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Hey Everyone,
This is my first post but thought it would be helpful in the advertising section for those in need.
I spent some time going around to different real estate agencies here in town trying to hook up with real estate agents and clean for them. They make it pretty difficult to talk to anyone or leave flyers at most of the offices unless you want to buy a house. So I got creative.
There is a real estate agency here in Charlotte that does about 33% of the real estate market share in town, they’re called Allen Tate. I hopped on their website and found a list of every agent in my area, along with their email addresses…all 1,300 of them. I came up with the idea of doing the carpets in their personal home for half price..carpets only. I thought I would give it a go because it would get more bites than a 20% off coupon, half price just sounds to good to pass up. So I sent this email out about 2 weeks before the LV seminar and booked about 10 appointments with different agents within the next 2-3 days. Referrals came in left and right after that. Every last agent was amazed at the work I did and complimented that they had never seen a better job done, and they’ve all seen a lot of homes and carpet cleaners come and go. The best part is since I gave them such a great price on the carpet cleaning, most of them had me do upholstery or other services while I was there or at least booked another appointment to have it done later, and of course that was at premium price. Many also had me book their clients It worked great and I stayed a lot busier with that…and guess how much it cost me to get this lifetime customer? $0!
Then after the seminar, I sent out another email to the same agents that had the subject line of “Last Call for Half Price Carpet Cleaning”. I sent it out Monday the 5th of Feb. and set a deadline of Sat. Feb 10th to book a half price appointment on carpet cleaning. I made it clear that they just needed to book by then and not clean by then. I booked at least another 20 appointments for over the next month or so and every last one of those is going to turn into higher dollar jobs with upholstery, hardwood, or other services included and also REFERRALS!
I leave 3 business cards with each agent and a magnetic business card. I tell them to stick it up in their workspace somewhere. They all do it an the referrals have been coming in from it.
Keep in mind this is only one real estate agency that I targeted, I still have quite a few companies to go.
I would recommend everyone do this because it is free and will turn into cleaning vacant houses on the market that can be done during hours that you normally are not as busy.
That’s a great idea. Half off!!! Gutsy move Maverick! But if it works, it works. THanks for the info.
Grant! Very gutsy!
I did the same thing when I started back in ’82’. The exception is I only did a 30% discount. The same results. Personal letters and eye to eye contact back then. (Al Gore hadn’t yet invented the internet.)
yeah, I’ve wondered if half off was necessary but it sure has gotten me a lot of business. But I’m only 7 month in and needed to stay a little busier. It seems to be working great though, I’m sure I won’t be doing this ever again.
Grant, Very Very Gutsy move, But if it works o.k.
As I have posted on this board in the past, When I started over 15 years ago in FL. I went to 8-12 Real Estate offices and did one room only for free, I did the jobs after hours so no one was there! I cleaned every agents chair and then left brochure and business card on his or hers desk. 15 years later we have some of those same agents that I started with, recommending Heaven’s Best to all their clients. It WORKS.
Ron
Only re-stating common info, but 20% of the realtors do 80% of the sales. Find the 20% grasshopper and you will find sucess.
Way to go Grant.
I’ve been in 7 years now, and I work for about 40% of the agents in my area. They have made a huge difference for me over the years.In case your wondering: Any clients that they reffer to me get one room free. I don’t tell them that it’s one room free. I tell them that they are getting “Realtors Pricing”.
Hey Grant~
That is awesome! I have just been waiting for a post like yours. I have been trying flyers and a few things like that with realtors but can really never get any of them to bite on good. That sounds like an excellent idea. Could you email me what you have been sending out? Both the original and the follow up email? I would really appreciate it. My email address is heavensbest@mtaonline.net. Thanks!Baden
Grant,
Great idea and fantastic job. You received some 30+ jobs from your emails…how many emails generated that business? You didn’t send out 1,300 emails did you?
Just getting an idea of the rate of return…I might have missed it in the posting.
