Your contact network represents your net worth, but that value is lost if you cannot effectively use that information to build your business. Your database requires structure and organization to be useful. Establishing categories is the best way to manage the high volume of contacts you collect every week.
Every contact you add to your database belongs in a category. Some are relevant to 2 or 3 categories. Those categories include:
Buyers
Potential sellers
Market appraisals
Past buyers
Past sellers
Key referrers
Landlords
It is important to have a central database with all your contacts sorted and accessible. It’s easy to end up with bits of contact information in your phone, on bits of paper, in printed lists, and random other places. Choose one system that can be automated and accessed easily.
Once all of your contacts are sorted into their proper categories you can begin to target your marketing efforts to key categories. Individuals belong in categories because they have specific interests, focus, timelines and positions. You will save time and effort by targeting your marketing efforts to those people through their category.
Contacts come to you primarily through online inquiries through major real estate websites, and through open for inspections each weekend. You may have hundreds of new contacts in a single weekend and they all need to go into your database. There are a few ways to accomplish this task, some more efficient than others.
You may enter all your new contacts into your office computer, or have an assistant do it. Or you could be entering it on-site at an open for inspection on a laptop, tablet or phone that is connected directly to your main database. You could also have an assistant whose primary purpose is to collect and enter contact information as people enter the open property. And of course, it all needs to be appropriately categorized as it is entered. Always be evaluating how you can best move these clients through the sales cycle. How many new contacts are you making in a weekend? How many are potential sellers, market appraisals, past clients and key referrers?
The next step in this process is to automate your marketing campaigns for timely information to be sent to clients in specific categories so that the right message gets to the right people at the right time. Automate whatever tasks you can so that you can address the tasks that cannot be automated more effectively. Then you can work on how best to manage tasks that cannot be automated.
Finally, you need to identify any barriers – or “choke points” – you may be experiencing against getting these tasks done. You may discover key information you are not gathering, or obstacles to getting all the data into the database quickly and correctly. Maybe you are trying to do too much yourself and it’s time to hire an assistant. Be smart about how best to get your necessary tasks done and you will build your business with consistency and integrity.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.