Why Are You Doing Open Houses? (or anything really)
Stop doing activities for the sake of the activity.
Last Saturday, I stopped in at half a dozen open houses near my home to chat with agents. I noticed that morning there seemed to be a lot more open houses scheduled than is typical for the scorching weekends that accompany Phoenix in August. For four of the open houses I stopped in at, I was the only person who had come through that day. Just on the east side of the Valley that Saturday there were over 100 agents sitting in empty homes speaking with no one.
Given there wasn’t any traffic to be occupied with, the agents I visited with had plenty of time to chat, and one of those conversations stuck with me. I popped in to the home around 2pm that day and quickly learned I was the only person to open the door so far. Chatting with him, I learned that he is primarily a prospector, regularly logging hundreds of dials a day. In his past life he was a stock broker - he was comfortable and confident working the phones and it had served him well so far as an agent. He said that he had missed a couple days on the phones that week though, so he decided to host open houses Saturday and Sunday to “make up for it.”
This is the trap I see so many agents set for themselves: doing things an agent does doesn’t mean you’re actually doing anything at all. Activity does not equal results. You should only do an activity if it is directly tied to a strategic method you are executing that translates to revenue.
I asked the agent what he would be doing today if he wasn’t doing the open house. He told me he’d most likely spend a few hours at the gym and then do his grocery shopping. I asked him if he saw the obvious in what he just described to me. He could’ve had more meaningful interactions and relationship-building opportunities by doing the thing that he loves to do for himself than he is by locking himself in this listing for the afternoon.
Lesson #1: The north star for every agent is always in relationship expansion, not filling your calendar with activities.
The other thing I noticed on my weekend tour was each agent was performing the surface level activity, but seemed to lack an underlying intention and method. If you ask most agents what the goal of doing an open house is, they’ll say something like “add leads to my database” or “book an appointment.” They assume that the open house is a vehicle that brings them opportunity, but fail to see that they are anchoring the outcome to the thing they can’t control - who walks in the door. How effective is leaving the quality of the results to fate?
The agents who are the best at open houses don’t leave the outcome to fate. They are hyper-intentional about the outcome they want and how to leverage the open house as part of their client acquisition strategy. There’s two primary methods I’ve seen be consistently fruitful for agents who know how to leverage open houses as a lever for incremental deals:
Method 1: The Traffic Maximizer
Most agents broadcast the open house online, have a sign-in sheet and property fliers in the home, then they wait. A step up from there is adding plenty of physical drive-by signage. But the agent who is intentional about the method is focused on stacking the odds in their favor - they understand they need to add levers that will drive an outsized amount of traffic to their listing compared to the others.
These agents are posting the open house on their social media, they’re door knocking the neighbors and inviting them two days before, they’re paying for an ice cream truck to be out there. This agent has probably also figured out how to digitize their sign-in experience and they’ve automated the post-event outreach to every person that comes through. And then, they have a discipline of engaging and working those leads after the fact. What this agent didn’t do was decide the day before to sit the listing and then hang out and hope an unrepresented, ready, willing, and able buyer walks in the door.
Method 2: Open Houses as a Listing Acquisition Strategy
This method requires you to completely rethink the purpose and strategy of the open house. If I challenged you to use open houses to generate 5 additional listings this year, how would that change how you approach it?
What you would probably end up with is a circle-prospecting strategy anchored to the open house. What that might look like is:
Identifying which homes in the neighborhood are most likely to sell next and do a complete, customized CMA for them and then deliver it personally and invite them to the open house
Door knock all the immediate neighbors (and leave door hangers) inviting them to the open house
Host a neighbors-only VIP hour the hour before the open house opens publicly
Also apply the strategies in the traffic-maximizer method
What this strategy does so beautifully is it takes the aspect of the open house that others view as the unproductive byproduct (looky-loo neighbors) and turns them into the focal point. It creates an experience around those prospective future listing clients. It helps you stack the odds in your favor, and notably, doesn’t take away from the core use case (picking up buyer clients).
Lesson #2: Success doesn’t come from quantity, it comes from effectiveness.
If you’re reading this and realizing that I’m speaking to you, I hope you’ll keep marching forward. I hope you’ll start to think about how you can start adjusting your approach, starting with clarity around what it is you want to get out of it, then work to stack the odds in your favor.
Want more?
I work with business owners, real estate teams, and individual agents to build their business intentionally around the life they want to live. If you’re curious about what it would be like to work together directly, I’d love to meet with you!
And if you know any other agents who might learn from this post, send it their way!