We are Help-U-Sell. We don’t play by the rules. Ordinary brokers don’t get us (thank goodness!). They think the reason they lose business to us is because we cost less . . . which is only the tip of the iceberg. They lose business to us because we cost less and are a better choice for consumers. Getting more business is not a sales challenge for us. Because our program is better, it’s an educational challenge. Time and time again we learn that if we just get the word out into the marketplace that: 1) We are Here 2) People use us 3) It works, and 4) They save thousands, our business grows.
Still, we live in a hostile environment. Our competitors outnumber us and sometimes we hear their internal dialogue more than we hear our own. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing what they say about us, about the industry, about how to go about being successful. Symptoms of paying attention to the wrong voice(s) include:
- Endless recruiting in hopes that adding agents will increase your bottom line
- Paying high commission splits to agents
- Advertising in print media
- Not taking advantage of seller participation
- Not managing incoming leads
- Monkeying with the Set Fee
- Spending money on marketing without tracking results
What do you think? Does that ordinary broker bear-trap have you by the ankle?
Stop for a moment. Remember: You are not ordinary. You are a Guerilla. Let me remind you what that means:
1. You understand that the first and probably most important rule of marketing is to be visible. That means you will do almost anything to establish your brand in your marketplace. You’ll do what Patrick Wood – who is 
one of our top producing brokers – does: You’ll fill your pick-up truck with dozens and dozens of directional signs and you’ll put them out all over the marketplace on Friday afternoon, taking them down Sunday evening. You’ll buy cheap, flimsey ‘Blitz’ signs that do little more than present your logo and tack/staple/tape them up all over your marketplace. You’ll refresh them every 4 to 6 weeks. You’ll wrap your vehicle and park it where it will be seen by the largest number of people. You’ll sponsor a Little League team or a Fun Run, getting your logo on the shirts. You’ll invest in billboards and bus benches. You will wear Help-U-Sell logo apparel and/or a logo name badge everywhere you go. You will not be invisible!
2. You will build a strong case for seller involvement when you take listings. You will coach your sellers to show the property themselves and to hold their own open houses. You will provide them with ample open house directional signs and help them select the best locations for them. You will teach them how to get contact information on everyone who comes into their home and to transmit that contact information to you for followup. You’ll do all this because a) their involvement boosts your visibility b) their involvement generates more buyer leads for you and c) their involvement gives them the best shot at saving the most money.
3. Whatever you do for marketing will be a system. That means you choose your marketing vehicles carefully and you track the leads each creates. You are clear that you are not trying to sell a particular home with advertising, you are creating a flow of leads into the office that will benefit ALL of you listings. Your marketing system does vary from time to time, but once it is established it stays pretty much the same, month in and month out.
4. You are crazy enough to explore and exploit new media. You do a little Facebook pay-per-click directed at homeowners in your marketplace. You become a premium member of Zillow or Trulia. You set aside 90 minutes a week to work on the continued refinement and optimization of your website. You KNOW what tools your MLS has that you can use with consumers to make their home search
process easier. You use QR codes and include a virtual tour with every listing.
5. Whenever you can, you get together with your fellow monkeys to share ideas, brainstorm, solve problems and learn. Of course there are at least two opportunities for this every week. On Tuesdays from 11am Pacific until noon, we have Tech Time, focused on exploiting the power of the Internet to build your brand and your business. Wednesdays from 9am Pacific until 10am, we have the Broker Roundtable call which always features a gem or two of relevant new information and lively conversation about what’s happening, what’s working, what’s not and so on.
6. YOU ATTEND THE UPCOMING HELP-U-SELL SUCCESS SUMMIT, Nov. 14-16 in Anaheim, CA.
One of the most powerful things about being Help-U-Sell (and if you are a broker or associate in a Help-U-Sell office, you are Help-U-Sell) . . . one of the most powerful things is that we are different. We don’t look, act, talk,or play the way the other barnyard animals do. We swing from trees, we have fun, we scheme and plot, and we make things happen. Unlike the cows, chickens and sheep scratching, chewing and pecking their way through yet another day, we are not waiting for everything to go back to normal. We are inventing the new normal even as we speak!
(p.s. I really do know how to spell Gorilla)
I would have liked to share this on FaceBook but the hiding in the trees and taking shots makes us sound like an Apache tribe.
That was supposed to be a patriotic reference to the minutemen who refused to play by the ‘rules’ of the Brits and thus won independence with a smaller, poorly equipped army. I can see how that might frighten some people, though. Let me consider an edit.
Ok: the offending passage has been removed. So much for flowery language and clever allusions!