Prospecting can be defined very simply as doing activities that introduce you to new people that will want to buy or sell a house in their lifetime. Specifically, you want people looking to move within a short time frame (within 6 months or so). Prospecting is about cultivating more immediate business and can include anything from door hangers, postcard campaigns and cold calling to planning yard sales or block parties.

Agents tend to focus so much time on taking care of their current business, they often forget to refill their pipeline! Services like GetMyHomesValue.com do the prospecting for you – although technically, Internet consumers generally tend to be more long term prospects, so a service like ours might be better labeled as marketing and farming. Instead of making 200 cold calls to find that one person you may get an appointment with, lead generation services send you warm or hot leads (who were actively seeking out real estate related info) without you having to do the actual prospecting.

There are so many different ways to prospect leads, you really just need to be creative about it. There’s the traditional door hanging and postcard prospecting, in which you send the items to hundreds of homes in your area via a mailing list. It’s always best to handwrite any notes and envelopes you send out.

More creative prospecting ideas are to rent a kiosk at the mall, and team up with a mortgage broker to help split the cost. Your broker can prospect for refinance leads in addition to doing free pre-approvals for buyer prospects. Be sure to have plenty of informative handouts and business cards; some freebies, like magnets, calendars or balloons for the kids; and of course, always have plenty of listings prominently displayed (without prices) to generate interest and conversation. You can even set appointments right there to take buyers out to view properties.

It boils down to standing out in the crowd and being remarkable in everything you do. Many agents we see who go out of their way to get a kiosk at the mall, or hold an open house, spend their time sitting playing solitaire on their lap tops rather than introducing themselves to the tons of leads that are passing by. And of course, introducing yourself is only half the battle – once the introduction is complete and you’ve got some of their information, persistent and consistent follow up is crucial in converting them to actual clients.

For instance, did you know that the man who holds the record for the most cars sold in a year sent every single person he knew or came into contact with a card on a monthly basis – for their birthday, for holidays, for the first day of spring, etc – any excuse to send them a card with a few business cards in it and a handwritten note of appreciation asking for referrals. It took a lot of time, and some money out of his own pocket, but it was obviously worth it in the end.

Many agents aren’t willing to do things like that, even though it’s as simple as keeping an excel database of all your contacts, with their names in a column and the dates for each month across the top and simply marking off each contact you make. You can have an assistant do the actual work, or even pay your kids to stuff envelopes!

Unlike nearly every agent out there, co-founder Dave Conklin actually LIKES cold calls. He knew his ratios (which you should figure out through trial and error with any form of prospecting you do). If he made 200 calls, he’d get at least 1 listing appointment, and out of ever 4-5 listing appointments, he’d actually get 1 listing. So about 800 phone calls = a listing for Dave.

He made sure he didn’t sound like a telemarketer, more like a buddy calling them up. “Hey Bob, how are you? This is Dave, I work over in Willow Street…you know where that is? Yeah, I’m in the real estate business, and I’m just trying to get my name out there, see if anyone needs my help. Are you in the market to buy or sell a house? No? Do you know anyone who is? No? Ok, thanks for your time, if you need anything real estate wise, just let me know!”

That’s just a typical conversation he may have – while many people will say no to both questions, with enough phone calls you’ll hit on someone who will say yes to one or the other. The important things is to regularly prospect to keep your pipeline full and make sure you’re consistently following up to become more familiar to your leads.

Recommendation: Use technology to prospect by creating a community website (you could use our RemarkableAgents.com products, or even something like Wordpress.com). Create a site all about your area, focusing on local everything: news, schools, interviews, local events, etc. and allow people to comment and contribute to the site – make it interactive. Take video of the subdivisions/neighborhoods in your area (you can have your kid hold the camera as you drive around) and then put the video up on the site. You’ve just made a tour of your area for out-of-towners considering a move to your area. Put the video on YouTube and do a little research into Search Engine Optimization (you can check out our SEO information here) to get your site showing up in search results and drive traffic towards it. Be sure to have contact forms for people – if they want updates or if you run a contest and they want to enter – any way to get the site visitors to leave their contact information.