KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Prospecting Primacy Elevating Your Approach with Enhanced Marketing Strategies!

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

Friday Focus is your weekly mini-series from KGCI Real Estate On Air—a deep dive into one theme, broken into tactical, easy-to-implement episodes. Every Friday and Saturday, we unpack the strategies, scripts, and systems agents use to win more business—without the fluff.Catch every episode in the series to get the full picture, and put these moves into play by Monday.SummaryThis episode provides a powerful guide for real estate agents who are ready to elevate their lead generation from a dreaded chore to a strategic, predictable business activity. The discussion reveals that modern marketing and old-school prospecting are not mutually exclusive—in fact, they are a powerful combination that can dominate any market. You’ll learn how to leverage digital tools to find new leads, nurture your existing database, and position yourself as a trusted authority that consistently attracts business.Key TakeawaysProspecting as Your #1 Priority: Understand that prospecting is the single most important activity for a successful business. The episode emphasizes that by treating lead generation as your top priority and time-blocking for it daily, you can create a business that is always moving forward, regardless of market conditions.The New Digital Door Knocking: Learn how to use enhanced marketing strategies to find new leads without having to physically cold call or knock on doors. The discussion provides a blueprint for using social media, email marketing, and video content to find and engage with a targeted audience that is ready to buy or sell.Master Your Database: Discover that the most valuable leads are often the ones you already have. The episode highlights a clear, systematic approach to organizing and nurturing your database, ensuring that no lead falls through the cracks and that you are consistently providing value to your sphere of influence.From Leads to Loyalty: Understand that the goal of prospecting is not a single transaction, but a long-term relationship. The episode emphasizes that by focusing on providing a high-quality, memorable experience, you can convert every lead into a loyal advocate who becomes a consistent source of referrals.TopicsProspecting primacyReal estate lead generationReal estate marketingProspecting tipsReal estate successCall-to-ActionReady to elevate your business? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and start winning with a prospecting-first approach! Ready for more? Subscribe to KGCI Real Estate On Air and grab the Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android. Inside, you’ll find our complete archive, 24/7 stream, and every Friday Focus mini-series—ready when you are.

Clarity, strategy, and step-by-step moves. Here's what you need to know from this week's Friday focus on KGCI, real estate outair. One of the greatest challenges that I've found that my clients have got is understanding what is prospecting and what is marketing. And when I've got clients that I sit with and I help them through this particular process, it suddenly, it reminded me of many years ago I was going in for a contract with a client. that wanted to open up franchises. And one of the questions that this individual asked me was, Stuart, what's the difference between sales and marketing? And at the time, I thought it was quite a silly question because for me,

my answer was very straightforward. Well, sales is money coming into the company and marketing is money going out of the company as far as your income and expenses. And he asked me a few questions thereafter, but he could clearly see. see that I understood the difference between sales and marketing. But when I've asked this question to so many clients of mine, suddenly that question jumped in the back of my head. Many people don't understand the difference. You see, for many people, they perceive sales as marketing. And they need to do the marketing and they'll get money from doing the marketing. And suddenly it

became quite apparent. The understanding of sales and marketing is not that simple. You see, in order to do sales, well, sales don't just happen on its own. What have you got to do before sales? And this is where the trick came in. For many of my clients, they didn't know what to do before the sales. Marketing, well, that's fairly straightforward and easy. I can do a social media ad. I can do a flyer. I can do an email. There's so many ideas to do marketing. However, to get the sale was the challenge. And this is what I shared with a lot of my clients is, well, you need to be doing prospecting. You see, prospecting will lead to sales.

And that's ultimately what you need to incorporate in your business. And then I'll ask me, Stuart, but what is prospecting? Just to find that a bit further. Well, if you think of mining, miners go out and they prospect for diamonds. They prospect for gold. they prospect for minerals. You see, the diamond, the gold, the minerals, that is what they can sell.

