If you're using a contact manager the way it's supposed to be used, then
you're sending hundreds of prospecting letters each month. If you're not
doing this, then you're missing the single greatest moneymaking feature of
popular real estate programs such as Top Producer, PREP or Online Agent.
Each of these programs has the ability to do more than simply mail-merge
form letters with your contact database. These programs will allow you to
create countless "action plans" that can be applied to your prospects,
where the "plan" will automatically write not just one letter, but
comprehensive sequences of automated letters, upon the frequency of your
choosing.
Thus, with the click of a single mouse-button you could specify that a FSBO
receive a different letter each week, for the next twelve weeks. Even more
comprehensive, an "action plan" might send a letter a week for 3 weeks and
then remind you to make a phone call or stop by, and then send follow up
letters every other week for the next two months and then offer another
reminder to call.
Besides letting you create fully customized "action plans" for all of your
prospects, the greatest thing about these contact managers is that they
will do much more than simply remind you to write the letters. Instead,
they will actually write them for you! All you have to do is tell them to
print your letters each day or week and then print envelopes or labels and
you're done.
Using a contact manager, a properly motivated agent can easily send 25 to
50 letters a day to cover all of their prospecting and customer follow-up
activities in just a few minutes. Annualized, this is at least 6,250
contacts made each year and that's not counting weekends and two weeks for
vacation!
The bottom line, lots more leads and referrals from those contacts.
However, the primary reason that most agents don't take advantage of this
sure-fire prospecting technique is the time it takes to create
comprehensive and meaningful action plans and then to write the original
form letters.
This brings us to the value of Dave Beson's LetterWriter program.
Thousands of agents have used this program to successfully implement their
database prospecting.
Within five minutes Dave's program automatically installs into Top
Producer, PREP or Online Agent and creates eight separate "action plans" -
containing 202 different letters. Each letter is professionally written
for use by real estate agents and can also be edited if so desired.
Recently, Dave has released LetterWriter Plus to add an additional nine
action plans and another 204 letters to extend the success that agents have
had using his original LetterWriter program.
If you own a contact manager, but aren't taking full advantage of the
ability to create and implement prospecting action plans, visit
www.canale.com and take a look at
LetterWriter and LetterWriter Plus, they're indispensable productivity tools.
Published: May 31, 1999
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