Whether we like to admit or not, real estate is a sales job – and like any sales job having closing sales techniques is vital if you ever want to earn a commission and get paid. There are many different ways to close a sale, and many wonder if an aggressive or passive way is more effective. Finding the most effective closing sales techniques will make it a lot easier to convert listing appointments to clients – as well as if you’re working with buyers drastically reduce the number of houses you look at. No matter what type of sales job you may have, even if it’s not real estate – if you can’t close the sale, you don’t get paid.

But, most closing techniques make a lot of people uncomfortable. And from an ethical standpoint, many agents (especially newer ones who have never worked in sales before) are often caught in a debate between getting paid or being nice.

The #1 most important thing in selling anything, whether it be a product or service: You’ve got to demonstrate your value. I’ve seen so many bad listing presentation strategies where agents don’t really “prove” themselves – and if you can’t do that, you’re not going to get very far, especially in a super competitive field.

Another strategy is one a very well respected and older agent taught me when I first started real estate. When she began her training as an agent 30 plus years ago they taught her one thing and one thing only: don’t leave until you have the papers signed.

Now, this aggressive type of closing technique works – but this is where the ethics of everything comes into play.  Being overly aggressive makes people not like you. It makes them feel uncomfortable.

The only way to successfully be passive at marketing yourself it to have a strong online presence.

1. Demonstrate Your Value: You’ve got to be able to show that you are the ultimate real estate solution available. (If you’re not the best, you should get a new job that’s more suited for you or get the training you need to be the best). Customers and clients want proof. They’re trusting you with the biggest investment of their life most of them, so proof is essential. (If you haven’t done so already, make sure you Subscribe via email to be notified when I write my next post on techniques you can use to truly show your value to a prospective client)

2. Have Solutions to Objections: Everyone is always going to have objections and excuses as to why they can’t do something today.  If you want to close a sale and use good closing techniques, you need to have answers for all those objections clients are going to have for you. See Response to Sales Objections for more ideas.

3. Don’t Leave Too Early: The longer you stay somewhere with someone, the more of a relationship you build with them, and the more you’re going to be able to get a feel for them. If you sit there for 10 minutes, show your presentation and get out, then you get points for politeness, but chances are people are not going to remember you or feel that you’re good at negotiating. The longer you stay somewhere, the more likely you’re going to get the listing.

4. Play on Emotions: As humans, we are naturally emotional – and relating to someone on an emotional level is going to help you instantly make more progress than if you didn’t. It’s not enough anymore to just blast someone with facts. If you can get into their emotional side, they’ll likely connect with you better and be more likely to move forward.

5. There’s Only One Way to Be Successfully Passive: Being passive is not going to get you many face to face sales. But if you’re not the pushy aggressive sales type (and most of us aren’t, because we hate high pressure sales people), there’s a way to be passive and wildly successful – and that is to have a compelling online presence. When you’re nice, and not pushy, you get more referrals, word of mouth marketing, and sales, which are all nice residual income builders – and you can focus less on those pushy listing presentations.

If you adopt aggressive closing sales techniques, then you’re going to get more closings and sales, period. You and I both know that when you go to someone’s house for a listing presentation they committed before you get there to make no decisions that night. If you know how to be aggressive, then you know how to get past that and you will get the listing.  But will you gain respect? Referrals? Will people out there think you are nothing but a ruthless, heartless, scumbag agent?

If you want to retain your dignity while still generating business and commissions, learning how to demonstrate your value,  solve objections, connect on an emotional level with clients, put the right amount of time into it,  and  having a passive yet strong online presence can help you leave the pushy sales tactics at the door.

So, tell me your thoughts. What kind of closing strategies and techniques do you use? Are you too aggressive? Too passive? Somewhere in the middle? What benefits do you see of passive versus aggressive in closing a sale?

With the real estate market as uncertain as ever on a national level and in many local sectors, there are still many agents doing just as well as before – and some may even be doing better than they were in a good economy when home prices where at their top levels.

Being able to be successful as an agent in any market requires adaptability. The more you can stay on top of trends for what sellers and buyers want, the more likely you will be able to attract and retain customers, even if they aren’t lining up at the door to make offers.

