Dec
7
Stunningly Easy, 25 Minute and 25 second Routine for Finding Buyer Clients
Filed Under Real Estate Listing Tips, Real Estate Prospecting Ideas | Leave a Comment
An African bull elephant weighs 12,000 pounds. Stands 11 feet high. Flaunts tusks 6 to 8 feet long. Eats 770 pounds of grass, leaves, roots, bark, branches, fruit and water plants.
A day.
Now, imagine eating that sucker. It would take forever, wouldn’t it? So one bite at a time, right?
Well, that’s the take away for today’s post. If you are in a market with a hefty level of inventory, then finding buyer’s is on top of your list.
But consumer confidence is gloomy . This means people are holding on to their money, saving, perhaps looking for discounts. What you have to do is figure out how to approach them with an enticing offer. Something that will get them off the fence.
It could be a discount or bargain . It could be a one day only sale .
Whatever it is you are offering, once you have that out of the way, use a simple, 25-minute and twenty-five-seconds-a-day tactic to find those hot leads…in a fraction of the time it usually takes.
How do you do that? Easy.
1. Choose the time of day you are at your peak. Whether morning or afternoon.
2. Block out 30 minutes each day at this time.
3. Use a timer: set it at 25 minutes and 25 seconds.
4. Then pick up the phone and return phone calls from leads you received that day.
5. Don’t do anything for that 25 minutes and 25 seconds. Except call.
Once you’re done, pat yourself on your back. And use the remaining 4 minutes to plan how you are going to spend all the money you’re going to make. Make sure you do it again the next day.
I like this method because it’s a great time management principle: time block AND lump tasks. The most important thing to do here is make sure you do nothing else but pick up the phone and dial. It’s unbelievable how much time people waste dilly-dallying simply because they don’t put boundaries on a task .
And get this: once the market is on the upswing, you can switch this tactic around to build a house list. Call friends and families, ask them for permission to call people they know who might have housing needs, focus your time, get to work and don’t look back.
Dec
5
The 4 Best Agent Inner Circle Articles
Filed Under Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Prospecting Ideas | 2 Comments
For the last year I’ve been following what I think are the best offline marketing articles written for real estate marketing by Senior Editor Craig Forte of Agent Inner Circle.
Craig is a master copy writer, a brilliant mentor, and reading these articles for pure study of copywriting persuasion alone will be worth it.
But there is so much more there for you…offline real estate marketing wise.
I recognize you are time starved, content-overloaded, so what I did yesterday was sit down and go through these articles in the last year and see which four I thought were must reads.
What follows are the ones I chose.
Of course Craig’s got other articles at Agent Inner Circle. Even articles by guest writers. You would not go wrong spending an afternoon sifting through the content.
It’s like an MBA course in real estate marketing online. But it’s free.
[Okay, not entirely free: You do have to hand over your name and email address to access the archives. But it's worth it.]
Enjoy.
The Three “M’s” of Marketing Success
Have you ever spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours on an ad or mailing program, only to stare at your silent phone or pager?
If so, you’re not alone. Most agents spend an enormous amount of time learning about “real estate”, but very little learning about the “elements” that turn your advertising (or any marketing or prospecting efforts) from a “sunk cost” to a true “money-maker”.
The truth about real estate success is this: Even the most competent and knowledgeable agent will go broke without a steady, consistent stream of qualified, motivated buyers and sellers.
So while knowledge about real estate is essential to being a competent agent, it’s not going to write your ticket to success. You also need to develop prospecting and marketing skills designed to create an on-going flow of leads and clients.
Money-making marketing isn’t difficult if you know a few basics. In fact, all successful marketing has three essential components. I call them…
An Investment That Pays for a Lifetime
Would you like a small piece of helpful investment advice? OK… look at these facts:
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Revlon stock 10 years ago, it would now be worth $4
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Harken Energy stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $2.
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of United Airlines stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $0.
But think about this…
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, and turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.
Isn’t it amazing that your investment advisor could have advocated drinking and recycling, rather than investing in their worthless stocks, and you’d be 5 to 43 TIMES RICHER?
This does not go in the direction that you think it does. It is well worth the seventeen minutes [if you are a fast reader like me] it takes to read it. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying if you read only one of these articles, read this one: what it teaches impacts everything you do. It puts the horse before the cart.
A Grand Slam Buyer Prospecting System
If you’re looking to generate a consistent daily flow of targeted, red-hot buyers calling you, this quick and easy strategy will have your phone ringing off the hook almost overnight.
You don’t need to make a single outbound call or prospect in any way. It will take you just minutes to set up. And (best of all) you can do it all on a “poor-boy” budget.
In fact, I know agents who have added more than $6-figures a year in commissions with this one system alone.
How to Master the Single Greatest Skill for Real Estate Success
Have you ever heard the saying, “If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention”?
Well, there’s an “outrage” being committed by well-intended (but misguided) “experts” in our industry…and it’s sending unsuspecting agents down a freeway to frustration and failure.
Dec
3
Have you ever been buried alive?
