January is a great time to reflect on where your business is coming from. Last January when I did this it became apparent to me that I needed to mail less and blog more. (And therefore I literally saved thousands of dollars.) Never has reviewing your client base origination been so important as it is now that times are tougher.
I’m going to open up here and share some numbers. True, I’m a real estate agent that deals primarily with investment property and not a loan originator. But I think the lessons should transfer.
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In 2007 I had 23 closings and received referral fees from 3 clients that I thought could be served better by someone else. Anyway, here is the breakdown:
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Of the referrals, 1 was a previous client in another city and the other two were blogging leads from other cities.
From the 23 closed transactions that I did:
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4 came from real estate investing workshops that I hold to educate people on the benefits of REI while also warning them to the pitfalls.
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7 were referrals to me. Of those 7, 6 came from previous clients of mine that were so satisfied with my services that they recommended me to someone else.
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5 were previous clients who used my services again.
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1 was a best friend who would use me if I were the worst agent on Earth.
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6 were leads that came purely from blogging.
Now, those numbers need to be examined a little closer. I’ve written before over on Active\Rain about the benefits of business blogging. And the numbers I just showed you are a little skewed. Why?
Because my blog is so entwined with my marketing and business strategy that it’s hard to know where to classify some of these transactions. For instance, though I classified 3 of those transactions as referrals I know that they were originally referred to my blog by someone else. They read the blog, liked what they saw and apparently thought I was someone they would want to work with.
All without me ever having met them.
So you see, the blog can not only attract leads, it can filter out those that may not want to work with you anyway while simultaneously locking in those with serious interest in what you have to offer. Therefore, while it looks like blogging accounted for only 26.1% of my business a case could be made that blogging really accounted for 39.1% of my business.
Furthermore, many of my previous clients keep up with me through the blog as do personal friends, family, Jayhawk fans and random drop bys.
The point I’m trying to make here is go back and examine where your clients came from in order to determine where you should be spending your time. And make 2008 your most profitable year ever.
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Chris Lengquist is a Kansas City area real estate agent working primarily with real estate investors who want a Retirement Worth Having. More information on Chris, Kansas City and real estate investing can be found at BBQ Capital.
