Harvesting Your Seller Crop Part 5 of 5

Posted May.01, 2008 by Joseph Bridges in Real Estate Internet Marketing

Harvesting your seller crop Farmers don’t get paid for their crop until they have harvested and sold it off. In other words they don’t get paid until the job is completely done. 90% of the way isn’t enough for the farmer to get paid and they know that and you need to know that about real estate business. Have seller real estate leads are great but if you don’t harvest them then you will have wasted all of your effort for someone else to reap the rewards.

Remember the last post in the series, How to Create a Seller Farm, we discussed how you can create different points to get seller leads from your blog and from your website. So after you have earned their trust through your posts, your real estate website content, and the tools you have on your website and blog you need to harvest them.

The best way to harvest them is to have them let you know when they are ready. Now this is not a trick at all. Experienced farmers know exactly when their crops are ready. They can tell by the weather, the air, the touch of the earth or tasting the crop that it is time to harvest. Too early and it will be a bust and not work and too late they, like you, will get nothing and many months of hard work will have been wasted. So how do you get sellers to tell you that they are ready? You do this through some simple communication steps and most simply asking them! Now you might think this is crazy but remember the worst thing you can hear if you have grown your crop correctly is “I am not ready right now.”.

Let’s look into some ways to get the sellers to let you know they are ready to harvest.

Real Estate Statistics- I of course have mentioned before how real estate statistics are a great way to communicate with your community. The important part is in these posts is to pose the question “Are you looking to sell within the next 45 days and you want to know where your home fits in with all of this stastics? Fill out the market evaluation form for an estimate of what your home is worth today!” People answering this call to action are motivated and looking for an answer for an immediate problem.
Make a post about how your market evaluation report helped someone - Be careful not to say how wonderful and amazing you are but if you recently helped someone from your blog tell the story of how the information helped that person decide what they were going to do. Even if that wasn’t listing at all. Again at the end of the post make a call to action for those who need help within the next 30,60, or 90 days.
Talk about the buyers in the market - Many sellers don’t want to list in “tough” markets because they fell their won’t be any buyers for their home. Mention how properties are moving, how buyers are having a problem finding a “good” property. Again make a call to action for sellers who have “good” homes and want buyers for it. No seller will ever turn down an agent who already has willing and able buyers.
Send market updates 1 a quarter to sellers who have inquired in the past - some sellers, like certain crops, look like they are ready to harvest at times and are not. The key is to stay in touch with them. E-mail or mail them a quarterly update of the value of their property. Remember they may not be ready at that moment but they may know someone who is and they will be happy to refer their friends who has diligently kept watch over the value of their asset.

They key is to make sure that sellers know you are a ready to assist them on their time frame by reminding them of what you are doing. Also note that some move up sellers disguise themselves as buyers so keep that in mind as you are following up with your buying leads.

Don’t worry about if you harvest a few bad crops and nothing pans out. All farmers have a few rotten apples and a few bad crops. The great farmers know that this is rarity though and not the rule so you just have to keep farming.

The start of this series can be found in the related posts section below titled “How to Create a Digital Farm“. It is a 5 part series on learning how to create your own digital real estate farm.