Today’s successful mega-producers are generating plenty of business, but unlike the customers of yesterday, today’s real estate customer is beginning online. According to the latest figures, in excess of 90% (94%) are beginning their search online. In my last installment, I explained how successful agents today are going way “upstream” to capture their business — before the customer has had the opportunity to be attracted by old-school marketing techniques. If you haven’t read it yet, you owe it to yourself to start there.

We are all under the gun every day in real estate sales.  Most of us get up every morning unemployed.  We need to go out and find a person to buy and sell with everyday.  How do we “pressure proof” our business?  We must put ourselves in the position where we are always winning.  When we are on a listing appointment, and we are struggling with the seller, we must believe they will sign the listing before we leave.  We must know during our prospecting block that we will turn up a new listing or new buyer every day.  Let me share with you a few ideas to make your business “pressure proof” and successful daily. 1.      Trust Your Skills and Abilities We all go through droughts or slumps in our business.  I s

In my last post I discussed the difference between yesterday’s pull marketing and today’s push marketing. I explained how pull marketing is reactive — “If you build it they will come.” Push marketing, on the other hand, is pro-active — “If you build it they won’t come so you have to go get them.” (Click to view previous blog post.) Many agents today have experienced that very phenomenon: doing lots of advertising and getting little if no results.

Before we launch into this segment, let’s recap the last installment. In it I was discussing how in the 1960s and 70s, our industry was in a Broker-centric Era. The brokers had all the power. Customers had very little access to listing inventory except through them. Agents had no business except through them. Modern real estate brokerage was in its infancy. By controlling the inventory, broker-owners were able to build real estate dynasties. It was common place to see multiple office operations with teams of agents, and it was during this climate that companies like Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, and other similar broker-centric companies became huge empires.

When CNN’s Pulse on America program featured us two years ago, they were investigating an interesting phenomenon in our industry. Click to view video. It seems that today there are two real estate worlds coexisting simultaneously. Like in the movie The Matrix, there was the “perceived” world and then there was the “real” world. In our industry there is much the same today. Those agents who are practicing real estate this new way, are doing quite well — many better than ever. But those who are hanging onto the old-school real estate model are finding themselves working harder and harder and making less and less money.

Salespeople love referrals. They’re the sincerest form of compliment and a remarkably cost-effective route to new business. The idea of attracting referrals is so popular that sales trainers who bill themselves as referral gurus make fortunes promoting magical systems that supposedly deliver more referrals than an agent can handle, all in return for tuition at a three-day seminar. What they talk about for three days is a mystery to me.  Referrals are really pretty simple stuff.  A lot of it you can only acquire through perfect practice of your scripts, over and over, of referral-generating and referral-cultivation tactics.  

Referral Truths and Consequences

One study after another has shown that your body language and tonality account for over 90% of your presentation’s effectiveness.  What you actually say accounts for less than 10% of the delivery.  If you’re scrambling to find the right words, as most salespeople are, you’re spending your energy in inverse proportion to what impacts your effectiveness. The solution is to plan what you are going to say beforehand, so that during the presentation you can focus on language, tonality, and the following four steps to a great delivery. 

How to Reach Buyers in Today’s Market 

With an abundance of houses for sale and buyers still weary to return to the housing market, it is now more important than ever before that real estate agents improve their marketing, says the new, 170 page 2008 Swanepoel Trends Report from RealSure Publishing.  In Trend 3, titled ‘The New Digital Currency,’ the Report provides numerous statistics and information showing the shifting patterns of today’s home buyers.  

NO HOUSE LEFT BEHIND ought to become the mantra of every real estate agent.   As we deal with the consequences of a sluggish market, it becomes essential that a certain degree of renovation should take place prior to the listing of every home.  That is if you’re hoping to attract the selective buyers who have an over abundance of choices.

I would really like to get some feedback on this topic.  This post comes from my observations of the Arizona Association of Realtors adopting Stewart Title's SureClose application and making it the transaction management tool of choice for their entire membership. It is an opt-in program so brokers don't "have" to use it.  If they choose to sign on, the application is covered in their current dues structure...fine and dandy but what about those who already have a transaction management platform and don't want to switch? Will the association give them back that portion of their dues so they can pay their vendor of choice?