I’m going to get right down to business and give you a hotline script that converts 9 out of 10 callers to pre-sold clients…
If you’ve been wondering how to create a great voice mail message – one that will motivate callers to leave their name, address, etc. for you – then this strategy will help you immensely because how you structure your voice message is the little-known secret for making big money using a real estate hotline.
If you do not have a hotline, get one. You can still use the script below for your regular office line, but there are literally hundreds of ways you could use a hotline in your practice to multiply your production… including promoting your listings with multiple extensions to track leads. If you’re looking for a hotline system that’s got additional pre-written scripts and templates to use with your marketing system, you can take a look at Proquest Technologies (www.SixFigureHotlines.com).
BACK to my main point…
The sole purpose for your message is to get callers to leave their basic contact information. Anything else is wasted time and money (including jumping in to why they should work with you).
Here’s how you create a great script to motivate prospects to take another step closer to you…
The Little-Known, Step-By-Step Formula For Creating
A Money-Making Voice Hotline Message!…
Special Note: This script offers a Free Report. I strongly suggest you use this type of “lead magnet” to get interested prospects calling you for information. If you’re using your hotline for listings, create a similar message for callers to get information about the property and a free report at the same time. You can write a report and give it a benefit-rich title, like the example above, or I have 8 pre-written special reports that are part of the Service For Life!® personal marketing system.
One last thing… if you want more strategies for using hotlines in your business to generate quality buyer calls, check out this past real estate marketing article.
A great way to generate quick commissions (and sell your listings faster) with a great buyer marketing strategy,
How to create a “Power List” that brings you consistent clients year after year, and…
How to understand your Return on Investment with your marketing.
So let’s get started…
PROFIT MULTIPLIER #1: New Agent? Just Relocated? Need to Generate Commissions FAST?
First, find an agent with several active listings. Tell them you have a number of “buyer” marketing strategies that will sell their listings in a fraction of the average market time. Offer to implement the 4 “buyer magnet” systems I taught you from this real estate marketing article for EACH of their listings. You manage everything for the agent so they’re out $0 and no time.
Second, implement the strategies, agree to take the buyer calls and qualify the leads, and sell them a home. Work out a commission split, and you’ve now got a marketing system working to bring you buyers, and even a few great listings.
Plus, you’ll look like a marketing wizard in your office and agent community (not to mention you’ll automatically be building your own “Power List” for increased referrals, word of mouth and repeat business).
If the listing agent refuses your offer (some people will step over dollars to pick up dimes!), move on to another agent who’s got some business sense.
Remember, the strategies from this real estate marketing article will also help sell your own listings faster by acting as active “buyer magnets”.
PROFIT MULTIPLIER #2:Create a “Power List” and Make Them Your Primary Market
You already know that the NAR research says 74% of all real estate transactions occur from a relationship – they know the agent or are referred from a trusted source.
Here’s something you don’t know: If you built a “Power List” (database of personal contacts) with 300 people (homeowners), and the average home ownership period is, for example 7 years (nationally it’s 5.5 years), then 42 of those people will buy or sell every year – good market or lousy market.
Holy cow! Is this getting your attention?
600 people on your database and it’s 84 transactions every year from that list. 900 people and it’s 128 deals a year – and so on. And don’t forget, that doesn’t include referrals they could send you – it’s just the number of direct transactions that come from that group.
Now hold on. Before you start thinking you just hit “easy street”, there’s something you need to understand. These are not just “random” people. I’m talking about people who know you or know OF you.
The higher the “quality” of contact on your list (i.e. the better they know you), the more responsive they’ll be to your regular contact. This means the more inclined they’ll be to think of YOU FIRST when they think real estate.
I call this your Personal Market Share™…
So the “operative” question is: WHO will get all those deals?
ANSWER: The agent with the highest Personal Market Share™.
The one who’s stayed in contact (at least once a month, every month), deepened the relationship, provided on-going value to their list, and demonstrated they’re a true professional committed to the relationship for the long haul and worthy of the client’s business over any other agent.
Are you willing to become that agent…the one who captures 74% of all transactions, holds such a high personal market share they generate huge income regardless of market conditions?
You are? OK, good because next I’ll show you…
How To Build Your “Power List”
Building a Power List is easy if you put your mind to it. Here’s the best way to go about it…
STEP 1: Start with all the people you know and create what I call the “Big List”.
