Communicating with clients (part 1)

This is the first of a three part series on communication with clients and prospects. Today we will focus on frequency and type of communication. In the coming week we’ll take a look at messaging and focus (part 2) and then finish up with moving people through a sales funnel (part 3). Hopefully at the end of this series you will be able to evaluate your communication plan and make it better.

Frequency and types of communication:

Messaging is the most important aspect of communicating with clients and prospects, unless you either aren’t reaching them with your message or you aren’t reaching them at the right times. There are a lot of ways to communicate these days and you can do all of them for free. So why not decide the best frequency and ways to communicate? I would break down a good communication plan in to three types of communication:

1) Personal email: This should be saved for people who you know the most about. The idea being that you can send highly personalized and relevant messaging to people who want/need to receive it. This type of communication is also the most time consuming which doesn’t make it very scalable. You should save this for your most valued clients who will give you the best return on your time investment.

2) Newsletters: These are one of the oldest means for communicating with prospects that we will discuss currently in use by the real estate community. They are great for reaching a large audience with a much smaller per prospect time investment. But, you need to be careful to test your messaging and formatting options when you send. Check to see how many people read your letter each time you send it out. If you aren’t getting a great response rate, then mix it up and see if it gets better. The most important thing to know about your typical real estate newsletter is that its not as effective at getting people to act than you have been told. You will need to couple other means with it.

3) Blogging: Blogs are a relatively new medium for real estate. But they are a great way to get timely information updates to your prospects and clients. Unlike newsletters, you can (and should), update these regularly. In most cases the updates would be several per week as opposed to once a month.

In my mind, newsletters are a thing of the past. The only redeeming quality that I see from them is that you can get the attention of a larger amount of people by “forcing” your message into their inbox. But, if you could couple blogging with a newsletter I think you will get better results with less effort. For instance, you could update your blog several times a week, then once a month take your favorite posts and send them to your database as features. This accomplishes two things: 1) You get your monthly communication which keeps your name in front of people who might do business with you and 2) More importantly, you promote your blog while not having to create more new content for a newsletter.

If you can successfully create a good communication plan you should be able to move more prospects to serious clients and then really get a reward for your hard work. In the next part of this series we will talk about messaging and focus. We will be looking at ways to create exciting, rewarding content for your readers that will lead to repeat readers and business.

What’s on your to do list?

(photo courtesy of kecute.wordpress.com)

There’s so much to do these days, even in a down market. But what’s on your to do list for today? Most agents find themselves trying to solely concentrate on making sales and getting new leads and clients. This probably includes checking email 50 times per day, answering and making phone calls, and going on appointments. Having this kind of frantic schedule leaves very little brain power left for making remarkable changes for your business and development.  If you are only focused on being frantic, like most agents are, you aren’t making progress on your real goal…actual business development.

You need to take some time each day or week, only a few hours, to work on projects that you enjoy that will create more business. Like to blog? Take three hours each week and work solely on that. I like to work on my blog about twenty minutes each day, doing research and writing posts. Why don’t you work on writing and formatting for your newsletter? Or get some research done on that new area of town that’s going to become your niche in the marketplace.

Point is, you need to take a breath….(that was nice). Then figure out the big picture task that you really want to get done this week or month. Then write out the three to do items that you can achieve today to move that vision forward. If you don’t take time to look at the macro picture of your  business, you will forever be stuck running in your hamster wheel without any real progress.

Can you make more money by firing half of your database?

Most of us have huge lists of people. We collect names, sometimes just email addresses, like its a hobby. Then we take those names and we write them down and we write all of those people everytime we have something to say. We write everybody regardless of their preference to hear our message, and this effects our messaging.

Today I was reading Seth Godin’s blog post titled, “Infinity – they keep making more of it”. He talks about this very issue and the almost innate desire to grow our businesses and our reach exponentially. If we can reach fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand more people then why not?

When you sit down to create your newsletter or your weekly marketing piece you probably salivate when you think about all the people that are going to “read” your message. But I think somewhere in that creative process you dilute your messaging. You go for broad appeal because you’re sending to a large, varied audience.

But we work in a niche market. We are specialists in our product type. Our messaging should never be broad, and it certainly isn’t meant for the masses. We need to deliver specific information to a very targeted group of people.

So, I ask you to consider getting rid of the parts of your database that you know nothing about. The names that haven’t responded to your emails, or the addresses that bounce-back everytime. If you’re not ready to do this just yet, try this little test. Take a look at the content in your last newsletter and then look at the content to the last email you sent to less than 30 people. You’ll see what i’m talking about and then maybe you’ll be ready to start cutting.

Thanks for showing up!

I appreciate you taking the time to check out lassohelp.com. Please take a minute to poke around, you’ll find the 5 latest posts below. To the right you’ll find a subscribe via email button, that I recommend you hit as well as a search box, archive, and a category sort bar. You can expectt to see an update here at least once a week that will help you promote and grow your business. Feel free to comment on any of the articles to get a discussion going with your peers. Let me know if you have any questions and I hope you enjoy!

I want you to succeed

Times are tough right now, the economy is showing signs of hope and potential for upward movement but we aren’t quite there yet. Most of us don’t have to look farther than our own bank accounts to know that we need to be doing more to succeed in this market and then the bear market that will return. I know that you can do better business with lasso using proven strategies for permission based marketing. But don’t take my word for it, consider this case studies:

1) Amazon.com: Amazon has been collecting information on their users/customers for years now. They’ve been collecting information on what kinds of books you like to read and therefore what kind of books you will most likely read in the future. The “print” business as we know it is doomed to fail. But Amazon has the right outlook for success. They have slowly been sending email to subscribers that want to read what they send. They send you suggestions that actually match your interests. They haven’t made a killing yet, but in the next two years Amazon is getting into the publishing industry. They are going to pre-empt the market and only print books with pre-orders because they know what their customers are looking for and they have built a trust relationship with those customers. They are going to make selling books extremely profitable from investing in permission based marketing.

This can and will work for real estate. If you can give your customers the reward they are looking for (quality, focused information) they will reward you with business and even better, referrals. I want to help you establish this relationship with a no-cost investment that doesn’t take a lot of your time once you have it set up. Others in our business and in our office don’t use this strategy because its not as glamorous as blasting 10,000 random email addresses. When you blast a random list you feel accomplished, but what do you get out of it other than that? I guarantee if you take the time to set up your own permission based marketing campaign you will see results.

If you have any interest in getting your own campaign off of the ground lets set up a one-on-one meeting. Give me an hour and I can show you enough data to convince you to move forward.

Don’t wait too long, somebody has the motivation to do better business, if its not you today, you’re a step behind.