I've always been an advocate of providing more than what's expected. When I was a waiter in my teenage years, I gave "silent service" by providing drink refills, extra bread, and condiments before the customers ever had to ask. When I programmed computers, I wrote very detailed documentation within the code to guide future programmers if they made changes. In our video business, I was the first in our area to provide authored DVDs at no extra charge. When I began my real estate career, I continued this "more than expected" philosophy for my clients.
I work with a lot of home buyers and I know one thing that all of them are looking for (especially first time homebuyers) is information. Information that answers basic home buying questions. Information that will help guide them through the home buying process. Information that will help them find the best home at the best price. If you can provide this to them, you'll be giving "more than expected" service and you'll have clients that will refer you for life.
Now there are many ways of providing this information. You can add it to your website. You can send it through emails. You can print it out and hand it to your clients when you see them. There's no limit to your choices.
In this article, I'm going to show you what I created and where I was able to get the information to use for free.
I started by wanting to create some sort of book to help home buyers in the purchasing of their new homes. Not just a one or two page report. But an actual book with a front cover and at least 30 pages.
I was speaking to an agent in our office who had a First Time Buyer's Kit. It included a bunch of handouts that I haven't seen before. She didn't have it in any kind of book form. She just gave them out as she met with buyers. It was a good idea, but I knew I could make it better.
She showed me where she got all of her handouts...luckily I work in an office where sharing ideas is encouraged. And the best part was that if you're a National Association of Realtors member, you can get them for free. You can download them as an Adobe PDF file or as a Microsoft Word file. I used the Word file so I could customize them to my needs. You have to keep the copyrights intact of course.
You can get the handouts at Realtor Magazine Online. You must register first but as long as your a NAR member, you shouldn't have a problem.
When you download the file, it includes both buyer and seller handouts. For now I only wanted to use the ones for buyers which ended up being 36 of them. Since it's a Word document, the first thing I did was change the footer to include my information as well as my broker's information. This added a bit of customization, plus other agents wouldn't be able to just take mine and reprint them. They'd have to do the same work I did.
The next thing I wanted to do was add some graphics to liven them up a bit. I went to the Microsoft Office website and grabbed some clipart (both photos and cartoons). I added the clipart to the pages that needed them. My individual handouts were taking a book shape.
Lastly, I needed to name it and create a cover. I didn't want to just call it a buyer's guide and put a cute house on the front. I wanted to name it something a bit different and design a cover that had a creative look to it. After brainstorming a bit, I thought of the book as still being a guide, but more for surviving the process of buying a home. So I came up with the Homebuyer's Survival Guide. This name reminded me of the military so I searched for images on Google for an army military guide and sure enough, there was a photo of one. I took that basic design and created my cover.
I think the design came out pretty nice and hopefully it will become a good sales tool for me getting buyer leads.
The last thing I needed to do was take my copies to our local Officemax and have them spiral bound to complete the look.
For more marketing and promotional ideas, visit the Creative Agent Club.
Mike is a real estate agent who's the marketing director for his real estate team. He specializes in producing creative marketing materials for both online and off line advertising.
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