This is a response to Robyn Hardy’s article posing the question
“Should Local and State Boards Purchase Opt-In Technology With Your Dues?”

It is such an important topic that I thought it important enough to write this as an article... didn't mean to steal your position Robyn...

There are two sides to this argument and it fits any scenario within the ‘broker autonomy vs. board babysitting’ issue:

Side 1 - Some Brokers want to have their own choice because…

a) they have their own 'relationships' and/or
b) what fits one broker's style of business might not fit another.  Some technologies fit large brokers better while others fit the small ones and no one knows the individual broker’s business model better than that broker…

I recently overheard an agent talking about their site and how it was getting over 1000 hits per month.  When I approached him and asked who the site provider was, I learned it was a provider that gave basic statistics to its users in the admin panel (which made me suspect that the stats were being misinterpreted by the agent).  I asked how many leads had come out of this and he said (paraphrasing) “I haven’t seen any yet but with those kind of numbers, it has to produce soon, right?”  I said, “Maybe.  Let me look into it”.  I asked the agent to look up all the stats and get them back to me.

We are currently in a very challenging market.  Some markets are worse than others, but overall, everyone is affected in some way.  I am watching as some very large companies ( Billions in Sales just a few years ago) are now in bankruptcy and probably won’t make it out.  How can this happen?  How can companies fall from glory so hard and so fast?  It is simple – just like the industry as a whole, they have not adapted.  Like it or not, technology is here to stay and things like email, PDA’s, text messaging and the like are going to make or break those in the industry.  Adopt or Fail.  That is the truth.  Many brokers running brokerages today are still using buggy whips and the rest of the world is driving Ferraris.  When I see an A

Imagine holding an open house and when prospects
arrive, your assistant promptly directs them to another
open house down the street without getting any
information or without asking any closing questions. You
wouldn’t end up with very many leads at the end of the
day, would you? In another way, imagine being a fisherman and using a
fishing net with a bunch of holes in it. You might know
the best fishing spots but in the end you can’t keep them

I get asked all the time “how do I get more traffic and leads to my website?” Many usually then ask the next question “how do I get ranked on the search engines?” Well, I think the search engine concern is only for those who have an advanced web program. To graduate to that ‘advanced’ level, you need to do the basics first.

Have your web address on all of your normal marketing materials. When I first examine the web practices of the average agent, I first tell them to put their address on their business cards, flyers for properties, newspaper ads, homes magazines, radio ads, etc. I’m amazed at how many spend money on pay per click and don’t even have their web address on their business card!

At the mid-year meetings in May of this year, Google was invited to have a panelist at the RISMedia Power Broker meeting. The Google rep stated that the Real Estate industry should take a cue from them and give away as much information as possible because the viewer will remember where they got it from and come back. There is one problem with this line of thinking...Google gets their money from ad revenues so as soon as someone hits their page, they've made their money! That is not true in the Real Estate industry - we need to actually capture a "lead" and get face-to-face in order to get paid. The Google rep was uninformed in this area and it was irresponsible for the organizers to allow this person to speak on the Panel for this reason.