As a real estate agent you probably already know how important your image is when enrolling your prospects in working with you exclusively. The sum total of everything you present to your prospects will have them decide to hire you, or one of your competitors instead.

One of the areas where you can make a great impression on your prospects is when they are located in a different city than you. If someone has a property they're going to sell in your area, and if they live in a different city, you may want to consider flying to meet them face-to-face to discuss listing the property with them.

Depending on the distance involved, your airfare will cost maybe $100.00-$400.00, and your hotel room for one night will cost you somewhere between $79.00 and $250.00. And since this is a business expense, it's all deductible for you, too.

So for maybe around $500.00, you now have an opportunity to meet face-to-face with the owners of the property you want to list, and impress them with your willingness to do what it takes to meet with them personally. And if you like the city you'll be traveling to, you may even want to stay an extra day or two and make a mini-vacation out of it. (That part of your trip, however, will not be deductible!)

When you fly to meet people whose property you'd like to list, this can be very impressive to them as owners. They'll really appreciate the fact that you're willing to invest your time and your money to travel and meet with them personally. And most of the time you'll completely leave your competition behind when you do this, too. This is because very few of your competitors would ever consider doing this themselves.

If you're not in the running as a candidate to obtain the listing, the owners will often let you know this by discouraging you from flying out to meet with them. But just to be safe, you'll want to establish with the owners in advance that you're someone they're interested in listing their property with before you make the trip. And if you make the trip and your competitors don't, you have a great opportunity to be chosen as the listing agent for the property. This of course assumes that you make a good impression on the owners during your face-to-face meeting with them.

Being successful in real estate sales and leasing means presenting an image of yourself that convinces people you're the best choice they could ever make in a real estate agent. When you fly out to meet people personally to discuss listing their property, you've just taken a huge step towards convincing them that you're exactly the kind of agent they want to be doing business with.

Published: August 20, 2004

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Jim Gillespie, Ph.D., is America's Premier Real Estate Coach℠. He has over 20 years of experience in real estate sales and is a past president of three different real estate companies. His FREE real estate E-newsletter with tips and creative ideas to help agents make more money is now read by over 35,000 agents nationwide. You can subscribe to his FREE E-newsletter by visiting RealEstateSalesCoach.com or contact him at Jim@RealEstateSalesCoach.com.