How to identify sellers from your past clients and sphere of influence … BEFORE they call another Realtor

Another one of the most effective real estate marketing strategies you can do to increase real estate leads and drive business in from your list is what we call ‘self-selection’. It’s a real estate agent marketing term that means getting the prospect to select themselves out of the group of potential sellers. In this case, in terms of finding sellers, it gets the sellers to raise their hand and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about selling, can you please come talk with me?” Let me share how it works.

Seller leads self-select when prompted by realtor postcards to think about putting their home on the market thanks to the reticular activator

In the human brain there is this thing we call the reticular activator. It’s kind of like a radar that is constantly looking for those things that are familiar. Here is an easy way to explain it. Say you are going to buy a car; you look for something unique because you want a very unique car. As soon as you purchase it, everywhere you look you see that same car. You’ve never seen it before, but now that you are familiar with it, you see it all over the place. That’s the reticular activator I’m talking about.

So the way self-selection works with real estate agent marketing, especially the way we use it with Agent Dominator, is to identify sellers within someone’s personal list and sphere of influence. We say, “out of this group of people, these people are likely thinking about selling their home right now, pick up the phone and engage with them.” So now you get to pick up the phone and say, “Hey John, I just got notified that you responded to my free report (or whatever it is). Are you guys thinking about selling anytime soon?” And John says, “Yes, we are actually thinking about downsizing this summer.” Now you are engaged and you have solidified your relationship with these potential sellers as a dedicated and trustworthy realtor who is motivated to get their home sold quick and for top dollar.

How to get listings by letting seller leads self-select so you can identify sellers before they come on the market

The way it works is simple. When someone starts to think about selling, they don’t immediately call a real estate agent. Most people start to think about selling three to six months before they actually call a real estate agent to list the home. What happens between the time they start thinking and the time they call the realtor is what we call the ‘educational spectrum’. They start to educate themselves on the things they need to be doing to get their home ready to go on the market and then, at the end when it is actually ready, that’s when they actually call a real estate agent, in other words, a sales person. Most people don’t want a sales person engaged until they are ready to make a transaction happen. That’s why they don’t call the real estate agent first. But, if you can offer that person something that a seller would be interested in that a non-seller would not be interested in, then you can get that person to actually raise their hand and identify themselves as a seller.

One example would be… let’s say you sat down for a moment and you thought about all the things that someone could do in preparing your home to get the absolute most money for their home when it goes on the market. You then boil those things down into maybe the top five things. So now you write a report: “The Top 5 Most Important Things to Do in Preparing Your Home to get the Maximum Sales Price as Soon as It Comes on the Market.” Then you market that message. Maybe it’s through realtor postcards you send out to your sphere of influence that say, “If you are thinking about selling, here are the top 5 most important things sellers can do in preparing their home to get the maximum sales price in the shortest amount of time.”

How realtor postcards can help a realtor identify sellers before they come on the market

That’s now your free report. Then you have them respond to your real estate mailers to get it, either they call you or text you. Maybe they go to your website and fill out a form. Perhaps they call a toll free number. It’s something that sellers can do that allows the realtor to identify who these seller leads are and now only the people who respond to that are actually the ones thinking about selling because, if they had just bought a home and have no interest in selling, they are going to get that offer and go, “Not interested.”  It’s not that reticular activator for that person. But, for the person who is thinking about selling, it’s a big deal and they want to know more.

There is one final addition to this real estate agent marketing technique—and I teach this and some other real estate marketing strategies that I offer on a podcast—but how you identify the people who are interested in selling is very important. If you say, “Call me for this list,” then you will get very few seller leads calling because they don’t want you to know that they are thinking about selling their house right now. The way you have to get them to respond is so they don’t know that you know that they are responding. We call this ‘stealth marketing’.

What we’ve done with Agent Dominator is we’ve actually perfected a process for the most effective self-selection real estate marketing products. We wrote a whole series of software code for our website that allows us to pinpoint with laser accuracy exactly which home address is responding when a prospect goes to the website using a special web address. They don’t even know that we know who they are. We simply match their visit back to the address on the realtor postcards We notify our client and say, “Hey, John and Betty Smith at this address just responded to this free offer.”  Then you can call them up and say, “Hey John and Betty, you are getting my realtor postcards, right?” They’ll go, “Yes.” You’ll say, “I just got notified from my system that you downloaded my free report on how to get more money when you get your home on the market. Are you guys thinking about selling anytime soon?” They say, “Yes, we are.” Now you are engaged and can focus there with seller leads.

That’s self-selection. Once you identify sellers before they come on the market, that’s half the battle.

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