Gary Elwood
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Gary Elwood
When You Should Depend on a Team–and When You Shouldn’t
So, you’ve been thinking about starting a team, have you?
In spite of a dismal economy, your market seems to be rockin’…you’re doing pretty well…and, well, you want to grow.
The natural thing to do is build a team, right? Yes.
A team will help you work more efficiently. It will help you grow…
But before you go a step further, though, you need to examine your reasons for wanting to build a team. Let me show you what I mean with a little story from Realty Times columnist David Flethcer:
“I love teams, but only if I am making a contribution. The most exciting team I have been on was as a member of a 23-man crew on a B-36 bomber in the United States Air Force. I was the tail gunner. Not because I said so, but because I was trained to be one. I made a contribution to the team.
“Watching a squadron of B-36 Bombers flying in formation on a beautiful day at 42,000 feet in peacetime is heady stuff for a 19-year-old. It’s great to be on a team at times like that.
“Then one day our crew was sent to “survival” school in Reno, Nevada, where we were taught and practiced survival skills in case we were shot down behind enemy lines.
“That’s when I learned that there will be times in life when the team cannot help me. Only my skills can. When I was alone in the mountains for five days with three days supply of food it was up to me to set the traps, catch the fish, read my compass, and operate my radio.
“My team couldn’t help me. Only my skills could.”
The same is true for your sales skills…
Only your skills can seamlessly draw 12 hours of hostile talks into an objective, feel-good contract for both parties.
Only your skills can save your commission from dying on the vine in the face of a relentless barrage of arguments from a feisty seller.
Only your skills can nail 25 good leads in one night of networking. Or a day of cold calling.
Only your skills can steal the best property out from under your competitors nose with an irresistible listing presentation.
That means you need to develop your skills. You need to make a list of the three sales skills you want to develop–say negotiating, cold calling and networking–and then practice them until you master them.
Because the truth of the matter is…if you are looking to build a team so you can hand off the negotiating to someone else…or the listing presentation…or the finer points of client relationships…then you need to re-examine your motives.
You don’t want to get stuck in a situation where you fail because you depend upon someone else to handle those circumstances.
You want to be prepared to not only survive…but thrive. And thrive well. See you soon.
And if you like what you read, subscribe to the real estate marketing blog.
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How to Concede Smart–and Avoid These 3 Mistakes
When it comes to making concessions in negotiations, here’s a good rule of thumb: If you are going to concede in the opening rounds of a negotiation, concede small.
In other words, avoid these three mistakes:
Mistake No. 1 – Equal-sized Concessions
If you have a negotiating room of $10,000, don’t give it away in increments of $2,500.
For example, imagine you are selling your house and your asking price is $270,000. You receive an offer of $250,000.
If you counter with $267,500 in the first round, $265,000 in the second, $262,500 in the third, imagine what the other person is thinking: “Hmm. Every time I push, I get $2,500. Why stop pushing?”
Mistake No. 2 – Huge, Final Concession
Let’s say you made a concession of $6,000, then one of $4,000.
You say to the other party, “That’s our absolutely lowest offer. I can’t give you a dollar more.” The problem is the other party has a hard time believing you won’t relent a dollar more when you gave up such huge concessions already.
He’s going to try for more, and when you dig your heels in, he thinks, “Why is he being so difficult? You just made a $4,000 concession and you won’t give me another $1000?”
Making this mistake has the potential for creating hostility.
Mistake No. 3 – Give It All Away Up Front
“Who would do a stupid thing like that?” you ask.
Problem is, people do it all the time. Someone calls and says, “My client doesn’t like to negotiate. So just give me your lowest price and I’ll give you a yes or no.”
Or an agent who looked at your client’s house last week calls and says, “We’ve just located two other homes my client liked equally well. Now we’re just down to the price. We thought the fairest thing to do would be to let all three of you give us your lowest price, then we’ll decide.”
Unless you recognize this ploy, you’ll panic and plead with your sellers to cut the price to the bone, even though the doors to a second round of bidding haven’t completely closed.
The Smart Way to Concede
Although negotiating this way takes time, conceding in small, irregular increments makes it more likely that you will end up with your objective price and both sides of the negotiations will feel happy about the outcome.
Did you find this article useful? If so, leave a comment. And if you like what you read, subscribe to the Real Estate Marketing Blog.
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Six Guidelines to Make Your Website Writing Even Better
Last week we talked about gimpy websites and what to do to make them better…
Bottom line: Make it easy. Make it simple.
This includes your message–your core message you want to communicate to people when they land on your website…
Do you want them to subscribe to an email list? Do you want them to ask for a listing presentation? Do you want them to register for a workshop or conference?
