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Grow to Win

What do Hyatt, FedEx, Microsoft, and Burger King all have in common? They all started during recessions. And today they each are winning companies in their industries. Every one of them understood that recessions cause both economic uncertainty and reveal new opportunities. Their success is a result of capitalizing on the companies who went into “automatic” mode during good times, forgetting that change, and recessions, always come. One look at these companies today proves that recessions and innovation go hand-in-hand. They either invented or re-invented how their industry performs during a time when rivals tried instead to weather the storm. They took risks that helped them grow through the downturn, and win a dominant position in their industries.

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37 Ways to Market a Listing

It’s been said that price is the most important factor in the sale of a home. If that’s true, then why spend all that time, effort and money marketing AND why have a class called 37 Ways to Market Your Listings? Exposure. That’s right Exposure. No matter how well priced a home is, if nobody sees it, it becomes the proverbial tree in the forest that falls to the ears of no one. This class will give you 37 ideas for gaining exposure for your listings in today’s marketplace. More than that, we will discuss the importance of marketing in the listing process as well as ways to separate the marketing presentation from the pricing presentation.

Highlights of this marketing session include:

• What Sellers want!
• Your TWO presentations
• Then NEED for Exposure
• What Buyers are looking for?
• Targeted marketing techniques
• Discover Relevant marketing practices

Meet Rich Sands, Senior Instructor at Matthew Ferrara & Company and former Director of Education, Coldwell Banker Colorado as he takes you through an online marketing session to generate awareness for your listings.

Webinar Tuition: $49.99

Register today and reserve your seat now:

• July 9th: 1:00pm - 2:00pm EST
• July 22nd: 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST

Winning Over Expired Listings and FSBO

Winning Over the Expired Seller & FSBO Economic times are tough. Everyone is feeling the pinch. Inventory is flooding the market and financing is harder to come by. When times get tough you have two choices; get back to the basics or get out of the business!

The Expired Listings and For Sale By Owners are two great places for you to jumpstart your business. Start prospecting people who want to sell and need your expertise. We will teach you strategies and the necessary skills to get back to basics and increase your revenue opportunities.

Learn how to:

• Understand the needs of an Expired Listing owner
• How to approach & help an Expired Listing move forward with you
• Discover the unique characteristics & needs of a FSBO
• Prospecting with Drip Marketing Campaigns
• A few ideas for contacting the Expireds and FSBO
• Manage the Sellers’ expectations and handling objections

Join Marilyn Maguire, Senior Instructor at Matthew Ferrara & Company, and top producing Realtor for 19 years, as she walks through a prospecting plan to help you boost your business.

Webinar Tuition: $39.99

Register today and reserve your seat now:

• July 10th: 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST
• July 15th: 11:00am - 12:00pm EST
• July 20th: 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST

Let’s Not Ruin Social Networking

A month ago, I received the strangest email ever: An agent in LinkedIn blasted an email to her connections announcing her next open house. Sadly, it was little more than a cut-and-paste of the abbreviation-dumb newspaper ad she probably also ran. No photos, nor punctuation. Not even a hyperlink. More recently, a steady-stream of Facebook invitations have been arriving,  with impersonal introductions like, “If you know someone who needs a REALTOR in AnyTown, USA, send me your referrals!” Oh, sorry; I thought you wanted to be my friend. But the social networking abuse reached a tipping point yesterday: It seems some virtual tour vendor has made it “quick and easy” to mass-post your tours across multiple networks at once. Oh, goody: REALTORS are about to have no more friends. Read more

That’s (Bleeping) Awesome!

Think back to the last time you used a really great product or service. Perhaps it was your first encounter with an iPod, which buried forever the notion that you’d “click” a fast-forward button or “insert” a compact disc into something. Maybe it was the experience of sliding open a new Google G1 cell phone that caused your face to light up along with the touch screen. Recently, it was the all-wheel-drive system on my Acura RL. The day started out rainy and gray, but I was determined not to let it wear me down. Even with a light drizzle, I opened the sunroof and blasted the radio, and pushed the throttle to a fun-even-without-the-sun pace. The RL is one heck of a ride, so much fun, sometimes, that you frequently look in the side mirrors to see if it has wings. Of course, with that kind of power, it’s a good thing the navigation computer reminds you that your exit is coming up in a quarter of a mile. Usually, I wish it would tell me a half-mile in advance, especially when I’m driving at Star-Trek speeds. No matter, however, because even if you hit the exit curve at a “you’re gonna be in trouble” speed, the all-wheel drive system kicks in and takes you ’round the bend tighter than a roller coaster. It was one of those product moments that makes you yell, “That’s (Bleeping) Awesome!”

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No Wonder Consumers are Confused about Real Estate

Why is it impossible for anyone - REALTORS, banks, media or economists - to accurately describe what is going on in the marketplace? If buyers are going to feel confident about moving back into the market, we should expect all of these groups to be providing clear, verifiable market facts that back up the “best time to buy” sloganism thrown at consumers. Yet most of the punditry has left consumers - especially skeptical Gen X’ers and impressionable Gen Y’ers - more confused than ever. And with a few trillion extra dollars sloshing around the economy and gas prices already moving higher nationwide, time is running out to make the clear-minded case that, by next year, real estate will be back to a “bad” investment once inflation roars back. Subtract the free-Federal-money for first-timers and add in a few million FHA loans that are about to default, and we’re actually on the verge of destroying the near-historic affordability levels once again.

