Author: James Dingman

Eight Things You Can Do To Get A Listing TODAY!

Here is a post from 2012.  The market was a little different back then.  We still had a lot of upside down homeowners, lots of Short Sales and quite a few REOs.  Still, there’s good stuff here.  Challenge yourself!  See if you can’t get one by nightfall!

Can you get a listing today?  I’m waiting . . . can you?  Let me rephrase the question:  If you were to be hung by the neck until dead at sunset if you didn’t get a listing today, could you get one?  I thought so.  Getting a Listing is something you can DO in real estate.  You can’t force a sale, you can’t force a closing . . . but you can DO a listing.  You can get one.  It is always within your power.

And today, more than ever, a listing is precious.  Inventories are so low right now and prices are inching (and in some cases, racing) upwards.  Multiple offers abound and the person with listings is in the driver’s seat.  But listings are also hard to come by.  Many potential sellers are sitting back, noticing the upcreep in prices and thinking: ‘If I just wait a few months maybe I won’t be so upside down . . . ‘

So, what can you do TODAY to get a listing?  Here are 8 ideas:

1.  Call all of your past clients.  It’s a simple dialogue:  you need their help.  Inventory is drying up, buyers are frantic to find something.  Have they heard of anybody thinking of selling?  I would be surprised if you didn’t uncover at least 1 listing lead for every 20 calls.

2.  Call all of your fence sitting, luke warm potential sellers and heat them up!   They’re not doing themselves any favors by waiting.  The bargains are disappearing rapidly and while they’re waiting for a few percentage points gain in equity, they’re missing opportunities.  Here – use this set of graphics from Help-U-Sell University:

I love that graphic.  Unfortunately, the improving market of the past four years has made it a bit irrelevant.  Today, if you want to heat up a fence sitting seller, work on where they want to go.  Spend an hour or two showing them houses, get them excited about moving.  And if they’re moving out of state, start that referral relationship early and have the other agent help get them motivated. 

3.  Pull all the expired listings for the LAST 12 MONTHS – that’s right, a full year’s worth – and drop them a note about the improving market, the scarcity of listings and the fact that you can save them money!

4.  Choose one of your buyer clients who is hot to trot but having trouble finding a suitable home.  Working with them, isolate the one or two perfect neighborhoods for them.  Then make a flyer with their photo and some humanizing detail,  saying they’re looking for a home in that neighborhood.  If you’d like to sell, contact Help-U-Sell.  And put your ETM on the back.  Deliver it however you’d like:  snail mail, Excel’s mailbox stuffer program, slide it under the doormat . . . although if you’re trying to beat the hangman at sunset, you’d better stick to doormats.

5.  Follow Kurt Steffien’s lead:  start cultivating probate attorneys.  They are certainly interested in being heroes to their estate clients, and will see your money saving (estate preserving) offer as a way to accomplish that.  In other words:  they get it.  And if you get one and do a good job, it’s not just one listing, it could be many.  For months and years to come.  Really.

6.  Work with Tony (today that’d be Alejandro, Mike or Soren) to build a landing page on your website to capture contact info on people wanting to know what their house is worth.  (By the way:  this home value landing page already exists on your website!  AND, it generates a report instantly so that the people who request it don’t have to wait for a response)  Then create a QR Code for it.  Have flyers made with nothing more than the QR Code and the words:  ‘See How Much Your Home Is Worth Today.’  Put them all over the place.

7.  Call every FSBO in the area and ask:  ‘If I were to find a buyer who made an offer that was acceptable to you, would you pay me a commission?’  (I know, I know . . .you guys usually choke when you have to say that word, but in this case it will serve you better than ‘Low Set Fee.’).  The answer will almost always be yes, because they’ve usually made the same deal with every other Realtor in town.  Quickly calculate what, say, 3% is (let’s assume it’s $4,500), and respond: ‘So if I find a buyer who makes an acceptable offer you’ll pay me 3% which is around $4,500 dollars, right?  Let me show you what I can do for you for just $3,950*.  I mean – I’m Help-U-Sell – you get my complete full service program for less than you’d pay some agent just to find you a buyer.  For $3,950*, I’ll help you refine your pricing (if necessary), do all the marketing, get you on dozens of websites, qualify all interested buyers, help you weigh the pros and cons of every offer and calculate your net proceeds, process all the paperwork and handle the details all the way to closing.  How’s that sound?’