It starts, of course, with you: What are you trying to do with your website?
Is it all about lead generation? Nurturing clients? Or simply sharing information?
So, once you do the leg work of figuring out your strategy for your website or blog, your next step is to turn that strategy into a message.
A lean, mean persuasion machine. Here’s how to do that.
1. Give people only what they need.
Steve Krug said it best: Kill happy talk.
What’s happy talk? It’s that fluff on the top of web pages that says things like “Welcome to my site…I hope you find….”
If they’re looking for secrets on how to stage a home…give it to them in as few words as possible [I’ll explain what I mean in a minute.]
If they’re looking for a list of foreclosures…give it to them immediately. You’ve only got four seconds to show people you can help them. Don’t waste those four seconds on a verbose introduction. Get to the point. And get to the point fast.
2. Cut. Cut. Cut. And cut again.
If you can trim a 500-word article down to 250 words…do it, please. And if you can cut that down to 100 words…do it, please.
And if you can trim that down into 50 words…do it.
And yes, if you can say it in 25 words…you must. Not only you must, but you want to: Tight, compressed messages pop off the page.
Remember, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was only 250 words. The speech before his was 2 hours long. Nobody remembers the 2 hour speech. Coincidence? I think not.
Trim relentlessly.
3. Break up walls of words.
You’ve probably seen it before: A large chunk of copy that looks like a brick wall on your screen. At all costs, break it up.
Keep this in mind when writing for the web: Short paragraphs. Short sentences. Short words. Follow those three simple rules and you’ll never have a wall of words that stops readers cold in their tracks.
4. Give useful, urgent, unique or ultra-specific information.
Online readers are ruthless. They don’t have much time, so they’re not going to read everything on your website. That’s why you need to make your information clear, concise and compelling.
One great way to do this is to use the 4 U’s approach.
When you give readers useful, urgent, unique and ultra-specific information, you are giving them something they need or want. Do that and you can’t go wrong.
5. Write using inverted pyramid style.
Journalism historian Mitchell Stephens: “The inverted pyramid organizes stories not around ideas or chronologies but around facts. It weighs and shuffles the various pieces of information, focusing with remarkable single-mindedness on their relative news value.”
When you write in this style, you put the most newsworthy information at the top. After that comes the information in order of importance, with the least important at the bottom.
6. Layer your copy.
In a nutshell, create leads [short bursts of compelling copy] to draw a user through pages, pop-up windows and information windows.
If you’re sending an email, remember, you’re first task is to get them to open the email. So you must write a compelling subject line.
Second, you must compel them to click the link inside the email that drives them to the supporting web page.
Third, you want them to perform some final action–subscribe or call or join or email. That’s the terminal point in your communication. And because you don’t want to accomplish all those tasks in one place…you layer copy throughout to draw the user in. the point behind the email is to simply get them to click through to you website.
If you like what you read, subscribe to the Real Estate Marketing Blog.
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Gimpy Website? 5 Techniques to Create a Killer One
Okay. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you’re a real estate agent, you probably have a website.
No surprise there.
But let me go even further out on that limb and say you’re probably not sure if it’s a good website or not…
First of all, you’re not sure if people are actually making it to your site. Second, you’re not sure if the people who are finding your website or blog are actually finding what they need.
Am I right?
To make matters worse, it costs money to host your website or blog. [Not a lot. But if you’re not making money, even a little money is hard to lose, right?]
You’ve got two options, really. Ditch the hobbling website/blog or make it kick butt.
If you answered “make it kick butt,” then you’ve come to the right place.
1. Make It Big, Simple and Short
People come to a website for one reason and one reason only: To get information. They’ve got a burning question or need–“how do I stage my home?” or “I need to sell…now!”–and you’ve got to answer that question or satisfy that need.
Fast.
See, people won’t look long or hard. More than likely they’ll skim and scan web pages. That’s why you need to make everything you write clear and concise. And the most important details must stand out.
If you want them to call you for a free consultation…spell it out loud and clear on your home page. In fact, every page should include a call to action.
2. Know Thy Audience
Who are you writing for? You should know your audience. And know them well. Only then will you be able to convey a message that will reach prospects personally. Find out what your audience wants to know…and then write to them specifically.
3. Empty Your Home Page
This may surprise you, but your home page should NOT contain the bulk of your information. Your home page is more for branding and encouraging people to find what they are looking for deeper in the site.
The links and short descriptions on your homepage should be clear enough that the reader doesn’t have to guess where they’ll end up. Bottom line: Simplify your home page.
One more thing: It is always helpful to have a search box. It makes the reader feel more comfortable on your site.
