Find and nourish your Mrs. Kravitz - as many as possible!
Some agents believe that farming prior to 5:00 pm before most people get home from work is not a productive use of time.. This at best (in the summer) leaves a two hour window and likely guarantees that you will catch people in a bad frame of mind if you interrupt their supper with a knock on that door.
A great thing about marketing to seniors in a geographical farm is that in retirement they are home all day. This provides the opportunity to get results from investing more door knocking time into your business. In fact, if you are serious and door knock during the day a high percentage of home owners you reach and initiate a conversation with is likely to be seniors. If you adopt and hone SISREP senior strategies and get good at establishing yourself as a senior resource, you will look and sound completely different to this high percentage of "hits" from door knocking creating value add relationships that will lead to listings and sales.
Another aspect of prospecting to seniors is many have lived in their neighborhoods for decades. Some seniors you encounter can be like Mrs. Kravatz in the television series "Bewitched". They have relationships established over years and time to be interested in what goes on in the neighborhood such as:
- - Which neighbors have lived there the longest and might want to move
- - Which neighbors have grown kids and might be downsizing candidates
- - Which senior neighbors have had or are having health problems that could lead to in-home care/aging in place or assisted living decisions
- - Which neighbors have just moved in and might be less likely to need real estate services
- - Which neighbors are going through a divorce and might sell their house
- - Which of their friends have kids or grandkids that might need real estate servicesA great strategy is to identify, befriend and nourish relationships with every Mrs.Kravitz you can find in your farm. Another term for this is finding “anchor” contacts. Even if never a prospect to sell their home, an anchor contact can be a referral source or be just as valuable by telling you what’s going on so you can be the first agent to meet real estate needs they uncover
In general seniors have time on their hands. If they like you they can be a great source of information about your farm. A caricature of this is the Mrs. Kravitz character from the show Bewitched. Although a meddlesome busy body, Mrs. Kravitz was always trying to find out what was going on in the neighborhood.
A great strategy is to identify, befriend and nourish relationships with every Mrs.Kravitz you can find in your farm. Another term for this is finding “anchor” contacts. Even if never a prospect to sell their home, an anchor contact can be a referral source or be just as valuable by telling you what’s going on so you can be the first agent to meet real estate needs they uncover for you.
Find as many outgoing and gregarious anchor contacts (like Mrs. Kravitz) as possible. Nourish these relationships by occasionally bringing them goodies, delivering newsletters in person or just dropping by to say "hi". Take a patience pill ahead of time as they have time and might talk for quite a while – going off on tangents but likely sharing tidbits of information that can be a good as gold!
