Working with Buyers, Step-by-Step

Kendra, Alejandro and I were talking with Stephen Taber today. He is setting goals for the new year and one of the items that jumped out was the lopsided mix of anticipated buyer and seller sides. Stephen was planning on just 30% of his production being from buyer sides.

Of course, we all know why buyer sides are important. Truth is, we market like crazy for sellers so that we can dominate the listing inventory . . . because doing so will create a strong and steady stream of buyer leads. Yes, we make plenty of money selling our listings; but we generally make MORE working with buyers. Even Don Taylor said it: ‘People forget, but Help-U-Sell Real Estate was always about the buyer.’

By the way: Stephen’s lopsided mix of buyer to seller sides is not unusual. Almost every Help-U-Sell office is weighted toward seller sides. Often the imbalance is slight, but it is usually there. We strive for a 50/50 mix of buyer to seller sides, but usually fall a little shy of that goal because our marketing is so heavily weighted toward home sellers and it’s easy to spend all of your energy and effort there.

Stephen said, ‘I just like listing! I enjoy it. You never know with a buyer when they’re going to go somewhere else or drop out all together.’ What I heard was that listing is predictable; working with buyers is not. We know what to do when we are working on a listing. Conscious or not, we know step 1, step 2, step 3. We know our scripts and how to respond when the prospective seller voices a concern. In other words: when it comes to listing, we have a system. When it comes to buyers, well . . . not so much.

Of course, there is a very notable exception to that generalization: Jack Bailey’s Buyer Consultation system. Nobody does it better than Jack and as proof of that, his buyer to seller sides mix is usually weighted to the buyer side. He usually does more buyer sides in a year than he does seller sides! For Jack, working buyers is as easy and predictable as step 1, step 2, step 3, and he’s helped many Help-U-Sell Brokers and Agents get to the same comfort zone. But still there are a lot of folks out there essentially winging it when a buyer calls. I think it’s time we had a simple, systematic approach to buyers.

Today’s buyers can and usually want to do a lot of the home search process on their own. One of the ways we can establish our value to buyers is to help them do that. Maybe step one is to ask the buyer how they are currently searching for homes. They will probably say Zillow or Trulia . . . both of which we know are horribly flawed, with duplicate listings and dead listings and bad Zestimates of value.

Right now, you know of a superior home search tool focused on your local market. It might be your own Help-U-Sell office website. After all, it is updated from your local MLS every day and gives buyers the ability to search very much like an agent would. It might be your MLS’s own public home-search portal. Or it might be a 3rd party tool like Listingbook. Whatever the best site for searching in the local market, you need to know how to use it backwards and forwards.

Then when the buyer calls and you ask how they are searching, you can give them a better alternative. Stephen had the great idea of:

Pointing out the limitations of their current search method (trust me: if they’re searching on Zillow, they are painfully aware of the limitations)
Asking if they are in front of a computer and if so, emailing them a link to a free online meeting site like join.me*
Once online together, showing the buyer how to search on the broker website or MLS public site or Listingbook or whatever the best local tool is
Exploiting the opportunity further by showing them how to set up a ‘First to Know’ profile and so on.

In less than 1o minutes you will have established a comfortable rapport based on your desire to HELP them. What could be better.

I’m going to be looking into this whole issue of buyer step 1, step 2, step 3 and how we might have a simple system for working with these important customers going forward. In the mean time, if you are so inclined, perhaps you could begin to think about how you might make the process a little more predictable. I’d love to hear from you if you do! And Thanks, Stephen for the great brainstorm.

*join.me is a free GoToMeeting type of online meeting/screen sharing platform. What’s great about it is that you, the presenter, need to install a small piece of software, but the person you’re meeting need only go to a website – and you will be together. There is nothing for the attendee to install. Once in the meeting, you can share you screen and show the person how to search effectively. It is sooo coool.

Target Your Market

This is a step-by-step elaboration on the previous post. Help-U-Sell Brokers: I believe this is the single most important thing for you to do right now. That’s why I’m giving it so much voice.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate is a target marketing business. Seriously. We’re not like other real estate companies who leave marketing up to the whim of the agents. We actually work at it with intensity and focus.