4. Think Pathway Pages
Your pathway pages [pages channeling off your home page] contain the answer to your reader’s question–they exist as a path to your reader’s ultimate destination.
Clarity is key here as you drive them deeper, with more specific information. And keep in mind, it doesn’t really matter how many click-thrus you have until your destination, as long as the path is extremely clear along the way.
Also, don’t forget that call to action on every page.
5. Prevent Reader Overload
When thinking about how long to make a web page, think about what the reader is looking for: Are they going to print this page out? Is this too much information?
If it’s too much information on one page, consider breaking your pages down into topics and sub-topics.
By the way: Use PDFs sparingly. PDFs are miserable to read online. They should only be used when a reader needs all the information on the document.
And if you must use a PDF, warn the reader.
Conclusion
Okay, you’re making your website or blog drop-dead easy to find and use. But is it compelling?
If you need help deciding exactly what you should say on your blog or website then join us next week where we’ll look at six guidelines to help you focus your essential message so it’s clear, concise and compelling.
Did you find this article helpful? If so, leave a comment or subscribe to the real estate marketing blog.
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A Sly Negotiation Tactic to Get What You Want
In football, when you want to give your opponent the feeling that you are moving in one direction but planning on going in another direction, you give them a head fake.
That is, you lean your head in one direction…
And once your opponent commits to that direction, you go the other direction.
The same is true in negotiations.
See, there may come a time in your negotiations where you hit a wall and need to break a stalemate.
Or you just want to see if you can get the seller’s to go lower to come in range with your buyers.
Or things have gone south and you’ve lost control of the transaction.
If that’s the case, then you want to give the impression that you are withdrawing the offer without actually doing so, roll out the “Withdraw the Offer” head fake.
Here’s How It Works
Imagine you are negotiating to buy a beautiful home for roughly $300,000. You’ve gone through several days of negotiating on many deal points.
Your client loves the house but the seller’s last concession was still $4,000 above what your client wanted to pay.
So you call the seller’s broker–with your client’s permission–and say that your client is going to have to withdraw from buying the house because he could not make the numbers work to his satisfaction.
You, however, are confident that neither the seller nor the broker would let a $300,000 deal go over a difference of $4,000.
Here’s the deal though: That may be the direction it does indeed go. There’s no guarantees.
But the worse that can happen is the other real estate agent says, “Sorry to hear that. Can’t go any lower,” at which point, because your client is willing to pay the difference, you can return, “Let me talk to my client first and make sure he understands what it means to walk away from this deal.”
Quick Tip: 5 Reasons Why Sellers Should Work with You on Both Sides of the Deal
Did you know that one of the simplest strategies to closing more transactions is simply helping your seller’s buy their new home?
If sellers ARE staying in the area, ask if you can help find their next house. It benefits both you and the seller.
Here are five reasons why:
1. They don’t have to interview more real estate salespeople.
2. You already understand their needs, know their decorating style, have an inside look on how they live.
3. If they trust your market knowledge enough to sell their home, they should trust you to find them a new house.
4. You can help coordinate both sides of the deal so they don’t find themselves homeless for a few days between closings.
5. You can make negotiations go more smoothly and quickly. You have dates on both closings and don’t have to wait for return calls from fellow practitioners.
And if you like what you read, subscribe to the real estate marketing blog.
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Need a Damn Good Referral System to Save Your Career?
Ever wonder why you seem to run into the same deal-destroying problems with prospects? Or hear the same bridge-burning complaints from your clients?
Or maybe you’d simply be happy to learn how to find clients who always walk away satisfied after a transaction with you…
Think about it: what’s it worth to you to find and nurture a handful–say, I don’t know, 100–clients who love you to death?
Who can’t stop talking about you…
And who send you so much business that you often wonder if there’s some kind of law against getting so many leads?
This would make you happy, yes?
Deep inside you and I both know that this kind of arrangement–referrals to the max–is the most sublime way to earn a living.
But here’s the sad part: you haven’t bribed or manipulated that situation into being doing things you are currently doing.
And probably won’t anytime soon. Man, that’s frustrating.
See, one of the chronic problems with sales, advertising, business and marketing–whether in real estate or not–is bad information.
Bad information in the sense that what you know about your client is off.
Way off.
And when you have bad information on prospects and clients, you will constantly concoct strategies that sail clear over their mark…
Or peter out well before they reach their destination.
Here’s the good news, though. You can overcome this failure.
How? Easy. Think like your prospect and client.
Learn everything you can about them. Better yet, spend a year or two in their shoes. Confront the issues and problems they see. Burn into your mind a feeling of what it’s like to live like them.
