Jun 17 '08, 07:31 PMAlthough many real estate entrepreneurs have had broad success with marketing by email, direct mail, telephone, and other channels, why haven't such technological forms of marketing come to completely replace the oldest and least complicated form of marketing, the sales call? The reason is that person to person marketing will always be an effective but cheap method of winning sales for businesses in all stages of development.
Getting close and personal with a prospect allows you to have the maximum number of channels of influence available to you to persuade the prospect to complete the sale. If your prospect encounters you by email or direct mail marketing, your words are all he or she can be influenced by.
If you are marketing by telephone then the prospect will be influenced by your choice of words as well as by your tone, inflection, and personality. Being in the same room with a potential client allows you to access every sensory channel available to influence that potential client to come to an agreement.
So where and how do you meet prospects face to face? If you maintain an office or place of business that is open to the public and you can get prospects to visit you in person, this is one solution. If your prospects are in business themselves, as may be the case if you are dealing with wholesale buyers or other investors, then you can visit them at their offices, if they have them.
The most common prospects to meet with are sellers, and the most common place to meet them for in person sales calls is at their house. You can either preface your visit with a telephone marketing campaign from which you set up appointments to meet with individual sellers, or you can simply go door to door, knocking on the front doors of houses that you think are likely to belong to prime prospects.
While this last practice may seem overly challenging or even burdensome, it is a sales technique that will always be available to the motivated entrepreneur and that has withstood the test of time while getting many new and under funded business ventures on their feet.
Your appearance when meeting the prospect plays an important role in creating the right impression and achieving a positive influence, but not in the way that many people think. Real estate is a business where it's best not to dress to impress but rather to identify with your prospect, or more precisely to allow him or her to identify with you.
If you project the appearance of belonging to a socioeconomic class that is far below or far above that of the person you are meeting with you stand a very good chance of triggering that person's unconscious prejudices, which will get in the way of making a sale. Ideally you want the prospect's first impression to classify you as " decent, normal folk" . The more you appear to be like your prospect the better this will work.
Never meet a prospect without having a ready supply of your own business cards, as well as circulars or brochures if appropriate. Think of this as some of the cheapest, most personal advertising you can get. And always ask for a card in return, whether the person you are talking to is in the real estate business or not; it is good business karma and making a habit of it will lead to some pleasant surprises. It is best to have a physical or electronic filing system for business cards, and keep every single one you receive.
