Higher Conversion Sales Letters in Commercial Real Estate Agency

When you work as an agent or salesperson or agent in commercial real estate, sales letters should be part of all your marketing campaigns.  Those campaigns can be for you personally, your office, or your listings.  Whatever the reason for the letter, they have a place and a use.

You can convert good enquiries and listing opportunities from these letters providing you follow them up.   Not many agents do the necessary follow-up; interesting isn’t it?  So many agents will send out several hundred sales letters for a marketing campaign of one type or another, and then make very few follow-up calls.

Ratios Prove it!

Here are some ratios for you.  A direct sale letter with no follow-up will have a conversion of about 1% or 2%.  When you follow-up the sales letter with a direct telephone call to the key person, the conversions lift up to somewhere between 5% and 10%.  I know that skill and dialogue will have some impact on the result by I assume that most people know the importance of professional dialogue in making calls.

So let’s set some clear rules for the typical sales letter:

1. Keep the letter simple.  Rarely will you need to go over one page, and it is preferable that you do not.  Everything that you want to say should be on the single piece of paper in 3 or 4 paragraphs of text
2. Personally sign each letter legibly in blue ink.  The person then knows that you are sending an original letter.
3. Your signature should be readable and better than a ‘scrawl’ at high speed.  You are sending a marketing letter, and your name is part of the marketing message.  It is preferable to write and sign your full name.
4. If you must go over 1 page in your letter length, ensure that the first page ends mid-sentence and therefore encourages a person to turn over the page.
5. Personalise the letter and make sure you have the names correct in all respects.  Errors made in addressing a letter to a person will see it hit the rubbish bin faster than you can imagine.
6. Typo’s and mistakes are unforgiveable in a sales letter.  They show a lack of attention to detail in the correspondence.  Get your sales letters proof read before they go out.
7. Enclose a business card in all your sales letters.  Generally speaking, a loose business card is likely to be kept after everything else hits the rubbish bin.
8. Encourage telephone and email response to your sales letter.  Make it easy for people to find you.
9. Use dot points and sub headings in the letter.  This will make the readability much higher.  Most adult readers only skim marketing material and will read it only if it has some interest.  That interest comes from the dot points and the sub headings.
10. Use a plain blue envelope that is personally addressed in neat handwriting.
11. Use a good headline for your letter that is relevant to your message.  Some words sell better than others; some words attract attention better than others.  Get a good book on ‘words that sell’ and use the words with skill in all your marketing material.

These concepts for a sales letter can be the main part of your commercial real estate marketing effort as long as you follow through on every message.  Get to know your market and the people through constant contact and relevant messages.  Use the sales letter strategically and regularly.

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