What a Real Estate Agent needs to do to sell to me.

What a Real Estate Agent needs to do to sell to me.
by James Miller

The best thing I think a Real Estate agent can do is to be in constant contact with their Buy/sell list of clients.

As a Real Estate Investor, a lot of Realtors put me on the auto-mailer that emails me when they have what their program thinks fits my buying criteria. It is usually way off, as they are often just sending me things like “commercial properties over $500,000”. Or any residential income properties in a certain zip code.

Besides being off target with what I am looking for, these e-mails get to be overwhelming, and I tend not to keep up with them.

What is effective is what only Ed, one of the dozen or so Real Estate agents that I have worked with, does.

He calls me on the phone.

It is short and sweet and usually goes something like this:

“I’m not sure if you’ll be interested in this, but I see [some property] has come on the MLS.”

We don’t spend a lot of time on the phone, but he does let me know in a very personal way, that he is still looking for properties for me and what’s out there.  He also always asks me what I have “going on”, or “what’s new”.

I am not even sure If he knows how effective this is for him. Every time he calls (and he has the sense not to overdo it) he forces me to remember that he is a Realtor.

He puts himself in a position to hear about what I have going on and what I am interested in doing at that moment.   If I have a property that I am thinking about selling, I am sure going to tell him. If I have a need for a tenant, he will know right then. If I know of someone who might be interested in buying or selling He will find out about it when were talking.

There is also the possibility that I may like the sound of the property that Ed is calling about.

By taking the time to call me, Ed has positioned himself on the top of a very long list of Realtors I know.

Want to hear a little secret about Ed?

He’s not the best Real Estate Agent that I know.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very good Realtor, but he‘s not the best one I know. He doesn’t have a big list of letters after his title  like a lot of Realtors and Brokers. There are questions I ask him that He doesn’t immediately know the answer to. He is consistently at the top of the list for sales, but he is not yet #1.  But none of that matters because he has done the one thing that no other Real Estate Agent does.

He has taken the time to learn about me, and what I am doing, by picking up the phone.