STEP 2: Put every new and old client on the list.
STEP 3: Put leads you generate on your list. Many successful agents make it a point to add 2 people a day, and soon have 500 contacts their first year (and got 10 to 20 deals just by putting people on the list).
STEP 4: Also, the other parties to any transactions you complete go on the list (hint: their agent will forget about them, so they’ll easily be yours when they buy or sell again).
STEP 5: Create “strategic alliances” with professionals who have clients that could be yours and get a “host endorsement” of your services: accountants, insurance brokers, etc. Consider reciprocating by introducing them to your clients as well. The credibility of the existing relationship is transferred to the endorsed person.
Final note: purge your list every 6 months to remove lower quality people. Within 12 to 24 months you’ll have a small, highly motivated group of people sending you consistent business month-in and month-out – something I call building “Critical Mass™” in your business (see Step 3 of the 3-Steps system). That’s what I mean by “Personal Market Share”.
How Often Do You Contact Your “Power List” ?
Now that you’ve create a “Power List” you must plan on monthly contact to make any inroads. Commit to monthly or don’t even start.
The Direct Marketing Association reports that the optimum contact time is every 21 days. There have also been studies out there that say for every month you forget about your Power List, you lose 10% of them – another reason for monthly contact.
Finally, the NAR reports that the “average” contact program takes between 8 and 12 months to “start” working. (Side note: We’ve cut that time in half with Service For Life!®, but even if it takes 10 months to start the “market share engine” producing, that’s still a great deal, considering most agents never get it going).
PROFIT MULTIPLIER #3:Know Your Return on Investment
If you understand where you get the most return for your marketing dollar… you’ll know exactly what to invest in to increase your income. Sounds pretty simple, but most agents don’t know how to track their numbers.
Here’s how to understand how well your monthly marketing system is working for you… and I’ll use a simple example.
Let’s say you want to send 300 Service For Life!® issues out each month to your Power List. That’s going to cost you about $0.91 to $1.29 per issue (let’s call it $1.20 because that’s on the higher end and will make the math easier). So you’ll spend about $360 a month for the mailing, including having the newsletter written for you.
That means you’re investing about $4,320 every year to contact 300 people 12 times each, or 3,600 contacts. Now, I know that might sound like a lot of money, but let’s get some perspective here.
Let’s run some quick numbers…
Of those 300 people, you know statistically that about 42 transactions will come from them (300 divided by 7 years average home ownership period = 42 transactions EVERY year).
If the average home price is $200,000, that gives you a co-broker commission of $6,000. Subtract out home marketing expenses and a broker split, and you’ll probably net about $4,500 from that commission.
Does it make sense to mail to your Power List every month?
Well, look at it this way: If you get only ONE of those 42 transactions, you’ve broken-even ($4,500 commission against $4,320 to send for a year).
But after all that marketing, do you really think all you’ll get is a ONE measly commission out of 42 transactions?
Here’s what’s more likely to happen…
First, ask yourself: Who will generally get the lion’s share of those 42 transactions? The agent who’s cold prospecting over dinner time or pestering people in the grocery store line, OR the agent who’s demonstrated their competency, brought great value, created a family-like relationship, and “been there” when it was time to buy or sell?
Are you getting a hint?
I have agents with small databases of 300 “quality” people who “net” more than $300,000 per year using that very system (and it’s their only marketing).
That’s a whole lot more than just one transaction out of 42.
Problem is, most agents quit before they get any traction – “instant gratification” takes priority over sound strategy. It’s a shame, but that’s good news for agents who “get it”.
When you consider the ROI in your marketing, you now have a benchmark to know when it’s profitable and/or unprofitable for you.
To learn more about developing and harvesting endless commissions from your Power List, go here.
Even though the internet is all the rage these days, agents are still using direct mail with fantastic success.
The key is to get your mail opened, read, and acted upon.
If you’ve struggled to get new clients with direct mail farming, chances are it’s because your mail was seen as “junk mail” and trashed before ever opened.
Here are 4 essential secrets direct marketing pros use to get past this junk mail hurdle and make big money with direct mail, and how you can use the same strategies for your real estate prospecting…
SECRET #1: Make it “lumpy mail”
Have you ever heard of “lumpy mail”? Lumpy mail is the process of inserting “something” into an envelope or doing something “unique” to make it stand out, involve curiosity and get opened. It’s also known as a “grabber”.
