RISMEDIA, December 3, 2010—In this article we’re going to outline a six-step process you can follow to consistently list more for sale by owners (FSBOs). The purpose of this process is to start a conversation with FSBOs in your market and position yourself as their go to person when they are ready to list. As we all know (or should know), 90% of all FSBOs end up listing their home at some point with an agent. Follow these steps and you’ll be the real estate professional that 90% of FSBOs are listing with when they’re ready.
Step 1: Set a recurring appointment with yourself every morning. I know this seems simple, but if you don’t actually make the appointment, it’ll never become a habit and it becomes easy to ignore or skip over. I can tell you from personal experience and from reading hundreds of business books, businesses and sales people who take consistent action on activities that are profit producing are the ones that last and become extremely profitable. You can set the appointment by simply writing it in your planner or you can use Google Calendar and set it to be recurring—whatever you choose, be sure to stick with it.
Step 2: Each morning during your “appointment” time, go to Craigslist, choose your city or the one closest to you, then choose real estate for sale and filter the listings to real estate by owner. You can do this at the top of the screen after you choose real estate for sale.
Step 3: Go through all the previous days’ listings and “cherry pick” 5-10 for you to target. You may want to target them because they are in a neighborhood or area you work, or they may be an area that you’d like to work in. It doesn’t really matter how you choose the properties you will target, just be sure to choose 5-10 (no less than three at a minimum).
Step 4: Send an e-mail making an offer to each of the listings. Be sure to keep your message short and sweet and make it about the FSBO. I see too many REALTORS® and agents who make their marketing messages all about them and not about the potential client. This is a huge mistake and will cost you tons of business. An example offer you could make is simply: If I had a qualified buyer for your home, would you be willing to pay our company a commission? Notice that the message is short, sweet, and to the point. You may be able to come up with something better, but just make sure it’s not some long winded message about why you are the best thing since sliced bread and they’d be crazy not to list with you. Remember, we’re just looking to start a conversation.
Optional: Pick up the phone and make the same offer to them (of course you need to scrub their number against the DNC list). Now here’s what to do when they say yes, and a high percentage of them are going to say yes.
Step 5: Schedule a time to go and preview the home. Notice this isn’t a listing appointment. You are simply going to preview their home in order to build rapport and establish a relationship. It’s a great idea to bring a market snap shot with you and/or anything else you bring to provide value to the seller. By providing value to them, you’re going to go a long way toward building rapport, and even if they do sell their home themselves, they’re going to be more likely to recommend you to others who can’t or don’t want to.
Step 6: Follow up, follow up, follow up. I love that the bookends to these six steps are consistency and follow up, because in any business, activity will be the difference between failure and success. You’ve got to regularly follow up with those FSBOs who you’ve communicated. You should be doing this every week or every other week at the most, and it can and should be as simple as this: “Hi this is so and so and I was just reaching out to find out if you’ve sold your home yet and if there is anything else I can do to help you with the sale?”
The six steps above will help you find success in listing more FSBOs. The process seems pretty easy when you write it out like this, but it’s the execution that’ll make the difference.
This article is provided by Josh Schoenly and Ryan Hartman and ReTechulous.com. You can reach Schoenly and Hartman at 888-809-7520 or e-mail info@retechulous.com.
