Ring in The New Year With Expired Listing Prospecting
The beginning of the year is a great time to grow your business through prospecting. After spending time focusing on the holiday, most people start to think about the important projects they want to accomplish in 2016, and few projects are more important than buying or selling a home. The opportunities this year are especially good, given the buyer/seller demand and improvement in both economic and real estate activity.
The most obvious prospects to contact are people that had their property listed for sale and chose to let their listings expire. The beginning of January is one of the most active times for expired listings to occur. These sellers are usually frustrated their homes haven’t sold and are looking for a change in strategy. Right or wrong, these sellers find it very easy to blame their agent for the lack of sales success. In many cases, listings still haven’t sold because they’re overpriced. The agent has spent countless hours encouraging the seller to drop the price. The seller recognizes they have to do something differently, so they decide to drop the price and the agent. They figure if they’re not sure if it’s the agent or the price, they’ll change both.
With the facts above as a background, it’s easy to appreciate why every agent should aggressively pursue expired listings. With the best buyers coming from sign calls, open houses, and internet responses, listings once again will dominate business growth in 2016. Most agents will be slow to recognize how challenging it will be to get listings this year. They won’t make aggressive efforts with their business until late in January. That is why it makes sense to jump all over the abundance of expired listings that will occur in the first part of this month.
You can mail material to these prospects. You can call them on the phone. You can even drop by their homes. There are two keys to success with this program.
- Stand Out– with what you present, or do something that’s different than what everybody else is doing.
- Spaced Repetition– Consistency of effort is also key.
- Don’t just send one letter, Mail previous sellers something twice a week.
- Don’t call just once and leave a message. Call them 2-3 times each week with a different message.
Just drop by and offer your services. Most agents are terrified of the rejection they may experience face-to-face. Have the courage to get beyond your fears and go see your expired prospects. If you’re too uncomfortable going by yourself, get a partner to go with you and share the listing with them.
Keep in mind, if the expired prospect isn’t interested they’ll let you know. If they list with someone else, you’ll find that out quickly enough. But, don’t give up until they tell you to stop. This may seem aggressive, but if you want the business, you must prove you’re willing to do what it takes.
One final suggestion for prospecting, ask yourself every day what you’ll be doing to make money during the day. If it isn’t prospecting or actually meeting with buyers or sellers, it’s not likely it’s a 20% activity. And, if it’s not a 20%’er, you aren’t going to make much money this year. That should give you something to think about, especially if you weren’t satisfied with your income in 2015.
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So, “TAKE THE SHOTS!”