Are You Connected To Your Prospects?
Are You Connected to Your Prospects?
Real Estate is changing! Wow, that's a profound statement... you probably already know that don't you? But, do you really know how and more importantly - how it affects you?
A recent study shows that 90% of ALL buyers and sellers are beginning their research from 1-5 years prior to making a move!
What is DRM? DRM is marketing that drives a customer to DO a certain desired (from you) response. When a prospect (or even an existing client or customer) sees the specific marketing piece, they will either:
A. visit a website,
B. call a specific number for more information, or
C. pass the marketing piece to a friend, neighbor, co-worker or family member.
The Internet has changed the way the public finds homes and how they get their information. The key word is information! I see a new consumer intelligence level every day. They are doing their research about houses, mortgages, the home buying process, the home selling process and about real estate agents. More importantly, consumers want their information INSTANTLY! It's called instant gratification - they want it now, or sooner.
When a prospect finds your web site - they want information and lots of it. The first step is to make sure that you supply that information in the form of: listings, buyer information, seller information, FSBO information, reports and more. For you to keep up with a massive amount of prospects/leads - you need to have as much automation as possible. You DO NOT want to spend your time in front of a computer screen all day. You want your systems to do that for you. You want to spend your time "belly to belly" (or in the internet world - IM to IM!). This brings us to our topic for the day... instant communication and accessibility.
As communication gets more and more "instant" on the internet - the information is provided by Instant Messaging (IM), Voice over Internet Provider (VoIP), Video Conferencing, Real Simply Syndication (RSS), Chat and Text Messaging. The challenge for us as real estate professionals, is that all of our prospects are on different services and expect us to have them ALL! Sounds like a lot of complicated set-up. It's really not and if you take a few minutes to set it up - you will convert clients and set yourself apart.
The nice part is that you can (and should) set up all of the various IM services for your real estate business and then forward them to your text message enabled cell phone! Again, very easy to do and implement. When you have this set up properly - you can have the messages forwarded to you or to anyone on your team. The prospect accesses you through any of the options on the front page of your web site. They simply click on the IM link that they use and it contacts you (or your team member on duty) instantly.
So, why is this important to you? You are "THE SOURCE" for real estate information.... INSTANTLY!
Whomever speaks with a prospect FIRST .... WINS!
