4 Free Top Prospecting Ideas for REALTORs®
Build a Successful Real Estate Business and Lead Generate for Free
Learn 4 FREE ways you can prospect and get more clients as a REALTOR® fast. As a real estate agent, it can be a challenge coming up with new ways to lead generate and drive build stronger relationships with your sphere of influence.
Free Worksheet and 15 Top Ideas (DOWNLOAD)
Top producing real estate agents rely on a number of ways to prospect during their golden hours (dedicated prospecting time). Not every strategy works well and not every strategy works for every personality type. However, successful real estate agents follow a plan and they focus heavily on the activities that are producing the highest result.
Use these 4 free techniques to get more clients quickly.
Annual Real Estate Evaluation: This prospecting idea is one of the most powerful ways to stay in touch with those in your database, introduce yourself to your network as a new REALTOR®, and meet more potential clients. All you do is offer a annual real estate evaluation to anyone you know. If you are brand new, you will not have the list of previous clients, so reach out to family, friends, old colleagues, or anyone in your community and offer a free annual real estate evaluation. Once you have completed one or two of these, ask the people you completed one for if they know of anyone else who would like an annual real estate evaluation. Remember - if you say it is annual, put it in your calendar to do another one at the SAME TIME next year. People will grow to expect it.
Social Media Wave: This free technique is part of our friend Sean Carpenter’s Social Media High Fives. For one of his morning tasks, Sean recommends commenting on people’s posts in social media or starting conversations over a direct message. This idea is so powerful because it starts a conversation on social media. Likes are forgettable. Comments and messages are not.
Business Spotlight: As a REALTOR®, you are a top member of your community. Even if you are new, people will still see you as a community builder given the local nature of real estate. In your community, there are plenty of businesses that are always looking for creative ways to promote themselves. The Business Spotlight is a regular video, podcast, or blog where you interview and spotlight a business in your community. Not only is this fun and informative to your clients and community, but it also helps the local business. Furthermore, you are building relationships that could lead to real estate deals down the road. (Personal Business Spotlight Podcast: Ideas and Stuff)
The Handwritten Note: Isn’t it an amazing feeling to receive a handwritten note? It shows you are thinking of them and it will help strengthen your relationship with that person. If you are struggling with who to send the card to, just look at your calendar over the past few weeks and send one to everyone you saw and every establishment you went (coffee, restaurants, stores, etc). For content think “thank you”, “congrats”, “just thought of you”
There are 4 free prospecting ideas that can quickly make you into a successful real estate agent and help you get more clients quickly.
Follow Up Reading
15 Prospecting Ideas for Real Estate Agents
Build your Network as a REALTOR®
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Show Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Rev Real Estate School the show with quick tips and acti"onable advice to help you sell more real estate in today's world. And now your host Michael Montgomery.
[00:00:11] Hello and welcome back to Rev Real Estate School. My name is Michael Montgomery. Do you ever struggle with coming up with prospecting ideas that do not cost a ton of money and are free in this episode. I'm going to give you for prospecting ideas that you do not require a ton of money in order to do so let's jump right in.
[00:00:33] The first thing is we are not going to discuss what I call the big three which are the phone, text and e-mail and that's not because these three things aren't important. In fact they are the three most important parts of prospecting. However we do want to look at a few different ideas that you can put into place today in order to start prospecting and a little bit more unique ways.
[00:01:02] So let's jump in to Number One. Number one is the annual real estate evaluation. This is doing an annual CMA for everybody that is in your database and everybody that you want in your database. At times we forget about the whole "want" section and if we're brand new in real estate or if we're working with a smaller database or we've moved to a new town sometimes it can be a little challenging to have that number of people that are required to do a number of annual real estate evaluations. The big thing here is you do not need to have these people within your database. The other thing is you don't even need to know a ton of people because if you do this properly you can end up getting a number of new people enter your database just through doing an annual real estate evaluation. So let's say you're brand new. What can you say to people in order to ask them to do an annual real estate evaluation when potentially they're not in your database? It seems like it might be a little bit of a challenge to approach somebody and say "Hey can I do an evaluation on your home". There's a few different ways you can approach this. And the way that I like to do it is if you haven't already reminded them of course let them know that you're in real estate but if you have you can say hey I'm not sure if you're aware but I'm now in the real estate world and I am super excited.
[00:02:22] Now you'll notice there I didn't say I am "new in real estate". I said I am "now in real estate". And that was done thoughtfully. A lot of times people when they hear new brand new things like that they might get a little bit. Not necessarily but they might feel like there could be a lack of experience not always but they could. So instead of saying I'm "brand new" I like to say I'm not sure if you're aware but I'm now in real estate and then I always follow up that with I'm super excited or some level of excitement or enthusiasm to show your interest in the career. And then you can follow up and say you know as a service to my friends and family and future clients I offer an annual real estate evaluation on their property where I give you a pretty good idea of what your place would sell in today's current market. Would that be of interest to you and that's it. Simple. And most people will say yes to this if they say no no worries you can move right along. And then after you have completed it you can ask them if they know of anybody else who would like to receive one.
