How Building Relationships Gives You a Huge Competitive Edge

How Building Relationships Gives You a Huge Competitive Edge

You can probably relate to the following scenario…

You meet a couple at an event. You introduce yourself as a real estate agent in their area. They tell you they’re thinking of selling within the next few months. So, you offer to schedule a listing presentation to explain how you might be able to help them.

Good so far!

Then it happens. They respond with, “Ah… well… we’ve known another agent for a long time. Rupelyn. She’s very active in our area. In fact, she mails us updates each month. We really like her.”

You try not to seem too disappointed. But you know that your chances of getting that listing has just gone down several notches. That’s because that other agent, Rupelyn, has a huge competitive advantage over you.

The prospect knows, likes and trusts her.

That’s the power of focusing your marketing on building relationships, rather than merely advertising or relying purely on online real estate lead generation.

By building relationships with previous clients, current prospects, and geographic farming residents, you earn their loyalty. You become top-of-mind to them. They come to see you as their agent, just as they see a dentist as their dentist, or the local florist at their florist. As Nancy Jackson, writing in BusinessKnowHow.com, points out, “That’s the magic of keep-in-touch marketing — people remember you and feel like they know you, and eventually, they often give your business or refer others to you.

For agents, that means getting more real estate client referrals and geographic farming leads.

From the perspective of real estate lead generation, this relationship-building approach accomplishes a number of important things for you:

• You’re building a base of relationships that pays off in increasingly more real estate agent leads and referrals every year.
• Your future — in terms of number of clients, listings and income — becomes more predictable. (No more January 1st blues worrying where your business will come from in the new year.)
• It’s a much more pleasant way to market your services compared to hit-and-miss advertising or chasing down hyper-competitive online leads.

The challenge is, building relationships takes a lot of work. You need to stay-in-touch with clients and your geographic farm each month, with a focus on adding value every time you connect.

Where are you going to find the time to do that?

The good news is, much of the heavy-lifting can be handled by a good done-for-you real estate marketing system that takes care of all the time-consuming tasks: strategy, writing, design, printing, mailing, and more.

For example, with the right real estate marketing system, working a geographic farm would only take you a couple of hours each month. The same is true for generating more real estate client referrals.

That’s a small price to pay for a huge competitive advantage.