Prospecting - How Clients Gather Information

In my last post, I discussed the major events that motivate prospects to start thinking realistically about buying or selling - the “awareness” stage.

In this post, I’ll address the “information gathering” stage because it is at this stage when prospects start considering whether to buy or sell their home. Something has happened that has made them aware that buying or selling their home is worth investigating.

Now, prospects are looking for any and all advice they can get from trusted sources. They pick up books at their local bookstore. They search internet sites for information on the steps of the home buying process, which agencies they need to contact, how to calculate what they can afford, and so on. They ask friends and coworkers how they bought or sold their home.

Why is the information gathering stage so powerful? Because at this stage, prospects realize there is a gap in their knowledge that is holding them back. They aren’t ready to make a decision because they don’t yet know but they are willing to learn and therefore devour everything they see that’s real estate related. It’s at this stage that they start to become receptive to your marketing message.

It’s now the time to start building rapport with prospects and demonstrate your expertise. You can do this through a number of prospecting ways - sending informative articles, offering a comprehensive free guide about a specific problem, blogging about local real estate, or conducting seminars and teleseminars.

Notice that everything listed here focuses on educating prospects, not selling them on hiring you nor telling them about how you’re the #1 agent nor sending them recipes or gardening tips. This stage is about educating prospects about the home buying or selling process - helping your prospects fill the educational gap so they feel comfortable making an informed decision about buying or selling.

It’s also at this stage that most of your prospects will get stuck and choose to quit the buying process. Why? Because it seems overwhelming. And overwhelmed or confused prospects don’t take action. There’s so much information out there. How do they know which sources to trust? How do they know that this is the way things are done? How do they know what to do next? If your marketing materials aren’t set up to guide them through this process and encourage them to take the next step, they never will.

Now, you may ask - why bother with this stage? If they aren’t yet ready to buy, why would I want them contacting me? The answer is that if you’re on their radar at this stage, it’s quite likely that if they choose to move forward and buy, you’ll be a strong consideration.

Why? According to the 2004 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 73% of prospects only contact one real estate agent. 14% only contact two. That means that 87% of the time, you’ll only be competing with one other agent for the job.

Now, take notice that the statistics say prospects only contact one or two real estate agents when they’re ready to evaluate solutions. That doesn’t mean that dozens of other agents weren’t prospecting to them. In fact with so many agents in the market, there’s a pretty good chance your prospects are bombarded with offers and promotions from other real estate agents.

But all those other real estate agents are looking for people that want to buy or sell now - not those that will soon be ready to buy. They don’t realize that they need to be in front of people as soon as possible - even if those people aren’t quite ready to buy - if they stand a chance of prospects calling them now.

Nor do they realize the value of educating their prospects. They simply send postcards and mailers out because that’s what other agents are doing! If you did the marketing audits in chapter 5, how many other agents addressed the concerns of their target audience and provided a compelling offer? Now, how many of them imitated each other and sent a generic postcard or flyer with a picture of a home, the agent’s picture, and a boilerplate message? Which do you think the prospect is more likely to notice? And which do you think the prospect is more likely to call?

In my next post, I’ll talk more about how prospects evaluate solutions and eventually decide not to buy or sell, to do it themselves, or to hire an agent.