Gary Elwood

Author Archives: Gary Elwood

2 Lethal Mistakes Realtors Make When Prospecting Foreclosures

In the past I’ve written on approaching foreclosures and preforeclosures.

Since then I’ve heard a couple of alarming stories about agents approaching foreclosures aggressively. Like face to face…on the first time they met.

Seems pretty straightforeward, but you just don’t approach foreclosures this way. That is if you want to have any hope of working with them.

People who are going foreclosures are very sensitive about what they are going through.

Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel?

This ranks up there as the deadliest and most common mistake:

One: Agressively approach foreclosures, face to face.

The other mistake is kind of the opposite.

Two: Passively approach foreclosures.

Remember, foreclosures have a whole lot at stake here. And some foreclosures are reaching out [and getting burned]…but mostly they are remaining quiet, trying to protect their pride and dignity.

So, we know the thing for them to do is to let down their pride, but we don’t get in their face. But neither do you back away and give up after one rejection.

In fact, for the best results, you want to approach foreclosures weekly, or every other week, with original letters.

Totally avoid form letters or postcards. They’ll see through that big time.

And each letter should reference the previous letter and always be different in some way.

And remember this: letters should appeal to the emotions of the preforeclosure homeowner because this is a difficult time for them. Your stance should be one of wanting to help. Make it clear how you can assist them, including offering cash for their equity, finding them a new place to live and keeping them from having a foreclosure on their credit history — something that could make it extremely difficult to qualify for a home loan for up to seven years.

In a nutshell, help them avoid a nightmare. And this takes some kid glove treatment. Persistant, sensitive treatment.

How about you? Have you heard any horror preforeclosure stories?

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Eliminate Competition at Your Next Listing Appointment Before You Even Arrive

Sounds alomost impossible, doesn’t it: eliminating competition at your next listing appointment before you even set foot in the door ? Well, it’s not. In fact, it’s rather easy…if you’re willing to be different.

How can you be different? Here are some ways:

Pre-Presentation Seller Briefing

  • Insist on being the last in a line of presentations,
  • Find out when all of the other presentations are
    (keep a note of this).
  • Call the sellers every day there is a listing presentation.
  • Ask them if your appointment is still on.
  • Ask them to promise not to decide on an agent until all presentations are done.

Pre-Presentation Research

  • Print a quick summary of market activity for the home’s neighborhood.
  • Look for identical matches in Actives, Solds, Under
    Contract, Pending, Withdrawn and Expireds. (This summary will help you familiarize yourself with the neighborhood, which you can reference during the presentation.)
  • Take digital photos of the property, comparable properties and the subdivision entrance. (This portfolio of photos will allow you to view the condition of the property and make positive and negative notes.)

Pre-Presentation Questions

  • Look at the seller’s home and ask yourself these questions: What are the negatives? Does it back to a major road? Is it under power lines? Does it need paint? How does this compare to other homes in the neighborhood?

Pre-Presentation Materials

  • Create the CMA from your MLS as a Web or PowerPoint presentation. Have a color print copy, too. (Everyone else will do a black-and-white CMA.)
  • Personalize the print presentation on a color-bound material with “Especially prepared for <their name>.” (It’s easy to create a template in MS Word, MS Publisher, HP Real Estate Software or IMPREV.)

Pre-Presentation Recording

Bottomline, when you are thoroughly prepared, you immediately distance yourself from every average agent (Pareto Rule: two agents out of ten are above average. The rest: barely average).

And when you arrive it’s only a matter of moments before your sellers recognize you were the only rational choice the whole time.

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Monday [social media] Mashup

Overcoming blogging fears with Anil Dash.

Trends in real estate marketing.

Dartmouth’s John Vogel says sub-prime mess predictable since 2004.

Make maps of unique places, neighborhoods, tours…media?

Zillow could end up replacing NAR as the….

The Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economic’s blog gives a fresh view of the housing slump.

To sell a home in a slumping market then, listen to Ralph Roberts.