A 2004 Chicago Sun-Times article gives a vivid example of this in the auto industry…
Yuji Yokoya, a Toyota engineer, responsible for revamping the Toyota Sienna minivan for the North American market drove from Anchorage, Alaska to Mexico…
And from Florida to California…in a Sienna mini-van.
The Chicago Sun-Times says:
Crossing the Mississippi River by bridge, he [Yokoya] noted that the Sienna’s crosswind stability needed improvement. He observed excessive steering drift while traversing gravel roads in Alaska, and the need for a tighter turning radius along the crowded streets in Santa Fe. Driving through Glacier National Park, he decided the handling needed to be crisper. He also made an all-wheel-drive option a priority, along with more interior space and cargo flexibility.
Finally, he decided that the new Sienna would have to be a minivan that families, and especially kids, could live in for extended periods of time. Upgrading seat quality became a priority, along with “kid friendly” features such as a roll-down window for second-row passengers, an optional DVD entertainment centre and a conversation mirror so parents could monitor what was going on in the back seat.
As you probably know, the Sienna has “an excellent reputation for overall quality” and “long-term dependability”. Edmunds says as much.
And Toyota is simply a brand with hot cars and hot technology. Year after year it fires on all cylinders.
Getting into the heads of your prospects and clients will allow you to give prospects the best possible solution for whatever problem they’re facing…
To persuade effortlessly, bringing to the table vast hands-on experience with all kinds of markets. In all kinds of economic conditions.
But you’ll need to go beyond traditional market research.
Instead of just combing through numbers and plowing through a stack of reports, you’ll need to get off your duff and speak to your prospects and clients.
Do it with no other agenda than trying to figure out what they like. And why.
In other words, create a persona.
Watch how they work. See what a typical day looks like for them. Find out how they interact with their families. How a home integrates into their lives.
As you can imagine, this will take a little work. But it will pay dividends. It will make you a murderously good real estate pro who will book up quickly…
Because people like to work with wise, friendly people.
And once you lock into the ebb and flow of your prospects and clients, you’re business will be on the fast track.
That’s a good place to be, right? Right. And when you get to the point where you want more…where you want to slam the pedal to the metal…check out one of the plainest, but potent referral systems around.
It might be a good idea to just check it out now. Get familiar with it so you’ll be ready when you need it.
Leave a comment if this post was helpful or if you have anything you’d like to add. And if you like what you read, subscribe to the real estate marketing blog.
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Up to this point your ways of working may have been successful. But here’s something to think about:
What can you, as a real estate agent, do that would challenge the status quo, overturn your market or even persuade a competitor’s client to work with you?
See, out of the 43 businesses that were showcased in the book In Search of Excellence 14 were out of business in two years. BusinessWeek then studied these 14 failed companies…and do you know what they found out?
“Failure to change” was the main theme for going out of business with these companies.
What does that say to you?
Are you in a position to change? To challenge the status quo? To shake up your market and be a trend setter instead of a passive causality?
6 Unconventional Questions to Help You Become a Market Shaker
Forget widely accepted principles such as blind optimism and arrogant self-promotion. Instead, break out of the box by asking yourself these unconventional questions that will lead you down a different, unused, but highly prosperous, path to success.
- What worse case scenario could happen, that seems impossible, but if it did happen, what would I do?
- What alternatives to marketing, technology, industry, prospecting, organization are out there…alternatives people are not thinking about?
- What pain are my client’s and prospects GOING to experience in the near future? And how can I provide a solution to that pain?
- What am I personally doing in my business or life that if I don’t change now could provide significant pain in the near future?
- What did other companies do during a recession or sagging growth to survive? How did they change? How did they adapt?
- Finally, what rules can I break? What rules can I rewrite?
The best performers in any industry are the agitators, the pioneers, the rule breakers and the game-changers.
In essence, it’s about staying fresh. So ask your self theses questions. Forecast the future. The ability to peer around corners will pay off big for you.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to the real estate marketing blog.
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How You Can Achieve Your Greatest Desire
Go ahead. Admit. You’ve got great dreams of being a fanatical success in real estate.
You want to make seven figures a year. You want the eight car garage. A second house on the sea. The boat.
You want enough money in the bank to run a small country. Send your children to the best schools. Buy a 747 so you can fly all of your friends to your private island off the coast of South Africa.
Okay. Maybe that last one was a stretch.
But you catch my drift. We’ve all got wild dreams. Big ones, to boot. And this includes your clients.
So often we forget that the people we want to attract have dreams. We forget that they are are dreaming and scheming.
Scheming in a good way. But scheming nonetheless. They want to be successful. Prestigious. Healthy. Liked.