(*Or whatever your Set Fee is.  By the way:  Commissions, whether percentage based of set fee, are always negotiable.)

8.  Call Jack Bailey and ask him what you should do.

This is July 5. (It’s actually August 9, but the principal still holds true)   The longest day of the year was, what?  A week and a half ago?  So you’ve got a few extra hours of daylight to get it done.  Go on now:  get out there and don’t come home until you have a signed listing agreement in your sweaty little hand.

*about that graphic:  For the arithmetically impaired: If you subtract the current value from the peak value of the first home you get $75,000. That’s the amount of the drop in value, what the homeowner ‘lost’. If you do the same for the second home you get $112,500. That drop is $37,500 more than the drop on the first home. Everything else being equal, that’s $37,500 less the buyer is going to have to mortgage. Translation: quit moping about what you ‘lost!’ Get out there and buy your dream home before it becomes unaffordable again.

 

HUSKA

Who remembers this?  What is HUSKA? Why is it important?

History Lesson:  One legendary Help-U-Sell Broker – who later became a Regional Director – used the ‘word’ to motivate and elevate her fellow brokers.  I believe there may have even been pins with the word on it. (If you have one, I’d love a picture).

That Broker/RD was Kris Hazard, who now lives in Hawaii.

And now, what does HUSKA mean or stand for?

Help-U-Sell Kicks %*S$!

Thanks John Powell and Maurine Grisso for remembering!

Last Chance! Market Well/ Save Big

Get In Gear!

Help-U-Sell Brokers, Friday is the last day to order your EDDM postcards in bulk for the next 3-4 months!

Your cost during this special Co-Op period is roughly HALF what it would be at any other time!

If you don’t order NOW, you’ll either be without or pay twice the cost until the next flight of Co-Op ordering is announced!

Go to:  http://www.husmailnow.com and look for ‘Office Co-Op’

For help, call me or Mike Paholke at Excel.

DO IT!

 

Get Off That Treadmill, You Hamster, You! (another message for ordinary real estate brokers)

How often have you heard it?  ‘Recruiting is the LIFEBLOOD of your real estate company!’ ‘Recruiting is the broker’s single most important job!’  ‘Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!’

Seems like we’re not even in the business of selling real estate anymore.  We’re in the business of providing a place where real estate agents can work.

If your business is driven by agents . . . that’s a definite case of the tail wagging the dog!

It wasn’t always that way.  Fifty years ago, real estate brokers were the business.  They worked hard to market themselves and become fixtures in the local community.  Sometimes, when they had more business than they could handle, they’d bring on an agent, to help.

But everything changed in the 70s when the franchises blossomed.  They showed brokers that every time they added an agent they increased the office’s reach into the community and expanded the office’s sphere of influence.  It was the birth of modern recruiting.

In the 80s, with success defined by the number of licenses held by the broker, recruiting warfare spread across the land.  Once someone figured out how to pay agents 100% of the commission on a sale, commission split became the only thing that mattered.  Splits rose higher and higher and company dollar fell lower and lower.

The contemporary residential real estate broker is little more than a beggar.  He begs agents to come to work for him and then begs them not to leave. He sweetens the deal with the only tool he has:  commission split.  With the lion’s share of the Gross going to pay agents . . . well, they don’t call ’em BROKErs fer nothin’!

It doesn’t have to be this way.  You can build your business on the power of your marketing rather than the number of bodies that occupy space under your roof.  But you must take control.

  1. Get back to reality with an attitude adjustment. It’s your business!  You took the risk, spent the money and you’re the one who squirms when it’s time to pay the bills.  Sure you love your agents, but they are the help. 
  2. Now that you’ve had an attitude adjustment, have a commission split adjustment. You are turning your office into a self-sustaining, lead generating machine.  Anyone who works for you will benefit from that and thus should be paid something unheard of today: a reasonable commission split!
  3. Take back control of your marketing. As commission splits rose to astounding heights, brokers in large measure shifted responsibility for marketing to agents.  Of course, very few agents actually invested in marketing and those who did marketed themselves, not your company.  You have to control the marketing to control the message and the leads that are created.  And you’re going to have to start spending serious money to market your company.
  4. Track and control your leads like the precious gems they are. A funny thing happens when real estate brokers take control of their marketing:  they become extremely fussy about their leads!  How many did we get?  What caused them to contact us?  What happened to them? It’s no wonder.  Today, most brokers spend more than $100 to generate a single inquiry! With that reality, you have to demand excellence in how they are handled.
  5. Never hire anyone until your business is generating so much buyer and seller traffic that you cannot handle it with your current staff. This probably means you’re going to have to let some of your existing staff go. It’s ok. Your future staff is going to feed you so much better than the commission split crew you have now.
  6. Come up with a consumer offer that is so compelling that people have to call you to find out how it works. It should be unique and should benefit the consumer.  Here is a hint:  if your consumer offer is 6%, MLS, Zillow, Sign, Open House, etc. – that’s not good enough.

