SalesMotivation.net

by Dirk Zeller

Regardless of the nature of your business or the frequency of your open houses, don’t proceed with another open house before establishing your objectives and expectations for each open house event.

The main purpose of an open house is to attract solid buyer and seller prospects, so when setting your objectives for each open house, you need to shift your focus away from selling the featured home and toward acquiring prospects.

Before each open house, set your prospecting objectives, including the following:

1. Number of visitors you hope to meet and greet. Your answer will depend on the size of your market area and the appeal of the home. Once you establish an objective for the number of visitors you expect to host, set the percentage of guests you intend to personally meet. By the way, the closer that percentage is to 100, the more effective you’ll be in using the open house as a prospecting tool.

2. Number of contacts from whom you hope to collect information for use in future mailings and other forms of follow up. Not everyone will be willing to share personal contact information, but with skill and effort you can expect to gather lead information from at least 50% percent of guests. For success, follow these tips:

o Have a sign in sheet, tell guests that you have been asked by the seller to track the attendees from the open house, and ask if they would they please help you keep that commitment to the seller.

o At the bottom of the sign in sheet, be sure to state that by signing in on this sheet they are agreeing to allow you to contact them in the future with real estate information. This helps you keep legal with the No-Call laws that are in effect.

o Have you business card in your hand ready to hand to people that walk in. Then hand it to them and ask for theirs at the same time. Often without thinking they will dig into their purse or wallet and automatically hand you their contact information.

3. Number of buyer interviews you hope to schedule. Again, there’s no single magic figure, but my recommendation is that you aim to achieve interviews from at least 25% percent of the guests who provide you with follow-up contact information. To achieve interviews, consider these steps:

o Ask for the opportunity to meet. You could use a script like this:

“Bob and Mary, in order for you to maximize you initial equity position and minimize your upfront costs in securing a new home for your family, we simply need to meet. Would ________ or__________ be better for you this week?”

o Most people at open houses also are sellers. They need to sell their current homes in order to make a new home purchase possible. Ask to come by and take a look at their home. Use script such as:

“Bob and Mary, would you be offended if I came by to take a look at your home? Would _______ or ___________be better for you this week?”

If you cannot secure a face-to-face appointment, aim to at least set a specific time that you can contact attendees by phone. Then you can work to at least acquire an over-the-phone appointment for a specific day and specific time to speak next. It is not good enough to agree that you will call them later in the week.

For more information on how you can turn Open Houses into a lead generation source and grow your Real Estate Business, click here now.

About the Author

Dirk Zeller is an Agent, an Investor, and the President & CEO of Real Estate Champions. His company trains more than 250,000 Agents worldwide each year through live events, online training, self-study programs, and newsletters. He’s the widely published author of Your First Year in Real Estate, Success as a Real Estate Agent for Dummies®, The Champion Real Estate Agent, and over 300 articles in print.
You can get more information by visiting www.RealEstateChampions.com.

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