Dear friend,

I’d like to welcome you back for the fourth season of Marketing Monday. It’s the week after Labour Day this week and everybody should be back in the groove getting ready for a big Fall market and if you’re watching the news you know that coming up in the Fall here is going to be a major push for first time buyers and you know that with the $8000 tax credit that’s about to expire potentially, we don’t know whether it’s going to be renewed yet but right now this is the story, this is going to be the driver of the Fall market, people are already starting to line up and realise that we’d better get in action and we’d better get something going if we’re going to close on or before the 1st of December so we can meet that deadline and get the $8000 tax credit.

So what we’re going to focus on this week is a three step system that you can use to jump start the Fall market and to take advantage of this momentum that’s already working in your favor.

Step 1: Find out who among the prospects that you already have are going to buy a home this fall

The best way to do that is step one, to send “The Amazing 9 Word Email That Revives Dead Leads”. Now I’m going to put a link right to the Marketing Monday where we talked all about it but I’ll give the summary of it right here. If you have a list of prospects, a list of people who you have come across over the last six months to twelve months who maybe they came to your website, the left their name and email address, they came into an open house and you got their email address, maybe they enquired about one of your listings on realtor.com or from your website, maybe they registered on your idx site to go and search homes for sale, somehow, someway you’ve got a list of people who at some point this year came across your path and were thinking about buying a home. Well now is your opportunity to reengage those people. So it may be worth your while to take an hour and gather up all of those people into one place, gather up all of those names and email addresses so that you can communicate with them and the basic idea behind the amazing nine word email that revives dead leads is to send a very short personal expecting a reply email that will reengage those people. Some of them will respond and you’ll be in a dialogue with them and hopefully be able to help them buy a home.

So let me share with you just the basics of this nine word email. The thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to send a personal email from you to them and it’s going to be very short. The subject line is going to have their first name in the subject line so if you were sending it to me it would say ‘Dean’ then the body of the email is really going to be very short, nine words and those nine words are ‘Are you still looking for a home in Georgetown’ or wherever you are, ‘Are you still looking for a home in Georgetown’. That’s it. Don’t be tempted to add to the email, don’t be tempted to say because if you are then I can help you or if you are please take a look at this. Fight the temptation to add on to this email. The power of this email is that it’s coming to them from you with one single purpose and that single purpose is just to get an answer to the question are you still looking for a house in Georgetown. Now there’s only four possibilities here that can happen. Number one, people will respond to the email and say no and there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s okay. If they reply better to know that they’re not still looking then to be unsure so that’s possibility number one. Possibility number two is that they do nothing, that they don’t reply, you’re no further ahead but you haven’t lost anything either, nobody’s going to come and beat you up for sending them an email or nobody’s going to do anything bad. The worst thing that could happen is that they unsubscribe from your list and that’s okay too. Don’t be afraid of having people unsubscribe. What we really want to know is what’s the status, are these people real prospects. And the fourth thing that can happen is that they reply yes and yes can have any number of flavours. They could say yes in a single word as a reply to your email or they could say yes and have an explanation about what they’re looking for, telling you a little bit about their situation; either way that is the ultimate outcome of sending this message and if you send this message to all the prospects that you’ve come across you’re going to be surprised how many people will reply yes we are looking for a house. Now here’s where your skill as an email dialogue-ist comes in. Is that even a word, dialogue-ist? Your skills in email dialogue.

What you want to do is how can we reengage these people, how can we have this email lead to something else. So when somebody was to reply yes then what you’re going to do is reply back to them and I will share with you now in the second step of our three step process to jump start your fall market is number two.

Step 2: Schedule a home buyer class for some time in the next two weeks.

Timing is very critical right now. Timing is going to be very critical especially with the first time buyers. They have very little time to get the ball rolling, to get out there looking at homes, to get all their ducks in a row, to get their financing arranged, to get their questions answered and to find a home and to get the process going so they can close before December 1st and get that $8000 tax credit. So you are on a mission right now. You want to take that in your purpose for the next several weeks, the next thirty days for you could be all about first time buyers and one of the greatest processes you can have is a home buyer class.

