Real estate agents often talk about farming their neighbourhoods. It means getting to know and build a relationship with as many people in the area as possible. Hopefully the result will be that the people get to know the agent and will choose to deal with them, when it comes to selling their home.

Most real estate sales people interpret that as meaning that they should do what every other agent does so they drop cards, leaflets and so on into local letterboxes. And the residents do what every other resident does and pitch them into the bin.

So we applied a little bit of creative thought to the exercise and produced this letter which is dropped in a pink, silver or gold envelope. Early each day the agent heads out from their home on an exercise walk in a different direction and drops these letters at every house they pass.

Within 4-6 weeks, the agent will have letterboxed every house within a big area around their home or office and already enquiries will have resulted.

Because life is a passing parade its then time to go back and cover the territory again with a follow up letter. And the enquiries keep on coming.

In another 4-6 weeks the exercise is repeated and so on.

Pretty soon the agent owns the territory and gets the lion’s share of the business.

If you are not a real estate agent you can pretty simply adapt the letter to suit your business. You can use it to work for you too so that you “farm” your neighbourhood.

Good morning neighbour!

I just wanted to say hello!

The purpose of this letter is quite simple. It is merely to introduce myself because I live comparatively close to you. We probably shop at the same supermarket, our kids may have gone to the same school, and we may even worship at the same church, support the same local sporting clubs or have coffee at the same cafe. We may even have passed in the street without recognising or knowing each other.

And that’s the reason I’m writing.

Because I live in the area and because most people believe that it’s not what you know but who you know I am writing to you to let you know what I do on the off chance that you may need my services at some time in the future.

You see I am the local real estate expert for this area and therefore I have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of what’s happening with local real estate and the values of homes in the area. I know what works and, more importantly, what doesn’t work when it comes to selling real estate in this area.

I have been in the business for a number of years and because I both live and work in the area I think that gives me a great deal of inside knowledge that could be of real value to you should you ever want to sell your home or buy real estate in the area.

You may not be planning to do anything along these lines at the moment but I’ll stay in touch so that if you should ever need my services you’ll know me as your neighbour and be able to access my local experience.

Yours sincerely

For more tips on owning your neighbourhood, I highly recommend you download How to be a Legend in Other People’s Minds. Another great resource is the teleseminar (avaliable as a recording) How to Create an Avalanche of Customers and Clients.