Instead we’re left with “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” proclamations from questionable analysts, partial data, a local appraiser and a journalist. We’d probably be better assessing market conditions with a Barney-Frank-roll-of-the-dice.

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The Real Meaning of Days on Market

Real estate is a tricky business. At some point, you’d expect things to “mean” what they say. Yet we’re an industry that can’t even decide what exactly constitutes a “bedroom.”  In some markets, it’s a broom closet; others extend the definition to unfinished attics. Of course, small dens and breakfast nooks in big-city condos qualify as bedrooms as long as a curtain divides them from the next room. Funny stuff, but it gets more serious when you try to apply these definitions to market data. If we can’t decide what certain market data means, how can we plan a business strategy around it? When current listing prices are sketchy, foreclosures skew sold data and “for sale by owner” inventory makes it impossible to determine meaningful absorption rates, wouldn’t it be nice if we could just pin down the meaning of something simple - like “Days on Market”?

Ironically, even that market metric is sorely misunderstood.

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The Listing Sheet is (Still) Pathetic

A while ago I wrote a short article comparing some of the “standard” real estate marketing tools with those of other industries. I remember commenting how REALTORS, who sell commodities in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, try to entice buyers with printouts made from an off-the-shelf inkjet printer on recycled paper, while automobile companies readily offer super-glossy-multi-page professional brochures to promote their lowliest of models. Of course, times change: When Baby Boomers invented the real estate industry, printing anything was a mimeographic achievement, so the small office printer was a revolutionary upgrade in marketing in the 1990s. Yet today’s buyers and sellers increasingly come from the Gen X and Gen Y demographics.

Does anyone still think we’re going to re-start the housing market by handing out listing sheets?

Let’s review some basic facts: Last year the average first time buyer was 31 years old, smack-in-the-middle of the Gen X/Y profile. This means many buyers were in their early twenties, while some lagged into old-age-thirties. Even the average seller was only 45 - the tail end of the Boomers, even if they try to pass themselves off as early X’ers. Either way we’re talking consumers who entertain on YouTube, read the news on their iPhones and post video clips to their Facebook page with their eyes closed. Whether it’s a kitchen faucet from Kohler or a new laptop from DELL, the way to attract these consumers is modern multimedia.

Of course, some printed items still work to provide information about products and services. For example, luxury products like the LearJet - comparable in price to some premier homes around the country - feature downloadable PDF spec-sheets complementing their virtual tour and video marketing. not completely unlike a property listing sheet found on some better real estate websites. Still, even LearJet could improve its printed marketing tools compared to a travel site like Abercrombie and Kent, whose Royal Scotsman Train Holiday offers an eight-page brochure online for a $7000-10,000 product. Even an inexpensive piece of software like ACT by Sage offers a multi-page full color product brochure.

The bottom line: One-page property listing sheets are simply pathetic.

To be fair, it’s not just the one page printout that’s awful; it’s the one-page information presentation that most real estate websites provide as well. Whether it’s a jet or a vacation or a software program, all of which have stiff competition in their price range, the marketing tools on their websites offer much more than a single page. Yet most real estate presentations stick to an address, a couple of photos, a few bullet points and a paragraph describing the product. Forget about the huge gap in multimedia - the Learjet site is NASA-like in it’s design while the ACT site offers a full-product video demonstration and a trial mini-site. It seems nearly impossible that real estate would ever reach that level of product marketing, considering the continuing challenge to get agents to put more than a half-dozen photos on every listing. Yet you have to wonder if the real estate industry has some other reason why it continues to propagate the one-page minimalist approach to marketing its products.

Oh, right: They want to force the customer to call.

Does providing less information lead customers to call, email or otherwise contact the “broker” of a product? Possibly. But has anyone ever wondered how many people simply don’t reach out at all, when so little marketing information is presented? Why do so many buyers who visit an open house fail to call for a second appointment? Was it because they didn’t like the house the first time - or that the listing sheet was such a poor “sales support piece” that it failed to inspire them to consider a second look? What percentage of online leads never inquire on a listing - or at best, delay that inquiry because the presentation of home information is flat, one-dimensional, and mostly organized like an IRS form?

Could the listing sheet actually be harming sales?

Any of this could be possible. But perhaps it’s not even that complicated. Maybe it’s just another example of how the Gen X / Gen Y consumer has moved far beyond the Baby Boomer modality of the real estate sales industry (I almost typed “stales” industry - what an interesting slip that would have been…) Listing sheets aren’t just a bad marketing piece; they are a bad marketing mentality. They reduce homes to uniform, tabular experiences that mostly fail to excite, entice or even adequately inform the potential buyer. The “just the facts” approach to room sizes, amenities and taxes smothers emotional excitement about buying a home.  Everything about the listing sheet presentation is dull, rough, plain-paper-bag.

