Here's a great marketing idea for new agents that doesn’t cost a lot of money. I thought long and hard about this idea before I decided to share it. After all, good ideas are worth money. Ok, I’m going to sum it up in one word, then prove my point.

The word? List.

You don’t like to list? Let’s be honest. You haven’t tried, and you haven’t learned listing scripts. So give yourself a chance to at least hear my side of the story from a marketing standpoint. Whether you like to list or not, it is still the best marketing program ever devised.

Here’s why:

Let’s say you and Agent B join a real estate company the same day. You immediately decide you are going to list. Agent B immediately decides that he doesn't like rejection, so he is going to focus on learning how to fill out purchase agreements, addendums, and review technology opportunities.

Within the first month you learn listing scripts and therefore become effective with for-sale-by-owners and expired listings. You get a listing, because you knew what you were doing, and you knew it, because you learned the scripts.

Agent B? By now he's learning a contact management system, watching sales videos, going to lunch with some agents, looking over forms, asking a lot of questions, and politicking for floor time.

You?

• You put a sign in the seller’s yard with your name on it.

• You sent out 300 post cards to the neighbor hood announcing you just listed the home.

• You prepared an ad that will have your name in it for the public to see.

• Your cost so far? $150-$200.

Agent B? He hasn't spent a dime. But one of these days, when he gets better trained, he is going to try to list. But in the meantime, he needs a good marketing program to market himself! He needs to mail his friends, join a civic club. He has plenty to do.

That weekend, you have an open house and meet only two families, neither of which is interested in the home. However, one of them wants to sell their home so they can move into the new one. (Don’t let slow traffic discourage you).

Agent B? He's hoping to get a prospect Tuesday morning when he takes floor time. Tuesday morning, he is on floor time at the office sharing with you about how slow business is when the phone rings. Yes! He may have a prospect. Oh, it's for you, he says disappointedly. Someone calling on your ad about the house you listed.

Now you have one prospect from the open house and one from the ad. Chances are neither will buy the listed home, but you have two prospects for homes and at least one more listing prospect all for about $200.

Agent B? He's home tonight explaining to his wife that business is slow, and that you seem to be having all the luck.

Question: Do you need a new car, a laptop, new clothes, and all the other stuff you can spend money on to start this marketing program? Of course not. But you do need to learn scripts and you do need to learn how to prospect.

Listing is still the best marketing program invented.

Let me add a warning. You will hear agents say they don’t like to list. They can come up with a lot of reasons they don’t like to list, but not one of them is financial.

You will also hear that the broker is always pushing listings because it is good for the broker. Of course it is. The more you list the more money you and the broker both make! This is a bad thing?

Your broker knows if you are listing, you aren’t complaining about the market, you have direction, you can sell and you are going to make it. You also have a chance to sell your own listing and earn two commissions or get that call listing agents love to hear. ”This is Agent Smith. I have an offer on your home.”

Remember I told you that good ideas are worth a lot of money. This is a great idea and can make you a huge success. I can’t take credit for the idea of course, but I surely do enjoy sharing it.

Try it.

Published: July 25, 2003

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

David Fletcher has been a Florida real estate condominium and new homes broker for 30 years with more than $3 billion in new construction sales. In 2008, Keller Williams Realty International named him a "Lifetime Achiever." Along the way he has chaired the Florida Homebuilders Associaiton Sales and Marketing Council, trained thousands of general agents and on-site agents to work together, and was a featured speaker at the National Association of Realtors. Recently he founded New Homes Niche, a builder-certified co-broker training system "to meet the growing trend we see in short sale buyers moving to new homes for a lot of reasons." Call David at 407 234 2349, , and visit his website.