Following Up and Cashing In with Real Estate

Following Up and Cashing in With Real Estate
By Larry Goins

Client or lead follow up is necessary yet difficult for most of us to perform. Why? Because we are busy with other more pressing aspects of our business on a day to day basis. Busy with the activities that bring in consistent revenue; booking appointments, selling, and creating new opportunities through lead generation. Not to mention finding real estate to buy and sell. This leaves us with very little time for follow up. However, successful business people know that when they do not stay in consistent contact with their customers they are literally throwing away thousands of dollars right out the front door. Successful entrepreneurs know that the fortune is in the follow up. Following up means letting no one fall through the cracks.
In real estate, like in most businesses, the fortune truly lies in the follow up. One of the tools that I constantly encourage my real estate investing students to use is Auto Responders. An auto responder is a software package that automatically replies to email that is sent to you or automatically sent out when someone is added to your database as a result of making an inquiry or searching for information on your website. Auto responders do a tremendous amount of your online marketing work for you. They make you look like the most attentive and customer-centric real estate investor around.
People like to do business with people that make them feel good. When you inquire about people, when you show interest in the things that interest them, and when you respond to their needs with immediacy you make them feel good. When they feel good, they want to stay in touch with you and do business with you. How much money is that worth in your real estate investing business?
Auto responders can be a single one-time email or a series of multiple email responses delivered at pre-determined intervals. The time saving power of auto responders is that once they are set up they run automatically. You can set up a response to an inquiry from your website or set up a response to someone who sends you an email when you are out of town. Auto responders provide consistent follow up without any extra man-hours required from you or your office staff.
You have probably already received an email from an auto responder. If you have purchased a product on the internet and immediately received a “thank you” email or an email message with a link to download a digital product then you have received an auto responder. If you have ever signed up for an email course and received pre-scheduled emails with the content you have received auto responders.
Auto responders are no-cost, round-the-clock working sales staff for your real estate business. Imagine the power of an instant email reply to an inquiry on your web site about a property. The person requesting information is instantly responded to. How powerful is that? Suddenly the follow-up that you provide to your leads is instantaneous and continual. If the fortune is in the follow-up, then you are suddenly generating no-cost, round-the-clock income with your auto responders.
An auto responder coupled with sound and savvy marketing techniques, is the speediest way to immediately boost business. Auto responders can store and send any electronic information that you want to drip market to your leads or release over time. You can pre-write and store messages, newsletters, announcements, specials, open houses, etc. Auto responders will carry your message to your leads over and over again.
Email auto responders save time and money while sending your power selling messages out automatically at standard intervals. Auto responders can provide both instant responses to inquiries and long term, steady information to your leads. Think about what online businesses you are most aware of, the one’s that you think of the minute their area of expertise is mentioned. It’s the businesses that stay in touch consistently and automatically that you remember. I promise you that the emails you receive round the clock from companies are not being written at the exact moment that they are being sent to you. They come steadily over time through an auto responder system.
An auto responder saves you time. Why answer the same question over and over again? You can set up email accounts for specific inquiries and write auto responders that answer the inquiries. For example, if you have three properties for sale you might want to set up an email address for each property and write auto responders for each one with the information relevant to the property. At the same time, you can capture the email addresses of people who inquire about each property and segment them in your database. So the next time a similar property or deal is available, you know exactly who to start marketing it to.
An auto responder works around the clock to turn your website visitors or prospects into buyers. Imagine having a professional sales copy writer emailing marketing messages to your list over and over again. That is exactly what you have with an auto responder.
Auto responders take you from working constantly for your real estate business to letting your real estate business work constantly for you. Think about this. The last time you went on vacation, or took a day off, or spent time with your family what happened to people who inquired about properties you had for sale or properties they were offering? They probably had to wait for you to return to your office to get the information they needed. Some of those people might have already found another property or real estate investor to work with, because to their perception you were unavailable when they needed your help.
The answer isn’t to work around the clock. The answer is to put auto responders to work for you.
Auto responders can follow up with every realtor, investor, FSBO, and retail buyer every week without you sending a single email or making a single phone call. When you use our Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine system, you get four pre-written auto responders to jump start your own buying and selling machine. Using our system, we put together a lot of deals where we talk to the seller or realtor only once and then the rest of the negotiation is done via email. How easy is that?
Here are the four basic auto responders that every real estate investor should be using because the fortune is in the follow up.
REALTORS: Whenever you talk to a realtor about a property, ask them if you can email them when you are looking for a property in a particular area or price range. Then you can set up a simple series of emails to go to the realtor every week to ask them to keep looking for properties for you. Let them know that you appreciate them taking the time to talk to you, and remind them who you are and what you are looking for. Keeping in constant contact puts you in the forefront of their minds when they have a property that would suit an investor’s needs.
FSBO’s: Any time you talk to an owner of a property for sale, ask them for their email address as a standard part of capturing their information. If they balk tell them how busy you stay in your real estate investing business and how hard you are to get on the phone. Get them in your database and then set up a series of auto responder emails to keep in touch with them to see how their house selling is going. Share with them tips on creating curb appeal, or market changes that might effect their property, etc. Remind them that you are available if they need help selling their home. Write a nice, friendly auto responder that encourages them in their FSBO endeavors yet offers to help them should they need it.
RETAIL BUYERS: Don’t forget about the gravy train of your list. Retail buyers are people who have purchased from you, or who qualified for financing but couldn’t find a property they liked, or called about a property that you have already sold. You want to keep in touch with your potential buyers via auto responders so that they are thinking about you when they are looking for a property. I would encourage you to even send custom email auto responders to your tenant/buyers letting them know that you are always looking for referrals and have them searching out properties they like for you to buy and resell to them.
INVESTORS: Whenever an investor calls you about a property you have or if you can an investor about a house they are holding you should be sure to add them to your database and set them up to receive an investor auto responder. I have provided a series of auto responders to send out every week for three weeks and then once a month after that in my Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine course. Investors are always looking for properties and you want to remind them regularly what you have available that might be of interest to them.
Auto responders are an easy way to keep your business in the minds of all your leads. Don’t neglect this powerful tool in your real estate investing business. The fortune still lies in the follow up. But there is no law that says the follow up has to be terribly time consuming. Let auto responders keep your investment income growing and growing.