Like everything else, real estate is changing quickly. These days, many homeowners begin researching and planning up to 24 months before they actually buy or sell a home, with most of that research performed online. After that, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports that 74 percent of homeowners list their property with the first agent they interview.

What can you conclude from these two observations? Clearly, the agent who captures the prospect’s attention early and successfully cultivates a long-term relationship with that person will have the best opportunity to ultimately win the business.

Most agents market their services to prospective sellers who are already in the market, competing intensely with other agents to snag every listing. Knowing that NAR statistics give you a 74 percent chance of securing the listing by forming a relationship with prospects before they decide to sell, isn’t that where you should concentrate your time and energy?

So now we arrive at the familiar “Catch-22” of life as a real estate agent. We get paid when we’re face-to-face with customers who are actively in the process of buying or selling. How many times have we heard this:

“Don’t waste time on prospects who aren’t serious. Time is all we have, and if we waste it on people who aren’t motivated, we won’t have time to make any money.”

That said, the key to maintaining a steady flow of business involves learning to cultivate time-efficient and cost-effective relationships with prospects who will turn to us first when they’re ready to buy or sell.

Here are some practical ideas on responding, tracking and following up on leads without wasting time:

1. Understand that you need to cultivate relationships with a large number of prospects simultaneously.
2. Recognize that you can’t predict the short-term or long-term motivation of most prospects.
3. Learn that automating the prospect management process by using database and email systems can save you both time and money.
4. Accept that even though not every prospect will mature into a customer, the long-term benefits of cultivating them are well worth your efforts.

This kind of targeted, long-term relationship marketing may appear on the surface time-consuming, but thanks to the advances in modern communication technology -- including database-driven prospect management systems and email messaging -- staying in touch with prospects is easier than you might imagine. Let me give you an example of how this works:

Published: June 26, 2003

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