What Prospecting Is - And Isn’t

Prospecting is everything you do to generate awareness and educate prospects about your services. Yet to most agents, it’s a lot of work for seeming little reward. Most agents who don’t have a prospecting system in place wonder if it’s really worth it. Here are 3 key points about prospecting which debunk some common myths.

Prospecting Is About Getting Interested Candidates to Contact You
I once heard a real estate agent refer to prospecting as a game of hunting. “Just get the bird in the cage,” is what he used to say. The cage, of course, was the signed contract. This agent thought that once he coerced the prospect to sign his contract, he won the listing.

When I discuss prospecting, I am not referring to forcing your prospects to do anything they don’t want to do. In fact, I’d say that if you’re manipulating your prospects from the start, you’re setting yourself up for a troubled working relationship with them down the road. Your clients are paying you for sound advice that they can trust. How can they ever trust you if they feel you are lying to them, not acting in their best interest, or are simply untrustworthy? Treat your clients as you’d wish to be treated.

Prospecting Is Not About Overpromising and Underdelivering
You might be thinking that this sounds like a pipedream. Don’t you need gimmicks and big promises to attract clients initially? No, you don’t. In fact, the more you use, the more you raise the bar for what clients will expect from you - and if you don’t perform as you say you will, your clients will see through your façade.

Unhappy clients tell everyone they know about the poor experience they had. Rather than refer others to you, they steer others towards your competitors. And they have a tendency to check up on you every chance they get because they won’t trust you.

Prospecting Is About Becoming A Trusted Advisor Before The Contact Is Signed
Instead of thinking of prospecting as hunting, think of it as a way to tell interested people who you are, what you do, and why they should hire you. It’s about educating those people within your target market about the buying and selling process. It’s about giving advice and taking time to explain how real estate transactions work - before they ever hire you.

Why do this? Because if you don’t, others will - and are right now. Your prospects only need to perform an internet search or head to their local bookstore to get information on buying or selling. The information is already out there - and it covers all sides of the spectrum from why they should hire a real estate agent to why they should sell FSBO. Some information is accurate. Some is outdated. Some is specific to a particular state. Will you leave it up to chance that your prospects find faulty information? Or will you help your prospects find the correct information they need to make the best choice they can?

If you help them during their information search, they’ll remember you when they’re ready to hire an agent. If you don’t, you’ll just be one of the many agents out there that all look the same - and probably won’t get their phone call.