Robert Socble explains why Facebook and other SEO resistant technologies will upend Google in 4 years.

And finally, 20 ways to streamline your social networking profiles.

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Take the Ultimate Real Estate Marketing Round-up Survey

I need your help!

For the last 12 years, it’s been very important for me to understand where the state of real estate marketing is.

That’s why I spend inordinate–some would say unhealthy–amounts of time exploring the most effective real estate marketing tools and strategies.

And one of the best ways I think to find these tools and strategies is to ask you, the real estate agent. (Makes sense, doesn’t it, since you are in the trenches everyday.)

Anyway, help me tell the real story about real estate marketing.

Please join me in creating the Ultimate Real Estate Marketing Round-up by completing a very short, multiple choice survey focused on finding out what it’s really like to be a real estate marketer.

(Wouldn’t you like to know how your marketing stacks up?)

Simply take five minutes to fill out the following 11-question survey.

Thanks in advance! I so appreciate you taking the time. I’m looking forward to digging in  and I’m looking forward to sharing the results with you in a future post.

Work 25 Leads in 2 Hours with These 9 Tips

25 leads is more than most people produce in 2 weeks.

Even 2 months.

However, there is one situation where you can generate 25 leads in 2 hours. . . with a martini in one hand, a smile plastered across your face and a stack of cards in your other hand.

The stack I’m talking about is full of business cards.

That’s right. . . I’m talking about networking events.

The country club. The Rotary Club. The Chamber of Commerce.

All fabulous places to meet many new people. And have a blast to boot.

Here are nine essential tips you must use to make any networking event a smash.

  1. Arrive early. Before people are engaged in conversations. It’s easier to start a conversation than it is to break into one.
  2. Zero in on the wallflowers. You never know what kind of potential is lurking around those shy, quiet types.
  3. Shake hands firmly.
  4. Wear something out of the ordinary…a top hat or bright orange scarf. When you follow up with the leads mention, “I was the one wearing the top hat.” That will ring a bell.
  5. Pick something up. Anything. A tray of drinks or hors d’oeuvres. “Hey, would you like one?” is an excellent way to introduce yourself. And, “Got to keep passing” is an excellent reason to move on to the next person. This trick will help you to keep conversations short.
  6. Memorize your elevator speech.
  7. Be happy…regardless of whether or not you had a tough day. People want to work with upbeat, outgoing people.
  8. Don’t drink too much. Sober and in control, you’ll stand out.
    Stay until the end. The later you stay, the more contacts.

Stephen Covey’s Top 7 Tips for Listening Well

“Just as the deepest hunger of the human body is for air, the deepest hunger of the human soul is to be understood.” Stephen Covey

Whether you are mired in closed door negotiations over the value of a piece of property. . . interviewing a star agent who you want to join your team. . . sitting in the home of a seller during a listing appointment. . . or simply enjoying dinner with your spouse, listening to another person until he or she feels understood is the equivalent to giving that person air. . .

And could mean the difference between a successful or disastrous conversation.

On the average, studies show that 75 percent of our waking hours is spent in verbal communication: 30 percent in talking, 45 percent in listening.

But the average person is a “half-listener,” retaining only about 50 percent of what he or she hears immediately after it is heard.

And many people, while outwardly listening, are inwardly preparing a response. And this often is a reason that a lot of conversations fall apart mid course.

But good listeners, on the other hand. . . power negotiators. . . generally follow a consistent set of guidelines or skills, that allow them to hold together even some of the more volatile negotiations.

Some of these guidelines are listed below:

1. Good listeners use their thought speed to advantage. They constantly apply their spare thinking to what is being said:

  • Are the speaker’s facts accurate?
  • Do they come from an unprejudiced source?
  • What are the speaker’s motives?
  • What has the speaker left out?
  • Is the speaker dealing in facts or inferences?
  • Am I getting the full picture or only what will prove the speaker’s point?

