Nothing Personal, but Buyers Don’t Want to Call You

So why not give them a reason to?
So why not give them a reason to?

Commentary from Harmon Media Group

RISMEDIA, August 18, 2006?Buyers are looking for a reason not to call you. But don’t take it personally.

Put yourself in the shoes of a home buyer searching for a “dream house.” You’re paging though a real estate magazine you picked up at the grocery store. Or perhaps you’re searching online for homes during your lunch hour. Either way, you’ve got plenty of listings to go through.

The last thing you’re going to do is call every last listing agent. You’d be there all day.

If you were the buyer, you’d search all the listings, eliminate the ones that didn’t match what you were looking for, go through the “maybes” a couple more times, eliminate some more, and take action on only the ones you were really serious about. You would only contact a real estate professional about the houses that suited you most.

In other words, you would search through homes looking for reasons NOT to call their listing agents.

So what does that mean?

You need to give buyers as many reasons as you can to contact you. Hopefully, they’ll be enticed by one of those reasons and pick up the phone.

But that doesn’t mean that you should leave out specific details in hopes that buyers will contact you for more information. On the contrary, a lack of details like price and location prevents buyers from calling you even more.

Why? Picture yourself as a buyer again. You work in Anytown, New Jersey. You don’t want to commute more than a half hour each way to work. You can afford to pay a maximum of $325,000, and you need at least three bedrooms and 1.5 baths.

These are reasonable needs, but they narrow your search considerably. If you know that your new home needs to meet at least these criteria, you will quickly eliminate the listings that don’t and take a closer look at the ones that do.

If the information you needed was not available in some listings, you would scan right past them in most cases and move onto other ones that told you what you needed to know. You wouldn’t miss anything, because you couldn’t miss what you never had.

Plus, by including specific details like price and location, you don’t just attract buyers. You attract the right buyers-the buyers who are looking for a home just like the one you have listed.

And don’t forget about those photos! Not including a photo for every listing you advertise is a surefire way to prevent your phone from ringing. The more photos you feature, the better! With one photo, a buyer might be enticed to read the details in the listing. With a few photos, your audience will be a little more captive. With ten or more photos, you’ll have them hooked!

Home search Web sites like HarmonHomes.com and Homes.com offer customized packages that let you include multiple photos with your listings to attract those detail-hungry buyers. For example, on HarmonHomes.com, you can include up to 20 photos per listing. Photos make listings more “real” and give buyers a better idea of what to expect should they schedule a showing.

Finally, buyers really won’t have a reason to call you if they don’t see your listings. With a network of over 250 print publications, plus a range of Internet tools at eHarmonHomes.com, HarmonHomes.com and Homes.com and the custom PrinterNet? Hybrid solution for brokers, Harmon Media Group provides integrated marketing strategies for real estate professionals nationwide. By combining print and Internet for high-response marketing results, Harmon Media Group provides agents with a definite unique selling proposition: the power of PrinterNet?. To connect with a Harmon Media Group representative in your area, call 1-877-9-HARMON or e-mail
results@harmonhomes.com

For more information about Harmon Media Group, visit HarmonHomes.com or call 1-877-9-HARMON.

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