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Many people associate January and February to be “slow times” of the year in the real estate industry with many home sellers waiting for the market to pick up in the spring. Areas affected by a lot of cold temperatures and snow especially are prone to a lot of people wanting to wait for warmer weather before selling or purchasing a home.
So while agents are quick to complain that the market is slow or all of their current prospects are on hold, very few take advantage of the extra free time to accomplish things that will bring them even more business when things start to pick up. The few agents who have seen the opportunity to use it as time to get a kick start on their marketing and prospecting may find that some things are more time consuming than others – and the most time consuming activities do not always yield the best return.
For example, let’s say you’ve decided to devote three hours to marketing each week. (If you don’t have any clients right now though, I hope you are devoting at least 10 hours or more!) What can be accomplished in three hours? You could make 30 phone calls that each last 10 minutes. You could go door knocking and visit 50 houses if it is in a subdivision. You could spend three hours creating a mailer and stuffing and addressing envelopes to go to 300 houses. You could spend three hours promoting your real estate blog online. You could sit in your real estate office on floor time and wait three hours for someone to miraculously call in.
There’s plenty of marketing and prospecting activities you could do in three hours – but which are the best use of your time?
Obviously, mailers are probably the least best possible use of your time. For starters, it is passive marketing and the return is very low. It can take months of consistent mailing before ever getting a response, which means it involves even more time and waiting for a response before seeing results. And if you are taking the time to write personalized letters and stuffing envelopes, it can really eat up a lot of time!
Sitting in your office on floor time waiting for someone to call in is also probably not the most productive. While mailers and floor time can lead to sales and results (I did have a $750,000 sale from floor time once!), they take time that could be used more efficiently for meeting people and getting clients.
If you’re having a hard time finding clients this time of year, take a look at what you’re really doing to get those clients. Are you doing passive marketing or active marketing? Are you making the best use of your time? And how much time are you really spending on prospecting? You might find that while you think you are “working” 40 hours a week, you may find most of that time is spent talking to other agents, making coffee, touring properties you don’t really need to see, checking your website stats more than you are updating and promoting your website, or other activities that aren’t effective.
What do you think is the best use of time for prospecting and marketing? Making phone calls? Door knocking? Networking? Something else I haven’t suggested here? Share it in the comments below!
