As many of you know, we’re not fans of the Case-Shiller housing report. Aside from the relentless media spin about the tiniest blip up or down, the primary problem with the report is that its focus – home prices – is simply an incomplete picture of the housing market. To understand what’s happening in any commodity market – especially housing – much more context is needed. And don’t expect the local REALTOR’s analysis report to be any better: Few are worth the paper they are (still) printed on.
Thank goodness, then, for Hagerty’s Quarterly Housing Report.
In Part 1, we started the countdown towards May 1: The Day After government tax credit subsidies expire for housing purchases. Leading up to that date will be a frenzy of purchases and sales that will make it “look like” the market is bouncing back. But are we kidding ourselves? When the clock strikes twelve, the housing market will fall again – just like it did in December 2009, the month after the tax credits “almost” expired last time. Only this time, it’s going to happen for real – and it will make the 17% December decline look like a blip on the chart of decline. In Part 2, we offer a few suggestions as to how REALTORS can stay in business when the dust settles.
We all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But for a while, homeowners, buyers and real estate agents thought a “heavily discounted” lunch was ok. Especially when it was Uncle Sam handing out the brown bags. Now the real estate and mortgage industries are paying the price for Fannie Mae’s free-lunch fraud. Looks like the people who couldn’t afford “affordable housing” most weren’t just consumers, but its most vocal advocates. Talk about bad strategy. Read more…
If there’s one thing the real estate industry needs to worry about, it’s mis-information. Bogus appraisals, misleading market analyses and self-serving press releases make it nearly impossible for consumers to get accurate data about the market. Even Fannie Mae can’t be trusted to accurately report how many subprime loans it makes. And with regular releases of the misleading Case-Shiller report, is it any wonder buyers and sellers don’t know what to believe? Read more…
Ready to make big improvements in your business in 2010? Most of us make a list of things we currently aren’t doing – and probably still won’t in the New Year. So rather than work against ourselves – a formula for failure and disappointment – why not resolve to keep doing what you are already doing. Perhaps just a little differently!
At Matthew Ferrara & Company, we don’t believe in the “overcoming weaknesses” method of business planning. Rather, we think everyone should focus on their strengths and find ways to maximize the use of them every day. If your resolutions involve working on things you don’t like to do, don’t have a propensity for, and mostly do poorly, you’re heading for underachievement, frustration and disaster. On the other hand, if there are some things you’re already doing that leverages your natural talents, you enjoy doing already and would be more inclined to do more of or better, those should be the focus of your strategy for the next twelve months of business.
Focusing on your strengths lets each of us create business resolutions that best suit us – and therefore have the greatest chance of success. Rather than adopt someone else’s “must do” lists that we’ll never even try, we’ll be more successful if we take our “already doing” list and fine-tune it. Here are ten ways to do just that.
1. Know your strengths: The first thing you need to do is identify what you already have some talent for doing. Very few of us have talent for everything in business. So we need to figure out where our talents lie and organize our strategy around them. So sit down and make a list of what you are already doing that you do fairly well every time. Every other resolution you’ll make must focus on taking those talents and turning up the “volume” on their effectiveness.
2. Accept your strengths: If you list the things you have talents for, you’ll also bring to mind everything you’re not so good at doing. Make a side list of those things. Review the list and label each one “QP” or “NC” – Quick Possibility of mastering and improving or No Chance of being really good at soon. There are some things you might be able to improve – if they already relate to your existing strengths. Maybe you’re a strong prospector, but you are fairly week at generating new contacts. That is probably a QP with a little technology and technique. On the other hand, if you are really bad at paperwork and numbers, then list if NC and put it aside. You will deal with it – but not personally – later.
3. Outsource everything that’s a NC or clear waste of time. Look at your No Chance list from #2 above. Decide whether you can simply stop doing it (and nobody will notice) or if it’s a vital activity required for your success. If it’s vital, determine how you will outsource it. Remember, you’re already not doing it – or not doing it so well you should stop doing it harmfully – so someone else is going to have to do it for you. Find an office staff, another agent or third party business who can do it for you – at peak quality and performance – and resolve to stop wasting time trying to fix things you’re never ever going to actually do well.
4. Set goals, not to-do lists for your business. Rather than make a list of lots of things you’ll buy, try or do, focus your mind on the most important outcomes you wish to achieve in your business this year. Stress and chaos are created by task-oriented planning. You can easily create a list of things you can never get done in the time you have each day. If you want to succeed differently this year, stop worrying about tasks and keep your mind on the goals. Whether it’s financial, professional or personal, three clear and measurable goals which you review and keep in mind every day will more effectively guide you to what needs to get done than a “master list” of intimidating to-do’s and tasks.
