As usual, we had quite a bit going on this week. We were following up with some Realtors and a couple other potential clients. We also started building the furniture set we talked about in our last posts and live streams! But the most important thing we did this week was our very first meeting with an entire Realty office!
Following up with a potential client (like these Realtors we've been sending boards to) is such a funny process sometimes....
We have our initial interaction (them receiving a cutting board in the mail) and then we won't hear back from them for a couple weeks! Just silence....
The first thing your brain wants to do is tell you that something went wrong: "They didn't get it. They don't like it. They don't want to talk to you. They don't want to hear your sales pitch. They don't care". But every time I call somebody back to follow up, NONE of those scenarios are EVER the case! Almost 100% of the time they've received the board, they love it, they want to put in an order, and they tell their other friends about it.
Never underestimate the power of a follow-up phone call. Humans are professionals when it comes to forgetfulness and oftentimes appreciate your reminders!
Another task we started on this week was building some of the furniture for the living room set we sold a couple weeks ago. We did several live streams as we modeled the furniture in Sketchup, but this week we started the actual build. We've gotten a start on the coffee table and we'll keep you guys posted as we move on to the end tables.
BUT! The most exciting part of the week was definitely presenting at our very first meeting for an entire office of Realtors!
A lot of Realty companies have smaller teams within the larger organization - so we always try to send these "team leads" cutting boards rather than just one or two people within the team. That way, if the team lead is on board and likes the idea of our closing gifts, they can share it with the other 10-20 Realtors under them! It's just more efficient that way.
That's actually how we were able to set up this meeting! We mailed a board to a team lead and she called us back to tell us how much she loved it! We then asked if we could come present some of the data we had about closing gifts to her entire team at a weekly meeting. She thought that was a great idea and put us on the calendar!
What data are we talking about?! We have data? We actually compiled all of the data from YOU guys from one of our videos! In the video, we asked if you had ever received a closing gift, what it was, and if you actually used it. We got a ton of really good responses, so we compiled the data into spreadsheets and lots of pretty pie charts (because, ya know, we're total nerds). If you want to see some of the responses for yourself, check out the comments in the video! They're pretty great.
Anyway, the main 3 points we took away from the data were:
People like closing gifts. Most times they work, and the Realtor will get a call back.
Home Use gifts work well
Personalized gifts are a home-run
We had our presentation completed, but now we needed to practice! The only real presentations we've ever given were in the military or at church - which are two completely different presentation styles! We've never really experienced a "corporate" style meeting, so we had to spend some time focusing on what we knew the Realtors would want to hear. We also engraved a "template" board to pass around at the meeting so they can actually see what our gifts look like. Now that we have a board for this exact purpose, we can use it at even more meetings like this in the future.
It was finally time for the meeting and we were super excited - but also nervous because we had never done one of these before! We had no idea what to expect.
It ended up going super well! Everyone was super friendly and welcoming! They were all expecting us and the team lead even gave us an awesome intro before we started the presentation. We found the people we want to work with!! These are the people we've been looking for since we moved to Houston and started the business!! So, the main things we learned after doing this presentation were:
Passing around an actual board to everyone in the room made a huge difference! We always talk about getting your product in peoples' hands and it was so cool to see it work in real-time
People won't listen to 50% of what you say. So be patient and answer everyone's questions politely and patiently, even if you already answered it in the presentation.
They were all super impressed with our 1-day turnaround for ordering and shipping the boards, so we'll definitely make that part of the presentation from now on.
Overall, this was a great experience and we can't wait to do it again with even more Realty teams! We learned so much about presenting to an entire office of people and how to include what the audience needs to hear.
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