In his last article, Eddie Cetin explained how to mine the gold in your database through targeted email marketing. In this article he reveals how you can rapidly grow a healthy database with little effort while positioning yourself to win more listings.
I’m hearing stories around Australia about how markets are tightening, and it is certainly becoming more challenging to keep your numbers up. The good news is that there is now more help than ever to enable you to be a gun at the fundamentals of becoming a high-performing agent.
The fundamentals are:
- Capturing all enquiries
- Engaging at open houses
- Follow-ups
- Vendor reporting
We all know that buyers are sellers and sellers are buyers, so how do we provide premium service to both in the limited time we have? Well, it all comes down to streamlining your processes and eliminating as many time-wasting activities as possible through technology.
ENQUIRIES
This is one area where you can gain significant improvement quite quickly. An efficient open home starts by capturing property enquiries throughout the week. You can then use this information to not only speed up the data capture process while at the open house but to provide you with a better overview of the clients who attend and the clients who don’t.
Most CRMs will now accept a direct feed of all buyer and tenant enquiries from realestate.com.au and domain.com.au straight into the database. This ensures that you are not relying on any manual entry from emails and links the contact to the listing for your buyer pipeline.
Make sure that all phone enquiries are entered into a simple central form in your CRM and then distributed to agents for follow-up. All these enquiries would then flow into running an efficient open for inspection.
OPEN HOMES
There is now a selection of mobile solutions to run an efficient open home. I admit it does take a certain knack to engage with people at the door while tapping on a tablet or phone, but those who make the effort do make the most impact. It is increasingly becoming the standard for an agent to do so and prospective sellers are taking note.
With all the enquiries streaming in prior to the open, it is the fastest way to capture details and welcome attendees through the door. As you start typing their name or number their details come up immediately.
Below are the key advantages of using a digital open-for-inspection process.
- Ability to send a quick SMS immediately to everyone who attends
- Record all feedback directly into the CRM (no time wasted later)
- Ability to send brochures and contracts instantly from your mobile device
- Send your vendor or landlord a quick summary report instantly
Look for a CRM that gives you live access to all aspects of your database and also has integration with popular apps, such as Homepass and Inspect Real Estate, which focus on improving the customer experience for you. The trend is to move beyond old-school paper at opens and deliver exceptional service through mobile technologies. This is the easiest way to leave a good impression.
FOLLOW-UP
We all know that your success boils down to the follow-up and working your pipeline. The top performers certainly put aside time to reach out to every buyer and potential vendor, making detailed notes. Some CRMs have a dedicated screen tailor-made to running an efficient calling session on both a desktop and mobile – worth checking out if you haven’t seen the latest. That being said, it can be just as efficient to print out your pipeline from the CRM with history and notes, and conduct your calls without technology distractions. This is great to do if you have admin support to update the system afterwards.
VENDOR REPORTING
Providing regular updates to your vendors is considered by many experts to be fundamental to delivering a basic level of service. However, it’s surprising how many agents we meet every week who put this in the too-hard basket.
Collating a comprehensive report can take more than 30 minutes, sometimes an hour to get something presentable together. After performing regular updates to the CRM as outlined above you should be able to generate an impressive and informative vendor report within five minutes.
Top tip: Some of our top clients are actually using these reports at listing presentations as a ‘carrot’, showcasing their service and the list of hot buyers looking for a listing just like theirs. The results and feedback are remarkable.
Remember, open homes can often be the first impression you give potential new clients. As the leading source of potential vendors, open home attendees could be buyers who will sell after they purchase, or a nosy neighbour researching to sell their own home. Running world-class open homes can be key for an attraction agent, as clients will want you to run the same quality for their own property.
Creating or refining habits around technology that support you in being more connected and efficient can be the key to achieving at least double your results in this new financial year.
