"Boy you sure have a lot of listings!"

Last week I had the privilege of seeing Branson Missouri with Brian Rodgers. We stayed in his wonderful condo on a golf course and Brian showed me a part of this great country that I had never seen (and some shows that knocked my socks off).

Brian and I were laughing and talking "war stories" of the business one night. We focused on some of our most radical ideas. These were techniques that were usually "in the face" of competitors and not the sort of things we could recommend to most agents. Brian and I have done some of these on occasion in the past and have dealt with the feedback and consequences, which are not always pleasant. These were more "emergency" methods of getting business in a hurry.

I will be writing about a few these "on the Edge" methods occasionally. We thought it would be useful to reveal a few of these hard hitting techniques, to get you considering the "outside the box thinking" that was behind them. Our hope is that these spur you on to your own ways of increasing business by looking at things differently.

These methods WILL get you in hot water. Do not copy them. You have been warned.

Here is one my favorites.

Back around 1995 I started an office in a small town that had no real estate office. The area was served by offices 12 miles away and I saw a great opportunity.

The area was franchise territory. They had the listings tied up.

I needed to get immediate visibility in this sea of franchise signs. I went to my sign maker and had 10 yard signs and 500 directional signs printed up. Then I went to work.

In a few days I had my first listing. That night I put in several extra hours putting up 100 directional signs. I worked an expanding radius and every single sign DID point to my listing. Anyone driving any street in a 5 mile radius could follow the trail of signs back to my listings.

It took less than a day for those signs to generate new listings for the office. I had folks walking into my office all day saying "boy you sure are busy, great to finally see an office in town". A few mentioned that I must have a lot of listings. I would tell them the truth. I said, "Nope only have one right now, but I believe that every listing deserves as much promotion as possible".

Then we would laugh about it.

Each of the next listings I got would get between 25 – 50 signs, until my entire area was covered. In a month or so, I had enough listings that I didn’t do the directional sign overkill anymore and removed the majority of the originals.

And yes, the local board wasn’t happy about what I did. Complaints did pour in, but only from competitors.

But the bottom line was that I was able to establish credibility in a hurry and generate enough immediate business to recoup my opening expenses. All for the cost of 500 signs.

Now consider all the ways you can get "instant credibility" by blanketing an area with postcards, reports, newsletters.

Ed Osworth