Carving out a niche of different types of housing available can be a great way to get ahead in a sluggish or uncertain market. There are certain different things that will always be in demand, and other things that will become more in demand as people shift and change their spending habits. Below are some ideas of different niches that you may have some success with – now and in the future.

Handicap Accessible Housing: More and more Americans are seeking ways to stay in their own homes instead of paying high nursing home prices. Whether you decide to specialize in senior living communities or finding homes that offer adaptations for physical limitations, this is a niche that will only continue to grow with the aging population. Being familiar with different products such as residential elevators, walk-in baths, stair lifts, single level living homes, and other construction aspects that offer greater independence and mobility can be a huge advantage in working with clients. Being familiar with construction isn’t the only place you’ll want to study – HUD and other organizations offer many different loan options and programs for those with physical disabilities to make home ownership a reality.

First Time Home Buyers: The first time home buyers niche is always a strong one, no matter what the economy is telling you. With tax credits and different financing programs, the American dream of owning a home never dissipates.

Foreclosures: Whether you work directly with banks or individuals facing foreclosures, this is another niche that if you’re interested in and haven’t tapped into yet still presents plenty of opportunity as foreclosures continue to be a mounting problem.

Economical Building: While home builders who have decided to scale back and make smaller and more economical new construction homes haven’t determined it to be a success yet, there is still a lot of potential to specialize in more economical housing solutions. Whether you’re selling modular housing or appealing to potential buyers and sellers looking to save money in any which way possible, as people continue to trim their spending habits there very likely could be a lot of potential in this niche as well.

Environmentally Friendly Building: As more and more people realize how our dependence on oil and other natural resources has impacted the economy and the housing market, many are looking for more eco friendly homes. Whether they want a house that offers low or non existent utility bills or just want to know they’re doing their part in being environmentally responsible, there are many people in every market looking for ways to incorporate more environmentally friendly practices into their housing needs.

Better Health: As more people struggle with health care costs and insurance and medical bills, many people are becoming more conscious about their health and well being, which means they are being more proactive to ensure they are less likely to become sick. Now could be the time to specialize in communities that offer gym memberships, swimming pools, walking trails, and promote a healthy and active lifestyle.

This is just a small and short list of the different housing trends out there and the niches that present themselves. Getting started in any of these niches would be relatively easy to do – simply by getting involved in your community, listening to what buyers and sellers really want, and addressing their individual needs can all be a way of making sure you have clients no matter what the market may be.

Do you have any ideas for a niche that could be a wealth of untapped buyers and sellers based on current housing trends? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments section below.

Measuring advertising effectiveness is one of the key components to having a successful marketing campaign. If you are concerned about whether your marketing return on investment is worthwhile or if you’re spending a lot on marketing without seeing results, knowing how to track and measure the performance of your activities will not only make you more efficient but also stretch your advertising dollars as far as possible.

Below are some ways for measuring your advertising and marketing effectiveness:

1. Website Stats: If you don’t have a website stat counter yet, you definitely need to have one. Not knowing how many visitors you get each day or where they come from will not help you see which online tactics are working, or if others have found you through offline promotion either. At the very least you should be aware of what keywords are bringing traffic to your site, how many are coming directly by typing in your domain name, and other referring pages. More detailed info such as bounce rates, visitor paths, landing and exit pages will all give you additional information to assess what marketing value your website is providing.

2. Asking People How They Found Out About You: If you get a cold call and don’t know where the person came from, there’s no harm in asking how they found out about the property they are calling on or why they called you. Was it the sign in the yard? The ad you placed in the paper? Craigslist? Most people won’t think it’s strange if you ask them how they found out about the property or your services.

3. Comparing Time With Promotion: Some promotions will bring immediate results, others might take months before you see results. For example, if you are consistently sending out postcards to a targeted neighborhood, you likely won’t get calls the first month or two. But, after 6 months you might start seeing calls. Make sure before judging that a campaign has been a failure that you’ve allotted enough time to assess it’s effectiveness and give it time to perform.

4. Stop Running Ads: If you’ve been regularly advertising in the newspaper every week for years for example, try a few weeks of going without the advertising. If you don’t see any difference in calls or business, there’s a good chance you won’t miss it and can cut it out unless your seller demands it for their listings. You can also do this with CPC campaigns – if you stop running it and notice you get less emails from your website contact form, you may decide it’s best to keep that one going. Always test this way one ad at a time – you don’t want to think it’s the newspaper advertising that was working when it was actually the CPC advertising.