And that's what's going to generate them their revenue. So why is it so important to understand the differences? Well, the reason we need to do that is because people don't understand the prospecting side of it. Or they feel it's hard work. They move straight to marketing. and they expect with all their marketing that they're actually going to start generating sales by itself. And unfortunately, prospecting has to come into it. You see, when I describe this to so many clients, marketing is like throwing out a net, a wide net, hoping to catch a fish or two.

Now, in that net, small fish can swim straight through it. Bigger fish could actually break a hole in it and get out. But it's the ones in the middle that'll get captured. But then it's the hard work of actually bringing it in and then going through the fish to find out if they're the right regulation sizes. So marketing is throwing out the net. Prospecting is now getting your hands and taking the fish out of the net and making sure that they fit within the regulation size. So that's just a metaphor that you can understand the difference. why should we be doing both? Why can we just do marketing because it's easier? Why can't we just leave out the prospecting? Because that means it's hard work. Well, at the end of the day,

we need to have belly to belly conversations. We need to have that voice to ear conversation. We need to understand the wants and the needs to be able to offer our products and services. That is prospecting. And we need to do that. to convert a lead into a sale. So what I want to talk about today is one, prospecting, you need to make sure that your prospecting focused every single day. Many people call it lead generation. Well, that's exactly what it is.

You see, prospecting is trying to generate leads. So you need to be prospecting every single day. You need to focus on that. However, you need to have marketing enhanced. So when you put the two together, you're going to create an extremely powerful part of your business. One, it's going to start to get that awareness out. It's going to start to generate those leads and you're going to be able to convert those into sales. So let's talk about a few little areas that we can actually dig into.

When we look at prospecting, prospecting as I mentioned, is what I like to call belly to belly or mouth to ear. So it's words to hearing. And it is so important to have the conversations. It's conversations that are in your industry. That's so important. And ultimately, if the person that you're speaking to is not ready to buy your product or your service, well then what you need to do is you need to incorporate certain scripts that's going to ask, well, do you know anybody else?

So that you can get a referral. And through that referral that becomes a lead, you can then start having those conversations again. So it's so important to be doing that every single day. Now, I'll say this with my clients, prospecting. You should be doing a minimum of two hours of prospecting every single day. And if you really want to be successful, you're going to push it to three hours. but what are you going to do in that prospecting? Because you could say that I'm prospecting for two hours,

but I don't get to speak to anybody. So in coaching, what we do is we take that time frame of two to three hours and we break it down to a metric of how many conversations are you going to have with potential leads? And that is really going to be the key to your prospecting. So what you need to be doing is sitting down and saying, right. How many conversations do I want to have with potential leads in a particular prospecting session? That's going to be so important because it could take you a half an hour. If you had set

yourself a goal to do 10 conversations and you did that in a half an hour, well, guess what? You've hit your metric for the day. And I'm almost certain that if you hit that particular metric, you're going to get appointments. And those appointments will then lead to potential sales. If in those two to three hours you don't get it, do you just stop and say, well, bad day? No, you carry on until that metric is achieved. That's one of the keys to prospecting. It's not so much saying I'm doing two to three hours of prospecting or lead generating. It's what is the metric?

Have you achieved that particular metric? Is it 10 conversations? Is it 20 conversations? Is it 50 conversations? And they've got to be related conversations. If the individual is not ready to buy or to use your service, can they give you a referral? Simple as that. And if they can't, you just simply ask, well, do you mind if I give you a contact in about three to six months' time?

And they can go back into your cycling and you'll make contact with them on an ongoing basis. So prospecting is something that you need to focus on every single day. Speak to the people that you know. and just have a simple conversation with them. Find out if they know anybody that is looking to use your product or service going into the future. So prospecting, make sure your prospecting focused every single day. Whereas with marketing, marketing you could actually do once a week. You could actually outsource that to a marketing agency that can do it for you.

