The perfect place to come to ask questions about real estate education or if looking at improving you skills in order to survive and thrive in your market.
It is interesting to note that www.Realtor.com has expanded to include both commercial and investment properties. And it continues to boast more eyeballs and clicks compared to all other real estate sites combined.
For those who may have had issues in the past; it is time to get back in there and make it work for you. With Realtor.com's numbers; you cannot afford to have your listings off this site (whether residential, commercial or investment).
Take the time to look at the various levels of participation and make the best choice for your budget today.
Mike Brodie, chair of theREALTORS® Federal Credit Union, announced that the credit union was "open for business." Brodie introduced Thomas Glatt, CEO, who thanked the more than 200 NAR members and staff who've already joined. "We're America's newest credit union," he said, "but after only four days of operations, we are not America's smallest credit union." Glatt presented information on the RFCU during various meetings throughout the week and they had a booth at the Trade Show which was bustling with people getting information and signing up. Check out the information athttps://www.realtorsfcu.org/
Probably the most important question you should be asking yourself right now is how can you stop or prevent the wasting of your valuable time. Many articles and blogs are quick to tell you what you should do; i.e. write a blog, join and post to Facebook or My Space, join and post to LinkedIn and Twitter. But then how do you spare some time for calling current clients; or heaven forbid past clients? Or marketing your listings? Or seeing your transactions through to closing? Never before have there been so many options from which to choose. So which prospecting tools do you choose? Which ones actually work? The choices boggle the mind.
Here's where I think you should start when budgeting your time: first split prospecting activities into two categories i.e. activities that are considered to be "active" and those that are considered "passive." Active is designed to put you face to face or voice to voice with those that may want to "do" real estate (buy/sell/rent/lease) or may know someone who wants to. An example of active prospecting is setting aside time each and every day to call 5 people who have used your services in the past or who are friends to see if they or someone they know may need your real estate services. Passive is where you are keeping your name and expertise in a public forum while allowing visitors to get to know you on a personal basis - the best examples of this are the social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space.
Active prospecting will always be more important and with faster results compared to passive activities; but passive activities consistently applied (and that is the key) are vital for the long term continued success of your business.
My mixture for success is 80/20 (where have we heard that before?); 80% of your time should be spent actively prospecting and 20% of your time should be spent on passively prospecting.
So how would that lay out in your typical week? Here is what I believe you should look at scheduling.
Active:
· Monday through Fridayat a specified time each day, set aside 30 minutes and call at least 5 people who have used your services. These are fairly quick calls. Check in with them to see how they are doing, give them an interesting fact about the market today, and remember at the end of the conversation to remind them that if they know anyone who needs your real estate services to please pass your name and contact information along (or ask them for the information so you may contact them directly) and say "thank you" for their business. Rotate through all your past clients. Ideally you want to contact them at least once a quarter, or better yet once a month. And yes they love to speak with you and yes they love getting "inside" information on the current real estate market. Who wouldn't!
· Saturdayis the day to spend one hour, the same time each Saturday, walking through your "farm." If you don't have one set up (next time I will make some suggestions on how to set up a successful farm), start with the neighborhood in which you live. Say "hi," give them some information about their neighborhood that they may not know, leave your card or some other advertising piece (how about information on a listing that is in their neighborhood! Or market facts!) Say "thank you" and move on to the next home or property.
Passive:
· For residential REALTORS®, I recommend using the REALTOR.com Blog (which you can get for FREE!).http://solutioncenter.realtor.com/Agents/FeaturedBlog.aspxYes, there are all sorts of Blog sites where you can get the software for a fee and for free, but which ones get you business? If you are a residential REALTOR® why not get a Blog at the site where the clear majority of home buyers and sellers start their agent/home purchase search? That's a no brainer for me. Now to add it into your schedule: spend 1 hour every week and write a brief factual article (remember those high school English classes, please and why not use what you came up with for your past client calls!) on a topic that is pertinent to your market place. Posting an article no less that once a week keeps your Blog fresh and provides the people who visit REALTOR.com an interesting tidbit to read and a way to see what you know and care about on your market. It also helps to drive traffic to your website and moves you up in the search engines - cool! Remember to add your Blog address to your business cards, your e-mail signature, and a link on your website plus add it to all your advertising pieces.
· Join Zolve.com; a referral site for agents. Spend 1 hour once to fully set up your profile and to invite other agents from areas where you have or might send or receive referrals, into your "sphere of influence." Then respond promptly to e-mail notifications that will come over time to your inbox from Zolve. Zolve is also a fantastic place to receive information on a variety of topics through its "Coaching Corner."