5. Organize your time. Most business professionals make the mistake of trying to organize their tasks, rather than their time. They erroneously think the goal is to find the magic combination of scheduling tricks to get the most things done in the least amount of time. That works if you’re a machine on an assembly line. However, most real estate sales is knowledge work, and your brain cannot work “on command” in an unbroken stream of activities. Deal with your time differently this year, by organizing it into periods of most useful outcomes. Determine what is most useful to your business – prospecting, training, presentation skills, negotiating – and then organize your time around getting those things done consistently. Look at the week and ask yourself how to best use the time you have to work towards your goals. Then schedule the right amounts of time to using your best talents to achieve those goals. Eliminate, delegate or forget about everything else.
6. Get effective before you get efficient. We sometimes mistake efficiency for effectiveness. This often leads us to mis-use our talents and time, and especially technology. For example, using technology to organize our databases and create labels for mass mailings may be highly “efficient” compared to the days when we tried to remember everyone’s name and send handwritten notes. However, it could be massively ineffective if the consumer’s preference for contact is email or social media. When you look at turning up the volume on your talents, don’t just take for granted that improvements come from simple efficiencies. You could outsource your prospecting calls to a call center, who could call 1,000 people a week for you; but that might not be nearly as effective as making friends with your past ten clients on Facebook, and writing a personal note on their Wall each week. Both are prospecting. One is efficient by volume. The other is effective by goal.
7. Fire things. Just like you clean out the drawers of your desk at the end of the year, simply throwing away paper and items you packed away rather than dealt with all last year, start your new year by firing everything that no longer works toward your goals. For managers, this might be non-productive salespeople, unattended office meetings, or handing out leads to agents who just throw them away. For agents, this might mean unreasonable sellers who refuse to market-price the home, buyers who won’t work under contract and other agents who refuse to pull their own weight in a deal. Your problem solving must be different this year. If avoid-and-forget didn’t work for you last year, fire-fast-now might be the different approach you need.
8. Stop copying others. Too many of us think that if we just copy someone else’s activities, we’ll reach the same success they have achieved. This is a bad strategy for two reasons: We only see the outward side of others’ success, without the back-story of challenges they handle, but some of which might sink us. We are simply not the same people; problems they can handle with their talents could overcome us if we have different strengths. Secondly, copying others activities means implicitly accepting their goals. Our goals should direct our own activities; There are many paths to success, and it’s important for each of us to follow their own. Some agents achieve high sales performance with lots of technology; others are masters of the telephone and handshake. Both can achieve measurable successful outcomes – based upon different strengths. But adopting the techo-approach for a techno-phobe could be the wrong strategy, and vice-versa.
9. Listen to customers. Lots of consultants, planners, leaders and technologists in the industry claim special access to the future. They have systems, tools, programs you can purchase to get there. Some work; some don’t. But what always works – every year, boom or bust – is talking to customers. They will tell you exactly what they want, how they want it and how they would like to pay for it. And since they pay the bills – not create them, like everyone else – they should be your most important source of information. Then you can go back to the others and ask how their products and services jibe with what consumers are saying, and incorporate the best of these into your optimal use of time and talents.
10. Get to work. While this sounds obvious, it is most certainly not. Most people go to the office but never go to work. They hang out, chat, catch up, eat lunch, run errands, do paperwork, upload a file, check their email, and lots of other activities. But they never actually get to work. If your job is to make sales, then going to work only happens when you make sales. At the very least, you’re only working when you’re doing activities that directly correspond to the next sale you will make. The sales will not make themselves. Others – your fellow agents, your broker, the government – will not make the sales for you. If you want to really do something differently in the next twelve months, then go to work and get to work for every minute you’re there.
So there’s a quick list of ten things to do differently in 2010. Note that none of them are silver bullets, get-rich-quick schemes. There’s not a single specific techno-gadget or snappy-comeback to use for or against consumers. The list requires each of us to assess, evaluate, plan, organize, delegate, focus and do that which is necessary to reach our goals in 2010. To create your next year of success, wishing for a thing is not enough to make it so. It’s time to do the right things – and differently – to make next year your best in the business.
