When I was in the business, I was a Mike Ferry devotee.
My partner, Mike and I even took Ferry's rantings about door knocking to heart. I recall one HOT summer day, going into a desirable neighborhood of Westchester, CA. We got out of the car. Mike took one side, I took the other. After about three blocks, I recall looking across the street at Mike.
He must of had the same revelation as me as we both walked toward the middle of the street and mutually decided to go to lunch.
It was there while we delighted in the spices of our favorite Indian restaurant, that we decided we would never door knock again.
"No one is ever home in Westchester we pontificated. Our market must be different than the area Mike Ferry talks about."
This story has flooded my recent memory much over the last few weeks and as early as ten minutes ago. I was interrupted by two Jehovah Witnesses. After politely saying no thanks, my marketing mind immediately turned on.
"Why are they door knocking on a Tuesday?" Hmmm.
"Someone must be home. Heck, I am home! So maybe there are prospects out there."
I would be very interested in hearing how many "prospects" these two ladies talk with today. How many doors will they knock to get a real live prospect they can "save"?
My ex-partner and I agree to this day that the door knocking thing was a bad idea. Yet, we both can rattle off names of top producers that use their rapport skills to intrude on people daily at home.
They sell themselves and eventually get buyers and sellers. They know how many doors it takes to get to a prospect and how many prospects to get to a showing or appointment. And how many appointments to get to a sale.
Mike and I chose another path. Perhaps if I would have been more diligent in my prospecting I would still be in the business. Who knows.
But there are at the end of the day, two ways to run this business. And they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
One is selling. One is marketing. And Marketing does not mean placing a website out on the web hoping to get a phone call because you were so nice to offer your content. In my view that is delusional and expensive.
Marketing is capturing, and then selling, selling, selling until they buy or die.
Will you piss some people off? No doubt. But you can let them go waste your competitors time.
TAGS: real estate blog // real estate marketing // doorknocking //tim okeefe // real estate blog // real estate blogs