Notice I did not recommend that you join a social networking site. I do not believe at this time it is worth your valuable time. Call me crazy but you know there are only so many hours in the day etc.
That is it for the moment. Send me your comments and your thoughts. I hope you find my comments useful.
You know that I am obsessed with great , cool, "free" stuff. Here is another one best for residential listings (although I can see a commercial application to it, especially for commercial leasing) you may want to check out:
http://www.propertypreviews.com.
It gives you the ability for "free" to create :30 or :60 videos with your photos! Once created it looks as if you can upload it to your MLS, you can do some simple editing, and you can upload to various listing sites.
I just returned from a 4-day teaching engagement in Vietnam. I was asked to come by the Vietnam Real Estate Association in conjunction with the International Real Property Foundation (IRPF - a non-profit arm of the National Association of REALTORS®) and give a seminar covering everything from brokerage management and sales training to real estate technology. It was an amazing opportunity to bring to a country new to property rights how we in the US help people buy, sell, rent, and lease residential and commercial property. There was shock and amazement with many things we take for granted; such as our MLS systems, standardized contracts, and relatively easy access to capital. We had great discussions on all these topics plus we discussed how we value properties in the US and how the US market actually was versus what they saw on the news.
But what struck me most, was that at the end of the segment on real estate technology, one young woman came to me and said that no matter how much technology she might use in the future, she felt that personal one on one interaction was her key to success so far in the real estate business.
Right on! That's something for us all to remember; real estate whether residential, commercial or management is always going to come down to our personal contact and interactions. Don't get so wrapped up in technology that you forget that one very important fact.
Sometimes we just need to take a break and start from the beginning. In fact it is cathartic to sit down at least once a year and take the time to assess our strengths and weaknesses, our opportunities and threats. It allows us to see what we are doing well and what we need to work on, it also allows us to look at the market around us and determine where the opportunities may now be versus the past several years and to assess the current and potential future threats. This type of assessment is referred to as a SWOT Analysis. It is a worthwhile exercise you should take the time to use to improve your business. A free resource on SWOT is available at www.businessballs.com.
Here's a cool item for your Treo fromMike Flynn(RVP Region 12), Washington State! It's a cell phone "kill pill." This is a way to send a coded SMS message to your Treo phone in case it's lost or stolen that will delete all your sensitive information. It's cheap ($15) and does other great stuff too; it is also packaged with a "do not disturb" feature, "super alarm," news and weather etc.http://www.bluefishwireless.com/products/Central_for_Treo.htm
And fromRobert Bass, Phoenix, Arizonafor you Blackberry users:Jott.comalso has a special feature for BlackBerry8800, 8300 (Curve), and 8100 (Pearl)users!It seamlessly integrates into the email application you already use, and is a huge leap forward for BlackBerry lovers in three ways: 1) it is 3-5 times faster than 'thumbing' text; 2) you won't be known for sending terse replies because you don't want to thumb type a more normal email message; and 3) you will be safer because you won't have to take your eyes off the road.
All right, many of my friends in real estate throughout the country are using it, but I just didn't see the need. Why would anyone leave voice messages on their cell phone that are turned into text e-mail messages? After all I can take the time to put reminders into my Smartphone or heaven forbid write them down the old fashioned way. I don't need another e-mail message to check...and then the day came when I was goaded into trying it. OK. So I was wrong; dead wrong.
www.Jott.comis one of the more useful services for agents on the go. And it is free - that is the best part. It takes you about 2 minutes to set it up, then you verify your phone then you are off and running in all of about 10 minutes. Easy peasy. (I can deal with an extra ad or two to use this service.)
So next time I am running around and need to "jot down" a note, I'll just use my cell phone and have Jott turn my voice message into a text e-mail messageta da!Keeping organized, keeping sane. :-) Cool. Try it for yourself.
And if you have an iPhone like me they have a special app for you that is way cool too!
I don't read many "business books" that are filled with beautiful sayings and tightly turned phrases that make you say ahhhhh. (I'll reread any Nathanial Hawthorn book again for that.) I don't want to waste my precious reading time. I want a book that is going to tell me straight out the information I need to improve myself and my business. Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of the latter. He gives you well researched, real world examples that you can apply to your business to improve your competency. His subtitle "why some companies make the leap and other don't" tells you what the book is going to be about. Plus at the end of each chapter he has a chapter summary if you are really pressed for time (or for you reread when you want to remember the point of that chapter).
A fantastic book and one you'll pull great ideas from that you can apply to your business today and tomorrow.