Target marketing begins with . . . well, with the target. Where are you going to market? At Help-U-Sell Real Estate we make that decision dispassionately and guided by data. We look for marketplaces where the turnover rate is high and where there is enough business to sustain the office. In most cases, this boils down to a zip code or two. And that’s the problem: zip codes are a lousy way to target!

Think about it! In every zip code there are neighborhoods where you don’t want to spend your marketing dollars. You have that area where all the new construction is occurring; it won’t even be ripe for marketing for another 3 years. You have that area that is mostly industrial; not exactly the kinds of households you’re looking for because they’re not households at all. How about that side of the zip that is mostly apartments? Do you want to send your marketing pieces there?

No.

Really: no. You are Help-U-Sell Real Estate, remember? Your marketing is aimed at one group: home sellers. Even though we acknowledge that Help-U-Sell is all about the buyer, we don’t market for them. We market our superior offer to sellers so that we can take a ton of listings that generate a healthy flow of buyers into the office. We get buyers by having inventory. Don’t forget that.

The problem with zip code targeting is that zips are loaded with irrelevancies. They also tend to be pretty large. Most zips come in between 14,000 and 20,000 households. To effectively market to that large a geography would take a ton of money. What usually happens with Help-U-Sell offices is they target a zip or two and go after it with a small budget. They end up taking a listing here and another there and another way over there . . . and never achieve the kind of concentrated visible success necessary to blast off.

Instead of targeting zip codes, let carrier routes guide you. A carrier route is the actual neighborhood the letter carrier walks to deliver the mail. Most zips are made up of a couple dozen carrier routes. You can choose carrier routes with higher turnover rates, the right mix of properties, in the right price range. The problem is: how do you get accurate sales data by carrier route? And how can you see where a carrier route is? Let’s solve those problems right here:

First, run a 12 month sold report from your MLS on each zip code in your overall market. That’s probably 2 -4 zips. Export the reports to an Excel or CSV file (if you are confused by this, drop a message to support@helpusell.com). Send the exported data to Mike Paholke at Excel Print/Mail: mikep@excelprintmail.com, and ask him to sort it by carrier route. He will return a report to you that breaks it all down, shows the mix of single family to multifamily homes, median household income and median home value. Most important, he will have a turnover rate for every carrier route in the zip code.

Step one: eliminate all carrier routes with low turnover rates. I consider 4% to be OK. Anything approaching 5% or more is great. I usually eliminate all carrier routes with turnover less than 3%. By the way: turnover rates change over time. That route with 1.6% this year may be at 4% next year – which is why you want to do this exercise at least annually.

Step two: eliminate carrier routes dominated by rentals. Your first indication of this would be the number of households in the route that are in the ‘Multi Family’ column. However, understand that the postal service classifies multi family differently than we do. They consider any household with its own street number to be single family. So an apartment at 123 Elm St. would be classified ‘Single Family.’ A condo with the address, 123 Elm St. Unit 4, would be classified as Multi Family. The only way to know for sure is to see where that particular carrier route is located, which brings us to the next step of the process.

Step three: go to https://eddm.usps.com. Put the zip code in you are considering and a map of the zip will come up. Click the button for ‘Show Table’ and select the carrier route in question. Click the ‘Hide Table’ button and the route will be highlighted on the zip code map. Do you recognize this location? Is it condos or apartments? Perhaps you might need to take a drive to be sure.

Go back and forth between your list of surviving carrier routes and the USPS website, looking at each carrier route. Be guided by the following criteria:

1. The number of households you select should be driven by the amount of money you are able to spend on marketing. We have a couple of rules of thumb for that at Help-U-Sell Real Estate.

Marketing should account for 33%-50% of your overall budget, including marketing.
Marketing should equal 10% to 15% of your anticipated annual Gross Commission Income.

2. Effective marketing is all about getting your logo in front of your target group every single day of their lives. That’s why we regard every listings as a marketing bonanza: each one provides ample opportunities for signs, mailers and so on.

