FSBO Guide - Authorify

Step #2: Follow Up Back in 2003, I worked as an assistant on a team. This team mailed all the FSBOs in our marketplace a series of generic, watered-down letters. As the assistant, it was my job to mail those letters to the FSBOs. We printed the letters automatically through Top Producer. We’d mail out the same watered-down letters week after week and rarely saw a listing come from it. Their primary purpose was to assist the team leaders with prospecting. We weren’t advanced marketers, but no one really was at that time. We did get some business from the letters, and I believe that they did assist with prospecting. However, what is really interesting is that we listed several homes a year simply because we kept mailing the FSBOs when other teams stopped. Our persistence paid off, which was evident every time we got a call from a FSBO wanting to list with us. During initial consultations, the leads would often explain that they had decided to call us because of the stack of letters they had received. The reasoning seemed to be that if we were so good at marketing ourselves to them, we must be good at marketing houses, too. According to all the studies, you have to follow up continually with leads to secure their business. This is especially true with FSBOs because they take longer to nurture into a listing. If you look at the study below, you will see 79% of all Realtors® usually give up on a FSBO after the third call. If you continue to stay in touch and build rapport, you’re more likely to get the listing down the road when they’re ready. If you call a FSBO back a fourth time, you’ve already pushed yourself ahead of 79% of your competition. Because only a handful of agents focus on securing FSBOs, that limits your competition even further. Beyond that, the potential seller will respect your determination and persistence. Who wouldn’t respect that kind of follow-up? The key is to keep yourself motivated to follow-up with them. The best way to do this is to consider each FSBO lead that you build a relationship with the same as an expired listing lead. Often, I will offer to go by a FSBO home and give suggestions on ways they can better market their home. By helping them out this way, it could likely turn into a listing. With this method, I converted as many of those soft-sell appointments into listings as I converted expireds into listings. Of course, you’ll want to build up to this preview appointment. The first time you call them, just ask them how long they plan to market their house themselves before they would hire a Realtor®.