At the risk of running afoul of marketing correctness, it is the author's strong belief that prospecting for residential buyers is overrated. Seriously. There are agents reading this column that lost track of more prospects in the last 30 days than many agents lose in a year or, for some, during their resulting brief career.

Buyers and sellers are everywhere, and their numbers will increase. Many of you reading this column already have more prospects than you know what to do with. Some handle them better; some worse.

If you don't track prospects, they fall through the crack. Many agents experience this, but either do nothing about it or don't know what to do.

RE/MAX Properties Broker Associate of Colorado Springs, CO, Marty Mankamyer, CRS, GRI, ABR, knows what to do and has been doing something about it. She adds a dozen or more relocating prospects a month to her prospect list and follows up with each of them easily and consistently.

Marty has been selling real estate for 35 years, during which time she also contributed countless hours of volunteer time in the world of sports, including Soccer, Taekwondo, and also served for a brief time as president of the United States Olympic Committee. 'Busy' does not start to define Marty.

Realty Times asked Marty to share her secret:

"No one can keep up without a system. Without a prospect tracking system I would not only be out of my mind, I would out of business. I don't take the position that a few prospects may drop through the cracks and that's ok. I take the position that I could lose a sale and a nice commission, because I did not follow up properly or forgot about the prospect altogether."

Marty believes that "if the truth be known, many agents lose more commissions from not following up on their prospects than the commissions they earn over a year's time."

She says, "We see it all the time - agents losing track of their prospects, not knowing if the emails sent were opened, and if opened if they were understood. Many leave the business blaming the market, when in fact it was the agent's lack of prospect follow up. I always know where I am and where my prospects are in the process. If the first email has not been opened within three days, my tracking system will ask me if want to resend the email. If I approve, it resends the same email automatically. Knowing whether my emails are opened before I call, give me important controls that I would not otherwise have. If they did open the mail, I have a record of the time and date it was opened."

"When I know that they have opened the email, I ask if they have seen it. If they say 'no' they are probably not being honest or they truly don't remember. The way I have branded my email letterhead, makes me hard to forget," Marty said.

But it goes a lot further than just prospect tracking with Marty.

"If it is an issue about a contract, my email records become invaluable, not only for tracking prospects, but for providing a date and time record on emails I send to other brokers regarding transaction matters and money. Without a tracking system, I would never be able to prove the recipient received it or opened it. More than once when a misundstanding arose, my email records proved that the other party did, in fact ,receive the email and opened it at a certain time on a certain date and matters were settled in my favor," Marty recounted.

National seminar speaker and trainer, Colorado Springs Realtor Chandra Hall, DRE, MBA, CNE, ABR,CRS,GRI, Green, SFT, agrees with Marty, but "my letterhead does more than provide branding, it is a proactive trust-building tool.

Ok, Chandra, we give up. How does a letterhead build trust?

"Think about it. Before I make the follow-up call, the recipient may have already clicked the tabs on my letterhead that give them the opportunity to review my listings, read about me and my company, read the testimonials and read about the local market, without ever going to my home page. Some see it as a traffic builder. I see it as something much more important. I see it as a trust builder," Chandra said.

"The prospect will know more about me than I know about them, and that helps them relax, and in turn be more forthcoming about their needs. If they like what see on my website, their sales resistance will be much lower than if we start out cold No more cold calling-all because they had the convenience of my website pages at their finger tips," Chandra said.

Fabusend CEO Sean J. Carolan, who developed the proprietary link-embedded email "stationery," says "prospects are the foundation of every sales program.

"They are worth money, and, therefore, worth the effort to do everything possible to list their home and/or help them buy one from the agent that does the best job of reaching them emotionally. Technology makes that possible using email," Sean said.

To do add more prospects or sell more of the ones you already have, that is the choice. Making the wrong one, isn't.

Here's a plan:

1. Take an hour or so to evaluate your prospect. Are you selling one out of two, one out of ten, or do you know. If you don't, you are already behind the curve.

2. Ask agents that seem to have it together how they keep up with their prospects?

3. Make a decision to improve your prospecting skills only if you are satisfied with the way you track them.

4. Set a date to settle this issue as a matter of work style and do what you need to do to tighten the controls.

Your prospects for success will increase significantly. Guaranteed.