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The answer to this critical question should inform your marketing strategy. But too many agents simply spray their money around and hope for the best, with inevitably poor results.
In this article I’ll try to focus your endeavours.
Real estate is a numbers game. To end up with a sale you need listings which have come from appraisals, which themselves have come from a much greater marketing effort.
Your success relates to how efficiently you convert marketing to sales. Agent A goes to three appraisals and converts two to saleable listings, whereas Agent B gets to five but only converts one. Not only is Agent B spending a lot of time for little reward, but (s)he is also burning 80 per cent of valuable leads for the office gained at considerable marketing expense.
The answer is that you have to identify the target market where you are most likely to succeed and chase that. To use a ruthless analogy, you have to hunt and kill your own to survive. You could be a lion, but if you decide to hunt salmon in Alaska, you are going to starve. Best leave that to a brown bear.
It follows that everyone will have a different answer depending on factors such as age, experience, personality, connections in community groups and organisations, financial literacy, language skills etc. But the keys are the same: Do you relate to them, and will they trust you?
If the answer is yes, you stand a good chance of getting their listing. If not, you are wasting your time.
Having determined your target market, you then need a strategy which (a) reaches them cost effectively, and (b) establishes you as the expert. But that is the topic for another article.
Happy hunting!
Gil Davis had a stellar career in real estate for over 20 years. He was a franchisee and top salesperson of L J Hooker, then Richardson & Wrench, before going independent. His achievements included more than 1,700 sales at an average of 100 properties a year during his last decade in the business, and an amazing 80 per cent market share in his local Sydney area. His largest residential sale was the amalgamation of 18 properties for $27 million. Gil subsequently completed a PhD and now works as a university lecturer, as well as consulting to RP Data.
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