IF you can execute those six steps, recruiting will stop being your reason to exist and become an essential activity, undertaken when necessary.  Armed with what every good agent wants, a steady flow of leads, you will be in a position to choose the agent you want to hire.  There is a big difference between choosing and begging and, as we all know, beggars can’t be choosers!

By now you are probably wondering what planet this happens on!  Understandably so.  The ordinary real estate world has been flowing in the same direction for so many years that, for it to right itself now would be about as difficult as having the Titanic maneuver around that iceberg!

Thankfully, the infrastructure for this real estate revolution is already in place.  It is a consumer focused, broker-centric business model called Help-U-Sell Real Estate.  For forty years we have been on the cutting edge of keeping brokers in control, and of delighting consumers in the process.  We build our businesses through careful marketing (and we market like nobody else), not by endless recruiting.  We deliver a full service experience that saves consumers thousands of dollars every day.

We organize our offices very differently than our ordinary counterparts.  A broker controlled environment operating on less revenue per transaction would have to.  Many brokers, struggling to make ends meet in their 6% offices, can’t imagine how Help-U-Sell Real Estate is able to charge less and keep going. But here’s the truth:  through proven systems and efficiencies, through careful control of leads and accountability, through staff specialization and division of tasks, our brokers usually return more dollars to the bottom line on a typical transaction than ordinary brokers do.  That’s right:  we charge less but make more.

If that sounds too good to be true, we’d love to talk with you and show you how it works!  Or have you talk with some of our current members.

Let’s be honest.  For forty years – probably less, depending on when you entered the business – you’ve watched us and thought we’d be gone like dust in the wind in a matter of months.  But we’re still here.  We’ve never gone anywhere.  Obviously, we have something that works.  Isn’t it time you found out what it was?

How to Generate Leads (a message for ordinary real estate brokers)

The lifeblood of our business is leads . . . but how do you get them?  

It’s harder today to generate a lead than it ever has been.  As the real estate business has grown up, the flow of easy leads into the office has dried up!  And while the Internet has lowered the cost of marketing a listing, the cost of generating a lead has gone UP.  Offices with active marketing programs easily spend $100 – $150 to generate a single lead.  When you factor in typical conversion rates – something like 8 to 1 – the cost to generate a bona fide buyer or seller can approach $1,000.  

Before delving deeper, let’s define terms.  An Inquiry is a call for information.  It may come on the phone, in an email or in response to an Internet ad.  Inquiries do not become Leads until that person surrenders his or her contact information.  So a Lead is a person we have the ability to contact.  

Most potential Leads are lost right there: in the conversion from Inquiry to Lead.  Real estate salespeople are so notoriously bad at this that at least half of all Inquiries simply evaporate without ever becoming leads.  Smart brokers demand performance in the conversion process, insist on practice and role play, and track it over time.  Smarter brokers hire specific personnel whose sole function is to respond to Inquiries and convert them to Leads.

There are several cultural factors that have caused that great river of real estate buyer and seller leads to go dry.  They include:

An explosion of readily available information.  With the Internet, Zillow, REALTOR.com and dozens of other portals, there’s very little a potential customer can’t find on his or her own.  In short:  they don’t call you anymore, because they don’t need to.

A steadily waning trust factor.  We have become obsessed with privacy and anonymity.  So often, the innocent sharing of an email address of phone number has led to endless scamming and unwanted solicitations.  People today are far less willing to give up their contact information than they were even 10 years ago.  