Recently while teaching a social media strategies workshop, one of the brokers approached me during a break. In essence, while he admitted to being dragged into the social media world reluctantly, he was just about furious with my suggestion that agents play games online. It’s bad enough they are wasting time in these social networks, was his point. To suggest they should spend time farming, killing vampires and running a mob gang was simply stupid. How are REALTORS supposed to make sales while they are playing games online. Let just see, shall we?
Riddle me this: How is it that the industries that charge the least for their products and services seem to have more more advanced technology than those that charge the most? Some time ago, we wrote that REALTORS might want to take a look at how gas stations were using technology to market ancillary products to their customers. Now a year later, my local real estate brokerages still don’t offer any interactive technology to their visitors in the waiting area, but my local veterinarian and shoe store does.
Hindsight is always 20/20, they say. Unless, of course, you spend most of your time navel gazing. So it’s almost myopic to point out that some ideas’ time has come. And other ideas’ time has passed. On one hand, it’s time for every sale to include in-house ancillary sales. On the other hand, it’s time for NAR to give up the dream of one HAL-like central database. Didn’t they find the bellybutton lint the last time they tried it? Read more…
The real estate industry is ripe for a serious game changer. By that, I don’t mean some company that comes along fiddling with commissions or cutesy technology marketing. I’m talking something that causes customers to stand up and say, Wow! I’m definitely working with that company. We’ve talked about this before in our blog, but the timing is better than ever. In fact, I’m thinking of making an appointment with Richard Branson, in the hopes that he’ll take up my suggestion and do for real estate what he’s done for the airline industry. It’s time for him to open Virgin Real Estate.
It has often been said that sales is a contact sport. If so, then every opportunity to work closely with consumers is a sales moment. Real estate sales professionals know that it’s all about relationships. So it’s important to never let a good sales moment go to waste. If you’re serious about a sales career, then selling means more than just showing up. And one place to start selling more is at the Open House. Read more…
Why is it that some things just won’t go change? There, on my doorstep, was a reminder that some companies still don’t get it. Nearly two pounds of absurdity, neatly wrapped in a plastic bag, and personally delivered to to my front porch, was a reminder that the more things change, the more some things stay the same. Absurd, when you think of it: Who uses the Yellow Pages these days?
A recent Businessweek article featuring Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz should be required reading for REALTORS. Its main point – that the Starbucks that told its employees “do anything you feel like” has finally met the cold reality of customer expectations. With sales dropping and stores closing, the Seattle-based giant has had to wake up and smell the coffee. Gone are the boom years, when Starbucks opened a store a week, hired “partners” not employees, and left it up to them to “organically” figure out how to pour coffee and make customers happy. Turns out that was a stupid business model. Not unlike another industry that was only profitable during a credit boom.
Yesterday found me on the 15th floor of the New York Times building in Manhattan, part of a trio of industry thinkers including Mike Staver and Steve Harney. Joining us for three hours of ”ask anything” discussion were some of the city’s finest brokers and managers. The host, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, had brought us together for a second time (the first in Phoenix) in a brainstorming session that had audience and panel each doing equal work. And unlike one of the usual presentations you might attend, the learning flowed both ways, from industry experts both on stage and in the audience. And what learning it was!
Which is harder to spot: The Loch Ness Monster or the housing industry recovery? Given the number of false sightings for both, it’s not hard to imagine that we’ll ever see either. It seems that few people can tell if they’re looking at a recovery or not: Even the “Voice of Real Estate” changes its mind every month. Should we call a recovery just because downward trends are slowing, or do we have to wait for them to actually rise? Is a one-month rise sufficient, or should we wait for two quarters positive balance? Can housing recover if consumers continue to spend less for homes (yes, by the way)? And how will brokers and agents know they are heading into a recovery when the average commission is still going to be falling (with average home prices, for years to come). With all of these questions, is it possible to even define what a recovery would look like if it happened?
Believe it or not: Yes!
Making mountains out of molehills seems to be a favorite activity in the real estate industry. First, it was the “internet” going to put brokers out of business. Then, it was websites who were “selling” real estate consumers back to agents as leads. Along the way the industry even ate its own, claiming REALTOR.COM was “stealing” the value of brokers’ data because they used it to create a profit selling ads. None of these issues turned out to really be anything more than a few busybodies being, well, busy. So it’s no surprise that over at Inman, they’ve been humping another non-issue for some months now: The great debate over whether agents compensation is at the heart of the industry’s failings. We can tell you right now this is another non-issue because, in order for it to be a problem, agents would have to be being compensated – something not really happening in the business these days. But do let’s go on…
