Creating an Effective Personal Brochure
Realtors who want to become top-producers in their chosen profession recognize that
a professional-looking personal brochure is one of the most important attributes required.
Personal brochures are meant to be given to prospects, clients, and essentially everyone you meet if there is even the slightest chance that this person may at some point, need the services you offer. Including them in any mailings you do
presents another opportunity to put it in front of a prospective client.
Rich Stover, a well-known Sarasota Florida real estate agent says "Your personal brochure needs to present, in a brief and cohesive way, a compelling reason for doing business with you rather than
just any other Realtor." Your brochure needs to include several items
- The front page should have a "ho hum crasher" title which says in 6 words or less what makes your outstanding, your photo and your company logo. The photo should be current (not what you looked like 15 years ago) A "glamour shot" which has been professional retouched is OK if its not overdone.
Remember that a prospective client should recognize you in person after having seen the photo on your brochure.
- Inside there should be
- A brief description of your experience and niche services, if any.
- A list of your major qualifications (do not use those acronyms that no one except other Realtors understands, eg. ABR, CRP, GRI after your name, spell them out in bullet format
- Accredited Buyer Representative
- Certified Relocation Professional
- Graduate of Realtor Institute
- your contact information including your brokerage name
- Here's the really tough part, in 25 words or less
- who you serve
- what you do for them
- why there is no one better than at doing it than you
You may want to consult a marketing or image expert for some hints on this.
A Note: You should memorize these 25 words so you can speak them crisply with with
confidence whenever you meet someone for the first time. It's a great way to introduce yourself.
- An incentive to contact you -- right now
- This can be an offer of a discount, a free CMA, or other offering which makes you outstanding, different and worth checking out
According to a Sarasota golf course homes
expert, personal brochures can cost less than a dollar each to have printed professionally. With a little experience and
training with a micro-publishing application like Microsoft Publisher, or any of several free or inexpensive applications
you can download to your own PC, you can produce them yourself with tailored messages for different situations on your
own PC.
Your personal brochure should be in full color and printed on high-quality, think paper. The colors
you use on it should be consistent with any other marketing communications you do. So if you buy space in Real Estate
Book or other homes for sale magazines, use the same colors and fonts on everything. It gives you a more professional
image. Conversely, producing marketing communications items on cheap materials makes you seem less like the top-producer
you want to be seen as.
A successful personal brochure can bring you thousands of dollars in extra commissions, hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of added sales volume. One Sarasota luxury homes
expert reported to us that "a single extra listing or home sale will more than pay for the annual cost of publishing and
updating your personal brochure." And she is absolutely right about that.
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