Doorknocking is a tried and true real estate tactic to introduce yourself to potential clients and, generally speaking, get yourself and your agency in front of as many buyers and sellers as possible. With the advent, however, of more internet-focused efforts and in a pandemic world, doorknocking is going by the wayside and may even be a thing of the past for many agents.
While doorknocking will always be a viable way to introduce yourself to your client base, there are some alternatives out there. Here are some of our alternatives to doorknocking.
Contact Your Current Client Base
One thing you can do to avoid doorknocking while boosting your rapport with clients is to get in touch and stay in touch with your existing client base. You likely already know that it can cost up to 10 times more to get a new client than to retain an old one, so it stands to reason that you’d like to keep your current client list close at hand.
Not only can you reach out to clients you’ve already worked with, but you can use those clients to create a sphere of influence. In other words, in speaking with your current clients, see if you can glean any information about their friends or colleagues where your services may be needed. Let them know that you’re looking to expand your business and that they could potentially help you accomplish that goal.
Call For Sale By Owner Listings
FSBOs are one of those untapped places where agents can interject and potentially make sellers’ lives much, much easier. FSBOs are looking to save money and eliminate the “hassle” of working with agents by doing all of the legwork themselves. Perhaps they have some legal experience in real estate or have researched how to sell a home themselves.
No matter the situation, you know that working with an agent actually relieves much of the pressure of buying and selling a home and will actually benefit sellers by lowering their workload significantly. Additionally, FSBO sellers may not understand the market well enough to appropriately price their home or sell it in an otherwise competitive market.
Contact Stale Listings
If you don’t already scour the internet for local listings to contact, you should start as soon as possible! Not only does this practice give you a great idea of what the local marketplace landscape looks like, but it may give you a nice place to start contacting prospective clients: those with stale listings.
Your experience tells you that if a listing is up for much longer than a few weeks, there’s either something wrong with the listing, it’s priced inappropriately, or it’s not being marketed correctly among other things. As you browse local listings, get in touch with those that have been listed and are in need of a boost. Stale and expired listings may just need a little pizzazz, so take a chance and get in touch with them.
Get Ready to Close Quickly
The last thing you want to do is to contact listings, start representing a buyer or seller, and then have a deal you’ve worked so hard on fall through. For that reason, it’s important to get ready to close before you even get started.
What we mean is understanding the mortgage market, get in touch with lenders and loan experts, and know where to send your buyers in order to get their financing in order early in the process. The loan experts at Tidewater Mortgage Services, Inc. are trained to do just that: help agents and buyers navigate the mortgage market. Call today!
