So – What business are you in?
The correct answer is: The Marketing Business! Marketers make it their business to have what the market place wants. So the focus is on the prospect not on the agent. There is a big difference.
Most agents confuse advertising with marketing.
Specifically Direct Response Marketing.
You see, the kinds of advertising I engaged in early in my career made all sorts of boasts about me, but it really offered no benefits of interest to prospects.
It seemed the harder I worked the more I failed at achieving my goals of making a really good living selling real estate. The advertising I did was the same kind of ineffective advertising most agents do to this day; meaningless boasts about them saying – “Here I am…a Real Estate Agent and I can help you buy or sell….”
I learned…through failure that advertising about me, was ineffective at getting a steady stream of prospects ready to buy or sell. I learned that EFFECTIVE marketing:
A. Talks to and about your prospects
B. Gives prospects real benefits
C. Gives prospects a non-threatening way to get more information
D. Gives prospects compelling reasons to call you to get it
This epiphany helped me to develop an overflow of business and now has me recognized as one of the Top Most Respected Real Estate Agents in North America according to the people at Accredited Platinum Real Estate Professions.
It in essence ended all forms of advertising that involved manual grunt prospecting, cold calling and expensive advertising and implemented systems that delivered exactly what prospects wanted.
I call it Reverse Prospecting.
You see, ALL of the hundreds of warm buyer and seller leads my real estate company generates month in and month out –all of them – call me first, or email me first or knock on my door. They contact me about buying and selling.
You see, you can’t make prospects call you. Prospects won’t call you just because you want them to. They won’t call you just because they are aware that you exist. They will only call you if it will benefit them in some way to do so.
Most agents think to attract prospects you advertise or think the purpose of marketing is to promote themselves: they are sadly mistaken. The purpose of marketing is to ATTRACT prospects.
As soon as you learn to STOP being a Real Estate Agent Selling Houses to Buyers and Sellers and START being a Marketer of Solutions for Those Wanting to Buy or Sell, the sooner you will discover the key to really making money in real estate.
I am in the Marketing Business and as a result, generate an extreme overflow of really good buyer and seller prospects every month that I then qualify and pass on to my team of full time professional agents for them to do what they do best – SELL the prospects home and/or find them a new one!