By Linda Davis

If you came here looking for a "Welcome World" post, move along; you can find that sort of stuff in the "about", and "bio" tabs above.  I thought my first blog post should be about farming. Farming propelled me from average to good back in 1980.  (I didn’t get to great until the 90’s.) I started by mailing postcards to 200 houses in a medium priced neighborhood. I added a few more houses until 22 years later, I was reaching all 6300 households in my hometown of Ledyard.  

Here’s a secret: one reason farming works is because most agents think it doesn’t. The agents that do give it a whirl, give up before it starts paying dividends. I’ve lived in the same neighborhood for 30 years and during that time I have received TONS of farming materials from other agents.  The longest any agent continued to farm was one year.  That is the first reason geographic farming doesn’t work for most agents; they are not consistent and don’t think of it as part of a long term business plan. Don’t expect to get results after 3 months or even a year.  The second reason farming doesn’t work is because agents send out boring and/or crappy stuff.  HAVE SOME FUN!!!  ( pssst…. No one cares that you are #1 in anything or have a new designation.  That’s booooring.)  If you absolutely can’t bring yourself to have some fun, then provide some useful information like market updates, emergency phone numbers, or refrigerator calendars.

If you are ready to become a farmer, I like the idea of starting out with postcards. I figure most of it ends up in the trash anyway but at least your prospect might glance at a post card between the mailbox and the trash can.  Color For Real Estate is a company I use quite often.  They are a fun company with postcards that are definitely not boring or crappy.  I also design some of my postcards on Microsoft Publisher and have them printed by Express Copy.  Turnaround time is fast, the quality is excellent, and the price is reasonable.

Once farming starts to pay for itself, consider creating a newspaper or newsletter.  I send a customized newspaper to my geographical farm 6 times a year published by Custom House Publishers.  I get oodles of listings from my newspaper. (Oodles means a lot.)  A prospect called me to list his home last year because he enjoys reading my newspaper every week.  He seems to have me mixed up with our local weekly. That’s a good thing.

I was reading a post in Active Rain not too long ago.  A new agent commented that some of the old timers in her office still farmed their neighborhoods. She thought farming was an old-fashioned idea and that it is all about technology now. She figures she is going to out-tech the old farmers.

This old farmer just smiled. I hope my competition thinks exactly like she does. 

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