Roll Over, Secretariat – Why Blogging is Prospecting

If I’m going to take the time to beat a dead horse, I may as well choose the best, right?

A couple of days ago I wrote about what I’m doing to generate business.

I was fascinated by a comment from Chris Johnson telling me that I was completely wrong. Since the post specifically was about what I personally had done to generate higher commissions than I had during the first quarter of 2005, I was stunned to learn that I didn’t really know where all the clients were coming from. Silly rabbit.

This wasn’t Chris’ point, of course. Rather, he was using what I wrote as a launching pad to extend upon the notion that blogging doesn’t constitute prospecting.

There are a couple of fallacies upon which the “blogging isn’t prospecting” argument totters ever so shakily:

1) All prospecting efforts lead to closed transactions. Ideally they should but they really don’t. Sending farming postcards is prospecting. But if the postcards suck, you aren’t going to get any business. Door knocking is prospecting. But if you have no game when that door opens, you aren’t going to get any business. The same goes for blogging. It’s not complicated – don’t suck.

2) It only works for you (and others) because they’ve done it for so long. Well … duh. Then again, I don’t think A-Rod hit 45 home runs coming out of the womb. You have to work on your craft, improve upon it, determine what works and what doesn’t. But what is great about the Internet is it brings to life that old saying about blind squirrels and nuts – I had my first web lead about two months in, with no clue how it happened.

3) New agents have better ways to spend their time. Baby, all you’ve got is time when you first start. After all, you have no clients and there’s a large Hoover attachment gnawing at your bank account. Devote an hour. Just an hour.

Absolutes don’t exist in blogging, in prospecting or in real estate in general. Different things work for different people. Telling new agents not to waste their time is akin to telling agents a few years back that websites are overrated, that no one will search the Internet looking for homes.

Wait … Century 21 still runs that ad. But that’s another story.

These days in Phoenix it’s not uncommon to find agents talking about Canadian buyers and trying to figure out how to reach them. Open houses, door knocking and cold calling really aren’t options. Neither is sending a postcard to everyone in Calgary. I just sit back and chuckle. The answer’s right in front of them if they decide to investigate it.

Blogging may not be prospecting for everyone. If it’s not, it’s by their choice. But for those who are willing to devote an hour and an incredibly small amount of cash (small compared to many of the money wasters out there), there’s business to be had.