We’ve been talking a lot about focusing your efforts on high performance real estate agents this past week or so. All of this sounds great, but the question remains: “Where do I meet high production real estate agents?” Surely we’re not going to ask each agent to tell us how many transactions they’ve closed this past year right?
Here’s how I did it. Two methods were used. The first was a quick phone call to my title rep. I had a great relationship with this company, as most my loans closed here. (I understand this call will not be possible for those of you in Attorney states) A quick 3 minute conversation ensued where I mentioned that I had a great new marketing plan that involved high producer real estate agents, and asked if tehy’d be interested in participating.
The answer was easy for him, as he knew the more real estate agents I did business with, the more likely they were to close at his office. He agreed to help me. The best part of this call was that the help I needed only required about 5 minutes work to provide. I asked the title rep to simply pull up a production report within MLS. All I needed was the results for the top 250 producers.
This list was shot over to me within 10 minutes. I now had access to a list that was worth its weight in platinum, and all it cost me was a phone call. I was now free to spend my time marketing to any agent on this list without fear of wasting my time with someone who had no referrals to share. It was a great feeling.
I already knew that my conversion rate was somewhere around 10 – 12% when marketing to agents, so even on the low end, if I completed my full marketing cycle, I could expect somewhere around 25 – 30 agents to work with. Sounded like wishful thinking at the time, as there’s no way 2 loan officers (My partner and I), much less 1 could handle all the referrals coming from such a large group of high end producers. (The results were better than I anticipated, but we’ll talk more about tha during Loan Officer Unleashed)
I used the list, as the basis of my marketing campaigns for nearly a year. The results were astounding, but as we grew and brought on more loan officers to the team, I needed more agents to include in the marketing efforts, but was unwilling to slow things down by randomly marketing to just anyone. Here’s where things went low tech. I ran to the local department store and picked up a few copies of the latest real estate publications. Harmon Homes, Land and Homes, Homes Magazine, The Real Estate Book are just a few of the local publications. (Most are national, and should be available to you)
I flipped through the pages looking for signs of success. To put it plainly, I was looking for agents who had lots of listings – haha. I’ve done a fair bit of advertising in these publications myself, and I know that it had cost me around 400.00 per page for just 2 weeks. When I found an agent that had a full page, or even multiple pages filled with listings, chances were good we were looking at a decent performer. (While not fool-proof, it was still a great litmus test of who could afford to advertise on a regular basis – Plus, the more listings an agent has, the more activity – More often than not)
After several hours of flipping through the pages, and looking for “signs of success” I had added anotehr 100+ agents to my list. Of course, in todays market you now have access to other tools that can speed the process. Social networking sites such as Active Rain, groups from LinkedIn, and even visiting the home page of the real estate publications mentined above means you don’t even have to leave your office to perform the research.
But even using the most up to date networking sites come with the same danger we’ve been chatting about all week – Spinning your wheels trying to squeeze loans out of someone who has nothing to give. Keep looking for those “signs of success” no matter which method you use to create your own list of target real estate agents. We’ll go deeper and show you what comes next during Loan Officer Unleashed. See you next week!
Here are some direct links to the publications mentioned above:(Use to search for agents, and view their number of posted listings)
In states like NJ, where we do use attorneys, if the the title company can’t help you, often times a close realtor friend can pull the same report
-Hammer
Thanks for sharing “Hammer.”
Yes, there’s always a good chance that a realtor friend can help as long as he/she has the proper access level needed. Nothing like saving a bit of time eh?
CW -
What about here in Canada? Typically solicitors close the transactions but sometimes title companys will close them as well. As per the comment above, I do know a realtor or two that have access to the MLS are they able to simply pull the data needed from the MLS?
how about a fiance that is a realtor?
Great info about the Title Rep for referring partners. I talk with my Title Rep all the time but have never thought about her as a potential lead partner… I’m going to get that rolling right away!!
Sacramento Real Estate