3. While there is no hard and fast rule about what it costs to accomplish that kind of saturation, I find that smaller targets (2,000 – 3,000 households) take about a dollar a household per month to effectively establish the brand. As the number of households goes up, the cost per household declines somewhat. Once the brand is established and the office is enjoying at least a 20% share of the market in the target area, signs start doing much of the branding and the marketing budget can be reduced a bit – but why would you want to? Once you’ve achieved a reasonable market share in the target area, continue marketing and expand the target!

4. When selecting carrier routes, it’s best if they are contiguous. Four or five carrier routes clustered together benefit from synergy : a listing in one carrier route creates signage opportunities that can be seen in the other carrier routes. On the other hand, carrier routes at opposite ends of the zip code are like little islands.

5. It has already been mentioned, but do this exercise at least annually. Turnover rates – which are the key to marketing efficiency – change over time. A lower turnover rate today may become healthy in a year.

If you are serious about success, growth and HAVING FUN while building a successful business, you really must do this. It is Help-U-Sell Bedrock. It’s who we are and what we do.

Refining Your Target

Remember: Help-U-Sell Real Estate is a target marketing business. Our success is built our ability to save consumers money; but it is driven by marketing focused on specific target markets. We study the local market carefully to discover where the highest turnover rates are, then we focus all of our business development activities in those areas.

Personally, I believe one of the most significant ways in which we have strayed form the original Don Taylor model is in expanding the targets to unmanageable levels. You can’t build a business on a dozen listings spread out over 5 square miles. However, dozen in a small focused geography makes a powerful impression and almost ensures growth and success.

Our targeting process usually begins with a Market Analysis. We gather sales data by Zip Code in our local area. We choose the Zip(s) with the highest turnover rates and then tailor a marketing plan to hit those areas hard.

And that’s the problem.

It’s not turnover rates or marketing plan that screws it up, it’s Zip Codes: they are too large and often too diverse for effective targeting. Maybe Zip ‘A’ has the highest turnover rate in your area, but 30% of the sales are new construction (a market segment not generally available to you ) which skews the number. Or maybe Zip ‘B’ has a low turnover rate but also has a large number of apartments. Take out the rentals and the turnover rate skyrockets.

Of course, all of this sounds ridiculously difficult . . . .but it doesn’t have to be. There’s a new wrinkle to add to your market analysis and targeting effort and it’s very exciting.

Mike Paholke at Excel Print/Mail (husmailnow.com) can take your sales data by zip code and sort it into carrier routes. You can see turnover rates by much smaller geographies, more closely resembling neighborhoods. His carrier route report also breaks down households by single family and multi-family, shows average household income and median sales price. When coupled with the US Post Office’s online carrier route mapping tool, the report gives you the kind of micro focus on your local market you have always wanted. Instead of targeting entire zip codes – and spending a ton of money in the process – you can now target the 4 or 5 carrier routes within the zip that will produce the best results.

When you start getting results within a carrier route, everyone in the carrier route sees it and your ability to garner market share there increases. This is how we come to ‘own’ an area.

We’re going to talk more about this in the weeks and months to come, but if you want to get a head start on this program, get in touch. All you’ll have to do is go into the MLS and pull a year’s worth of sales data on each zip code in your area. I’ll help you export it to the proper format and we’ll send it off to Mike who will turn the report around in less than a day (usually). I think this more precise way of targeting will get you really excited about marketing. You’ll be going at it with the tools that will help you slowly come to dominate your target market.

The Bullseye in Your Backyard

I’ve grumbled about this before but apparently, not loud enough. I am afraid, in the interest of being ‘techno-current,’ we’ve strayed from the core marketing strategy that made us great.

Help-U-Sell was founded on one powerful marketing principal: geographic targeting. As a broker, your job is to study your overall marketplace – I mean, really study (massage the numbers until they throb, to quote Dr. Dick McKenna) – to determine which specific neighborhoods are most likely to produce listings, the fuel that feeds our lead-generating fire.

There’s a lot in that statement. Unlike our ordinary competitors who believe the answer to any marketing challenge is to add another agent, we look at hard data about the market and solve our marketing issues by going where the action is. And we market for LISTINGS. That’s it. Just listings. What about the other side of the business, what about buyers? We love buyers. As Don Taylor once said, “People forget, but Help-U-Sell has always been about the buyer!” But we’ve learned that the best way to find a buyer is to get a listing and another and another.