Where are the download-ready multi-page flyers, with edge-to-edge high quality photography? Who is handing out CD’s or flash drives at open houses with dozens of photos, documents and videos to help the buyer learn as much as possible? Have you ever seen an agent offer to SMS a video clip from their smartphone to the buyer’s smartphone after touring a home? I’m guessing these aren’t the ordinary experiences that real estate agents are offering to their customers today.

Think about a great product experience. Perhaps it’s the thrill of flying on a private jet. The luxurious feeling of a train ride through the Scottish Highlands. The creativity of a powerful, intuitive piece of software. There’s no way those emotional responses can be conveyed on a single web page or printout. Complex sales take complex marketing tools. Capturing the value proposition of these products simply can’t be done in a sanitized one-page format.

Real estate is perhaps one of the most complex transactions - emotionally, financially, intellectually. Trying to excite buyers by handing them a single piece of paper seems - well - just a little pathetic.

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Voodoo or YouTube Real Estate

At first, I thought it was a joke, something to lighten the mood of an otherwise dour real estate industry. Yet a few clicks of the email invitation told me it wasn’t a joke, it was actually back by “popular demand” of a lot of REALTORS.  If I hurried, I could save a seat at the “all new and updated” course that would unlock my power colors and align my compass at a very affordable price. I couldn’t help it, and just laughed out loud.

Feng Shui for real estate is back. It’s being conducted in the Temples of Real Estate Associations across America. Even more incredibly, in some states it has been approved for Continuing Education, a sanctioned topic that deals with “consumer protection.”

The high priests of Feng Shui contend it will help you be a better professionals, maximize referrals and increase sales. Their rites-of-passage into this sales Nirvana include:

• Using “success colors” in marketing pieces, like business cards and brochures
• Conducting space clearing and blessing ceremonies to chase away stagnant energy
• Written instructions on how to use “success symbols” to energize your office

Just bring your compass directions and floor plan and the Wizard will teach you how to rearrange your furniture and your career. Read more

Resolve To Follow Your Business Plan

Every year at this time, most of us are making “resolutions” of how to improve ourselves for the upcoming year. We resolve to go on a diet, save more money, take time off with the kids, and so on. Business people usually take it one step further, resolving to do all the things they “put off” in the last year because they ran out of money, or opportunity knocked, or they just forgot. We all do this - while conveniently forgetting the most common thing about New Year’s Resolutions is that we usually forget about them by the end of January!

So this year, why don’t we resolve NOT to make any resolutions, and try something much better, instead…

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Chrysler’s Lesson for REALTORS

Yesterday, Chrysler announced it was going to suspend production at ALL of its North American factories until mid January. This was excellent news - for those of us who believe business is a rational process of allocating scarce resources to meet consumer demand. Others may think it’s just a political ploy to get politicians to fork over taxpayer money for the “poor, hardworking (?) UAW laborers” who will go be furloughed over the holiday. Regardless of your stand on the auto maker bail out (would just one new outlet please interview Honda or Toyota during this debate?) there remains a solid, clear lesson for the real estate industry within Chrysler’s decision to halt production.

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Do you have the Success you Deserve?

Graduates of our Integrity Selling course learn a very important principle in the world of sales: You always get paid what you think you are worth. It’s how the great sales people in real estate always earn the top dollars - because they believe they are worth them and won’t settle for a second-rate pay for the first-rate service they provide to their clients. The principle of “getting what you believe you are worth” is usually applied to commissions, but lately, with our clients, we’ve been taking this to a whole new level:

Are you achieving the success you believe you deserve?

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Why do Brokers Hire Sellers?

Listen to this blog entry by clicking the play button above.
You can also click the podcast icon to listen in your default mp3 player.

Ask any broker today what his “number one” problem with the market conditions, and he’ll tell you either there’s too much inventory or it’s all overpriced. Granted, if sellers want to put their homes on the market, nothing can stop them, with so many “for sale by owner” options out there. But that still leaves the issue of the overpriced homes that are represented by brokers. And that begs the question:

Why are brokers hiring sellers to sell their own homes?

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It’s the Housing Market, not the Stock Market

For some months, REALTORS have been fretting that buyers are “sitting on the sidelines” waiting for the market to “hit the bottom.” We constantly hear news reports with interviews of “savvy” sellers who are trying to “time the market just right” to get the most for their home’s sale while getting a “bargain” for their next home. Timing the market - to sell high, and buy cheap - is a strategy for buying and selling stocks or bonds.

But when it comes to housing, it’s the entirely wrong market model. It’s time REALTORS started saying so.

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Another Cool Outlook Tool from Xobni

Recently a friend in the business send me an email suggesting I try out Xobni, a ‘must have’ plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. I always get a little skeptical about Outlook plug-ins, usually because they always end up causing my Outlook to “go funny.” Maybe there some code Microsoft puts in the program that says, “If anyone tries to add on a piece of software that REALLY makes Outlook work well, then sabotage it!” But in this case, it looks like the only quirks come during shut down, and even then I can’t be sure it’s Xobni’s fault.

I can say this: Xobni is something every busy Outlook user needs to check out!

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