2. Good listeners try to find something interesting in what is being said, something that can be used to help create a new idea or solution or be used in some other way.

  • What is the speaker saying that I need to know?
  • Is that really a practical idea?
  • Is the speaker reporting anything I don’t know?

3. Good listeners avoid getting too excited about a speaker’s point until they are certain they have heard it through and understand it.

4. Good listeners concentrate and instinctively fight distraction. They close a door, turn off the radio and interrupt only when it is necessary to clear up one point before proceeding to another.

5. Good listeners focus their attention on a central idea or theme. This helps them to remember the facts cited.

6. Good listeners restate and summarize the speaker’s point of view. They also look into the speaker’s face and maintain eye contact.

7. Good listeners enable the speaker to express what the speaker has in mind and thus make the speaker more able to give listeners the information they need.

[Adapted in part from Covey’s audio program Living the Seven Habits and the books The Power of Words, by Stuart Chase (possibly out of print?), and Are You Listening, by Ralph Nichols and Leonard Stevens.]

To Cold Call or Not to Cold Call

I’m not sure how you feel about cold calling, but I feel getting 2-4 new listings from knocking on only 20 doors worth the stinking effort.

Of course, if you don’t like to cold call, it never hurts to enlist the help of a simple sign rider. Sign riders could triple that number.

Besides, cold calling seems…well, ancient?…in this age of the social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies and the new marketplace conversation, what some call Web 2.0.

What do you think?

I know that I’ve been saying cold calling is dead for a long, long time…but does Web 2.0 drive the stake through the heart of cold calling?

Or is there still a place in real estate for cold calling?

Does a strategy of approaching the ten houses to the left and the ten houses to the right really constitute cold calling?

I mean, you have a warm opening in the sense that you can approach the neighbor and say “Hey, I’m helping your neighbor Linda sell her house, and I was just wondering….”

What do you think?

Stalling and Concessions: a Hard-Tactic Even the Easy Going Can Use

In the spirit of what we are doing here at the Real Estate Marketing, today I want to share with you a negotiation technique that I see happening more often I think than necessary.

Not always in the real estate arena: I’ve seen it with clothing salesmen. I’ve seen it with an acquaintance trying to sell his business. I saw it once with a simple street peddler in Dustin, Florida one summer.

But because real estate is my main focus, my life so to speak, I’ve of course seen it a lot in this business. And like I said: I think it’s unnecessary.

I’m not absolutely sure why it happens, but I have some hunches: desperation and fear.

Go ahead and read the remainder of this post and afterwards let me know what your thoughts are.

Salespeople are typically short on patience when they smell a deal in the air. In fact, sales trainers sometimes teach that if you do not strike while the iron is hot, you might lose the deal.

But impatience may encourage a real estate agent to make unnecessary concessions.

Knowing this, a savvy counterpart might stall for time… trying to make the impatient negotiator nervous and more willing to make trade-offs.

Imagine an investor offers a FSBO $100,000 for his home.

Over the next few days, that investor calls two or three times to ask what the FSBO thinks of the proposal.

The FSBO never calls back. He’s stalling, hoping the investor will make some concessions if he feels she isn’t offering a particularly good deal.

In fact, the FSBO might be doing business with a competitor the investor thinks, and gets nervous…

Although she is not sure if the FSBO has even had time to review any of her proposals, the investor leaves a message that her “numbers are ballpark, based on the information given, and there is room to negotiate.”

And this is exactly what the FSBO wanted.

The moral?

Never discount a price before your counterpart tells you there is a need to do so. Never make a concession until it is apparent the other side wants one.

Your best bet: wait patiently for a reply. And do not call over and over again. You’ll look desperate.

So, tell me: why do you think real estate agents–salespeople in general–do this?

And when it comes to negotiating, do you look forward to the conflict or do you shy away from conflict?

What do you think of the idea of stalling?

Is this particular technique something you’ve used in the past? If so, were you successful?

Is it something you would use in the future?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

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