[00:03:25] So it's basically free now if you do do it. You can go and present their valuation to them in person. That's great. But I think in today's world it can be a little bit challenging for people to carve out the time in order to have you over and present the real estate evaluation . I would definitely do it in person because this can help your presentation skills but if there's somebody who maybe you want them to enter your database or you're getting to know them I would just drop it in the mail. I would put it in the mail and draft a nice little note associated with it and send it off to them. This can be such a great way to establish yourself as their real estate professional. And if they already have somebody who they're close with and they plan on using them again no worries it's still showing that you go over and above. So the annual real estate evaluation is probably one of the most important things you can do as a real estate agent throughout your whole career because it will continuously lead to more business. Consider doing that as a free prospecting idea in order to get more business.
[00:04:32] Number two the social media wave. So this comes from Sean Carpenter and his High Fives. Now he was on the show previously when we were a Modern Real Estate Radio and he is an awesome guy. He is amazing at working database systems. For High Fives, instead of focusing on just going onto social media and liking things we should focus a lot more on commenting and potentially even starting conversations and messenger or in DM's on on Instagram because this is truly what causes the conversation. Liking and reacting to things on Facebook not necessarily a bad thing and better than nothing but commenting on something really helps you become better known and I can think about my previous posts and oftentimes. Personally, I am going to remember those that have commented or have sent me a message afterwards especially a message. But of course you don't want to become too spammy so there's a there's a balance there which I think we'll all understand.. What I'd recommend it shoot for a shoot have a goal for yourself. So I would shoot for five to 10 and I would say maybe shoot for five comments and then five conversations that you start within messenger or as a DM. So that is a social media wave coming from Sean Carpenter's High Fives. He is an awesome resource. If you ever need to know anything about working your database.
[00:06:15] Moving right along to number three. This is the Business Spotlight. So you're a local member of a community and there are a ton of local businesses that want to get their name out there. So how can you help them. And you can do so by doing a business spotlight. So once a week you're going around your choosing a business potentially start with a business that you know and you're spotlighting them and that can be an audio form that can be in video form and that can be written and I can't think of many local businesses that I know that would say I don't want to get my name out there more. Most businesses are going to be open to this but come from a place of how you can help them. Oftentimes we can see through it when people are trying to do things that will benefit them and yes this will benefit you but you're actually doing it to help benefit the business owner and the whole concept behind there is the business owner does well you do well everybody does well so this can be a great free technique in order to build your network because you're meeting somebody new potentially within the community. Plus you're showcasing somebody in your community so you're establishing yourself as a community expert and you're helping somebody out.
[00:07:28] Number Four. I Think this is such an amazing idea for anybody newer in real estate or anybody who's looking for a free way in order to build your database and prospect number for one of the most powerful things the handwritten note. So this is basically free. I guess other than postage and the and the card but one of the things I notice with my agents is they wonder who do I send these cards to so I know the power of sending a nice handwritten card but who do I send them to if I don't have a huge database. Well one of the tricks that I like to use is just go back in your calendar and look what you've done over the past few days and anywhere where you've been out and about. Send them a card so if you went to a coffee shop if you went to a restaurant any of these sort of places you can send a card to this person who served you or to the business as a whole. So going back in your in your calendar and looking at what you did over the past few days can be such a powerful way to spark some ideas of who you can be writing these notes to. And of course people within your database everybody likes to receive one but again send them in a genuine way and be thankful or congratulate somebody. What about putting your business card in the card? I wouldn't say it's a rule but our guideline is if the person knows you and they're receiving a card and they know who you are then usually I wouldn't put it in because I'm just sending them a handwritten note to say thank you or congratulations. But if it's somebody who potentially doesn't know you then dropping a card in there can be really useful not only because they can reach out to you but also so they can say OK can I look this person up and of course they're going to look you up online. So having your online profiles reflect that you're in a real estate can be great.
[00:09:38] So those are your for free prospecting ideas the annual real estate evaluation the social media wave from Sean Carpenter's high fives business spotlight and the hand written note. If you'd like a few more prospecting ideas feel free to head to the show notes or go to www.revrealestateschool.com/tips/free-prospecting But that can easily be found in these show notes as well. And you can even download 15 awesome prospecting ideas directly on here as well. Thanks again for listening to this I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to tune in. And if you have any questions or you'd like to reach out you can always find us at real estate school dot com. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.
[00:10:23] This episode of Rev Real Estate School has come to a close. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you back here. Lesson.