With everyone looking for solutions to reduce their energy costs, check out this website site: www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home. It is a great site for your clients and for you. It gives your clients useful information on how to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. It helps to educate us with information on topics such as new building techniques to reduce energy costs as well as information on saving money with energy efficient appliances. Cool!
OK. Not all of our clients will search for a home on the internet. Not all of our clients will even visit our great websites. And unfortunately not all of our clients have a cell phone.
Did you know that according to a recent Neilson Marketing Association survey almost 20% of the respondents said they would purchase goods or services via texting!
So do your clients text? Can and do you text?
Here are a couple great links to get you started so you can add texting to your list of abilities:
Here is a quick way to improve your weekly organization.
·Sunday: take an hour today to plan your upcoming week; first acknowledge what you accomplished the week before, see what you still need to do, then put together your plan. Prioritize your items or projects into three categories: 1) current client needs and activities; 2) midterm client needs and activities; and 3) enhancing business activities / business development. Then add these activities to your calendar. For some if you are worried about the day getting away from you, add your “must dos” as appointments and stick to them. Note all your appointments both for business and personal, list your items to do on the appropriate day. I always set aside a lunch appointment with my husband once a week. :-)
·Monday: Spend your first hour on the computer checking and returning e-mails, and phone calls. Set aside 1 hour today and call 5 people ask them how they are doing, let them know one new fact about the local real estate market that they may not know, and then close by reminding them if they know anyone looking for a REALTOR® to please pass your contact information along, or to give you their contact information. As you are going through your calls write a quick handwritten thank you note to each person – whether you were able to contact them or not – as appropriate. At the end of the day, note what you accomplished and what you still have to do. Add those items into the remainder of your week.
·Tuesday: Spend your first hour on the computer checking and returning e-mails, and phone calls. 5 calls and 5 thank you notes. At the end of the day, note what you accomplished and what you still have to do. Add those items into the remainder of your week.
·Wednesday: Spend your first hour on the computer checking and returning e-mails, and phone calls. 5 calls and 5 thank you notes. At the end of the day, note what you accomplished and what you still have to do. Add those items into the remainder of your week.
·Thursday: Spend your first hour on the computer checking and returning e-mails, and phone calls. 5 calls and 5 thank you notes. At the end of the day, note what you accomplished and what you still have to do. Add those items into the remainder of your week.
·Friday: Spend your first hour on the computer checking and returning e-mails, and phone calls. 5 calls and 5 thank you notes. At the end of the day, note what you accomplished and what you still have to do. Add those items to Saturday or the following week.
·Saturday: Spend your first hour on the computer checking and returning e-mails, and phone calls. Prepare for appointments.
·Sunday: Repeat last Sunday’s activities.
I hope that if you try this for one week you will find that you will have a better handle on your weekly schedule and your life.
With the world quickly moving from “written” communication to video communication with our customers and clients, take a look at what I just found: http://realtytimes.com/html/videonewsletterintro.htm! Wow! This is a video newsletter that you can purchase, choose content, and then send to your customers and clients. Yes, there are fees. But this is cutting edge stuff from Realty Times with facts and figures to enhance your position as your client’s “trusted real estate advisor!”
And no, I do not work for Realty Times. I just think the product is fantastic! Cutting edge! And that’s the type of information I want to bring to you!
It's baacck! That's right, walking your neighborhood "farm" area is back and just as successful as
it was in the past! You may have thought that fancy brochures or e-mail campaigns or refusing to practice the art of
farming (that is; choosing a neighborhood and working to develop a rapport with those that live within that area by
walking through the area and knocking on the doors of those who live there and introducing yourself and letting them know
that you are the expert in that area so if they know of anyone who wants to buy or sell in that are you are the one to
call...whew, more on the "how tos" in the next post) was dead, or a thing of the past. We were all
wrong!
As "high tech" as we are in this business, it is the "high touch" aspect that keeps us successful in the
practice of real estate. More and more REALTORS are finding out in order to be competitive in today's marketplace -- no
matter what your market may be -- they must adopt new (or old) techniques to connect with people who want to buy or sell
real estate; high touch techniques.
Next time we'll talk about how to set up and cultivate "farms" to insure that they will be
successful.
Lenders and mortgage brokers cannot be forgotten when it comes to education.
Responsible lending that allows a lender or mortgage broker to increase income and personal effectiveness is important as is education of the consumer.
Responsible lenders play a vital role in helping families achieve homeownership, but consumers need to make sure they are not dealing with a predatory lender.
REALTORS and lenders alike have to avoid predatory lending through education of the consumers and those within our industries.
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