I talk with brokers every day. Often I hear the complaint, ‘My website isn’t working, I don’t get any buyer leads!’ My answer is always a question: ‘how many listings do you have.’ I usually hear something less than 5. Well Duh!! You don’t have any buyer leads because you don’t have any listings! Real estate, whether the enlightened Help-U-Sell model or the tired old agent model, has always been an inventory business. He who controls the inventory, controls the business.

Back to the idea I presented at the start of this post, the notion that we’ve lost our focus in favor of being technologically relevant. With the entire Universe – especially NAR, Trulia, Zillow, et. al. – screaming that almost every single buyer starts their home search online, we have been lured into believing that we have to market online. We spend money on AdWords and Facebook pay-per-click, and Google Display Ads; we obsess over our websites and constantly re-work them to become more attractive to search engines.

The results are almost always disappointing. Even when leads are produced, the quality is iffy at best. And what kind of leads are we getting from all of this online mania? Buyer leads. Again, we love buyer leads, but we also know how to produce them and it has nothing to do with point and click.

Meanwhile, as good Help-U-Sell brokers pour countless dollars and lots of energy into their online programs, I see them ranging all across God’s Green Earth to take a listing here and another way over there and heck – you’re an hour away from my office and in another area code, but shucks, I’ll take your listing!

Stop It!

Use your market data to pick the two or three specific neighborhoods in your Target Market that have the highest turnover rates, and then focus all of your energy in developing listing inventory there! When a FSBO sign goes up, you know it and are in contact with them that first day. When one of your competitors gets a listing, you immediately do 50 ‘Arounds’ so the neighbor who is also thinking of selling knows there’s an alternative to 6%. When you get a listing in your Target Market, you regard it as a gift from the Marketing Gods and you exploit it to the max with signs, and brag cards and open houses and half a dozen other strategies.

Now, once you’ve done that, once it has begun to produce, once you’re getting at least 15% of the listings in your Target Market . . . then, you can consider online marketing.

And the online marketing you do should be aimed at further establishing your brand. It’s things like putting your latest Sold & Saved or Testimonial on Facebook and then paying to promote it within your target market. It’s things like creating a well-focused landing page for a Google pay-per-click campaign aimed at FSBOs in your target market.

Yes, there is a place for the Zillow/Trulia/Realtor.com ‘buy a Zip Code’ programs. I know of a few offices that have thrived with those additional marketing pieces. But you know what all of them had in common? Tons of listings. Really. Go onto Zillow and search for homes in Chino Hills, CA. Patrick Wood will turn up in Spades. Why? Because he has a huge share of the listings in that town. Zillow works for him – just as it works for Ken Kopcho – because he has a nice chunk of the listing business in his target market.

So, Help-U-Sell Brokers: use the Internet. Use it to gather as much data as possible about the individual neighborhoods in your overall marketplace. Pick a few that have the highest turnover rates. And then pursue the listing business in those neighborhoods with an unwavering focus. Do it on foot, in the streets and the mailboxes. Do it on billboards and bus benches, community sponsorships and involvement, Do it with signs. Get a listing and another and another. And then, start thinking about how you an further establish your brand in those neighborhoods with online marketing.

Please.

How to Use the Help-U-Sell Logo and Brand Identifiers

HELP-U-SELL BROKERS! THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POST!

I’m writing it because everywhere I look I see logo violations and improper use of Help-U-Sell trademarks. It is critical that every affiliate of this company – whether franchisee, vendor, agent or admin – use the Marks properly because improper use could cause us to lose them. It happened to Kleenex and it happened to Xerox.

Having said that I must confess: I have been a regular violator, myself, and if you look back a couple of years you can probably find examples of me NOT using the name and marks correctly. Kendra Gemma is the absolute highest authority on proper use and she’s been tutoring me; I have sworn to do better going forward! To help everyone get back into line, I offer the following tips.

