3 Main Objectives To Achieve In An Open House

In an ideal world, the sole interests of an agent conducting an open house are those that maximizes the needs of the homeowner.

Homeowners are after all, the clients with a house to sell. They pay the agent’s commissions. And give you a reason to get up in the morning.

But as we all know… the world is not ideal.

And letting the huge business opportunity that comes with every open house is too valuable to go to waste on one single purpose.

Homeowners understand that hiring an agent to conduct an open house grants the agent a big prospecting event to capitalize on. And there’s little they can do to prevent the open house from becoming a lead gathering source for the agent.

It would simply look too selfish to bar the agent from gathering leads for other non-related deals. Even if a homeowner was to declare a rule of no prospecting for business other than for his, there is little chance of implementing it.

If you are an agent who is not exploiting the opportunities abound with open houses, you are leaving a lot on the table. Because every person who walks through that door to have a look at the home interior is a buyer who will be potentially making a buying transaction pretty soon.

And they might be just the buyer for one of the other properties you have listed for sale.

However, it is important to practice a little ethics as a real estate agent here.

You should always prioritize the very homeowner whose open house gave you the opportunity to generate these leads. Only if the potential buyers are absolutely not going to buy that specific property, should you start to introduce other houses under your care.

That is only the right thing to do.

With all that said, here are the 3 key objectives you should spend a little time to ponder over for each open house.

1) Number of visitors

The instinctive reaction to this question is to have as many as possible.

But is that the best way to approach this?

The more visitors you get, the less time you have to interact and build rapport with each. This can be detrimental to the effectiveness of the whole occasion.

There’s little point with passing around your business cards and getting them dumped in the trash as soon as recipients walk out.

While every agent would like to have both quantity and quality, it is not always possible to satisfy that greed effectively.

To estimate the number of interested parties who will arrive, you need to do some work with analyzing the size of the market and the general appeal of the house.

If a mass of visitors are expected, consider spreading out the event over a few days. And if the projected number are small, a one day event if often sufficient.

If you end up with a number that is unmanageable, consider bring in a partner agent or two to help you with organizing and managing.

2) Number of contacts to collect

One of the secrets of prospecting is to collect information instead of giving it.

Rookie agents often make the mistake of thinking the more business cards they distribute, the more like they are to win with the law of numbers.

While that can be right to a certain extent, it is not the most productive thing to do.

A more productive way to approach this is to reverse this activity by collecting your prospect’s contact information as well as giving yours.

Telephone numbers present you with the opportunity to call, SMS, and broadcast in messenging apps. Emails allow you to send detailed information, subscribe them to newsletters, and even connect with them on social media.

And when they start to like and trust you, you might get referrals coming your way.

It is near impossible to collect the contact information of everyone who arrives. Some genuinely miss your request, some are not interested enough to provide it, and some simply won’t offer it for the world.

But you should still set a achievable target to go after.

For example, if you are expecting 100 visitors, set a goal of getting contacts of at least 50 of them.

3) Number of follow-up meetups

The more time you meet with a prospect, the more likely you are going to be hired. This is due to familiarity and reciprocity.

Again, remember to put the initial property as the top priority to promote. Only if a prospect writes it off, do you start promoting other houses in your exclusive portfolio.

As much as many agents would not want to admit, real estate is still very much a people business.

Customers will more often work with an agent they are comfortable with than one with a deadly reputation.

So set a target of arranging follow-up meetups with at least 25% of the contacts you have collected.

Not only will this be your chance to sell the specific house, it will also be a great chance to understand what they are looking for so that you can match it up with your other listings.

While overall objective is to meetup so that you can work those soft skills and get a human factor involved in the relationship, sometimes people are just too busy with their jobs to meetup.

In that case, at least schedule phone calls to discuss their needs. Again try to schedule appointments.

With these 3 objectives in mind, do be specific in your objectives the next time you organize open houses. The clearer you are with these goals, the more likely it will be to either sell that house, or one of the other houses.

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