open house marketing

As an agent working an open house, do you mind if a home inspector shows up to market to you.
Lets just assume that the HI is courteous and makes sure not to get in the way.
Curious to know how a Realtor might feel about this practice.

I ask first and have (knock on wood) never been turned down. I know I've gotten a couple of inspections from the last one I did - it feels like there are a lot of "lookers" and few actual buyers at these events!

I have gone to some of these, I make sure not to get in the way if there are people looking around. If no one is there I introduce myself and then ask question related to the agent and his business. If they have any questions for me I will answer if they ask. But I would like to get some fed back also on how the agents feel about it.

I had much success in open houses when I started. I went every weekend and hit 8 or 9. I made sure that I was out of the way, if there were many cars out front I would try later, or if potential clients in the home, I left some info a small goodie bag and went on my way.

It is a captive audience they are sitting there for 3-4 hours and are more often than not BORED! I would bring a small "survival kit" I made with some gum, TP, band aid, pen, post its, Kleenex, and a travel febreeze (for those stinky houses) and put a brochure all inside a large zip lock. This usually got a chuckle and open the conversations up. I would simply ask if they had a preferred inspector, what they looked for in an inspector, or what they liked about their inspector. If they were happy I asked to be considered as their back up, then always followed up with a thank you card the next day. Sometimes they even had a question about the home, and you could impart some knowledge and gain their trust.

Our 3 top referring agents all came through this method, its also a super way to meet new agents as they often sit houses for the successful agents while they learn the ropes.

Just my 2 cents on personal experience. I never had anyone get annoyed with me being there.

When I first started I hit open houses and although my success in landing these agents was likely not worth my time, the experience of talking about myself and putting myself out there was well worth the time.

I encourage visiting open houses and on a Sunday if I see an open house of an agent I work with I will pop in and say hi!

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I dropped these off every now and again. Open House Survival Kits.

Put in some marketing material, some goodies, water and the all important TP

That's fantastic. I have heard of people using these but I have never seen a photo of what people are using.

Thanks

TP is a must. I also always carry TP in my car just in case of vacant house "emergencies" during the inspection.

Snacks, bottled water, TP...can't go wrong. No agent will mind you stopping by and candidly with the latest news regarding violence against agents, we're doing good deeds by stopping by and checking up on them. Having a group of honest, hard-working guys that have the strength to lift themselves into attics three times a day stopping by open houses at random could be a great deterrent and this thread is hitting Google searches as we speak.

I have a friend that owns a gas station, and every morning contractors stop by for their morning coffee. There's no less than a dozen of them in the store from 7:00 AM all the way until 8:00 AM. That's when he has the attendants service the ATM...never even had an attempt at a robbery with a huge stack of $20 bills getting loaded into the thing with a single female employee doing the task. From 8:00 AM until close they don't touch the ATM even if it runs out of cash.

Or one honest home inspector carrying a Glock 19.

That works.

Violence against agents is at 0% in the history of the world when a home inspector was present. Market that.

Here, I'll be the first:

If any agent in the Indy area is going to a showing or open house and is uncomfortable for any reason, call my office (whether you're a client or not) and let us know. We'll do a random "stop by" with one of our warranty reps to drop off brochures.

That's actually a great idea! I'm going to use that.

Now we are cooking with
GAS!

Slightly different Slant to this:

Newbies should consider visiting RE offices on Sundays.

Perfect time to practice and hone your Presentation skills.

Very small audience: Usu only 1 agent on duty.

That means captive audience, who is usu Bored.

Bring a snack/treat and work on your elevator speech and presentation skills.

then ask them to suggest to the Broker to bring you in for a meeting.

Received the glasses and bags for my open house marketing. Everything looks really good and much better than the stickers. Now I just need supplies to fill the bags and to target my market. I am guessing each bag when it is done will set me back between $100-150 so target market and ROI is important. I plan on including a nice bottle of wine (for after), water, some snacks, and maybe a gift certificate to a local restaurant. Completely above and beyond but worth the investment if I can get just one out of ten agents to put me on their list and start using me.

We are going to start leaving a glass behind at homes with k-cups or the Starbucks sample bags depending on what they are using. I only plan on doing this at homes that constitute us wanting their business.

I have a ton of these glasses and I need to start unloading them! Maybe I'll have to start bringing my own glasses to bars and leaving them behind. Hummmm not a bad idea!