A few years ago I was fortunate enough to meet a successful real estate professional who made his office the golf course. It was in Rhode Island which hosts many privately-held golf courses. I promised him I would never use his name but would talk about him often. As he put it “I don’t want my clients to think I’m exploiting them.” For the purpose of the story I will call him Brian.
Brian joined the golf course simply to meet other people in his community. He quickly learned that he was the only real estate agent at his golf course. He made a pact with himself that he would never play golf with the same person in the same week—his attempt of meeting every member in the club.
“It didn’t take more than two years to capture what I estimated was 80% of the real estate business from my club,” Brian told me. Brian established himself as a non-pushy guy who, just like the rest of them, simply wanted to play golf and run his business.
He was able to build a relationship with the course manager and have a brochure placed in every new member’s folder. Every member felt as though they had their own personal real estate professional at their beck and call.
Since I last spoke to Brian he still has not posted a personal promotion ad in the newspaper and you can’t find one on the internet either. Agents like Brian teach us the importance of why we advertise and to whom we are to build relationships.
New marketing tells us that the ‘who’ is more important than the ‘how many.’ The old marketing of methods of reaching thousands is now irrelevant.
Matthew S. Gosselin is the author of My Blue Goose, Exploiting The Wow Factor In Real Estate Marketing. The book can be purchased on MyBlueGoose.com or Amazon
1 Comment
January 18, 2008 at 2:59 am
Sometimes more is not better… but that is a lot of golf!!!