According to illusionist David Blane who spent 7 days buried alive, it’s not the near suffocation or loneliness or claustrophobia that grinds away at you…
It’s the feeling of being alive and TRAPPED that nearly kills you.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, people were so afraid of being buried alive that they often requested to have their feet sliced or prodded with a fire poker to make sure that they were dead.
They did not want to be trapped.
We have a fear of being buried prematurely. Whether it is real or metaphorical. Nobody likes being trapped.
What does this have to do with real estate? Pay attention. I’ll show you.
The Ancient Bazaar
There’s good reason to believe that the real estate model is changing. [In fact, it already has: you just may not be aware of it.]
Nah, you say. The NAR is a huge organization that will not allow the model to change. At least not dramatically.
Is that right?
Let’s look at other supposed entrenched models that have changed and then tell me how you really feel.
Consider the Internet.
In the Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke wrote, “In many ways, the Internet more resembles an ancient bazaar than it fits the business models companies try to impose upon it.“
The Internet is a place where people can talk to other people without constraint. Without filters or censorship or official sanction. And perhaps most significantly, without advertising.
That was true in the beginning. But not now.
Manipulation, Coercion, Threats of Reprisal
The web has become just an extension of preceding mass media, primarily television. According to Locke, the rhetoric it uses is freighted with the same marketing jargon that characterized broadcast: brand, market share, eyeballs, demographics.
Of course, online marketeers still drool at the prospect of the Net replicating the top-down broadcast model wherein glitzy “content” is developed at great cost in remote studios and jammed down a one-way pipe into millions of living rooms.
It’s like TV with a buy button.
Yippee!
But business environments based on command-and-control are usually characterized by manipulation, coercion, and threats of reprisal.
And this means nothing to the web surfer. He’ll ignore you because he’s got plenty to keep him busy.
Funny thing is, not a whole lot of agents even know what the Internet is for, let alone blogging. Regardless, we’ve adopted it faster than any technology since fire.
And you need to catch up.
How to Bury a Real Estate Agent Alive
For one, it’s given the consumer way more choice and power than anyone imagined. It’s turned the tables upside down.
Many brokers and agents feared these changes, seeing in them only a devastating loss of control.
Those who didn’t adapt got buried alive.
Darwin said “It’s not the strongest or the fittest that survive–rather it’s the species that most adapts survives.”
Are you willing to adapt?
In the old school, you get this rule-book mindset–the broker’s s common look and feel, logo placement, legal number of words on each Web page, calls per day, work your family list, post a billboard here, churn out endless reams of cash here [pay per click].
These may have worked in the past, when the web was young, when the 80′s were a stellar set of years, but it’s all so cramped and constipated and uninviting now.
Dead.
The real point is that the Internet has made it possible for genuine human voices to be heard again.
The fact is, people at the bazaar, the consumers on the web, often have far more valuable knowledge than brokers and agents and business control freaks. They are driving the car now.
The Challenge Facing 21st Century Agents
So you get yourself a website. Fling up a pic, a logo, a slogan: “Outstanding agent in the Metro City Area who stands up for quality and fairness.”
Somebody, please, slice the feet to see if they’re alive.
What you don’t want with your website is to kill off people. If you kill off this enthusiasm, you can easily end up with a large, professional-looking, and very expensive website or blog that nobody gives a damn about.
In contrast, genuine conversation flourishes only in an atmosphere of free and open exchange. What if, instead, the attraction is a throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales?
When people are encouraged to share what they know with each other, when agents are ready to learn from the consumer what their wants and needs are…then this exchange becomes a rapidly expanding conversation–a conversation that would soon lead to loyal clients.
The challenge I’ve found agents to have is not to offer just trivial feature alternatives, but transparency.
In a networked market, the best way for an agent to “advertise” will be to provide a public window into his or her heart.
Instead of putting up slick images of what they’d like people to believe, agents will open up so people can see what’s really going on.
Of course you’ll be sticking your neck out.
But if you don’t, you risk premature death. You can’t invite customers to contribute buying and selling ideas by holding them at bay.
Or worse: failing to meet them where they are congregating.
Why They’ll Make Fun of You
To some, it’s spooky to think going online invites criticism.
Mouthing platitudes guarantees you will be challenged. Nothing is accepted at face value, or taken for granted. Everything is subject to inspection–whether it was a market condition, a working philosophy or, God help you, an advertisement.
Think of Joel and the ‘bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The point is not to watch the film, but to outdo each other making fun of it.
But this whole gamut of conversation, from infinite jest to point-specific expertise: who needs it?
You need it.
Conversations are markets. And markets is where you make your money.
When conversations are not only engaging, interesting, exciting–they become effective. They become tools and techniques to bridge that chasm between their problems and your solution.
Do It Now
Conversations on the web does not reinforce loyalty and obedience–it encourages idle speculation and loose talk. It encourages stories.
So leverage a blog. Leverage LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Open Social, Active Rain, Zwillow.
Bare your soul. Tell a story. Create a cult. Do something out of the ordinary online. Otherwise this cooling market will bury you.
And bury you before you are ready.
Related Articles
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Naked Conversations: The Lynchpin to Your Real Estate Blog