5. Use Different Phone Numbers: You can often track an ad’s performance by using different contact phone numbers. If you get calls to a number that’s only listed in one advertisement, then you can be pretty certain that ad was successful.

6. Use Direct Response Postcards: Postcards that can offer a simple pre-paid “drop in the mail for more info” type of response can help you gauge the effectiveness of a direct mail campaign. This works well with an offer to do a free home consultation or to provide the customer with more information about recent news, events, or special promotion.

While there is no exact science to understanding how your marketing efforts are paying off and what response and return on investment they are bringing, doing just a few of these will help you decide if what you are doing is working and should be continued, if you should try something else, or if there are other ways to improve your marketing campaigns. Taking the time to analyze the effectiveness of a campaign will not only help you spend less time preparing ads that don’t work – but also save you money as well.

What do you do for measuring advertising effectiveness? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The weather is warmer, schools are letting out for summer break, and it’s time to start brainstorming for some creative summer marketing ideas to help make sure you stay in business all year round. Here are some of our favorite ways to get exposure and advertise your real estate services this summer:

The Community Pool: Just about every area has a community pool, which makes it a great place to network and meet people in the area. You can take the passive approach, which is to sign up for a membership and visit on a regular basis talking to everyone you can with a stack of business cards in your bag, or you can take a more assertive approach by sponsoring or hosting events. For example, you could sponsor a special lunch with free admission for a day or you could set up to have free passes or admission to use for past client appreciation.

Real Estate Internship: If you are a broker looking to recruit some young and fresh agents, offering a real estate internship summer program could be a great way to attract high school and college students. They could learn the ropes and do just about anything around the office that doesn’t require a license. You can start off by contacting local schools and colleges, advertising in the job classifieds, and submit press releases for local papers or magazines to cover for additional exposure.

Ice Cream Social: Everybody loves ice cream (well, mostly everyone!) and this can be a great event for your farm or marketing prospects. All you need to do is either set up in a community center with games or activities and all the fixings for ice cream sundaes, or you can partner with local ice cream shops to see about hosting an event there.

Community Day Marketing: Many areas have a community day celebration complete with vendor booths and events and activities for the whole family. Reserve a spot, set up a tent and table, and have something phenomenal to give away, such as a raffle or promotion with every house sold. (Just remember to check with your broker on what is okay and what may be against the law!) You’ll have all types of new prospects to follow up on by the end of the day.

Weekend Getaway: If you have a few close past clients, organizing a fun group camp or getaway could be a great way to reconnect on a personal level and hopefully increase the referral business. Invite them to bring a friend or two along, and you may just have a few new clients while you’re taking a mini-vacation!

Wedding Crashers: While I would never suggest being a wedding crasher, June is one of the most popular months for weddings, which can be a great source of first time home buyers. As I mentioned in our article on where to find real estate leads, networking with a wedding planner can be a great source for referrals. You might also want to scope out the announcements section of the newspaper.

Summer Promotional Gifts: Whether it’s a Frisbee or a beach ball or golf balls, there are all types of promotional gifts that are geared for summer that can work well for mail campaigns or other promotional events.

Summer BBQ: Fire up that charcoal grill, get some of your picnic favorites, and celebrate summer with your past clients, neighbors, or farm. It can be a great way to get more referrals and clients with a little careful planning and creativity.

The options are endless for possible summer marketing ideas. Think about the events that are going on in your community and how you can be involved. Have any creative summer marketing ideas you’d like to share? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

Every agent needs one thing to be successful: real estate leads. Real estate leads are basically anyone who has the potential to become a customer or client in your real estate business. Having a solid supply of regular business leads can help you stay busy all throughout the year.

It’s important of course to remember that real estate leads are people, and that most people do not like to be treated as “leads”. It takes a little bit of tact, self control, and good people skills to talk to someone without them feeling like you are a typically starving sleazy real estate agent. It is up to you what you do with my list of 53 ways to generate real estate leads and how you handle and convert the leads that come to you as a direct result. As the saying goes: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

Some of these ways to get real estate leads are free, some of these ways will cost only time, others may cost a small amount in advertising or marketing costs. Sure, you can buy real estate leads too – but why do that when you can get your own better qualified leads on your own?

