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.

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

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.  

As i was researching the current market in the USA I came across this and found it to be wonderful new's.

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1. Salt Lake City

Median Home Sale Price: $246,700
Percent Change: 14.1%

Prices in Salt Lake City continued to climb as the city remains largely unaffected by the nationwide housing downturn due to low unsold inventory and a stable lending environment. This median-priced, ranch-style home was built in 1993 and has views of the surrounding mountains. There are five bedrooms and two baths across 1,800 square feet of interior space. The home also features a two-car garage and a rear patio. It is listed for $245,000 through Secure Real Estate.

 With the average days on market up in many markets across the county, more and more Expired Listings are showing up on a daily basis.  Expired listings are a great lead source, but only if you have a plan to work, locate, follow up with, list at an appropriate price and then market properly so that it will attract buyer leads and then sell.  

You can find Expired Listing on your local MLS system, or you can use a program like that one outlined at http://www.expiredrealestateleads.com that will do much of this initial research. 

By Cheri Alguire

You have heard the arguments for having accountability in achieving your goals and you’ve decided to bring one or two or a dozen people into the process of achieving your goal. How do you start? What can you do to make sure the accountability functions as you want it to, as it’s supposed to?

By Cheri Alguire

Are you sick of all of the bad publicity you hear on the news about the Real Estate Industry?

Are you sitting on a bunch of listings yet not had a sale in months?

Are buyers running you all over the place and then too afraid to put in an offer?

Wondering if this industry is worth sticking it out for any longer?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then it may be time to make some lemonade.