I’ve been out of the real estate business for some time now, but one success strategy that has remained a constant is the ongoing need to prospect.
Every agent’s approach differs I’m sure. Some might use long stretches at the kiosk display their company has at the local shopping mall. Some might geographically farm, utilizing postal walk mailings and ads in specific community newsletters. The odd agent (literally) may stand in busy areas and try to tackle prospects.
Others might even still be door-knocking and cold-calling. Like other industries, a phone call or in-person visit might be the only way you can encourage those prospects to use your services. But those methods also tend to frustrate consumers.
Imagine: Your workday is finally over. You arrive back at your home and toss your jacket onto the hook by the door. Just when you’ve settled into your favourite comfy chair, cracked open your favourite chilled beverage and found an unexpected rebroadcast of Cher’s 37th Farewell Tour, either the phone or the doorbell rings. Sometimes both at the same time.
Has your ship come in? Have you been chosen to represent Canada at the Maple Syrup Battered Seafood Consumption Competition? Has Lotto Canada found an accounting error in your favour that has brought them to your door with riches beyond imagining?
Oh no. It’s a salesperson: either the dastardly dinnertime telemarketer, or the 14-year-old male in his dad’s ’80s grad suit at the door trying to convince you to invest in the astonishing value of a 56-piece vacuum attachment assortment, for just $19.95.
This is your home, your castle! Should you be forced to endure these relentless and often inconvenient intrusions? I say no, and hereby offer the following solutions for different sales situations:
A land-line phone service provider is calling to suggest you switch over to their company. Do you:
- Apologize and confess that you are getting your phone cut off later that day by your current provider. However, if THEIR company would like to keep you on…
- Ask them to hold on for just a second, Drew Carey is finally getting ready for the first Showcase Showdown.
- Insist you don’t even own a phone.
A door-to-door salesperson representing some common household product is speaking so fast you can barely understand him and his foot is halfway inside your door. Do you:
- Start pulling at his moustache.
- Warn him your bladder has been acting up all day, but assure him you’ll be happy to pay for any dry-cleaning should there be a “problem”.
- Insist you don’t even live in a home.
A customer service rep from a large national bank is asking you to participate in a brief telephone survey. Do you:
- Agree to do the survey, but answer every question with “I have some very nice bananas…”
- Start yelling at the top of your lungs that you haven’t trusted banks since that mean Jesse James kid started causing all those problems at the teller wickets.
- After beginning the phone call in perfect English, switch to a language you make up as you go and refuse to let the telemarketer hang up.
You have just picked up the phone and a competing real estate agent is calling homeowners in your neighbourhood to see if they are thinking of selling. Do you:
- Invite her over and try to get her interested in your 43-year-old basement-dwelling son.
- Giggle after everything she has to say and suggest you’ve just heard the best “knock-knock” joke.
- Tell her that today would be a perfect day to stop by because your landlord has gone into town to fetch supplies.
Humour columnist and author Dan St. Yves was licensed with Royal LePage Kelowna for 11 years. Check out his website at danstyves.com.
