Finding the Best Buyers

Finding the right buyers for your listings is part strategy and intuition, science and art.

To get optimal results, agents must deploy broad-reaching advertising tactics to attract as large a market as possible. People working in specialized areas of sales have know this for years, such as executive recruitment services and insurance brokers.

Agents must be prepared and unafraid to highlight every feature, benefit and advantage a listing represents. Every house has an ideal buyer that you cannot miss finding and connecting them with the sale.

The most tried and tested tool that agents can rely on is print advertising. Between newspapers, trades, classifieds and mailers such as postcards and direct mail, there are many techniques that have always proven successful. Targeted outdoor advertising, with media placed in key markets, on the right bus bench or billboard, can prove hugely effective.

Whether they're opportunities in Richmond Hill or Halton Hills real estate and everywhere in between, you must gain attention on a new property as quickly as possible. Get into your target market's neighbourhood, knock on some doors, network and navigate your way through the crowd until you find the best buyers. Find out what incentives appeal to different people in different places.

From there, you must have the skills and techniques necessary to transition that attention into interest, desire and action. As such, you need to create as much buzz and demand as early as possible, to create as many selling opportunities as you can. After all, real estate is about developing and harnessing as many relationships as possible.

By creating as much word of mouth attention as you can, you can rely less on print advertising. In all of your efforts, make sure that you craft a solid vocabulary of persuasive language to rely on. Whether speaking to a Markham executive or a Mississauga lawyer, there are words that can persuade to your betterment and detriment in sales.

Words like the classic 'feel, felt, found' can go a long way in building rapport and putting a prospect at ease. Like a cowboy, you have to sling ropes of positive and attractive linguistic reinforcement around a prospect, one after another, in order to pull them in.

On the other hand, being tactful and cautious about words that could be construed as negative, such as 'foreclose' or 'bankrupt', could quickly backfire on rapport building efforts. (When faced with a seller who is in this position, it is always important to remember that the agent is ready, willing and able to be the one providing a solution to their challenge. Be upfront and honest, tell them if you had done some research at the local courthouse and are there to work with them on a solution).

Looking and listening for who would be interested in the family dwellings around the metro area or the luxury homes Toronto has to offer is a big part of the job. With the right amount of leg-work and clever advertising, you will be able to find the best buyers for your listings.