Face time with one's clients and prospects is very important. A good agent will often solidify their relationships with people at a much deeper level the more time they spend with them personally. But with respect to prospecting and staying in contact with people both in person and by phone, there are often certain limitations that come into play.

First of all, you only have so much time available as an agent. And if you have 2,500 prospects that you'd like to do business with, it's not easy to have one phone call a month with every one of these people, and even one phone call every three months will be difficult.

And when it comes to actually meeting with these people on an ongoing basis, there's no way you're going to get that coveted face-to-face time with every one of these people on a regular basis. In fact, you normally wouldn't even be able to do this with everyone over the course of a year.

Even if you could talk with or see these people every month or every quarter, you'd drive some of them crazy while doing it. If some of them don't anticipate having any real estate needs for years to come, and if you call them or drop in on them every month anyway, you'll probably do more to drive them away from working with you than you'll do to have them want to work with you.

So what's the solution? Well, sending mail is definitely one solution. You can send two mailers a month to people and most of them will simply think you're doing good business marketing. Plus you'll keep your clients and prospects constantly thinking of you.

But what about sending market updates to your clients and prospects via audio and video in your emails? This goes even a step further than mail because it brings them closer to a real life interaction with you by hearing the sound of your voice and/or watching you move and talk on video.

Just imagine for a moment that you're sending an email to your clients and prospects once a month or once a quarter with an audio update on what's happening in your market. In this example I've chosen to give an update on the industrial properties market in Central Los Angeles because that's the territory I worked in as an agent for many years.

So the email you might send to your clients and prospects could look something like this:

Dear Bob:

To listen to my 45-second audio update on 2nd quarter activity in the Central Los Angeles industrial market, please click on the following link while listening with a high speed Internet connection.

Thanks,
Jim Gillespie

You can probably see how sending an audio postcard like this one brings people one step closer to feeling they've interacted with you. Whether or not you and I already know each other, through listening to the sound of my voice it's as if we've just had a live interaction where I told you about the latest trends in the market. And you can reach hundreds or thousands of people with this technology when you can't talk or meet with every single one of them. In addition, you can customize your audio postcard with pictures and images if you'd like to, similar to designing your own custom postcard.

When you click on the blue link in the audio postcard, it sends you to my own home page as I've been a full-time trainer, coach and consultant for the past 8 years. But I wanted to give you an idea of the kind of link you could create for your people on the audio postcard as a full-time real estate agent with access to all the data in your marketplace. (For more information about sending audio postcards click on the link at the bottom of the postcard itself.)

Now if instead you'd prefer to send a market update to your people by video, you might send an email to your clients and prospects similar to the following:

Bob:

To see my one-minute video update summarizing the activity in the Central Los Angeles industrial market in the second quarter of this year, please click on the following link with your high speed Internet connection.

Thanks.
Jim Gillespie

The video above was taken by me in my home office with the Logitech Orbit Webcam. The price online and in stores for this Webcam runs from about $95.00 to about $140.00. And the process of recording the video and linking it to your email is very simple. (For more information on this you can click on the video image of me after you've watched the video.)

In terms of utilizing this technology in your own business, you need to use your own judgment as to how many of your clients and prospects are currently using high speed Internet connections. Most companies nowadays utilize high speed Internet connections in their offices, but not everyone has a high speed Internet connection at home.

A lot more people will be adding high speed Internet in their homes within the next 1-2 years or so, so you may want to provide these people with an alternative in your email to listening to your voice or watching your video. Consider adding a link within your email to a written report or newsletter on what's happening in your marketplace. This way you'll truly be speaking to everyone who opens and reads your email.

With today's technology, you're offered some great opportunities to connect with people like you've never done before. When they watch videos of you throughout the year, continually updating them as the top expert in your marketplace, they'll begin to feel like they know you a lot better than before. And when people feel they know you better, and feel like they've been face-to-face with you on an ongoing basis throughout the year, they're one step closer to choosing you as the agent they'll close their next transaction with.