The “thing” you include must tie-into your message inside. For example, one agent mails their farming pieces in a small brown paper bag with a stamp. Inside, the letter headlines, “Here’s Why There’s No Free Lunch When Selling Your Home…” The letter talks about “you get what you pay for — so why would you use a discount broker and steal from yourself?”
The letter then talks about the risks of using a discount broker, all the ways the agent can net the homeowner as much or more than a discount broker, makes an irresistible, completely risk free offer for a “Free Home Audit” and a “Free Special Report”.
The agent also uses a few great testimonials and statistics about their success (proof). The letter is then followed-up by a second and third notice. Can you see how that gets noticed and acted upon?
SECRET #2: Make it “personal”
Another way to get your mail seen is to make it so personal, the reader thinks it’s just for them. Here’s what to use on the envelope to make your mail look personal:
Hand addressed
Return address is personal with name
Commemorative “live” postage stamp
Monarch size envelopes
All of these have a personal appeal vs. junk mail – and they get opened.
SECRET #3: Make it “blind”
Have you ever received a letter with just a return address and no business name?
This works great when farming to new areas – your prospect’s curiosity will help your mail get opened.
Here’s a blind envelope template you can use when farming (click the image to download the template)…
3-Steps To Use Your “Blind Envelope” Template
STEP 1: Save the document to your computer…
Click the image or download this 6×9” BLIND ENVELOPE template by Clicking Here.
STEP 2: Personalize it with your information…
DO NOT put your name or your broker’s name at the upper left-hand return address. You can disclose your broker at the END of your letter inside of the envelope. Just use your return street address.
STEP 3: Direct impression right on to your envelope…
You can add merge fields to the template and then run the envelopes through your printer to “direct impression” the return address and the recipients address (or send the template to your printer with your mailing list). But DO NOT use mailing labels.
Curiosity is one of the strongest human emotions – if you don’t have a relationship with a mailing list this can be one of the best ways to get your mail actually opened instead of being quickly identified as “just another promotion to throw out”.
But remember, curiosity alone won’t help you build a stable business. You also need to be marketing to a hot prospect, give compelling proof, a great offer, and call to action.
SECRET #4: Make it “multi-sequence”
Multi-sequence contact always out-pulls single contact. This applies to follow-up with leads or with farming an area.
Direct mail pros have found that you may spend 2 or 3 times more to send out a sequence of 3 letters, but because the response rates are so much higher your ROI is also higher.
To send a multi-sequence mailing successfully…send your first mailing, then a second notice about 7 days later, then a third notice another 7 days later. You can continue to send additional follow-up mailings or contacts until it’s no longer profitable. But first start with a 3-step sequence rather than the usual one-and-done mailing agents usually do.
I’ll write more about “multi-sequence” mailings in an upcoming article, but for now realize that you’re leaving money on the table by not continuing to follow-up with a sequence of mailings.
One last piece of advice from a 35-year direct marketing veteran…
Instead of spending hours each month toiling over how to put together real estate promotions to use with these mailing secrets…use pre-written templates that work. Check out the numerous examples that appear in our archives, organized by category (on the right side).
You can put together a “swipe file” of direct mail promotions that you have at the ready… or use a collection of proven templates like this toolkit of real estate sales letters for just about every situation you could face in real estate… click here to learn more.
ANSWER: It depends on when the product was created…
Have you ever been faced with these questions in your own business?
“How do I increase my sales?”
“What do I say in my ad that will make people call right away?”
If so, you could gain a lot of insight by understanding the lesson that is clearly demonstrated in the series of ads shown above.
The ads are for two well-respected corporations: Dell and Mercedes-Benz.
What do cars and computers
have in common?
Not much if you approach things in an ordinary fashion. An obvious difference would be price: computers cost hundreds of dollars, while a car costs tens of thousands. One product sits on your desk…the other on your driveway.
The first two ads on the left were used by each company in its early years, and the second set are current examples. Even though the two “products” appear to have nothing in common, note how similar the first two ads are. The layouts are similar and each is copy-dominant.
