Have you ever heard this question before: “What’s the one thing all sales professionals have in common, and yet each of theirs is completely different?”
Well, if you have, or haven’t, the answer is the same! The answer is your database! Simply put, the Census Bureau says that if you graduated from high school, you know 2000 people by first name. Why is it, then, that most sales professionals maybe have 200-500 people on their database? It’s actually disturbing how many people you know, or have met, that are NOT on your list! Crazy! We don’t, as a whole, truly leverage our database.
There are so many books written about the power of communicating with your database! There are entire coaching companies and coaching systems, built around that same subject. Almost every single seminar I have ever gone to in over 37 years of selling real estate, has had some part of the seminar focus in on building, managing, servicing and growing your database.
Communicating with your database, is, without a doubt, the primary, simple, inexpensive, and results oriented way to bring more business to you! Now, here I go, extolling the virtues of your database, again, fully knowing that most of you will read this and think to yourselves…..”here we go again!”
So, seriously, what’s the issue here? Why is it so hard to get us (real estate sales professionals) to take advantage of the simplest and least expensive tool we have for getting business? That’s a loaded question. I answer it often, in my classes and talks on mindset and behavior. Fact is, leveraging this tool (your database) can easily have the biggest ROI (return on investment) and the make the most remarkable difference in your income.
If we go with the belief that change is painful for most, and that communicating regularly, through email, mail, phone calls, events, and more constitutes change for the majority of us, we can begin to understand why we don’t do it. I’m always, and I mean always, stunned into silence, as a coach and a speaker, at the number of people who would rather spend money they don’t actually have, to BUY LEADS, when they can just communicate, mostly for free, with their database and get tons of leads!
Now, I’m not saying to stop all of the other things you’re doing. I am saying, for sure, is that if you’re not working and leveraging your database, you’re “leaving money on the table”! It’s truly a question of how we prioritize our time and on what we decide to focus.
In addition to using your database to grow your business, we want to make sure we GROW our database. My goal, for instance, is to grow my database by at least 60 people per month. My database includes past clients, people I know or have known for a while, whether I sold them their home or not, Realtors from all over the US and Canada whom I have met or know, and so many more. Your database is a living, breathing organism, and when people opt out, or unsubscribe, it’s like one of your cells in your body dying, only to be replaced by a new and more vital cell which is represented by the people you add, each month! Spend time finding people to add by scouring your old yearbooks, old address books, databases, wedding invitation lists, Christmas card lists, and don’t leave ‘any stone unturned’!
I would be remiss if I did not also mention in this article, what we recommend to our coaching clients when it comes to this subject. We have a couple of tools, so that we can keep track and monitor and we have some tools that help to drive activities in this area. We have something called the DSH or Daily Success Habits Form to help track your time and your activities, and it allows you to track activities you actually did, versus those you said you would do! We have an amazing ebook, by our founder, Verl Workman, called 86-50-1, showing you how to get to 86 transactions a year, from your database, while working your top 50 people from your database, 1 hour per day! It’s incredible. We have “The ABC’s of Lead Management,” so that you can schedule specific times during the month to call your database, and your leads!
Walk away from this article with ONE QUESTION on your mind! “Am I doing all I can to get business from and, truly, “LEVERAGE” my database?! I’ll take a wild bet that the true answer will be a resounding “NO!”
By Rick Geha
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