Staying Top-of-Mind with Short-Term Real Estate Prospects

Short-term listing prospects, those likely to sell within the next six months, are both exciting and challenging.

They’re exciting because they’re not just “thinking about it” prospects. These homeowners have solid reasons — a retirement, a relocation, a divorce, etc. — to be making a move soon.

But these real estate leads are also challenging because many other agents will be aggressively knocking at their doors. In fact, you may have already experienced the frustration of a short-term prospect — someone you thought was a sure thing — slipping through your fingers.

So how do you stay top-of-mind so you’re their first choice when real estate prospects list?

As any successful real estate agent knows, it’s not enough just to follow-up with the occasional phone call or email. In fact, doing that alone is unlikely to have much of an impact. You need to have a comprehensive strategy (ideally, an effective real estate marketing system) for positioning yourself as their real estate agent of choice.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of a prospect…

Imagine you’re a homeowner planning to move in four months. You speak to an agent, like that person, and decide that you are going to consider hiring her when the time comes. The agent then follows-up with regular calls, emails and visits. But she also sends you very helpful information, each month, in the form of a real estate newsletter packed with buying and selling advice, market information, and other valuable tips and articles.

By sending you that great content, she’s making an impact on a deeper level. In fact, your whole family may come to welcome the monthly newsletter. Chances are, you’ll like and trust that real estate agent even more than you did when you first met with her. And when it’s time to sell your home, you’ll feel comfortable giving her a call.

In fact, she might be the only agent you call!

That’s the power of a smart strategy for staying top-of-mind with short-term prospects. You’ll get higher real estate lead conversion if you combine regular follow-up with high value content, ideally within a marketing system that makes it easy.

By the way, a great real estate newsletter should be part of that strategy. As author Kim Walsh-Phillips points out in an Entrepreneur.com article, “print newsletters arriving by mail, opened, physically handled, read, clipped from, saved, and shared have positive effects that cannot be replicated…”

So if you want to land more short-term prospects, think about your approach and how you can improve it. Keep in mind that, next to calls and visits from you, valuable content can be your hardest working relationship-builder.