Top US real estate professional Jimmy Burgess has revealed a simple, yet highly effective prospecting strategy that netted him $11 million in listings in just three months.
The Berkshire Hathaway Home Services chief growth officer said the unsolicited comparative market analysis (CMA) strategy takes just 36 hours of work and netted him $6139 per hour.
Here’s how it works:
Identify your prospects
Jimmy identified 72 potential sellers and over a period of three months sent one unsolicited CMA per day (that he worked) in a bid to list their properties for sale.
“I went through property owners that I had either met at open houses, those that I had sold to in the past and were buyers of mine, people that I knew in (my) farm areas and sellers I knew that had mentioned that maybe they might think about selling in the future,” he said.
“And the results were pretty amazing, I listed over $11 million, and then I sold out of that $9 million.”
Other sources for potential clients include your past clients, orphaned clients of other agents or the vendors of expired listings that haven’t been relisted.
Prepare your unsolicited CMA
Jimmy used Google Earth and recent comparative sales to create a video that showed the potential vendor their property in relation to other homes that were currently listed, had a sale pending or had recently sold – along with prices, of course.
He also had an inset of himself speaking to the client at the top of the screen to make the video personal.
“The reason I like Google Earth is that it has a 2D portion… that makes it look super hi-tech,” he said.
“It gives me the ability to really show them visually what we’re looking at. They can also see me, which gives that connection.”
Step your clients through the comparables
The next step is to pull up a list of comparable sales to show the potential vendor. You don’t need to memorise them, just walk them through each one.
“I just go through and talk about the sales prices, the averages of what things are and give a range of value,” Jimmy says.
“At the end, I just simply say, ‘I hope this is valuable to you and I want to make sure you know that I’m here if I can help in any way. If you guys are thinking about possibly selling let me know and I’ll be glad to get you a more distinct value just by doing a quick walkthrough of your place.”
Make a note in your calendar to follow up with the potential sellers in six months time.
Crunching the numbers
Jimmy says each one of these unsolicited CMAs took him 15-30 minutes of work to create and send.
From those 72 CMAs he listed $11.2 million worth of property and sold $9.1 million.
“If I just took an average of the 2.5 per cent (commission fee) that’s 227,500 in gross commission income that came in,” he said.
“Now, if I divided that by 72, that means that every time I did one of these, it was about $3159.72.”
Jimmy says even if your average sale price is lower than his, the return on investment is still strong.
“The hourly rate was $6319,” he says.
“Now, even if your income was one-tenth, if you knew that every time you did one of these that you were going to get paid $631, would you do one every day?”
