, then do so! Use the same script (Leave off the part of them giving you a call if you catch them live!) as the handwritten note above.
If you start doing this, by whatever method you can then you will turn up some business … unless you have a very tiny database! But even so, get started as your database will grow over time.
If you think all of this is too old school for you and you want to catch the digital people in your life, great! Include the social media connection information in your database. Then start reaching out to those people by following them and commenting on things that they post. Who doesn’t like to see that the things they post are liked by their friends and contacts?
I’m not suggesting that you stop what you are currently doing to get business (Unless it isn’t working) but I am suggesting that add in relational approaches so you can stay top of mind when the people in your database find themselves in need of a real estate agent.
Or, you can keep on doing what you have been doing. It’s really up to you!
