2013 Prospecting – Supercharge Your MLS Auto Notification Campaign

One of the best prospecting tools developed by the MLS systems in the past couple of years has been the auto notification campaign. This program allows you to sign your buyers up to receive any new information about activity within the parameters that you set up for your buyers. It’s a great tool because it allows you to maintain constant communication with your buyer prospects with little or no effort. This benefit can also work against you because it can encourage you to let the system handle your buyer and seller communications.

Why not exploit the opportunities with your hot buyers by making the effort to maximize the opportunities that occur with the updates your buyer and seller prospects are receiving?  Instead of letting the system do all of the work, use the following approach to generate even more business.

1. Identify your best buyer and seller prospects.
2. When you see a notification about a new listing, price change, withdrawal or other change that your prospect is receiving, take the time to print out the most intriguing changes.
3. Then, write a brief comment about what the change means to your prospect and mail it to them.
4. If you have the time, follow up with a phone call. Remember, this is a buyer or seller prospect that you felt had great potential.
5. For the less desirable prospects, you can stay with the auto notifications without putting in the extra time.

 

Here’s an example of how the steps above could be applied:

A couple has contacted you about buying an expensive home. You’re confident they will be buying in a couple of months and you set them up to receive information about the neighborhood, price point, and type of home they want to buy. Several changes occur in that market and they are notified. One of the changes is a property that met their needs and closed for significantly more than prior sales. Recognizing the opportunity to create urgency, you print the sold information out and make a not at the bottom with this comment, “Prices appear to be moving up in the neighborhood you like. If possible, you may want to accelerate your plans before other higher priced closing occur and a pattern develops. Let me know what you want to do.”

As you can imagine, the impact of your personal comment on the data provided can be very compelling. That’s why you should take the extra step outlined above for your best buying and selling prospects.