First, let’s talk about grammar. The trademarked phrase ‘Help-U-Sell’ is not a verb. You don’t ‘Help-U-Sell’ a property. Neither does it ever stand alone (in fact, using it as I did in the previous two sentences is actually wrong!). It should be used like an adjective, always modifying a noun. So, our trademarked name, Help-U-Sell Real Estate, is proper usage: ‘Help-U-Sell’ modifies the noun, ‘Real Estate.’ It is ok to say ‘Help-U-Sell Broker’ or ‘Help-U-Sell Office’ or ‘Help-U-Sell system,’ but never just ‘Help-U-Sell.’

Second, consider identity. You are not ‘Help-U-Sell.’ Neither is Corporate. Help-U-Sell Real Estate is the name of the Franchisor with whom you are affiliated. You have a license to use the name ‘Help-U-Sell Real Estate’ and accompanying logos under very specific guidelines. I cringe a little writing this because I did a blog post some years back entitled, ‘I Am Help-U-Sell.’ No you’re not! So think about this: it’s not ok to pick up the ringing phone and answer, ‘Help-U-Sell, how may I help you?’ You are a Franchisee of Help-U-Sell Real Estate and are licensed to use the phrase ‘Help-U-Sell’ WITH your DBA: ‘Help-U-Sell Acme Realty, how may I help you?’ It’s not ok to verify your business on Google (a very important thing for you to do) as just ‘Help-U-Sell.’ You must verify with your full DBA: ‘Help-U-Sell Acme Realty.’

Third, let’s look at the logo. It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? You can’t imagine the time and effort that went into selecting and perfecting the red for our logo and signs! Take a look a the font used to spell out ‘Help-U-Sell.’ Believe it or not, it’s not a font at all. You can’t find a font that does that, because it is not typing, it is a graphic, a picture. Note that the U and the S don’t align properly with the other letters at the bottom and that the H and S don’t align with the L’s a the top. That is by design. So don’t think you can recreate the logo using a font in your word processor or publishing program: you can’t. Always insert it as a picture, a .JPEG or a .PNG, or a .GIF.

Next, notice the words, ‘Real Estate’ under ‘Help-U-Sell’ they are a part of the logo as well. So is the red ‘surfboard.’ So the logo is comprised of three things: the graphic name ‘Help-U-Sell’, the words ‘Real Estate’ and the red surfboard; you must use all three every time you use the logo. Also note the (R) (circle-R) to the right of the logo. While not technically part of the logo it does give notice to the world that this mark is registered and protected. You should always include it, too.

Now, you may use the logo exactly as it is, with no additions at all. I know, that seems to fly in the face of what I said above about always using your full DBA: ‘Help-U-Sell Acme Realty.’ But it’s apples and oranges. That’s you DBA, this is a registered LOGO. What you can’t do is use the logo and under it have the last half of your DBA, like this:

ACME REAL ESTATE

No, No, No and one more No for good measure! When you do that you are implying that you own Help-U-Sell Real Estate and the logo, which you don’t. If you use your DBA beneath the logo, you must use your full DBA, including ‘Help-U-Sell’, like this:

HELP-U-SELL ACME REAL ESTATE

There are a number of other nuances about the logo and the name that are outlined very well in the Policy and Procedure Manual*, but in the interest of simplicity I’ll leave them out of this post. Most of the violations I see and hear involve the situations mentioned above; if we could all get better at following these few guidelines . . . that would be a major victory!

Finally, here is the So What: the franchise agreement gives Help-U-Sell Real Estate the right and obligation to protect the mark(s). That means the $2,000 car wrap you just ordered and the $10,000 channel letter sign for you office MUST be correct. If they are not you can be asked to remove them. Your best course is ALWAYS to run your proposed marketing by Corporate before you begin. As mentioned, Kendra is a wiz at proper use and so is Ron McCoy. I’m a little slow but know how to ask either of them for help if you send your stuff to me! Let’s agree to make July the month we go back and tighten up all of the instances of improper usage!

*If you’ve misplaced your copy of the Policy and Procedure Manual, you can download a copy in OMS, under Marketing & Content, Operational Tools, Operations Manual.

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ACME REAL ESTATE

HELP-U-SELL ACME REAL ESTATE

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