Expired Listings, Real Estate Marketing Tools

Today’s guest article offers some great tips on how to become a successful Expired Listings agent… enjoy.

How to Make Six Figures Prospecting Expired Listings

Prospecting expired listings can be the core of anyone’s business in the real estate field. You can create a system that will give you repeatable results for your effort. Let’s look at these three very positive characteristics in prospecting expired listings.

They are easy to find: The expired listings come up everyday. You will have a handful that you can work on, on a daily basis. Expired listings provide a steady stream of new leads of people to contact for listing appointments. There are usually a few very heavy days in each month. You will need to set your schedule to take advantage of the heavy days. The end of the month is usually one of the heaviest times for expired listings; up to 25% of the expired listings for the month may come up on a heavy day.

They want to sell: The expired listings were on the market at one time, unlike many other types of clients you want to contact. The clients had a plan laid out to sell and move. Their plan did not work out, and in most cases they wish it had. There will be some expired listings which were listed by clients who are now tired of the process, but the majority of them still want to sell.

The bulk of them are looking for an agent: If the client still has the desire to sell, as most do, then they are searching for a new agent. They are looking for someone who can solve their previous problem. Most do not know why their home did not sell, but they are frustrated with their previous agent and sometimes all agents. They will rarely return to their previous agent.

The successful way to work expired listings is the CAP system.

• Consistency
• Attitude
• Persistence

The first part is consistency: You must consistently work the expired listings. For you to achieve a large return on your time invested, you must work diligently for a minimum of four weeks straight. Expired listings cannot be started and stopped without losing momentum. There is a rhythm and a flow to expired listings. They must be a daily discipline that you work on. If you prospect them for two weeks, then take a week off, you are back to zero. I did not prospect weekends, but I did diligently call Monday through Friday.

Your leads must build, and your follow up must grow. When you get down the road 30 plus days, you will begin to receive calls for listing appointments from your work earlier in the month plus your appointments from new expireds. You must work to create a pipeline of expired listing clients.

The second part is attitude: Your attitude plays a crucial role to your success with expired listings. You need to convey to the seller an attitude of compassion and problem solving. They are not just looking for someone to pound a sign in the ground. They are looking for someone to get their home sold. They are looking for someone to solve their problem. They feel that everyone else is the problem, when it really is them and their price. They can get even more resentful due to the high volume of agents that may call them.
The price is the problem 90% of the time when it comes to expired listings. You have to read the people you are meeting with regarding their home. Too many agents who work with expired listings hit their prospective clients with a ball peen hammer between the eyes about the price. That will work with some and fail miserably with others. You must be able to adjust your delivery.

You need to read the prospective clients, but most importantly you need to exude an attitude of caring and compassion for their situation while conveying confidence in your ability to get the job done; sometimes the only way to get the price down is to convince them you care and it pains you that they have to sell for less, but there is no other way. It is like the doctor who tells his patient she has cancer. He does not like it, but he has to do it so he can cure her.

The last, and at times most critical, is persistence: Your persistence or ability to stick it can have the most positive results of all. Many of the expired listings do not set appointments right away with agents. Sellers will wait a week or two or a month. The amount of calls they receive about their home drops dramatically as the weeks tick by. Do not be one of the agents who drop off unless the sellers have low motivation or are unreasonable. Be one of the ones left standing at the end of a week or two.

Be persistent in your calling. Call them a few times a week. All you are doing is trying to set an appointment. You are not doing a listing appointment over the phone. Just close for an appointment. That is what the call is for. You just want to be one of the three or four they interview. If you keep that as your goal, you will get plenty of salable listings.

Focus on the CAP system daily. Work both today’s expired listings and the past ones daily. Effectively follow up with your hot leads daily. Remember consistency, attitude and persistence are the keys to success to make six figures in prospecting expired listings.

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Dirk Zeller, President of Real Estate Champions, is recognized as the premier coach for the real estate industry. He has developed a system that takes “regular” agents and “regular” managers and transforms them into “top gun” agents and managers. Dirk’s coaching systems are built around his incredible success in the 90’s as one of the top agents in all of North America. He closed over 150 transactions annually while working Monday through Thursday and taking Friday, Saturday & Sunday off. Copyright© 2000, Dirk Zeller. All rights reserved. To contact Dirk about his availability to speak to your group, please call the Frog Pond Group at 800-704-FROG (3764) or email susie@frogpondgroup.com; http://www.frogpondgroup.com.

“I need a sample expired listing letter to send out. I am new and want to make sure that I send out the right letter to the homeowners. Thank you.” wrote a real estate agent from California recently.

I spent two years perfecting my expired listing letter I sent to the expireds with my resume. Re-writing, testing, editing… Constantly looking for that perfect paragraph that would finally make the phone ring with “Come list our house, please!” But it never did. Here is the problem…

When a listing expires, the owners get from 20 to 50 expired listing letters within 48 hours! That is one BIG pile of mail. It doesn’t matter how powerful my letter is, how well written it is, it will get lost in the stack of others. That’s the bad news…

The answer is not in ONE letter. One expired listing letter will never do. If you really want to list a bunch of expireds, you must use multiple contacts using multiple methods. Let me give you an example…

Some sellers prefer letters. They open every one, read it carefully, and are influenced by the message. Others respond better to post cards. They prefer the short and sweet message, and they like the interesting visual elements.

Others sellers review your resume page by page. Some will closely read your web site. Some will read your emails you send them. Some only engage over the phone. And some like to meet you in person. It just depends…

And then there is another group of sellers that you need to approach using a mix of all the real estate marketing tools. Since you don’t know what will work with whom, you have to do it all, do it well, and do it consistently. For how long? Until you (or somebody else) list the house.

It was not unusual for me to list a house that had expired 12 months ago. Most agents give up after a few mailings. If you stay persistent, keep sending well written expired listing letters, postcards, updates – anything that’s interesting, it will pay of handsomely.

It’s been a while since I stood in front of a camera, so last Friday was really fun. Hollywood director Leigh Gregory cast me in a small part of a angry, controlling manager Barry. Yes, I know, it was a big acting stretch for a quiet introvert like me

I was a bit nervous at first, since the acting muscles were a bit rusty. The vibe on the set was really good. The entire cast and crew made me feel right at home.

The shoot went well, I knew my lines and I was prepared, so the old routine and instincts kicked in.

Yours truly even got an applause after the final take, I’m proud to report. I don’t think I’ll go back into acting anytime soon as a full time job (the make up alone would keep me away), but it sure is fun to do it once in a while.