Ready? Here’s 53 Ideas on Finding Real Estate Leads:

1. Pass Out Business Cards: Sure, you know you’re supposed to pass out business cards. But who are you passing them out to? Are you passing them to everybody you meet? Do your friends and family have ample supply of cards for them to hand to others? Yesterday a complete stranger came unexpectedly and visited my house to tell me I should read the Bible. I welcomed her visit with open arms and made sure she didn’t leave without a few business cards.

2. PPC Campaigns: What is PPC? Basically PPC stand for pay-per-click advertising. Google Adwords is probably the most well known version, though other sites such as Yahoo and MSN also offer it. Pay Per Click campaigns, when targeted properly for your area and desired keywords can help you get real estate leads pretty quickly. This is actually what a lot of people who sell leads use to get leads! Cutting out the middleman can help you do it yourself. Just be sure that the page of your site they come to when they click on is going to make them want to call or email you.

3. Speaking of Websites: You do have a real estate website, right? Complete with a regularly updated real estate blog? The successful real estate agents I know have nice websites, nice blogs, and rank #1 in Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.

4. Email Marketing: Email is one of the easiest, non-confrontational, and least expensive ways to generate real estate leads. People might not like giving you their phone number, but most will be okay with giving you an email address. Check out our list of creative real estate email marketing ideas to get started.

5. Post in Craigslist: The first time I ran a Craigslist ad, I couldn’t believe that I actually received a single email out of it, let alone several potential real estate leads. You can submit your latest real estate listings, offer a free real estate report, or entice people to call you for some other reason. Our list of Craigslist Ad Creators can help you make your Craigslist ad outshine the rest.

6. Attend Networking Meetings: Are you regularly networking with other professionals in your area? It doesn’t matter who, what, why, or when – but networking can greatly increase your referrals and real estate leads. Start up a breakfast club, find some people on sites like Meetup.com, and naturally don’t forget about your chamber of commerce.

7. Host a Seminar or Class: Everybody loves free information, and many people enjoy going to seminars or classes to learn something new, especially since it takes away some of the pressure when you are with a group of people. It doesn’t matter what you teach – how to sell your house, how to buy your house, how to do xyz home improvement project with a contractor you met at a networking meeting, etc. These people will remember you and if you effectively follow up with them, they will all be excellent sources for real estate leads.

8. Tell Everybody What You Do: You’ll be amazed how easy it can be to get leads just by telling complete strangers what you do and that you work in real estate. Mentioning it in casual conversation and you’ll likely be asked questions which gives you a good opportunity to hand out business cards and/or get their contact information.

9. Advertise on Your Car: Your car can be a great source of real estate leads and referrals. You can often order magnetic or vinyl signs inexpensively. This builds recognition, and you may even find yourself talking to people about real estate in your driveway or a parking lot more than you’d think!

10. Exhibit Yourself: Just about every community and area has some sort of trade show during the year. Sometimes they are community events, other times they are for businesses, currently in our area is a Home and Garden show. You may have to pay for a booth, but if you set up your booth professionally and come equipped with an enticing raffle (where they submit name, address, phone, and email) you will likely gain many real estate leads this way.

11. Network With Other Real Estate Agents in Different Areas: When you make real estate agent friends all over the country, you increase your chances of receiving relocation referrals from them. If you live in a small town or obscure place, this may or may not payoff, but if you live in an area that is constantly attracting relocation business, this can be very beneficial. It also helps to have real estate friends all over the country so you can send referrals their way – and know that your clients will be treated well and have confidence in the sale closing.

12. Write for Local Papers and Magazines: Many local newspapers, magazines, and newsletters simply don’t have the time to write a lot of articles or have the money to pay someone to write an article. A simple letter to the editor with a few sample writing articles and a proposal to write regularly for them in exchange for a small byline or advertisement can pay off immensely. You’d be surprised how many of those local papers will welcome you with open arms and how many have high circulation numbers.

13. Network Online: You’ve probably heard of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others. There’s hundreds of online social networks. Go on, create a profile and find your friends on there. Don’t be shy. See Using Social Networking Sites to Meet Clients for some tips.

