Are You Friends With Your Sales Team?
The traditional spring selling season, for most real estate agents, means increased competition for buying and selling. Why should you care? As a New Business Manager, this can only mean one thing – more potential landlords for you to create more connections with.
Tapping into your sales team’s contacts is not always easy, but it is oh-so-important. Why? They have access to buyers, which means access to your potential clients. Not every buyer will be ready to buy an investment now. However, connecting with them in the early stages of their investment search means you can continue to help them until they are ready to buy that investment and, in that time, you’ll become their go-to PM expert.
So how can you become friends with your sales team, and increase the opportunity to connect with more leads?
- Help them understand what you do and why you want to talk to their clients. Ensure they are clear on your value, how their client will benefit and exactly what you will be saying to their clients.
- What’s in it for them? Selfish, perhaps, but they want to know how they too will benefit. Make them understand that you are babysitting their pipeline and any properties referred to you automatically go back to them when their clients are ready to sell. You’ll care for their clients as much as they do.
- Attend sales meetings and educate them on what’s happening in the rental market. Give them stats and facts. They need to trust your ability and knowledge.
- Ask to help at their open homes, so you can get face-to-face with potential landlords and build your own network. If there are 100 open home attendees every weekend, and 50% of them are thinking of investing now or in the future, that’s 50 contacts you can add to your database.
- And, of course, keep them updated on existing referrals.
Your new friends have a goldmine of potential opportunities for you, but it’s about building and maintaining trust with them to ensure these opportunities reach you. You want to be the first person your sales team think of when they hear the words “investment” or “property management”.
The most important thing to remember: If they don’t trust you they won’t refer you!