The genericization of the real estate industry.  A couple of decades ago, there was a perceived difference in the consumer offering of some real estate companies.  That perception is gone with the last millennium!  Today, there is not one whit of difference in the consumer offering of almost any real estate brand.  There is endless innovation in how real estate companies attract and retain agents, but for the consumer it’s basically 6% (or 5% or 7%), put you in the MLS, put you on Zillow, hold an open house and pray.  When everyone is offering the same thing, something extraordinary has to come through in an inquiry response before contact information is exchanged.

So how do you become a lead generating machine in this environment?  It’s actually pretty easy.

Step One: look at your consumer offering.  What are you offering that is utterly different from what everyone else is offering?  And, forget the industry buzz terms like ‘Excellent Customer Service,’ and ‘Professionalism.’  Those things are important, but to the consumer, they are an expectation, not a differentiator.  

Remember that one of the first things any consumer shops is price.  If your pricing model is the same as the 3,000 other Realtors in your Board . . . well, that’s hardly standing out in the crowd, now is it?  And does your pricing model make sense?  Does the person in the $250,000 house pay less to sell it than the person in the $300,000 house?  If so, why?  Spoiler alert:  answers like, ‘That’s just the way we do it,’ don’t fly.

The pricing of any consumer good or service is a value-for-value exchange.  In a value-for-value universe, your fee should have some relation to the cost of the goods or services you are providing.  So, if the person in the $250,000 house pays, say, $15,000 to sell but the person in the $300,000 house pays $18,000, where are you spending the extra $3,000 in the home marketing process?  You’re not?  Well, then, both of those homeowners should be paying the same thing, don’t you think?

Assuming you do step one correctly – meaning you devise a superior pricing model for your company and a dynamite consumer offer – you move on to:

Step Two:  which is to market the heck out of it.

Bear in mind that it is your company that makes the consumer offer; it’s not the agents.  They may make the offer on the company’s behalf, but it is the company’s offer.  

Over the past 40 years, residential real estate companies have shifted the cost of marketing (which is how we communicate the consumer offer) in large measure to agents who demanded increasingly lofty commission splits.  The logic was solid:  I can’t afford to pay you 80% unless you start paying for your own marketing.  But we’ve learned that, generally speaking, agents won’t invest in marketing regardless of split.  The end result of shifting marketing to agents is agents running around willy-nilly, making this promise here and that pledge there, with no coordination from the broker and no clear or consistent offer being made to consumers.

So, you have to take control of your marketing, which means you’re going to have to budget a significant portion of your gross for it.  Then you go into your target market strategically and consistently with your marketing message . . . and soon, like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the inquiries start to flow in.  

By this time, the next step should have already happened.  It will happen while you are doing step two.  

Step Three:  Take control.  As you take control of your consumer offer and of your marketing, you will take control of your company.  As lead generation becomes your responsibility, as you begin to hold your staff accountable for the disposition of those leads, as your unique consumer offering is constantly and consistently conveyed, your company will shift from being a place where agents work to a thriving business machine with growing market share and value.

Sound like a lot of work?  A lot of risk?  It is.  But if you want to control your business (rather than be controlled by it), it has to be done.  

Thankfully, there is a shortcut.  

For 40 years, Help-U-Sell Real Estate has been perfecting the kind of business model described above.  Our consumer offer – Sell Fast for a Low Set Fee and Save Thousands – is unique and very attractive to consumers.  Our marketing system is a system.  Like the consumer offer, it is unique in the industry and produces stellar results. Nobody markets like we do and nobody generates a steady flow of leads into the office like we do.  

Couple this with a robust technology platform that we built and own and free expert coaching and support; and Help-U-Sell Real Estate could be your path to local market domination.  

If you’d like to know more or simply have questions, feel free to contact us.  Much can be learned at our website, helpusellfranchise.com or at one of our regularly held informational seminars, but nothing is better than picking up the phone and having a conversation.

Caution:  One of the biggest snags brokers encounter when trying to understand how Help-U-Sell Real Estate works happens when they try to imagine the pricing model fitting into their existing operation.  It doesn’t work.  If you did that, you’d fail.  We are not a stripped down version of what any other real estate company does.  We are a completely new and different approach to how to run a real estate company, one that allows us to charge less and make more.  

Just as almost every seller who is aware of us feels they must find out what we do before choosing a listing company, you too should find out what’s different and special about Help-U-Sell Real Estate before you map out another year of your future. Get in touch today.

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