Have you ever wondered why it can be so hard to get market share or gain loyalty from potential clients?
Have you questioned why you end up missing business you thought should, or could, have been yours?
Throughout any given year, I do a stocktake with my clients and look up the last quarter of sales in their core area to run an analysis on the millions that have been missed.
The analysis consists of three key metrics:
- Did the agent have the listing opportunity but the owners chose another agent?
- Does the agent know them (in the database) and either appraised in the past or did not get to the appraisal/listing stage?
- Is it that the agent doesn’t know the owners and winning the listing was never a possibility?
The most recent exercise I did with one of my clients uncovered 23 sales. Four were missed to another agent, 10 were in the database and he didn’t know the other nine.
The most disappointing metric was the 10 he knew.
The problem? A lack of proactive contact and follow up.
He had no clue that something had changed for them and they were ready to sell.
We calculated a loss of over $27 million in sales value and a potential $450,000 in fees.
So how do you get on top of this and harness the missing millions?
As an industry, we need to be smarter about proactive follow up and decide on a technology that will keep it simple and help maximise this revenue.
Step 1
Consistency and frequency of contact increase your chances of knowing when something has changed for the property owner. You need to apply the two-phase follow up method.
Time-based – an agreed timeframe for your next proactive touch point. This should be based on the conversation that has been had or the situation at hand.
Things can change very quickly, and that touch point should be based on the prospective vendor’s situation. But don’t wait longer than six months.
Event-based – use listings and sales as events to trigger the next proactive conversation. This gives you a purposeful and relevant reason to reconnect and will bring forward the next touch point.
A combination of the two is absolutely the right recipe.
Step 2
Choose technology to automate and harness the missing millions. Don’t over complicate this, decide to use either your CRM or your email provider.
If you are not yet a database convert, then using Outlook or Gmail is the next best thing.
Step 3
Attach one future task to each of your property owners and add it to your CRM or email calendar.
Rather than clog up your calendar with multiple tasks each day, add just one task, title it ‘today’s follow up’ and include the names of who you need to connect with in the description.
Step 4
If you have provided an appraisal in the past, make sure the details are attached to the contact, including the price range.
This is a fast and easy way to pull up all of your contacts in a certain appraisal range every time a listing or a sale is made that is similar to the appraisal. It gives you a purposeful reason to call those contacts.
Your CRM will have this feature and on email, you can add the property owners details to the contacts section and use the ‘labels’ feature. Create several price range labels for appraisals ie: $1-$2 million.
Step 5
Build the habit of actioning your tasks or follow up!
Now that you have automated your reminders, the technology will tell you who you need to be calling each day.
The best approach is to print the list from your CRM or calendar first thing, then you can make these calls in your first prospecting block or take it on the road and make calls on the go.
If you were to do your own stock take, what would you find? How different could your business be? It’s time to claim these missing millions!