Or perhaps they just want a roof over their family’s head. A roof they can call their own.
We call that the “American Dream.”
So, with this in mind, let’s look at three ways you can help beef up just about anything you do–whether it’s writing an ad or pitching during a listing presentation–and help your prospects and clients understand that you can help them reach their wildest dream.
1. Paint the Vision for the Prospect.
Within the headline or the opening copy or at the start of your presentation, tell them about the benefit they’ll get from doing what you want them to do: living well, saving money, entertaining grandly. This is the big promise.
2. Offer the “Prize” Inside.
Either within the same headline or within the first few lines of copy or just minutes into a presentation, introduce your offer as the means for obtaining the desired end: the infinity pool that makes you to live well, the low property taxes that allow you to save money, or the finished basement with wet bar and 50 inch plasma screen that allows you to entertain grandly.
3. Go On the Quest.
This is the fun part. Here you get to tell the story of how and why your offer, in Step 2, fulfills the desire in Step 1. You’re pulling all the pieces together here.
For example:
Living well means owning an infinity pool. Posh hotels in Singapore with infinity pools attract actors and presidents and singers. And actors like to live well, don’t they? They like to relax in a landscape that’s unique and something only a few people can afford to enjoy. Infinity pools are all about living well.
By the way, if you need help creating pictures like that, we have great resources here to help you. But also consider picking up a travel magazine like Conde Nast Traveller.
Your Real Estate Career: 9 Ways Blogging Can Help You
Is blogging right for you?
While I’m a big fan of blogging as a way to get content online, I don’t think it’s the ULTIMATE way of having a web presence for real estate agents.
Why? Simple. Blogs don’t suit every personality.
You might be a writer. Then again, you might not be.
You might be a good communicator. And you might not be.
You might prefer speaking over writing. Or not.
You might be a self-starter. Or not.
You might be starved for time. Or not.
You might have thick skin. Or not.
You might enjoy reading. Then again, maybe not.
You might have the stamina. Or not.
Where you fall in these two columns depends on lots of factors, but namely your personality. In other words, you have to decide that for yourself if blogging fits your personality.
However, if you’ve come to that point in your career that blogging, indeed, suits your personality, then this post is for you. Here are nine ways in which blogging can help you and your real estate career.
1. Attract a New Market.
No surprise here, but the new savvy home buyer and seller is online. Googling for homes to buy. And real estate agents to work with. And more.
People are also searching for answers. You have to be the person who answers those questions.
2. Dominate Search Results.
So, a blog will allow you to write content about how to buy a home, stage a home or finance a home…typical needs home buyers and sellers have.
In other words, you write posts about ways you can help people.
And you want a page from your blog to appear in the top ten of search results. More pages with more inbound links equals greater chance you land on that coveted first page for that keyword. That’s how you dominate search results.
3. Establish Your Authority.
Published online content–at first blush–equals instant credibility. But there’s more to it than this. I’ll explain in a minute.
4. Sharpen Your Writing Skills.
Within four seconds people decide if the page is worth their time and attention. The more you write, though, the better you become. And people start to recognize your talent. Thus, your credibility grows.
5. Engage Your Prospects in a Wider Discussion.
Did you touch upon an issue in a meeting you would’ve liked to have gone deeper but couldn’t because of time? Blog it.
Local issue that’s abuzz in your community? Blog about it.
Then there’s popularity contest you could play. A sure winner for drawing readers.
6. Clarify Points.
Maybe you said something in a networking event or negotiations that wasn’t clear. Or drew criticism. Blog it. Systematically and clearly. Why? See point 4.
7. Do More.
Wanna start a discussion about a topic but don’t want to mess with the logistics of actually bringing warm bodies together? Blog it.
You can use your blog as a forum and invite your prospects to join a certain topic–new development or a slumping market. Think online small group.
8. Build a Reputation.
This is similar to authority. The difference is that authority is instant credibility. The certificate you see on the wall certifies your doctor is legit. That’s authority. Your best friend raving about the best MD in town…that’s reputation.
You want both.
9. Stretch Your Skill Set.
Launching a blog is easy. Still, it contains challenges and new ground to cover–from the hard [minor technical tweaks] to the soft [replying to criticism].
Thus, rounding out your real estate career set with blogging skills can be an added bonus for younger generations who grew up with blogging and social media. Something to consider.
Please note that these are in order from what I think is most important to the least important. Building an online presence and generating more traffic is a good reason to start a blog. Better than simply stretching your skill set.
But they’re all good things–both professionally and personally.
I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons why or ways that blogging can help your real estate career. Can you share some?
Did you find this article helpful? If so, leave a comment or subscribe to the real estate marketing blog.
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