And by doing that, you're enhancing your prospecting. Now, let's give a bit of a definition around prospecting and marketing. You see, prospecting doesn't cost you any money. Just remember that. It's for free. That's why you can do it every single day. It does take your time because you have to do the activity. This is the part that people don't like.

But for giving your time, you will get immediate results. By having that conversation with somebody, they will be able to say to you, yes, I'm interested, no, I'm not. You get an immediate result out of it. So prospecting doesn't cost you money. It only costs you time. And that's why we need to do it every single day. Whereas with marketing, marketing does cost you money.

If you really want to make an impact, marketing is going to cost you money. Why? Well, you want to build up your brand. You want to build awareness. And you want to put it into social media. You want to get out there. but it's something that you could do once a week or outsource that. So that's costing you money, but it's saving you on time.

That is why people love doing it because we can do marketing once a week because it's fun. However, because it doesn't cost us a lot of time, the results, they are long-term results. You see, when you send out a marketing campaign, you don't, the day you pay you, press that button, suddenly get responses and your phone starts ringing. Generally what happens is it may take a day, it may take a week, it may take a month before you get any kind of feedback. You may send out 10,000, whether it's email, messages, whatever it is on the campaign, but you might only get two responses coming back.

So one thing you must remember, prospecting, zero cost, does take time, immediate results. Marketing, it costs you money, but it does save you time, but it's long-term results that you get out of it. And it's that long-term results is where it confuses with so many people. You see, we want instant gratification. We want to do something and we want to get the result now. So ultimately what happens is we do a marketing campaign, we throw some money at it, and we feel this is fantastic. I'm going to be, and then there's no responses. So you do one of two things. Either you throw more money at or you've got no more money. So you stop it all together. And ultimately, you're actually sitting in a position where you've been so focused on your marketing that you get zero results.

And then you've got to be sitting back and go, now what I want to do? And that's been the question that so many people come through to. me. So I want to dig into a little bit of marketing and to give you something that is going to be marketing enhanced on your prospecting. Remember, every single day, two to three hours, it's the metric that matters. How many conversations that you're having to get those appointments. That's what you need to be doing every single day. But when it comes to marketing, so many times people just do blanket market. marketing. They're not being very specific to the audience that they're working with. Now, I've broken down marketing into three different stages. And at each stage, you're doing

a different style of marketing. Now, some of this marketing is going to be social media. Some of this marketing will be with the events and social events, networking, etc. Some you can do on messaging. Some you can do on emails and flyers, etc. Remember, it's not just one marketing method. It's a variety of marketing methods. So there are three stages of marketing that I've deigned to find. Now, the very first stage is what I refer to as the awareness stage. And the awareness stage is typically a very big net. Why? Because these are people that you don't know and they don't know you. So you've got to throw that net far and wide on that. And ultimately, what you're wanting to do. When you're doing awareness, there's three subcategories in the awareness of

stage one. The first is yourself. You need to do marketing about yourself. Who are you? Having your face, having your details, having your credentials, having your authenticity out there. So number one of the subcategories of the awareness is marketing of yourself. So people know who. you are. The second is the marketing of your company. Now that gives you some kind of credibility because it might be a big company, it might be a new company. But you need to then start linking the two together. But what do you do with the company? Well, you talk about the company's values. You start talking about their value proposition and exactly why they're in business so that people can really feel the company. So you've got you as the brand, your face, making that a

the company so that you can get that value proposition out there so that people can really feel you. And the last is your products and your services. And that should be last. Don't start with your products and services. Because ultimately, when you start doing the branding and you start doing the marketing of those three elements, so you, the company and your products and services, you've got yourself a complete package. So somebody out there who doesn't know who you are. suddenly sees, hey, there's a marketing campaign about you.

Oh, I'm interested in you. Then there's a marketing campaign about the company. Wow, that company. It really sings true to me of who I am. And then it goes through to the different products and the services that you offer so that everything comes together. And that builds the awareness. So that's the first stage.

