2016 PROSPECTING
Top Business Priority #9 – Sharing Databases

The common belief is that the average American family moves once every seven years. If you exclude people that don’t actually own property, between 5%-10% of the population in any given neighborhood will move each year. Extensive research indicates if you have 24 “touches” or communications this year with a group of people, and you’re a solid agent, you should be successful in capturing at least 20% of the business that is transacted with the group you are contacting. There are two critical elements to your Relationship Management, 24 Touch campaign.

1. You must have a way to communicate with the whole group. You can’t see or call 1,000 people twice every month, so it makes sense to use direct mail or e-mail. If you don’t have the money to direct mail, your business can still flourish if you are continuously collecting e-mail address to add to your database.
2. You must identify what you’re going to send. This can include, personal success, real estate information, open house announcements, or market updates.

What if you don’t have very many e-mail addresses? If this is the case, it’s important to implement an e-mail gathering campaign immediately.

1. Talk to other professionals you do business with, like doctors, lawyers, accountants, retailers, maintenance people, or anyone else that comes to mind. Offer to network or share your information with them if they will share theirs with you. Every time you have a new buyer, recommend they do business with this group and encourage the group to do the same.
2. Ask residents in a specific area to get you a copy of the neighborhood directory.
3. Join groups or organizations and e-mail to its members.
4. Remember to get e-mails every day from people that you talk to.
5. Ask your friends, family member and associates for the directories or e-mail addresses of everyone they know.

E-mail gathering should be one of the most important projects for you this and next year. The rewards can be fantastic! If you were to e-mail to 1,000 people, information they enjoyed reading, and there were 50-100 sales, of which you participated in 20% of the transactions, you now have 10-20 real estate closings you can count on. If you calculate the commissions on this number of transactions, you are likely to be very happy!