Realtors ® are one of our 4 key target audiences for growing a home staging business. If you’re like me, the thought of having to pick up a phone and call an agent (you’ve never met or don’t know very well) to pitch your services, ranks right up there with having a tooth drilled. It’s been 9 years since I tried this sales tactic and I’m very glad I discovered less painful alternatives while building my own staging business.
More often than not, you can’t reach agents by phone anyway. Leaving a message to have them paged is a bad idea. Imagine how annoyed they’ll be when they call you right back thinking you are a potential client, only to discover you want to sell them on home staging!
Some courses will tell you to hang out at brokers’ offices handing out free cookies in the hopes that an agent will stop to talk to you. This is an even worse idea because you’ll get little respect and waste a ton of time.
One of the 80 marketing ideas I share with students in Course 4 of the Staging Diva Program is to visit targeted open houses to meet individual agents. They are really a captive audience in this situation and it’s not hard to get their attention.
There are important things to keep in mind when using this technique effectively. Overall, you’ll have 3 objectives:
- Initiating and starting to build your relationship with that agent.
- Demonstrating your own expertise as a home stager.
- Educating him/her about how staging can help the agent earn more.
> Read the rest of this article for specific tips to meet these objectives
Course 4 of the Staging Diva Training Program includes 80 home staging marketing ideas