Help Wanted

Wanted:  Market Segment Specialist
We are expanding our business and are looking for
a few happy folks in specific ‘niche’ marketplaces
to help secure our position there.  Are you in a
unique or specialized neighborhood? Belong to a
large local organization?  Are you active in a local
club, religious or social group?  This might be the
perfect way to earn an extra income working part-
time from home!  A real estate license is necessary
but easily obtained with our help.  Contact . . . . .

Once again, today’s Broker Roundtable call was a hit.  The sharing has been so good lately, there is a move afoot to change the name from ‘Roundtable’ to ‘Mastermind.’  We started out talking about the difference between hiring an agent as a real estate salesperson (charged with the responsibility of expanding your business) or as an assistant (helping you manage the flow of business you have created and freeing you up to create more).  It was an interesting discussion.  But once again, near the end of the call, an exciting new idea bubbled up.

It started with Maurine Grisso describing a Seniors Only neighborhood in her marketplace.  She said she’d love to have someone there to be her advocate.  Ken Kopcho chimed in, saying, ‘a kind of Market Segment Specialist?’  So this idea of bringing someone on to help you gain access to a specific niche market began to take shape.  It might be Seniors in a specific neighborhood or active in a specific club, or Veterans at the VFW, or even well liked and visible teachers.

The MSS job would be to tell the Help-U-Sell story whenever an opportunity arose so that we get the call when it comes time to buy or sell.  Compensation would probably be a referral fee.  You’d probably NOT be offering these people a full bore real estate career – and good candidates probably wouldn’t want one — just a chance to earn some extra money doing something easy and enjoyable.

Jack Bailey talked about a very well liked teacher who is active in his school and with the families of his students.  He has five kids of his own and is always looking for a way to earn a few extra dollars.  This might be perfect for that man.

While the initial vision of this job seemed to be most like a ‘bird-dog’ simply alerting the Broker when activity is imminent, Maurine enhanced it a bit, saying she’d want her Senior Specialist to work any of the buyers who might be appropriate for that specialized neighborhood.

I just cranked out the sample ad above that might be helpful in identifying candidates for this interesting new recruiting target.  Perhaps it would go well in Craig’s List or the Penny Saver.

While I love this idea, it is a little bit of a twist on the Help-U-Sell way.  Ordinary (Traditional) real estate Brokers recruit bodies with almost no selectivity hoping to hire the few who may expand their business.  You see, the Ordinary Broker believes the only way to do more business is to hire more agents.  At Help-U-Sell, we never hire unless we have more business than we can handle.  When we hire, we’re hiring NOT to expand our business but to more efficiently and effectively handle the business we have already created.  When we want to expand our business we do it with Marketing and skill development.

But here, you are hiring a Market Segment Specialist who will enable you to break into markets that are at present unavailable to you.  You are hiring them to help you expand your business. It’s a new wrinkle for us . . . but I like it!