Photography For Real Estate

There is a good thread in the PFRE flickr discussion group about considerations for making a real estate office presentation for the purpose of connecting with potential customers. There is tons of great advice in this thread about how to approach this method of connecting with prospective customers:

1. These meetings are all about personally connecting with potential customers.
2. You will typically have only a few minutes so depend almost entirely on handouts.
3. Don’t bother with technical talk. The main purpose is to show listing agents that you can do a better job of shooting their listings than they can.

Having worked in a real estate office for a long time I think that making direct contact with the top listing agents is a more productive use of your marketing time than doing presentations at real estate meetings. Here’s the problem I have with marketing to office meetings:

1. Only a few people at these meetings are likely customers. Your best potential customers are the top listing agents in the office and in most offices the they are in the minority. In my wife’s office there are about 80 agents and less that 10 agents ever list many properties use the services of real estate photographers. The rest are buyers agents.
2. Many of the listing agents don’t come to meetings because the meetings tend to be aimed at the lowest common denominator which is the less experienced majority of buyers agents.
3. The managing broker is the “gate-keeper” for these meetings. Most managing brokers allow presenters to come to office meetings but there are some that don’t.

In summary, you will undoubtedly get customers if you are persistent in presenting to real estate office meetings (follow the advice in the flickr thread). But I believe a focused approach to individuals that you know can use your services is more effective. In my The Business of Real Estate Photography e-book, I go into detail about how to do find and contact the top listing agents.