A. Building a list of high-potential people is one of the most important strategic moves you’ll ever make in your business. It represents your “personal market share.” If you have no personal market share, you open yourself to the stresses and strains (and waste of time) of constant prospecting.
People do business with people they KNOW, LIKE, they feel are COMPETENT, and whom they TRUST. And the single greatest reason why someone will do business with you is because they either know you personally, know OF you, or are referred to you from a trusted source. According to the NAR’s Profile of Buyers and Sellers, more than 2/3rds of all clients come from some type of relationship.
So let’s talk about 2 types of lists you’ll be building with Service For Life®: 1) Your “Power List” and 2) a Farming Area.
1. Your Power List is the highest quality list in your business – it is essentially YOUR MARKET SHARE, and it will ultimately be responsible for up to 60, 70, 90% of your entire business. Most agents take 20 years to build strong market share because they don’t know how to do it – we’ll show you how to do it in less time with our member training.
Building a power list is not difficult, it just requires some focus on your part. We’ll give you a FREE course with your membership, called “Building Critical Mass In Your Real Estate Practice” that will show you, step by step, exactly HOW to build a power list. It’s a video presentation of one of our seminars on building a power list, PLUS, a complete manual with over 40 ready-to-use marketing systems. It’s a Free Bonus for members to help you succeed as much as possible (and you can watch it directly on the Member’s Only Website anytime – no matter where you’re at).
The QUALITY of your power list is more important than the total number of people. For example, we have a couple in Orange County who reportedly make over $200,000 GCI per year on a power list of about 320 people. Others have 2,000 or more and don’t do near that volume. The difference? The 320 people know the agents better, have been in a contact program with them for years, and they automatically think of the agent when they think ‘real estate.’
2. Now let’s talk briefly about FARMING:
The first piece of advice I can give you is: “Fish in a stocked pond.”
A lot of agents select farm areas without analyzing their potential. There are subdivisions and areas in your locale that are more profitable than others. You want to find areas with: 1) Relatively larger number of homes for sale, 2) lots of turns (i.e. the subdivision turns over a lot), 3) relatively fast sale times, 4) fewer agents working the subdivision – so you know there’s opportunity for you.
Obviously, the more homes for sale, the higher the sales price, the faster the turns (popularity of area), and fewer agents make for a higher potential farm area. We give you a simple, but helpful farming analysis template with your membership, where you can compare farms against each other (using MLS data you research) to determine which farms may have higher potential for success.
Now, the second piece of advice I can give you is, “Adjust your expectations.”
A farming area that doesn’t know you, or doesn’t understand your difference, value and professionalism is going to be much lower quality than a Power List that knows you or has done business with you in the past. Make sense?
So it’s going to take more time, effort, and investment to make a farm area pay off for you – for obvious reasons.
Make sure you use our “MarketWatch™” template with your farming area – some people want to know how much their home has increased in value. If you know that’s something they want, then give it to them each month.
Also, if you decide to farm, include a brief market overview of activity for the area in your cover letter. It shows you’re professional and competent, and you know their area (you’re a specialist).