As the Executive Vice President of Sales for National Land Realty, I have the unique opportunity to learn from our over 430 agents and brokers about what they believe has allowed them to be successful in land brokerage. The eight secrets below were compiled from the advice from those land professionals and their hundreds of years of combined experience in the land brokerage industry. I hope they will help you see opportunities where you haven’t before, and better understand how to get more real estate listings from landowners. If you’d prefer to listen to this blog, click here!

1. Direct Mail

The first thing I’d like to talk about is the targeted direct mail campaign. Everyone loves to go to the internet to find buyers and sellers, but we have found that direct mail is still alive and well. At National Land Realty, we send out over 300,000 direct mail pieces each year, and in 2022 we’re going to well surpass that number. This costs our agents and brokers little to nothing and produces an average of 10-15 new landowner leads each month. People still check their mailboxes, so don’t overlook direct mail to get directly in touch with landowners in your area. 

2. Virtual Property Touring

Most people think that our proprietary Land Tour 360® touring technology leads to a better experience for land buyers. While they are right about the buyers, what most land professionals miss is that other landowners look to see whose listings stand out when they are considering which brokerage they will use to sell their land. This is a great way to get sellers to list with you. We’ve had many neighboring landowners reach out and ask us to list their properties, specifically to get access to this technology. So again, it’s a means of getting more listings because they see that our technology sets us a step ahead of our competitors.

3. GIS Technology

What truly sets us apart from other brokerage firms is our technology and our team. At National Land Realty we staff a Geographic Information System (GIS) department that develops custom mapping platforms. These platforms incorporate demographic and locational factors to help our agents and land brokers target sites more efficiently. They also include parcel data with ownership information which allows us to connect directly with property owners, regardless of whether the property is listed for sale or not. This technology is complemented by our team of experienced land professionals, who provide the market knowledge and expertise necessary to get deals to the finish line. The best opportunities are often found off-market, so don’t overlook building a GIS team if you want the best land to list in your area.

4. High Quality Listing Presentations

If you’re in a listing presentation or going up against the best land brokers in the area, you need to be able to offer something they cannot. Proprietary tools such as our Land Tour 360® can give you the edge. In addition to this, our in-house marketing team tailors listing presentations on behalf of our land professionals and brokers to meet the needs in their area and properly demonstrate our value in the marketplace. Professional quality sales collateral leaves the impression that you pay attention to every detail, therefore it’s important to develop a team with a trained graphic designer and copywriter. This way you’ll never let something as simple as a typo in a listing presentation be the reason you aren’t getting more listings.  

5. National Referral Relationships

Our top brokers and land professionals count on referral networks to help them expand their influence. We are currently active in 40 states with over 350 land professionals and brokers. Unlike franchises, our brokerages work as one big team, which means from day one, you have a national referral network built-in. Building a national referral network is hard and time-consuming, but all of our years in business have culminated in an extensive referral network that’s available to our agents on day one.

6. No-Limits Branding

Many land brokerages are pigeon-holed into one segment of the land market such as recreational properties. At National Land Realty, we focus on land, but our agents and brokers have the ability to branch into other areas such as solar, commercial, and even leasing. What this means is you’ll never lose the opportunity of listing because the landowner thinks you only sell one type of land. Your brand shouldn’t close doors for you, it should open them. Ask yourself if your brand is working toward your goal of getting more listings.

7. Back Office Management Software

Land brokers and agents make their money in the field, not sitting behind a desk doing administrative work. We continually update our systems to help our brokers and agents spend less time behind the desk doing busy work and more time in the field. Our proprietary back office management software and automated agent tools are easily accessible and give our team numerous options to be able to create broker price opinions, sales comp summaries, auto-generated and custom property sales flyers, internet traffic reports, client reviews, listing syndication, customer relationship management, and much more.

8. Support Team

One secret to getting more real estate listings from landowners is learning from others who have gone before you. All of our new agents go through National Land Realty’s Boot Camp, which gets them up to speed on the fundamentals of land sales that have been learned from the hundreds of years of combined land sales experience held by our team. Our land brokers have access to monthly mastermind sessions with other brokers from across the country. This means that if you’re facing a challenge, chances are someone on our team has already been there and explained how to handle it; this way you don’t have to learn the hard way.

While training is important, one of the biggest enemies of any land professional is obscurity. Landowners and buyers simply don’t know you exist. When landowners in your area are looking for professionals active in the marketplace, they will find your listings on the Land.com sites, including LandWatch, Lands of America, and others. Our in-house marketing team takes care of all that for agents and brokers, meaning prospects in your area looking to buy or sell will know you’re the expert in their area available to help. These are just some of the many ways that our Support Team provides meaningful assistance to our land professionals.

I’m confident that if you institute these secrets into your strategy, you’ll be getting more listings than ever before. If you’d like to talk more about National Land Realty and how we can help you get more listings, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I would be happy to set up a time to talk.