Professional real estate agents often intertwine the prospecting terms, “Circle Prospecting”, “Geographical Prospecting” and “Neighborhood Prospecting”.
While they share similarities in outcome goals, they are significant differences in practice. First let’s define them:
- Circle prospecting refers to the practice of calling homeowners within a circular radius of a specific property, typically a just listed or a just sold home is the target center.
- Geographic prospecting is targeting everyone in a desired neighborhood.
- Neighborhood prospecting means you’re prospecting straight down the street or inside a high rise.
The scripts are different, but the goal is the same.
Different Method Same Goal
Most agents that are willing to pick up a phone, overcome the objections and rejection has one goal in mind: to find a seller. Certainly, some buyer agents will prospect for buyers, but listings are where the money is at and is the primary goal of telephone prospecting. Circle Prospecting’s strength is that the agent has a specific home that they have just listed or just sold, the neighbors have likely seen the yard sign and the agent already has some brand awareness. The goal is to expand upon the legitimacy and obtain another listing. The script positions the agent as an expert willing to educate and share marketing information, i.e. “I’ve just listed your neighbor at 123 First St. I did significant market research to value it and was calling if you’d like to know what I’d value your home at?” If the homeowner says no the agent will often ask for a referral, “Do you know anyone who may be interested in moving into your neighborhood?”
Geographical prospecting the agent doesn’t have the brand awareness and is calling into a neighborhood where they desire to create their brand. If homeowners continually hear from an agent, then name recognition is built and so is the value that the agent is active.
Neighborhood is a tighter version of geographic, the agent is prospecting a street or high rise. Both geographic and neighborhood prospecting use the same technique of sharing expertise on market trends in specific areas to stimulate interest. Often the agent will have a buyer looking in that area (or knows one they could persuade) and their script will state, “Hi, I’ve a buyer that has been aggressively looking to purchase in your area. I’ve done extensive research on the homes in your area and feel now is an excellent time to consider selling. Do you have interest?” and if the answer is no, there is always the referral question, “Do you know anyone who may be interested in selling in your neighborhood”.
Do These Real Estate Prospecting Methods Work?
Yes, they work, and they work very well if you work it. The goal of circle prospecting, neighborhood prospecting or geographic prospecting is to generate immediate business, but the secondary and just as powerful goal is to strategically grow your database and brand awareness. After all, the best lead is a referral and ultimately all agents desire a referral-based business. But you must have enough clients to feed you sufficient referrals to achieve this goal. Prospecting feeds the machine.
Telephone prospecting is not easy, but it’s the most proactive and costs effective approach to generate new business. Advertising is a reactive approach. Expensive and more subject to the whims of the buyer/seller because you have not built the relationship as deeply as you can when you generate the lead by prospecting. Any agent calling web leads knows there is no loyalty and conversion rates can be low single digits. When you circle prospect, geographic prospect or neighborhood prospect homeowners respect your efforts and trust you more.
Circle prospecting can be much more enjoyable than calling fsbo leads and expired listing leads because they are not as competitive. Good news for newer agents who may require some time to build influence and skill to compete with seasoned agents for the limited fsbo and expired market.
How Can ArchAgent Help?
Our Neighborhood service enables you to perform all three prospecting strategies. You can choose to sort you list by proximity from an address, for circle prospecting. You can choose to draw an area for geographic prospecting, or you can sort the list by street for neighborhood prospecting. Additionally, we append the phone numbers in real-time, so they are as fresh and accurate as possible. Email address and social media links are also included. We’ve also developed sort strategies, such as “likely to list” using predictive analytics to sort the homes with the highest propensity to sell at the top of our list. If you have your own analytics, there are manual sort strategies such as selecting only homes with price points, years in residence or assessed value.
If you’ve never tried circle prospecting or called into neighborhoods, now is a perfect time to try it. Inventory is still very low across the country. Real Estate has become 25% of the US economy and there’s an estimated 2 million licensed agents fighting for it. With predictive analytics you can find homes before they become competitive. Try it for free and let ArchAgent help you become trusted expert in your area.
ArchAgent brings together the tools and resources the country’s top real estate agents rely on in a single package for a low cost. Our suite of new listing and marketing services are proven to work and help agents set the standard for success in their market based on extensive research with hundreds of agents around the country. To be the best, become an ArchAgent.
Steve Cortez is a seasoned real estate professional with decades of experience and owner of ArchAgent. ArchAgent brings together the tools and resources the country’s top real estate agents rely on in a single package for a low cost.