Building contacts list: How Pearson & Associates did it

In August of 2012, we interviewed Anne Sullivan with Pearson & Associates about how she uses XSellerate to get a new appraisal order at least every day. Read that story here.

A critical part of marketing is building your list of contacts. Anne had several creative ways to do it quickly and effectively. Here are her top 3 tips for building your contact list:

• We volunteered to do a “Market Conditions Summary” presentation every month at all the big real estate brokerages in town. We have all the agents in the room provide their contact info (including e-mail addresses) on a sign up sheet we pass around during the presentation. We always get several referrals from real estate agents that we meet in these presentations.
• All borrowers/home owners get added to the contact list, too. When we schedule the inspection, we tell them we’d like to e-mail them a confirmation reminder. They provide their e-mail address, so it’s easy to add them to the campaigns. They often know people who need appraisals, so we get a constant stream of referrals from families whose homes we’ve appraised in the past.
• When we do an inspection, we always try to leave a few postcards on the doors of the surrounding homes. The postcards have our contact information and just say “I appraised your neighbor’s home. If you’re interested in the value of your largest investment, contact us today.” We get several new assignments this way, and the postcard is ready for you in XSellerate so all you have to do is print them on those Avery postcard templates you get at the office supply store.

It takes some time, but you’ll be surprised how quickly your list grows. The bigger the list, the more potential business you’ll reach.