One of the ways I started my real estate career was calling people in my neighborhood.
But I wasn’t calling to ask if they wanted to sell their house.
I called to do a little research.
“Mr. McQuaig, it’s Dean Jackson from Royal LePage. We’re conducting an area market survey. I wonder if you’d have a minute to be included?”
Usually they’d say no.
So I’d say:
“It’s just five questions. One minute, I promise.”
And often they’d say yes.
I’d ask things like:
How long have you lived in your current home?
Where did you live before moving here?
How did you happen to choose Georgetown?
If you were to move, would you stay in Georgetown or move somewhere else?
And when do you think that might be?
That was it.
I wasn’t trying to convince anybody to sell.
I was statusing people.
Every hundred conversations would uncover some people who were thinking about moving now.
But more importantly, I was building a record of friendly people who had told me where they wanted to go and roughly when they thought they might move.
Maybe it was two or three years away.
That was fine.
I was playing the long game.
Looking back, I think there’s something really important in that distinction.
Most prospecting asks:
Who wants to buy right now?
A much more valuable question might be:
Who is likely to buy eventually, and what would be helpful to them between now and then?
You don’t need everybody to be ready today.
You just need to know who they are, where they’re headed, and when they might get there.
Then you can be helpful along the way.
That’s a very different way to think about prospecting.
And thirty years later…
I think it’s still the better way.