14. Letter of Recommendation Exchange: If you have a long past client list, and a business colleague of yours has a long past client list, why not do a letter of recommendation exchange? Basically, you send your list of past clients a letter that says “If you need xyz service, I’d like to recommend Jane Smith” – and that person writes a similiar letter to their clients recommending you. Email works too

15. Join Associations: The more associations you join, the more directories you will be in, and the more people you will meet. See what associations in your area you can join that not only add to your credibility, but also your contact database.

16. Target Soon to Be Expireds Neighborhoods: Soon to Be Expireds are people who are in the multi-list and are approaching their contract date, and have yet to sell their house. Chances are they are less than satisfied with their agent. So target any neighborhood with a listing over 4 months old, since many agents despite horrible DOM statistics are still accepting 90-120 day listing contracts. Obviously, you should not directly solicit someone else’s listings, since you would not want them to do the same to you and in some cases could get you in big trouble with your local board. So be creative, and send out some catchy postcards to the entire neighborhood. You ARE allowed to send to geographic areas

17. Speaking of Direct Mail: Direct Mail is a way of getting leads if done properly. The key to successful direct mail is to 1. Send Stuff People Will Open and Use and 2. Be Consistent.

18. Become a Regular Somewhere: Enjoy drinking coffee? Go out to lunch often? Becoming a regular at your local coffee shop or diner can result in many possible real estate leads, since people will get to know you and be happy to refer others to you as well.

19. Newspaper Announcements: Your newspaper can be a goldmine for real estate leads. Birth announcements, obituaries, engagement announcements, marriage licenses, and even foreclosure notices are all published regularly in your paper.

20. Speaking of Newlyweds…: Are you networking with wedding planners? Advertising on popular wedding sites like TheKnot and others? Often times when people are getting married getting a new house together is on their to-do list.

21. Be a Guest Speaker: Chances are there are plenty of avenues in your area where you can volunteer to be a guest speaker. Career day at schools and colleges, motivational seminars, and others can all be a chance to give you a wide variety of audiences.

22. HR Departments: Is one of your local companies expanding? Do they employ a large amount of people in your area? Introducing yourself and staying in contact with HR departments can help send real estate leads your way. You may even be able to work out some sort of benefits plan they can offer their employees if they work for you in the form of rebates, discounts, or other special offers.

23. Get Involved With News Channels, Radio, and Other Local Influential Media: Getting involved with your news channels might seem pretty daunting at first, but it’s not impossible. It’s all about your approach and what need they may have you can fulfill. Would they like a local real estate expert to talk for 5 minutes during their finance section? Someone to talk about real estate for free for an hour on their morning radio show? It’s a long shot if you don’t have any connections already with the local media, but it’s not an impossible idea either.

24. Offer Something for Free to Be Reviewed: Companies do this all the time, and there’s no reason why a real estate agent can’t either. Find local bloggers or writers, and ask them if they would be willing to write a review in exchange for a free comparative market analysis, free ebook you wrote for home sellers, or other product/service you can provide.

25. Don’t forget the FSBO: It’s hard to believe I’m already on idea #25 and I am just now listing the FSBO. Working with FSBO’s is not easy, but it can pay off over time with a little persistence and the right strategy. Converting FSBO’s is a whole other post, so be sure you subscribe by email to make sure you don’t miss it!

26. Network With Local Bloggers: Visit my recent post on Networking With Local Bloggers to see how you can increase your website traffic and build more contacts and relationships online.

27. Get Your Overalls on and Go Back to the Farm: Okay, so farming in real estate is not the same as farming, say, corn and potatoes. (Though I have had many people who randomly visit this blog leave comments and not realize this!). Farming is the way Gary Keller started out, it’s the way many new agents are gaining success, and it’s highly under utilized. Read our complete series on Real Estate Farming.

28. Post on Local Forums: This can achieve two things: introducing you to new people and link building all at once! Don’t try to sell anybody anything, this will likely get you a bad reputation pretty quickly. But if you simply provide helpful information regularly, people will click on your link and see your site. Too busy for this? You can actually hire people to post in forums for you! Really!

29. Open Houses: I know, I know…open houses are a waste of time. Open houses don’t bring serious buyers. Go on and list your excuses. But if someone wasn’t seeing any benefit from open houses, guess what? Nobody would have them at all anymore. The 200+ open houses advertised in today’s Sunday paper tells me that you can get leads from an open house. Here’s how to get more traffic at your open houses.

