Best Agent Business
Providing part-time virtual assistants to top real estate agents.

Snail Mail?

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How do you contact your buyer-seller leads? Are you sending emails only? No matter how tech-oriented a person may be, an email will not speak as loudly as a physical mailing will. Start out by sending a personal note to your qualified internet leads. Follow this up a few days later with a marketing packet. Need help? Ask how Best Agent Business can do these mailings for you!

 

Proactive Customer Service

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You need to call all of your contacts several times per year to ask them how they are doing and see if there is anything they need. In addition to your personal calls, you can have Best Agent Business call your clients for feedback. Begin to practice proactive customer service and database marketing calls.

 

BOO!!!

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Best Agent Business is involved in a wonderful effort to increase neighborly love—with a frightful twist! We have started what is called “Ghosting It Forward.” This is a combination of the movie “Pay It Forward” and the fun Halloween tradition of “Ghosting” or “Boo-ing,” as some neighborhoods call it. Basically the idea is that you gift some neighbors with a bag of candy, a nice card, a small decoration or any other small gift that you feel is appropriate. The fun part is that you do this in secret!
Do not let your neighbor’s know that you were the one who ghosted them! Include, with your gift, the directions which instruct them to do the same to 2 other neighbors. After a while this idea will spread around your neighborhood, your town, and we might even see it happen all around the country. It has already begun. Have you been ghosted yet?

 

Give More Than You Take

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Are you a giver or a taker? While most of us must take a great deal to increase our business, we can also give even more! Not only does this increase other’s opinions of you, but it could increase that which is being given to you, such as referrals and repeat business. Best Agent Business practices this. We are always willing to share information with clients and non-clients for no additional cost. Take a step back and ask yourself if you have given anything today. Be willing to constantly provide help, ideas, and knowledge to clients, prospects, and fellow agents.

 

How productive is your database?

Posted In: , . By Best Agent Business

For every 100 clients or SOI in your database, you should be getting 4-10 deals per year from repeat or referral business. Are you achieving 10 per 100? If not, ask us for improvement ideas. You may need to clean up your database and you should probably increase your focus on marketing efforts. We can help you with all of this! Contact us for more information.

 

Best Agent Business provides virtual assistants to successful real estate agents. You probably already know that. But did you know that we also utilize the very same virtual assistants to keep our business running? That’s right; everything about Best Agent Business is done by a virtual assistant from their at-home office. Even this blog! We believe that, just like Microsoft, we should practice what we preach. We eat our own dog food, so to speak. Yum!

 

A great time to increase marketing to clients and SOI is during October and November when life is steady and calm and business is a bit slower. We encourage you to reconnect with calls, emails, mailings, and special events revolving around Halloween and Thanksgiving. This is far more effective than the December holiday rush. We strongly encourage you to consider investing $1-$10 per person for your clients, SOI, and farm. People love Halloween and it is the most 'home' oriented holiday because people walk around the neighborhood. Do pop-bys or pop-ins to give away pumpkins, pumpkin pie, or other items. We have a new blog full of great Halloween marketing ideas. Check it out! Best Agent Business has assistants ready to help you get your choice of these ideas up and running.

 

Two buyer’s agents are better than one. When you hire two buyer’s agents, you should encourage friendly competition and cooperation. Develop a method to compare their success and create a positive work environment to minimize turnover.

 

Internet Leads: Too Many or Too Few?

By Best Agent Business

The internet is a wonderful thing. The number of leads you can generate from having a website, blog and online listings is amazing. And it’s pretty easy to do; just subscribe to a real estate website, pick a template, fill in your name and address, and post your newest listings. Voila! You have internet business! Of course, you could double or triple your time spent online, operate several web sites and create unique content for each, publish several blogs, update your listings with lots of pictures and even use virtual tours! But what do you do with all those leads? If you overspend your time or budget on internet lead generation but do nothing with it, you have wasted leads and lost potential profit. Be sure to balance your internet improvement time with time spent calling, qualifying and resolving your new leads. You can do this yourself, or you can have someone else do it. There are many options, but did you know that we specialize in these areas as well? Best Agent Business can not only improve your website, write your blogs and post your listings, we can also follow up via email and phone with your new leads, passing the hot ones on to you.

 

Having Trouble Focusing?

By Best Agent Business

We all have days that just seem to be a waste. These are the days we can’t seem to focus, the days we wish we could spend golfing, boating or just vegging out at home. However tempting that may be, it will do nothing to get you through the backlog of duties you probably have waiting for you at the office. If you don’t have anything pressing, such as a major deadline, meeting or showing on these days, then spend them doing small buffer tasks. These are the tasks that need done, but get pushed to the side. They usually have no real deadline and require little time and little thought. Take a few minutes right now and make a list of your “buffer tasks.” When it’s done, set the list aside until you have a day that you just can’t seem to focus.

 

IVR as a Marketing Tool

By Best Agent Business

An interactive voice response system, or IVR, is a great tool for marketing your listings. Customers call it and listen to a number of selections, including detailed information about particular listings. Not only will this free up your time, it will pull in additional clients who may not be ready to talk to a live person just yet. Make sure this is an 800 number, because you want the out of town clients to feel comfortable calling as well. Best Agent Business has information on a number of reliable IVR services. Let us know if we can help you get this started.

 

What To Do With All Those Contacts?

By Best Agent Business

Clean up your Seller leads and code properly. Seller - A is someone who has had a listing appointment or someone who you anticipate a listing appointment with within 30 days. Seller - B is within 3 months. Seller - C is within one year or unsure if selling. If Seller - C decides not to sell, move them to SOI - C so they will receive your monthly emails and mailings. We suggest keeping leads under a FSBO or Expired code until you meet with them and they escalate to Seller ABC.
Once your clients and SOI are properly coded, you should develop a unique marketing plan for each group. Let us help you reach out to them. We are experienced at helping busy agents sort through their contacts and reach them using a variety of marketing tools.

 

How much is a client worth? How about your SOI? Did you know that they are worth an average of $500 a year per contact? That certainly makes an investment of $10 per person per year well worth it. That is all it takes to manage and update your database! Think of the profit you will bring in when you are using the correct marketing tools for the correct contacts because your database is clean and you know who to market to! If you are not sure how to start, send us an email or speak to your Key Assistant for further information.