To run a successful sales campaign, it’s important to communicate well with your vendor. Sending a weekly report is an effective way to do this, and it’s something all agents should be doing.
Here are some tips on how to use your weekly report to help you drive sales:
1. Stick to a Routine
For reports to be successful, it’s important that you use them consistently. Leaving vendors in the dark for long periods of time, and then springing information on them, is going to give the impression you aren’t working constantly on selling their property.
But the key to a routine is to have a plan for collecting information. Make sure you have systems in place for capturing data, and keep up with the status of each property. This should allow you to produce reports in as little as 20 minutes, making it easy for you to get them out on a consistent basis.
2. Include Only What’s Most Important
When you send out a vendor report, avoid filling it with fluff. Vendors only want to know about what’s relevant to their property. Anything else is extra and it might give off the impression you’re wasting their time.
One thing to make sure to include is how you’re marketing the property. Vendors are paying top dollar for you to get the word out, so they want to know their money is going to good use.
The report should be a quick snapshot of what’s most important: marketing spending, buyer feedback, genuine interest. Everything else is irrelevant and should be left out.
3. Be Transparent
Don’t ever give your vendor anything other than the truth. Citing incorrect facts, or excluding information because you’re afraid of how it might make you look is dishonest and bad practice. If the vendor figures you out, it’s going to really hurt the relationship.
Plus, it’s insulting. Vendors are aware of what’s going on in the market, so if you try to doctor the truth, they’re going to know you’re lying. If there’s bad news, just pass it on and accept your role as the messenger. From there, you can work with the vendor to let them know how you’re going to respond to this troubling news.
4. Make an Upfront Time Investment
No one really likes making reports, but if you put in the time to make detailed vendor reports, this investment will deliver significant returns.
Keep your finger on the pulse of the market, and if you use an integrated CRM platform, most relevant information should be right there. No report should take you more than an hour, but this hour will make it much easier to sell the property.
With iDashboard, Online Vendor Reports display inspection feedback that has been entered into the system. So creating your vendor report, is as simple as adding inspection & offer information, and this is automatically added to the online report, to be accessed 24/7.
5. Keep Everyone on the Same Page
Make sure to include the topic covered in phone or face-to-face meetings. Most vendors—and agents—will have a hard time remembering who said what and when. If you include this information in your reports, it makes it easy to get everyone on the same page, improving communication and enhancing the relationship you have with the vendor.