30. Sundays are Good for Church, too: I’m not one to tell anybody they should be any specific religion or that they should go or not go to church. BUT…going to church can have an added benefit. For starters, many churches now sell advertising in their bulletins rather inexpensively, especially when you consider that anywhere from 1000-10,000 people may read it. People also tend to trust people they go to the same church with. Churches also have tons of activities you can go to – pancake breakfasts, kids parties, you name it. Don’t go to church just for the leads though – you should go mainly because it gives you some sort of spiritual fulfillment.

31. Pick up The Phone: Call up everybody you know, and maybe even a few people you don’t know if you can successfully get past the Do Not Call List. Our tips on cold calling should help you make some warm calls to past clients or associates. Have a text messaging group of contacts? You can send those, too.

32. Start Your Own Newsletter: Earlier I suggested contributing to local newsletters and magazines. If you have the time, the budget, and either the people to hire to do the work for you or the experience to make it successful yourself, starting your own newsletter for a large neighborhood or area can be a lucrative way to not only gain more business and referrals, but possibly even make a side income from advertising revenue. For example, you could partner with other businesses and have them pay for advertising or contribute towards printing costs. This one takes a lot of effort, and probably some research, but it could work out well.

33. Start a Neighborhood Blog: This one’s a lot less expensive and easier than the last idea I suggested, and likely no less effective. There is not one single neighborhood blog in the area where I live. This is pretty ironic, when you consider how many different neighborhoods and areas there are. I’m sure the 40,000+ people in my township would appreciate an easy to access site with the latest news and events posted. Invest in a high quality blog design, send out mail to notify the entire neighborhood of their new blog, and welcome others to post and comment. Make sure it also links to your site

34. Floor Time: I know, I hear you already: “Floor time is a waste of time.” Actually, I don’t really know that floor time is a waste of time, I sold a $725,000 house to someone who called in during floor time. Sure, you might have afternoons where the phones just don’t ring, but you can always use that time to work on your real estate blogging while waiting for the phone. This is another one I’ll be covering in a future post, are you subscribed by email yet? Floor time is “opportunity time”.

35. Fly-er Away: Real estate flyers are nothing new. But I am willing to bet that even if you do make and use real estate flyers for all of your listings, you’ve never gotten a single lead from one. Why is that? Because chances are the only thing you do with a flyer is sit it in a sad lonely folder on the kitchen counter of a vacant house. If you don’t distribute those flyers, how do you expect them to generate any real estate leads for you or have any real purpose? Don’t leave your flyers locked up in a vacant house. Get them out somewhere they can be seen and read and create interest in potential buyers and sellers!

36. Knock-Knock: Door knocking, my friends, kind of sucks. But you know what? If you do it regularly (at least once a month), bring something of value (something a little better than a flyer), and consistently (same neighborhood, same time) and supplement it with mailers or other similar marketing plans, guess what? IT WORKS! The worst that will happen if you door knock is that nobody will answer the door. The second worst thing is you will get somebody like me who tries to promote their business to you instead as I mentioned in idea #1.

37. Don’t Leave Home Without Identification: You have a real estate pin, right? I bet you also have a jacket, or a sweatshirt, or a hat, or a bag, and probably tons of other stuff with your real estate logo. Wear it and use it. Go to the pool a lot? How about a beach towel with your company logo? I’ve heard all kinds of success stories about wearing their pins. Dress like you’re going to work everywhere you go – you never know who you’ll run into at the grocery store or other places and what conversations may ensue.

38. Do Something Press Release Worthy: Our newspaper has a section dedicated to real estate agents and happenings in the news. If you do something that is press worthy, you too can gain newspaper recognition and have your company send out press releases.

39. Run a Promotion: People respond well to freebies, special offers, and coupons. Many real estate agents don’t know what to promote or offer as a freebie, but there are plenty of things such as gift cards, commission coupons, free books, etc. Check with your broker to make sure you can do something like that, and go wild with it.

40. Visit the Library & Bookstores: This one could maybe get you in trouble, but it’s a possibility. Put your business card in the first chapter of real estate related books. Alternatively, maybe you could set something up with the library or local bookstore owners where you can advertise in that section. People read books because they need help – being available can help.

41. The Retiring/Ex-Agent’s Files: You’ll have to be on the good side of the retiring agent and the office manager, but with the market being the way it is right now many agents are also quitting real estate. Jump in and volunteer to take over their client maintenance.