But look what happens in the second set of ads—they both rely on photos and graphics and there is almost no written information. At first blush, this seems a little confusing because one set of ads uses words to do the selling, but then it gets reversed and the entire pitch is communicated with pictures.
However, it all makes sense if you consider the ads in terms of life-cycle of a brand. Long ads—ones with lots of copy—are needed when a company or product is unknown. Long ads are helpful because information can be used to educate the consumers about what sets the product APART from the competition.
This is branding’s sole purpose—it tells consumers what makes you different. Dell was the first company to sell computers direct, and Mercedes was first to introduce a super luxury brand to the American market (when launched in this country, a Benz was twice the price of a Cadillac).
The question is not as simple as, “Does a long ad work better than a short ad?” The better question is whether you’re selling a new product or a well-known one.
What do these examples have to do with selling homes? A lot. As you’ll soon see.
Remember: Branding is nothing you do to the product…it is a perception that exists in the mind of the consumer. For example, if you stopped the average person on the street, he knows that “Blockbuster” means video rentals…that “Dominoes” delivers pizza…and that “eBay” stands for online auctions.
Long ads are well suited when you are building a brand. Short ads are fine for maintaining an established brand. At this point, Dell and Mercedes-Benz are household names so long ads are not needed.
What’s best for selling a house…
LONG or SHORT ads?
Because homesellers are too close to their situation, they often make a misstep when they put their homes on the market.
They know all about their home and what makes it special, and they assume prospective buyers will easily recognize its positive attributes. But the consumer has never seen any of the homes that are on the market. Buyers start with a blank slate. They will form an opinion about a home based on the marketing material they see.
Unfortunately, most houses end up being promoted with “me-too” real estate flyers that simply list boring statistical data such as:
Bedrooms: 4, Baths: 3, Year Built: 1994, etc.
If you allow a house to be marketed with details that are COMMON to many other houses, it may never escape from obscurity. For example, houses in Westlake (an area outside Austin, Texas, where I sell homes) are often marketed with a theme that stresses the highly acclaimed Eanes School District. But why rely on a feature that is guaranteed to be available at every other Westlake house?
A seller may in fact have the best home in the neighborhood, but it may not make a difference if the consumer never gets the message.
When you set out to market a house, it tracks the same path as bringing a new product to market.
This means that houses are tailor-made for using long ads. Since no two houses are alike, there is always plenty of information you can communicate to the consumer. And you cannot bore consumers with straight facts.
It is better to use a “story ad”—ads that sell by telling an interesting story. In theory, holding an open house is a sound marketing idea because the consumer gets to use all of his senses to see the house and get a “feel” for the floorplan, the yard and the neighborhood.
But an open house may only produce a handful of people who walk through.
However, a well-written ad, that is widely circulated, has the effect of one voice speaking to thousands of potential buyers. The law-of-averages kicks in at this point, and your odds of finding the right buyer increase exponentially.
Here’s an example of a “story ad”…
(click the image to open the ad in a PDF)
This ad is an example of the type of message needed to bring a beautiful home to the forefront in a glut of inventory…
When the seller called me, this house in the Lakeway area of Austin had already been on the market for a year, and there were about 90 other “for sale” houses in the immediate area.
This home really was the best house in the neighborhood, and there was not a thing wrong with the seller’s price.
How do you get a prospective buyer interested
enough to come see your listing?
I wrote this long ad above that told about the home’s unique design, materials and lot. The seller got THREE offers, and the home sold in less than 30 days!
Here’s how I did it (and the same steps you can follow to sell your listings quicker):
STEP 1: Interview the seller on what made THEM interested in the house
STEP 2: Find your story-line by pulling out some of the unique benefits of the home from your research
STEP 3: Write a “story ad” that communicates the home’s difference
STEP 4: Place your ad in local publications where it will find the right buyer
Believe it or not, it really is that simple.
All kinds of excellent products fail in the marketplace because of weak, tame, and ineffective advertising. This includes homes when all that’s used is a traditional flyer to communicate a list of features.
Learn how to investigate what makes a home truly different than the others on the market. And then communicate that difference in a way that targets and benefits the potential buyer.
More examples to come in my next article…stay tuned!
[Ed note: Copyright Stan Barron. Reprinted with permission. If you, or someone you know wants to sell a house, please give Stan a call at 512-345-8585.]