And these are for people that you don't know. They're not in your database. It is the widest net that you're going to throw. In fact, awareness is the most expensive. So you must be aware of that because you need to get to the widest possible audience, whether it's a target audience, the widest possible audience, and these people don't know you, so it's going to cost you the most. The second stage is what I like to call the development stage.

Now, the development stage is when somebody potentially has made contact with you. It's a lead. So you've got an incoming lead, you've got their details, but they've never done any business with you. They've never touched your products or your services at all. They know who you are, but they don't know exactly what to do to close a particular sale with you. So with these particular audience, you see, you've got them in your hands.

What you need to do is you need to be marketing them so that they can be more aware of your products and your services. You see, you don't have to make awareness of who you are. You don't have to make awareness of the company because they're ready in that particular circle. But you continue your marketing with your products and your services. So there is an overlap from stage one to stage two, but it's developing it and it's taking it beyond. Now, this particular audience is much narrower. You see, these people, you have the details. You can actually do it on email campaigns. You can do it on newsletters, flyers, giving them direct messages. In fact, you can start prospecting to them. You're starting to create it and you're starting to develop them.

So that is why marketing enhanced, you've brought awareness, they start getting in those leads. The second stage is development so that you can start building and they get to know more about you and what your products are, what your services are so that they can get to the point to do a transaction with you. And that leads us to the final stage. And the final stage is the ongoing stage. You see, so many times we have a client that buys from us or uses our service. And that's where it stops. You see, the ongoing stage is every person that has made a sale or that has used your service. It's these individuals that we need to have ongoing communications with. You see, ongoing communications with them with marketing, it's sharing success stories.

It's getting to know them at a different level. It's wanting to become friends with them, building those stronger relationships with them. Because ultimately what's going to happen through the third stage of marketing and its ongoing communications, emails, calls, messages, all of these. When you're doing that on an ongoing basis, what you're going to start to build and what you're going to start to develop is a very powerful database. And that particular database is going to start giving you repeat business. It's going to start giving you referral business.

And that's where your business will really start to grow. And the prospecting, well, then it's a lot of eerie. easier. You're still going to be prospecting to them, but they really know who you are. They know the products that you deliver. They know the services that you have. They know your value proposition. They know why you're doing everything. And you're just going to continue that relationship with them on an ongoing basis. So you make sure that you can see that you are prospecting focused, but marketing enhanced. Prospecting. really it's getting those conversations, hitting those metrics every single day.

And if you're starting out, start with speaking to two people every day. And when you feel comfortable with that, move it to three people. Start small and grow it from there. Because you're going to find that you'll start to enjoy it. Why? You get the immediate results. And you're going to start to see those transactions coming through. But then you do marketing enhanced.

And what you can do is once you've got a client base, you can actually start marketing via stage two, which is the development start. You can actually implement marketing, there's development marketing to your existing database of people that haven't purchased from you, and you start building from them. The budget is much smaller. You can manage it because you're being very specific and let that grow into clients. And once you've got clients, guess what? It starts to generate revenue that you can then feed into stage one of building awareness. Make sure that you've got the budgets in place. It is so, so important.

And once you're doing this, you're going to find that you are building your business. And your business, it's not about the products and services. It's about the relationships that you have with your clients. Whether it's to build that relationship with awareness so they get to know more about you, or it's to actually build those relationships that you get the repeat and the referral business. You see, your business is so, so built around customers. And ultimately, the only way that you are going to make an unknown person into a potential lead to an appointment, to a sale, to a client is through prospecting.

You've got to have those conversations. So the big key here today, make sure that your prospecting focused every single day and your marketing is enhancing your prospecting once a week, maybe even outsourced. It's so important to see how that grows and helps you in your business. This is Stuart signing off until next time. Keep it simple, keep it real, and let's conquer prospecting together. Remember, in the realm of prospecting, innovation and authenticity are your greatest allies.