42. Enlist Family and Friends to Spread the Word: Imagine if you had just one relative tell 5 people about you, how many people you could have knowing about you and your services. Your friends and family should be happy to help you. If not, well, you can at least make new friends!

43. Be Positive: I am so sick of hearing people say how horrible the market is, how nobody is doing anything, negative excuse after negative excuse. That is mostly my inspiration for writing this whole article on how to get more real estate leads. Repeat this phrase to yourself until you are ready to be sick: If I act enthusiastic then I’ll BE enthusiastic! People are not doing anything real estate wise because all they hear is negative this and negative that. Focus on the positives – now is a great time for many people to buy.

44. Write Articles and Submit Them to Directories: Writing articles online takes a lot of time and effort but again it achieves two things: quality inbound links, and it defines you as an expert.

45. Hospital Marketing: I know one real estate salesperson who routinely sat in the cafeteria of a hospital for lunch while taking his elderly parents to doctors appointments and such. He often sat and talked with doctors and nurses. The doctors and nurses enjoyed a non-medical conversation, and he built up a nice relationship with them that caused many of them to use him and to refer him to newly relocated employees as well. I don’t know if it will work for everybody, but if it works for one person, it can work for you too.

46. Real Estate Developers and Builders: There are many real estate developers and builders out there for you to network with. Working on a new construction site for many agents may be all the business they need for an entire year or two. See our article on getting started in new construction for some ideas on breaking into this area of real estate if you haven’t already.

47. Real Estate Niche Marketing: In every area, there is a need for a specialist in real estate. Many agents do well specializing in horse farms, others condos, some for seniors looking to live in retirement communities. If you are knowledgeable about a certain niche in real estate, capitalize on it and find ways to reach your unique target market.

48. Spend Some Time Looking at Tax Records: It’s quite possible that there are property owners near you that are behind on their taxes, and many areas have this information freely available online. A simple friendly, warm letter offering to help may be just what both of you need.

49. Apartment/Renter Marketing: Many people are apartment renting, and these people can all be excellent sources for specializing as a leasing agent or working with them towards purchasing their very own home. Find out some creative ways to get involved in a local apartment building near you, and you could have an entire year’s worth of real estate leads and clients. Don’t dismiss advertising in apartment rental books or on popular apartment search websites in your area also.

50. Go Get Some Exercise: It’s important to be healthy and get enough exercise. But you’ll find you can also meet a lot of people if you join a local health club, go to the neighborhood swimming pool at least twice a week, or even find others to walk or exercise with. You’ll feel good about exercising, and you’ll also find some new real estate clients to work with as well!

51. Sponsor a Sports Team: Little league baseball and youth softball will be starting up soon, and there’s also many other sports teams such as football, basketball, and soccer in need of a sponsor. Beyond just having your name on the team’s t-shirts, you can do many other things to really connect with the parents and coaches, such as treating the team to ice cream after a game. Don’t forget to go to games as well.

52. Make a Coloring Book: It’s true, I’m a sucker for coloring. I’ve loved it since I was a little kid, and now I’m just thankful I have my own kids to use as an excuse to color with them. You can create your own coloring book by hiring a print shop to design one for you, or purchase royalty free coloring book images. Good coloring book topics are “We’re Moving!” – a story about Sally and Jimmy moving into a new house, and other similar things that makes parents think it will benefit their kids. Distribute your coloring book to schools, churches, day care centers, doctors offices, and others. You can also make simple coloring pages with your company logo and contact information on it to entertain anyone who stops in with their children in tow – they’ll be unlikely to throw away their child’s artwork.

53. Day Care Centers: Day care centers are full of children and their working parents. The day care staff often knows a lot of gossip going on between parents, as well as if they are getting any new children or if other children may be moving away.

Obviously, there is no single person out there that I know of who can do all 53 ideas on this list for generating real estate leads. But hopefully some of these will give you an idea on where to get started on generating more leads for your business. By starting with just 1-2 ideas in this list, you may find yourself finding enough business to keep yourself busy. If you do these all right, you may even be able to hire a real estate team to manage most of the marketing and real estate lead generation for you.

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Have any other ideas on generating and finding real estate leads? Share them in the comments below!