A pile of printouts and a franking machine
Every Monday someone goes through the portal and data alerts for properties that have been withdrawn, have sat on the market a long time, or have come off a sole agency. They print the addresses, write letters, post them and move on. Nobody records which houses were written to, whether the owner responded, or whether the same house got three letters from three different staff.
When a vendor does call, nobody knows which letter prompted it.
Why this kind of prospecting stays haphazard
The source data comes from several places: portal alerts, a property data subscription, your own lists of past valuations. Each one has its own format. Once the addresses are copied out, the link to the source is lost, and there is no single list to update.
There are also rules to respect. Some properties should not be approached, for example those where the owner has asked not to be contacted, and your business will have its own policy on how and how often you approach homeowners. Without a shared list, those rules are easy to break by accident.
| Problem | Result |
|---|---|
| No central list | Duplicate letters, some owners never contacted |
| No suppression list | Owners who opted out are written to again |
| No timing rules | Letters arrive while the property is still with another agent's sole agency period |
| No response tracking | No idea which approach works |
What haphazard prospecting costs
Letters and staff time cost money whether or not they work, and without tracking you cannot tell which ones do. Duplicate or badly timed letters make the branch look disorganised to exactly the homeowners you want to impress. And an owner who asked not to be contacted and hears from you again has every reason to complain.
The opportunity cost is harder to see. Homeowners whose property has just been withdrawn are often still keen to move, and they are deciding what to do next. The branch that reaches them at a sensible moment, with a relevant and respectful letter, has a real chance of the next instruction. A process that relies on someone finding a spare Monday morning will reach them late or not at all.
One prospecting list with rules built in
- Sources: we connect the property data you are entitled to use, such as your data subscription, portal alerts and your own past appraisals, into one list, with the source kept against each address.
- Timing rules: you set when a property becomes eligible, for example a period after withdrawal, and the list only shows eligible ones.
- Suppression: owners who have opted out, current clients, and anything your policy excludes are removed before anyone sees them.
- Letter generation: letters are produced from templates you write, with the property and a relevant local fact such as a recent nearby sale you handled, for a person to approve and print or send through a postal service.
- Tracking: each approach is logged, with follow-ups scheduled by your rules, and responses are recorded against the address when an owner calls or emails.
- Results: a simple report of approaches, responses and appraisals booked by source and by letter type.
Your compliance lead should approve the data sources, the contact rules and the wording. We build to what they agree.
Prospecting you can measure
One list, no duplicates, no accidental repeat approaches. Letters go out on a regular day and follow-ups happen on time. After a few months you know which approaches produce appraisals and which do not, so you can spend the budget on what works for your patch.
Is your prospecting run from printouts?
- Prospecting letters are prepared by hand from printed alerts.
- You cannot tell which homeowners have already been written to.
- There is no suppression list for owners who asked not to be contacted.
- You do not know which letters produce appraisals.