Why aren't you translating your offline reputation online?
A few years back, I was in a position that many business founders will recognise. Relying on reputation, referrals, and the occasional walk-in felt solid — until I realised how much I was missing out on. Here’s the thing: there will always be a much bigger market of people who don’t know you yet
A few years ago I was in a position I’m sure most business founders are in. You're relying on the reputation you've built and the odd walk in - great stuff I was there too.
The thing is; there will always be more people that don't know you than currently do (a bigger market). So how do you increase that captive audience of prospective customers who know, like and trust you without ringing around, knocking on peoples doors and relying on people to refer you? 🤔
I'd helped Letting Agents, a handful of Property Entrepreneurs, an Estate Agent and a Property Developer to make more money, with less stress. However it felt like I was constantly taking prospects through an uphill battle to convince them and build up the same picture in their minds with my stories. It wasn't until I put the video testimonials in the right places, started podcasting, and sharing tidbits of my day to day that I had this knowledge hungry captive audience that were anticipating my next move.
Do you know what's amazing? Estate Agents are actually incredibly comfortable doing outreach. That includes picking up the phone, ringing around and handling objections/or accepting that not everyone wants to work with you. That phone manner skill is becoming rarer and rarer with the younger generation some will say.
A lot of people you call don't answer, or when you get through you can end up sitting on the phone with them for a little while. You never know when someone's just leeching for free information; sometimes till right at the end of the call.
Typically that outreach can end with, "look just email me just a little bit of information about your estate agency".
You'll let them sit on it for a little while, let them do their own research, and then a follow up call to ask whether they had time to look at you. I've met so many Estate Agents that have their CRM, doing separate things on spreadsheets. Following up. Calling. Texting. It goes cold...
Nothing beats posting fresh content consistently. I pride myself on giving options to those who ask it. I've tested out lead magnets, webinars, cold email, door knocking, leafletting, outreach, website changes, landing page, split tests, etc, etc. I won't bore you, but there's a buying psychology to take new audiences through otherwise you're constantly having to build up the same picture over and over again.
Here's a sequence that's doing really well for 1 client who's sales negotiator does about 30 mins of outreach a day using this approach.
On the first call you're not trying to push for a sale, instead you're focussing on building rapport and understanding if there is a problem you hypothesise can be solved whilst highlighting the pain points. And if you can; get a meeting booked. A lot of the time, the money's in the follow up. Guess what though? With this sequence you only have to do the outreach once.
30 mins a day the sales negotiator is doing outreach for new business. When there's interest, she's notified and she reaches out to them to secure the valuation. She's warm calling landlords now, the conversations different. And she's got a couple valuations this week from it.
Enjoyed this? Check out Marcus Sheridan's They Ask, You Answer. I'm 99% positive you'll find the ideas for the videos and articles you've been sleeping on.
