I'd be interested in hearing some suggestions from other agents as to what they found to be the best approach with a buyer in having them sign a buyer agreement.  Do you have them sign one before you take them out to look at houses, after a certain number of showings, or something in between.  My biggest concern is the approach with the buyer.  I don't want to sound like some mercenary just looking to get them on the hook and then disappear.  They then think that they're on the hook.

I just wanted to get other people's opinion on cold calling.  Does anyone else feel that it is a viable tool for building one's customer base?  My wife and I keep getting notes and copies of articles from our broker (as does everyone else in our office) about cold-calling. 

Both my wife and I have not had great success with cold-calling in the past; my wife used in back in the 70's and found that the ROI (conversion to customers) was less then 1/2 of 1%.  My experince with cold-calling during the late 80's, when I was selling mortgages, was getting less then 1/10 of 1% converted to customers. 

Have things improved that much that many are touting cold-calling as a viable marketing tool.  Personally, I find that cold-calling is something that you'd use to fill your time if you have ABSOLUTELY nothing else you could be doing.

Are we missing something?