If you haven’t done a first time home buyer class don’t worry about it, it doesn’t have to be a big production. It doesn’t have to be something that is going to take a lot of time or something that has to be a three hour ordeal. All people really want to know are the basics. They want to know how much can I afford, how do I figure out how much money I can afford, how does the money part of buying a home work. They want to know what the process is, the home buying process, how it actually all comes together, how the mechanics of it work. They’re going to want to know especially if they’re first time buyers how the $8000 tax credit works and they’re probably going to want to know how to avoid some of the big mistakes that they could probably make in buying a home. So you know the answers to all of those, you’ve probably shared them one on one with dozens of first time home buyers throughout your career so just sit down, put together a nice little outline. It doesn’t have to as I said be a big production. All we’re doing is you’re going to pick a date, you’re going to pick a date some time in the next two weeks, no longer than two weeks from now and you’re going to start steering everybody who replies to your email into your home buyer class. That’s a great way to respond to that email by saying perfect, we’re having a home buyer class next Tuesday at the library and we’re going to be talking about how to take advantage of the $8000 tax credit when you buy a home before December 1st. We’re going to answer your questions about financing and how mortgages work and how to determine how much you can afford and what’s the best type of mortgage for you. We’re going to talk about the home buying process and how the actual home buying process works. Things like that, easy things to put together, things you already know and basic things that home buyers will be excited to learn about. So just do it, schedule the date, get the place, whether it’s at the library or the community centre or the Chamber of Commerce or even if you have to have it at your office, that would be probably not the ideal place that I would recommend having it but if you have a conference room and it’s easy for you to book that room go ahead and do that. What we’re looking for is that you take action and get things rolling, get it on the calendar and get your home buyer class set up.

Step 3:  Follow letter for letter the 30 Day Orchestrated Referral Process

Essentially this is an ideal time for you to be spreading the word to everybody that you come across in the next thirty days, every person that you meet and I’m going to share with you in the Marketing Monday that I’m going to link you to there the exact dialogue, exactly what to say to people but essentially you’re going to be in a regular conversation with people in the regular course of every day and you’re going to be asking them if they know anyone who is thinking of buying their first home and you’re going to tell them about the $8000 tax credit and you’re going to invite them to invite any of the friends that they meet or know to come to your home buyer class and we’re going to give them little lead generating business cards that they can hand to their friends and this is going to facilitate the way referrals happen.

First of all we need to know that every referral happens as the result of a conversation and your friends and the people that you know and the people that you run into every day are in conversation with people who are going to be talking about buying a home or talking about taking advantage of this $8000 tax credit. Now what we need to have happen is that in order for a referral to take place we need three things to happen. We need to have your clients or your friends or your sphere notice when the conversation is about real estate, they need to think about you, they need to think when that conversation comes up that hey that’s exactly what Dean was just talking about and number three, they need to introduce you into the conversation. So those three things need to happen, they need to notice the conversation is about real estate, they need to think about you and they need to introduce you into the conversation and those lead generating business cards will be the perfect prop for them to introduce you into the conversation. People love to feel good about referring things that are going to make their friends’ lives better, that are going to help them out so if they’ve got these lead generating cards in their hand they’ve got them there to hand out, they remember that they just had that conversation with you, they’ll be more than happy to spread the word that way.

So there’s your three step process. Watch or listen to the Marketing Monday about the amazing nine word email that revives dead leads and do that first, schedule your home buyer class for some time in the next two weeks and then number three follow word for word letter for letter the thirty day orchestrated referral process that I’m going to link up right here on this week’s Marketing Monday for you.

So there’s your homework and if you do those three things in this next week, in the next seven days so you get that ball rolling even if the next two or three days the next thirty days are going to be harvest time for you. Anybody who is thinking about taking advantage of that $8000 is going to be taking action in the next thirty days. They have to. You need to act like the tax credit is going away because we don’t know whether it’s going to be renewed. We don’t know either way. Hopefully it will, maybe it will but we can’t say for sure so we want to act like it’s going away and we want to act like you are driving the publisher’s clearing house sweepstakes prize mobile and you are giving people $8000, the opportunity to get $8000 that’s going to be gone in just a few short months. So that’s the kind of conviction that you want to have as you’re going through this next thirty days and if you do that you’ll be set up for having a big Fall market.

Now if you want to have some tools to do this that are already done for you that are already written, already prepared for you you might want to take advantage of our finding buyers program, our FindingBuyers.com. Now what I’ve done is I’ve created the ultimate first time buyer marketing tool kit and in that tool kit is everything that you need to take advantage of the first time buyer tax credit program. We’ve got a little booklet that is already done that you can put your name on and give to everybody that you meet to answer all of their questions about the $8000 tax credit. There are lead generating postcards that you can send to your clients, to apartment complexes. There are full page and half page ads that you can use in your homes magazine or as flyers or as inserts in your newsletter. There are emails that you can send to your sphere of influence, to your clients. There are flyers that you can insert in your newsletter, in any print materials that you’re sending out. There are the little lead generating business cards that you can use in the thirty day orchestrated referral process and there are voice mail scripts and email scripts that I’ve already written for you, everything that you need is right there so take a look at FindingBuyers.com and if that’s something that would help you out over the next thirty days please take advantage of that and let me know how this is working out for you.

We’ll be back next week to talk about even more ways to find buyers, get listings and get referrals.

Dean