The intention of this plan is to increase our average sales price and commissioned earned per real estate transaction. This plan does NOT replace what I already do. This is an additional project that I will focus on in 2012 ongoing.
There are two stagesto this plan. The first stage is meant to kickoff the plan, educate myself of the high-end market and make it known around the community that I am actively showing these homes. It is critical that I know about every community and home that fits the high end profile. I have to be the most knowledgeable agent in the market if I want to dominate this segment.
Stage One:
1. Identify the markets that you want to focus on.
2. Identify your competition in these markets and research what promotional materials, prospecting methods and presentations they use. In order to take over this market, you must know how your competition plays the game. We must learn their playbook so we can design our own.
– identify who has the most listings
– identify who has the most sales
– identify who has the most expireds and withdrawns
– get on their mailing lists so we know when and what they are sending to these areas
3. Preview 80% of the high-end listings in your market. Leave a card with a personal note after each preview so the seller knows that you were showing the home. We need people to start seeing our name.
4. Search all FSBO websites for high end listings. Accumulate all of these leads at one time so you can start prospecting them.
5. Research all of the expireds and withdrawns for the past 24 months. Once again, you want to start off with a lot of prospecting opportunities from the beginning.
6. You must post a few BLOGs or have someone post a few Press Releases on the internet about you and the high-end market. Remember, this high-end clientele is likely going to Google your name. You want to make sure that you control what shows up on the first page of Google for your name. Press Releases can do this for you. Wouldn’t it help if it said “Greg Harrelson – Myrtle Beach Top Luxury Home Sales in 2011”? Trust me, people are Googling our names daily.
Now that we have laid a foundation, let’s get to work…
Stage Two:
1. Make 25 contacts per day in the high-end. This should not consume all of your daily contacts yet this should be enough to generate appointments in the near term. The contacts should be made in this order; New expireds, FSBO, Old expireds and cold calls.
2. Preview every listing that comes on the market. Preview it after it has been on the market for 30 days. Do not preview it the first three weeks because that is when it gets the most activity. Preview it on day 30 because they are not getting a lot of showings at that time and they could be getting discouraged with their current agent. Your card will be a breath of fresh air for that seller. You MUST preview these properties to learn your market.
3. Hold a minimum if two open houses each month for 12 straight months. If you do not have a listing to hold open then call the other agents and offer to hold it open for them. Many will not agree yet it will be a numbers game and you will find one that will allow you to. It is MANDATORY to knock on the doors of a minimum of 20 homes in the community around your open house. Pass out a flyer with information about the listing and use your scripts to identify additional leads. Collect an email address from them if possible for later promotions.
4. Organize a Parade of Homes every quarter for a high end community. Here is how it works….You call all of the agents that have listings in the community and you tell them that you are coordinating a Parade of Homes for the community. Tell them you expect a lot of traffic and ask them to commit to holding their home open also. If they agree, tell them you will be adding their listing to a promotional flyer and you will give them copies. This flyer will have a list of all of the homes that will be participating in the Parade of Homes that week. Believe me; they will not want to be left out of this.
Here is the nugget…You then send out a mailer to the entire community database advertising the Parade of Homes that YOU are organizing. In this mailer, you will tell them that you are committed to helping the community raise its property values and the way you do this is by creating a lot of demand for the area. You take credit for organizing the Parade of Homes therefore everyone will start to see you as the agent with authority as well as see that you are very active versus passive. They will start to see that you are hard working and that is what they want in an agent. I did this to one community last year and I am now the dominate agent in that neighborhood.
5. Use direct mail to raise awareness and generate additional leads. Take the communities that you are looking to dominate and create a direct mail campaign. The key is that you mail consistently as well as follow up with phone calls. I recommend that we mail to the same communities every thirty days and do this for a minimum of 12 months. We cannot expect instant results from the mailers. It will take time to establish trust. The mailer gives us some name recognition yet the prospecting behind the mailer will generate the leads. All of the 25 daily contacts should be made within 4 days of the mailer hitting their mail box.
