Build your Contact Database and feed it daily!

This is the first and probably the most important step in developing your real estate career. There are many different types of real estate database programs such as; Top Producer, Sharper Agent and Agent Office just to name a few. But you dont need to go out and purchase one of these specific Real Estate programs. You can get started with something we all likely have on our computers right now, and that is MS Outlook. What you want to do is make a list of EVERYONE you know and put them in the database with full contact information (email, address, phone, spouse and family name, anything specific about them, the last time you saw each other and why, etc). You also want to try and categorize each person into one of two groups; mets and have not mets. If you can, add more categories like profession, or if they could be a buyer or seller, or if they would be a someone who is likely to recommend you to friends. Call these categories whatever you like, but you should know what they mean and know under what circumstance a person would fall into a category. The reason for the categories is simple. You want to be able to run reports and do specific marketing to certain groups at certain times. For example you may market to the "have not met" group at certain times of the year with different marketing than you would to the "have mets".

So now you've built a database with all the names of everyone you know (friends, relatives, former co-workers, people from your civic groups, chamber of commerce members, former schoolmates, etc.) now what do you do with it?! Naturally we are going to use it in a systematized way.

I will cover what to do with your database in the next blog!