|
Why
Marketing Effectively is So Important
for Your Business There
are a lot of skills that are important
for becoming highly successful in our
industry, but none is more important
than how effectively you market
yourself. That's the way it is in almost
any business, and that's the way it is
in our industry, too. The problem,
though, is that very little if any time
is ever spent teaching agents how to
market themselves to their clients and
prospects. So
much training for new agents involves
teaching them about the different terms
utilized in our business, what they need
to know about the different types of
buildings, and generally, what they need
to know to be able to talk intelligently
with their clients and prospects and
conduct business with them. And of
course, agents are also trained on what
they need to know to ensure that both
they and their companies never get sued
over anything. And
all of this is definitely very important
information for any agent to know. But
very few commercial agents understand
the concept of marketing themselves.
They understand prospecting, oftentimes
feel they should be doing more of it,
but that's normally about it in terms of
what they do to get people to know who
they are and do business with them. So
many agents close transactions with
their clients and then drop out all
communication with them for years,
figuring there's no need to talk with
them anymore. And with this in mind, so
many veteran agents have tens or
hundreds of clients they've closed
transactions with who they haven't
spoken with in quite sometime now.
Ideally you want this business to be
about becoming your clients' broker for
life, but how is this possible when you
drop out all communication with your
clients for years at a time? And yet so
many commercial brokers fall victim to
doing this exact same kind of behavior
I've just described. When
it comes to marketing yourself outside
of doing your prospecting, there's no
better way to do it than by direct mail.
You simply can't reach your clients and
prospects with a specific targeted
message about you as frequently and
effectively as you can with direct mail.
But yet so many veteran agents
completely ignore this idea. They figure
if nobody ever trained them to do it, or
if they don't know any other commercial
agent who is mailing in a big way, then
it must not be an approach that will
work effectively for them. And
I'm telling you that this couldn't be
farther from the truth. In
locating people who will openly embrace
this concept, the best audience
sometimes is people who are completely
new to our industry. Many times they're
not as set in their ways, and oftentimes
they're willing to try anything to see
if it works. I
was recently introduced to an agent in
our industry who's in his mid-20s. He's
only been in the business for 2-3 years,
and he's been completely setting his
market on fire with the results he's
been producing during this time. When I
asked him about his mailing campaign and
how frequently he mails to his clients
and prospects he told me, "I mail
to all of them eight times every
month." And
with this level of constant contact
through the mail to his people every
month, it's probably very difficult for
many of them to think of doing business
with anyone else. In
my monthly Inner Circle telecoaching
program for commercial agents, I led
a call in June titled, "Sending Out
Mailers That Get You a Ton of New
Commercial Real Estate Business."
And in my August Inner Circle call
earlier this month one of my Inner
Circle members said he had followed my
exact instructions from the June call on
mailing, and the very first mailer he
sent out to 1,200 prospects landed him
over $8,000,000.00 in new listings. This
is someone who is brand new to our
industry who had relatively few
preconceived ideas about what he should
be doing to develop business for
himself, and he was willing to follow my
recommendation. So
while it's important to have great
fundamental knowledge about the
commercial real estate brokerage
business to be successful in our
industry, it's more important to know
how to market yourself effectively to
produce great business for yourself once
you already know the basic fundamentals.
There are a lot of people in our
industry who know the basic fundamentals
and can carry on a conversation on most
any subject dealing with commercial real
estate, but they're still struggling to
get more business because of their lack
of ability at marketing themselves. All
the business you've ever wanted for
yourself is out there constantly just
waiting for you. Just look at all the
transactions being closed by your
competitors that you're not involved in.
When you learn how to market yourself so
you direct the leads for much of this
business your way instead of to your
competitors in the months ahead, your
biggest problem will soon become how to
follow-up on all the great business
you've now generated for yourself.
Click
here for downloadable E-books and live audio interviews with
top-producing commercial real estate agents. These interviews
are with industry experts
who show you exactly what they do to
continually make $500,000.00 to more
than a million of dollars a year.
|
