Whether you love holding open houses or hate them, look forward to them or dread them, they’re an important part of the real estate industry, particularly as the market picks up again. And even more important is to not waste the opportunities that open houses present.
We’re not just talking about a list of potential leads who wander through and (hopefully) leave their email address or phone number on your signup list. As real estate coach Dan Smith talks about in this first of two videos, open houses can yield far better results if you know how to work them. Take a few minutes to watch this video, then run next weekend’s open houses with this new approach, and let us know what kind of difference these changes make in your open house experiences.
What I want to talk about this week is open houses. Now, a lot of you guys and gals are doing open houses. And, if you’re not, you should be, because open houses in this particular market are gold. Now there are other markets – let’s say hello to 2007, 2008, where doing open houses was a complete waste of time and we would suggest just as strongly as we could that you not do them…. That was back then. This is now. And this is such a great time to be doing open houses. There’s so much potential business that is coming out of open houses. And if you have your own listings, what a great way to spend some time. And if you don’t have your own listings, other people will let you hold their houses open. You want to know why? I’m going to share this little secret with you. Because a lot of the other real estate agents are not willing to work as hard as you are. And they don’t want to hold their homes, their houses, their listings open. And they’ll let you do it for them. And then you can get the business from that. Does that sound good? Say yes.
So let’s talk about how to make an open house an effective, a productive, a profitable open house. Why do we do open houses? I want you to answer out loud right now. Never mind the people in your office who are going to think you’re crazy because you’re talking to your computer screen. Why do we do open houses?
Now some of you just said “to get leads.” Some of you said “to find buyers.” And I’m going to say Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Not the right answer.
Now some of you are shaking your head, “what do you mean?” Yes, you can find buyers. Yes, you can get leads. You can have people sign the guest register and give you their phone number and their email and hopefully it’s right, because I’m sure you’ve all gotten bad phone numbers and bad emails that don’t go anywhere. And even if it is right, you’ve all probably gone through this, you call them and they don’t answer you, email them and they don’t respond, and you do that for days on end and they never get back to you, so you throw that lead away. So I ask you, was it in fact a lead? No.
See, do you think yours is the only open house they went to that day? Again, no. They probably went to three, four, seven, eight, twelve, thirteen open houses and have all of these real estate agents’ information, and, guess what, come Sunday night or Monday morning, all of these real estate agents are emailing them and calling them and… you don’t seem any different than the rest of the pack. And that’s not really a great spot to be in.
So here’s what I want you to do differently with open houses to make them productive, to make them profitable. Don’t go in there looking for leads. Go in there looking for appointments. Don’t go in there looking for buyers, cuz, let me ask you a question, truth be told. Would you rather have a buyer or would you rather have a seller? Which one? Now 99% of you just said “seller.” And here’s an interesting statistic. 76% of all buyers have to sell their home. Now we go in there looking for buyer leads. But truth be told, three out of every four of them are also going to sell their home. So why not treat them as potential listing appointments who might also then buy? Hmm. That’s an interesting way to look at it, isn’t it? All of a sudden it changes how you’re thinking about these open houses.
Are you telling me, Dan, that if four people walk in, three of them are probably going to sell their house and buy? Not just buy? And I would tell you, “Yes, that is right.” So let’s stop trying to get these leads, these sign-ins, these buyers. Let’s start getting listing appointments set. Let’s start getting buyer appointments set, right there on the spot at the house, at the open house, that very minute. How would that be, if you walked out of that open house with two listing appointments set and three buyer appointments set when you’re picking up your signs? Would you feel a lot better about that day than you normally do?
I say the answer is yes.
So here’s what we’re going to do. This is going to be a two-part segment. Here’s part one. You now know what we’re going to talk about in part 2, right? When I’m there talking to them, Dan, how do I get an appointment out of them? How do I turn that into a buyer appointment? How do I turn that into a listing appointment?
That’s what we’re going to talk about on the next episode, so make sure you tune back in to see that, and, not only that, but lots of other great coaching videos and ideas here at ReboReports.com. You can also go to my website, versatilityinsales.com.
Until next week, I want you to remember this: To get what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done. See you for part 2!
