Real Estate Agents: good customers or bad?

[FrankenSigns.biz]

As a rule, have you found real estate agents to be good (profitable) customers or crummy (unprofitable) customers?

 

[TheSnowman]

I smile every time ours walk through the door. We live in a small town, that only has about 4 real estate company's. There are two of them that are auction company's as well, and we work for them at least three to four hours a day. Without them, my lifestyle would have to change, because they are such a big part of our business. They are very involved in the community, and send lots of work our way. I love working with them, and I'm very thankful every time they walk through the door. There was one realtor that did call me once to do some stuff for her, then she decided not to do anything with what I'd gone and talked to her about, and that's about the worst story I have w/ a realtor...and I know, that's not really bad at all.

 

[Steve C.]

From my experience Real Estate customers are not very loyal. It's all
about price, mostly. I have a few that are regulars. But if you can give them
the best price and quick service they can be good to have. I have a friend
in the business who makes probably 4 times what I make and all his customers
are Real eatate. He has no artistic tallent at all but is one hell of a salesman.

 

[Graphix Plus Ink]

If you can get in with the Heads you'll do alright but they are frugal and always debate numbers. Stand firm but know your Competitors numbers always. Ohh and they love to compare Apples for Oranges.

 

[theskipman_98]

Of the all the realtors around here, of the the one's that come to us (for such a small area we have a lot of realtors), and 99.9% of them are cheap. They will actual look a at a coro sign and ask, "got anything cheaper? It's only got to last a few months."
We have one realtor that gets us to do the 18x24 .040's for them but will not get the frames from us (home depot is cheaper by like $2-3 ).

 

[SignTech]

Crummy!

 

[Sign_Boy]

Funny, an agency just opened up 3 doors down from my shop.
I'll have to stop in and introduce myself.
One never knows right?

 

[SignTech]

Funny, an agency just opened up 3 doors down from my shop.
I'll have to stop in and introduce myself.
One never knows right?

Your always like a fresh bright ray of sunshine .... how do I get some of that? LOL

 

[TheSnowman]

Wow, those comments make me like mine even more. They don't even ask me for price, they just say do it. I do prioritize them MAJORLY ahead of other stuff, unless it's big money...but they love it. I take care of them, and they take care of me. We are all kinda "downtown", and all the businesses down there try and support eachother to keep us all in business.

 

[FrankenSigns.biz]

My experience has been on the large part, bad so I voted "crummy". Indeed they are cheap, cheap, cheap. I have also had experiences where they order stuff and never come back to pick it up, much less pay the balance. Needless to say there are exceptions. I have had a few who were good customers. (but where'd they go?)

The reason I ask is that I am always picking up those full color Homes & Land type publications. Those publications seem to be a veritable cornucopia of leads. So before I go spending a few hours calling through this thing, I thought I'd ask.

Keep those opinions coming I still have a day to change my mind.

 

[THATgirl]

Commercial realtors are better than residential, but even the commercial realtors are getting cheap. I have one realtor that I can't complain about tho. He pays right away, never asks for a price first, and has been with me for 33 years.

 

[Sign_Boy]

Your always like a fresh bright ray of sunshine .... how do I get some of that? LOL

Yea right!! Me a bright ray of sunshine???? That's funny

Wow, those comments make me like mine even more. They don't even ask me for price, they just say do it. I do prioritize them MAJORLY ahead of other stuff, unless it's big money...but they love it. I take care of them, and they take care of me. We are all kinda "downtown", and all the businesses down there try and support eachother to keep us all in business.

I wish my town was like that, we are actually in a transition stage right now. Many of the older businesses closed up, the building were bought up and the new property managers plan to tear them down and rebuild.
I guess it will be a good thing for me, but who knows when it will happen. One strip mall has been vacant for around a year and it's in a prime location.

Sorry to be a

Back to the question at hand. I haven't done a whole lot with Realtors. The occasional job.

A while back I did have a job that consisted of 200 12x18 coros and 100 6x18 .040 Riders. They were screen printed. I kept them at the shop, when they needed them they would give me the names and phone numbers. I'd slap some vinyl down and ship them on out.
Not a bad gig.

 

[Creative_Lance]

The cheapest ever!

 

[Graphix Plus Ink]

Its always supposed to be cheap because its only suppose to last a few months, lol, they say. But they won't budge on 6% commission rate for a $300,000 sale. lol. They crack me up.

 

[TheSnowman]

Are you guys dealin' w/ one man team realtors, or a bigger company? I'm dealin' w/ the owners of bigger company's. The ones that I have had trouble w/ in the past were just a one man shop, and never did anything they said they would.

 

[Pat Whatley]

I like real estate customers.

 

[iSign]

mostly good here

 

[FrankenSigns.biz]

It may be too late to point this out but I did say real estate agents, not real estate companies.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

In our experience alot of individual agents are fairly frugal or cheap people. Some are because they have no choice, the real estate market is bad right now, I understand where they are coming from to a point, when all of the marketing expenses have to come out of their pockets up front, why would they buy a sign from me when they can get almost the same for two thirds less elsewhere? On the other hand, we've dealt with some that are just arrogant and ignorant, and believe they deserve cheap pricing because they are realtors, or they are who they are (not sure about other areas, but around here, for some reason, there is an ego war with alot of the bigger residential realtors). All in all, residential realtors don't make up a ton of our business because there are a number of other companies out there that cater to them with very inexpensive (and less quality) products that we cannot compete with.

However, commercial realtors are a different ball game. A significant amount of our business is with them. Most are business minded because they are dealing with business professionals. They understand what it takes for us to do our job and what they need to effectively stand out and market their services and their clients' properties. If you can get in good with a few commercial realtors or their firms, you will do okay.

 

[mystysue]

we have both good ones and cheap ones..
Its like everything else.. differant personality types lol