Great job…I will copy here…But I will have to do something for those who already refer to me…gotta figure out something special for them I think.
I sent out an email to every agent, all 1300. But what I did was 10 at a time in the BCC field so that they couldn’t see who else it was sent to. Sending it out one at a time takes to long but sending out too many at one time will cause it to be considered spam sometimes. So I sent out 130 emails to 10 agents each. It took a couple hours to gather them all and send off, but I did it on my laptop in the evening as I kicked back on the couch. If you use Microsoft Outlook it really makes life a lot easier than web-based email.
Email won’t give you a huge rate of return but it is free, so it has been an excellent rate of return in my opinion.
Grant,
That was a great idea. Emailing Realtors and offering a 50% discount. We just raised our prices to .40 cents a sq ft recently. So .20 cents a sq ft is still good money with a chance to sell additional services to them. We’re gonna give it a try.
(we offer everybody 20% off)Half of our territories are in Resort areas. So dealing with realtors/property managers is vital to our business.
The way we usually contact new realtors is by offering to clean their lobby for free and give each agent we meet a HB folder with our brochures, reference list(which has names and numbers of the different realtors/property managers that we deal with, and explains that we are licensed, bonded and insured, certified, part of a national franchise, our rank, ect) and a copy of our Realtor/Property Management Program, which I have now added a personal 50% discount.We are in the process of redoing our web sight and will actually have a realty/property management button. If you could send a copy of the letter that you sent to the realtors to me I’d really appreciate it. I am sure there is something else in it that I can incorporate into my letter or vice versa.
Here is a copy of mine….(payments are made via credit card by phone, we also leave a small stack of business cards for each agent, our cards have a 20% coupon on the back of it.)
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Realtor/Property ManagementConvenient Key Holder Pick-Up Program
We here at Heaven’s Best understand the value of your time as well as your clients.
With this in mind we offer “convenient key holder pick-up”.
This option works as follows:
You put us into contact with your client, we then set everything up with them personally.
(leaving you completely out of it from this point on)We set up a specific day and time to pick up the key, let ourselves in and walk thru the home, measure, incorporate the discount and any other services they may require and call them to confirm the price.
At that point if they are satisfied with the price we will be prepared to stay and clean that day and work out payment details with them directly or if in other cases if you the realtor/property manager are authorized to pay for services rendered we would call you personally to confirm the price and again stay that day to do the work.
Once cleaning is complete we return the key to the office having already been paid by the customer themselves via credit card or pick up a payment from you directly.
We offer all of your customers a 20% discount
on our carpet and upholstery cleaning services!Please take the time to look over our reference/referral list of the other Realtor/Property
Management Companies affiliated with Heaven’s Best that are taking advantage of our convenient key holder pick up program!This is one way that will actually help you sell a home or offer an additional service to your clients without having to do anything but refer Heaven’s Best.
**We are now offering all Real Estate Agents/ Property Managers a
Personal 50% discount on our carpet cleaning services,
as a way to help you feel more comfortable about referring us to your clients.**Grant, would you mind sending me the email you sent to your real estate agents. I’ve sent out 50 or so as a test and pulled one email back so I just want to optimize what I’ve sent out with what you have and hopefully get some lifetime customers. thanks man email me at
justin
This is a great tool to use in getting started…Even if the idea came from a younger, less attractive member of the Brown family.
I got the emails Grant sent out and I sent them to about 2400 agents and it has been keeping me busy. I’ve gotten tons of calls and tons of work from it. They aren’t top dollar jobs, but when you’re just starting out it definitely pays the bills.
I cleaned for an agent yesterday that got my email. She had me clean a sofa and loveseat and 2 rugs (all full price) and I sold her protectant. It turned out to be a pretty good paying job, but on top of that, just after I left she sent out an email to all of the other agents in her office and to over 100 of her contacts. Before I reached my next job I had already gotten a call and booked the appointment.
For all of us newbies, this could be a great way to builld up the business!
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