How many times have you been in the car with your wife, and driven past a property with a for sale sign in the yard, and no flyer in the box? Frustrating to say the least. I jumped in the car the other day and took the flyer challenge! After first driving to a local real estate office for a current list of active properties, I set out to find at least one current flyer in the box, and stopped at any property with a sign in the yard along the way.
Initially, I was fairly optimistic considering I had spent so much time over the course of my career as a Senior Mortgage Loan Consultant creating marketing pieces for open houses, and other agent’s new listings as a courtesy. I was assuming that I was sure to find at least a few flyers, whether they were good or bad quality was arbitrary. Being that in this case, if you were simply making an effort to provide information about the property in the box, you were already more proactive that your competitors. Out of the 25 properties I had wasted my precious fuel driving to, can you guess how many flyers I was able to find? Anyone? Absolutely zero!! That’s right, zero for 25.
In effect, if I was actually an interested buyer looking for information on the property (i.e. room count, square footage, etc…), I was left with no other option than to call the number on the sign. Although wait a minute the number on the sign rings to the real estate office? Not the listing agent. Do I really want to talk to track the agent down right now to get the information, or would I rather prefer to just be able to show my wife the amenities of the property so we can discuss it on our way to the next home for sale? Perhaps if the agent had posted their website address on the sign, I can write down the information and check it out online when we get home…IF I remember to do it.
If you are trying to differentiate yourself as a professional in your community, the one sure fire way would be to have flyers available at all your listings. Sure the neighbors are going to take most of them, but a few buyers too. Who is to say that the neighbors might not be looking to sell soon as well?
After all of my efforts, I once again had to drive by another real estate office to request a flyer for a property, and what I was handed just blew me away. The black and white layout of the flyer left a lot to be desired, and had just one photo…of the front of the house! I had already seen this view of the property, when I was standing in front of it. The paper it was printed on was stock printer paper as well. You might as well print at the top of the page “here, you throw this away”.
Which brings me to my next point. What does the quality of your flyer say about you as an Agent? Does it represent you as a true industry professional? Does it bode well for your experience, and expertise? Take a look at the picure below, and tell me which flyer you would prefer to show a potential buyer or seller. If you are going to provide a first impression of your listing, which do you think is going to be more powerful? The flyer on the left took just 8 minutes to create, and is printed on quality high gloss paper. Feel free to give me a call and I’ll show you how easily it was done!
