It’s an old adage but List to Last stands as strongly today as it did 31 years ago (ouch) when I started in Real Estate. 

Not having listings is like having a store with no merchandise or a website with no interesting content. No one will come.  If on the other hand, you have a consistent flow of exciting new product (listings), people will be constantly visiting and revisiting you.  This consistent flow of people feeds your business with not only buyers but also with sellers and more listings.  I call this the listing parade and it makes for a pretty sweet business.

It’s tough to get it going. 

You’ll need to do the heavy lifting of finding people who need to sell and convincing them you are the best agent to represent them.  The first few are the toughest but it is what we do.  There are thousands of ways to find these sellers but it pretty much boils down to one thing:  Have conversations with people about real estate.  You could initiate those conversations through social media, your website inquiries, at charity events, open houses, baseball practice, phone calls or your PTA meeting.  It doesn’t really matter how – just that you do, that you have enough, that they are deliberate conversations© and that you have a solid follow up system.  

Once you get the first listing or two, you need to use that as an opportunity to connect with as many people as possible and have more deliberate conversations©.  Visit the neighbours, invite people to open houses, meet the seller’s friends and family, create super appealing ads for all media channels that bring in calls – pull out all the stops in marketing the listing so that you can parlay it into more listings.  And then keep doing it. 

You’ll collect a lot of long fuse listing leads and a few shorter fuse ones. 

Don’t let anything fall through the cracks because next year and the year after, listings are still going to be your only sure path to an awesome real estate practice.