Looking for another way to attract prospective buyers to your listings? Look no further–Reverse Prospecting is for you.
What is Reverse Prospecting?
Reverse Prospecting is an opt-in system that any ARMLS subscriber can use. Reverse Prospecting can help you find the right property for your client when a new property that matches your client’s needs is listed. It’s a unique marketing opportunity inside Flexmls and a great way to network with other real estate agents. Just remember that both parties–listing agents and buyer’s agents–must participate for Reverse Prospecting to work.
How to Enable Reverse Prospecting as a Buyer’s Agent
You can turn on Reverse Prospecting for individual clients through their Contact Details screen inside Contact Management. Once this function is enabled, you can be contacted on behalf of your client by a listing agent when your client’s search criteria match that listing agent’s Reverse Prospecting search.
Will Reverse Prospecting Give My Clients’ Contact Info to Other Agents?
No, absolutely not. When you enable Reverse Prospecting for individual clients inside your Contact Management, Flexmls in no way sends your clients’ contact information to other agents. It simply enables your information, as a buyer’s agent, to come up in Reverse Prospecting searches run by listing agents.
How to Run a Reverse Prospecting Search as a Listing Agent
As a listing agent, you can use Reverse Prospecting to market your listing to buyer’s agents. It’s a fantastic tool to use when a listing has just gone on the market, to advertise an open house, when you have a very motivated seller, to advertise a price reduction or buyer incentive or agent bonus or when a listing goes back on the market.
Under Contacts in the main menu, select Reverse Prospecting.
From your active listings, select one and click the Run reverse prospecting button.
This will provide you with a list of buyer’s agents. You can email the buyer’s agents individually to let them know they have a client who might be interested in your listing.
How Does Reverse Prospecting Find the List of Buyer’s Agents?
Reverse Prospecting generates the list of buyer’s agents by sifting through every saved search in Flexmls that does these three things:
- The main fields of the subject property match the criteria of the saved search.
- That saved search has a contact attached to it.
- That contact has Reverse Prospecting enabled on their Contact Details screen.
What Should I Tell the Buyer’s Agents in My Email?
As a listing agent, when you email the list of buyer’s agents (generated from a Reverse Prospecting search), make sure to do these three things:
- Explain what Reverse Prospecting is and why you are contacting them.
- Tell them the MLS # of your listing.
- Explain how they can determine which of their clients might be interested in your listing. Here are some simple instructions: “Search for MLS # XXXXXX. Once the listing is pulled up, click the down arrow to the right of the MLS #. Last, choose Match Contacts from the dropdown menu.”
This will show the buyer’s agent which of their contacts matches your listing. From the Match My Contacts to a Listing page, the buyer’s agent can reach out their own client to tell them about your listing.
Will Reverse Prospecting Guarantee Interested Buyers for My Listing?
Occasionally, you might get a false positive. That is, Reverse Prospecting will sometimes connect two agents where the buyer’s agent doesn’t have a client interested in the other agent’s listing. Nonetheless, Reverse Prospecting will work much of the time. And it’s always a great way to network with other real estate professionals.
For more info on Reverse Prospecting check out this ARMLS webinar.
