Category: Attitude

The Mission

A friend of mine recently had a bit of bad luck with his car:  he wrecked it.  He’s been running around in a rental while his vehicle is being repaired and today we stopped by the body shop to see how work was progressing.

The experience was so different from what I expected that I wondered if perhaps I’d stepped through some kind of rift in the space-time continuum:  an auto body shop worm hole!

The shop was immaculately clean.  The people – all of the people – were neat, clean, and smiling.  We were immediately greeted and then treated like royalty.  I waited in the office, in a comfortable chair.  I was offered coffee and then water.  I started noticing the graphics on the walls.  Their Mission  statement was prominently displayed and I was immediately struck with how honest, how real it was.

“Our Mission is to restore the rhythm of our customers’ lives.”  Simple, straightforward, intriguing.

I actually pay attention to Mission statements and often find that they are pure garbage, cooked up by some disconnected marketing person and saying absolutely nothing.  This one, though?  I saw evidence of it’s honesty all around me.

I am so impressed that I want all Help-U-Sell family members to take a look at a short video that describes the Mission.  It is from their website:

So now you know:  it’s Calibre Collision Center.  They are located in several Southwestern States and based on what I saw today, I can’t imagine taking a crumpled car anywhere else to be fixed.

Our Mission, our identity is very similar to theirs.  We’re all about the consumer experience – it’s one of the ways we are so different from our competitors – and that’s not just marketing babble.  It’s for real.  We get a huge charge out of saving our customers money!  Out of charging them LESS than everyone else does!  When we do it right, we find that they become our biggest promoters!

Go ahead, watch the video again or visit the website.  Take a little inspiration from someone doing it very well.

Flashback Friday: I Am Help-U-Sell

Flashback Friday is what?  About 8 1/2 hours late this week.  For that I apologize.  But I think I have a good one to recycle today.  It’s from December 2009 and it’s a bit of a mantra or maybe an affirmation.  Since all good things begin with gratitude (not the other way around), here’s a little juice to prime your attitudinal pump:

I am Help-U-Sell.

I am grateful for a business model that generates a profit while saving sellers money

I am grateful for market data that enables me to make logical, structured marketing decisions

I am grateful for premeditated marketing that maximizes results

I am grateful for leads management that enables me to know when marketing produces results, where I need to work harder to convert leads, and who on my staff is performing well

I am Help-U-Sell

I am grateful for ‘Sold and Saved’ properties that tell the world that I am here, people use my service, and it works

I am also grateful for testimonials that say the same thing

I am grateful for my own special color:  Red, and for the signs that are recognizable a block away

I am grateful for car wraps

I am Help-U-Sell

I am grateful that I produce so many buyer leads that I need help to manage them all!

I am grateful that I can provide a place for a good agent to sell more real estate than they ever dreamed possible

I am grateful that I don’t need a huge retail space and dozens of desks to run my business

I am grateful that I am so feared by my competitors that they spread false rumors about me

I am Help-U-Sell

And I am IN the real estate business, not the recruiting business

I am Help-U-Sell and I live and die by the quality of the work I do for buyers and sellers and by the money I save them

I am Help-U-Sell, and I am grateful for the opportunity

I know that the system works and I am grateful to work the system

I am Help-U-Sell and even in the darkest hour I am optimistic about the future

I am Help-U-Sell and I will always find a way

I am Help-U-Sell and you can’t kill me

No matter what the turmoil, the chaos the bad decisions and broken promises, you can’t destroy me

I have a life of my own and I am bigger than any of the dogs that nip at my hem

I am Help-U-Sell.

I am well.

And I am ready for 2010.

Bring it on.

How Is Your Real Estate Muscle?

I am into Geezer Fitness.  That’s what happens when old people work consistently toward achieving fitness goals.  Geezer Fitness.  I got serious about it 10 years ago, in my early 50s and it has paid big benefits.  I am much stronger, healthier and happier than I was when I began.  I look better too.

Geezer Fitness means 3 things:

Diet – which doesn’t mean denying yourself anything, but rather taking control and making small adjustments.

Mental Conditioning – stretching your brain and pushing it to grow.  For me this takes the form of learning new things:  another language, a new sport, painting.

Physical Exercise – (in order) Stretching – Cardio Exercise – Resistance Training.  I say ‘in order’ because if you haven’t exercised in a long time, that’s how you should start:  consistent stretching every other day until it becomes an anticipated habit;  then adding in a little Cardio, and a little more, and a little more, until it, too, becomes an important routine; then doing the same with Resistance Training.  If you’re just starting out, it will take at least a year to get all three happening in an integrated rotine.

If you are not a little careful, it is possible to ‘strain’ any part of this recipe.  If you go overboard on the diet thing, you can end up craving stuff that will set you back.  If you push too hard in learning, you can become fatigued and muddled.  And when you over-do any part of your exercise program you can end up in pain . . . as I have.

I strained my back late last week.  Believe it or not, I think I did it stretching . . . in a yoga class.  Yes, it’s even possible to over-do when you are doing the most gentle part of your program.

Pain is your body talking to you.  It’s telling you you’ve gone too far, done something wrong, and now need a break.  I’ve had five days of pain – each day a little less severe than the one before – and near complete cessation of physical activity since.  You have to do that when you strain a muscle:  stop, sit down, take a break, give the muscle time to heal.  And while you are recouping, think about how you did this to yourself and make plans about how you’ll avoid it in the future.  In baseball they call this the ’15 Day Disabled List.’

And all of this is true for your real estate career too! (you knew I’d get around to that, didn’t you?)

If you’ve done it right, your real estate career is a set of pleasant routines you’ve developed over time that produce a beneficial outcome. . . just like my Fitness program.  Your routines are probably in several categories:  Marketing, prospecting, lead management, client base development, and so on.  You can ‘strain’ your real estate muscle by being out of balance, by dropping the ball on any one of your routines, by becoming reactive and out of control of your business.

No matter what the cause, Real Estate Muscle Strain always feels the same:  you hate your job.  The thought of talking to one more FSBO contorts your entire face into a frown.  You can’t find the gumption to call the Seller with the unrealistic price to report no new activity and to suggest a price reduction.  You put your phone on d0-not-disturb mode and let it all go to voice mail . . . and then dred all of those calls to return.

Just as with physical muscle strain, there is a prescription for Real Estate Muscle Strain, and it is the same:  Stop.  Rest.  Think about how you got the strain and plan how you will avoid it in the future.

But how do you do that when your business is clicking along?  You can’t just abandon everything and take off to Cabo!  But maybe you could get the flu.  Here’s the cure:

  • Identify your real estate pals:  the one or two people you would trust to cover for you and for whom you’d be willing to cover in return.  Do this NOW, before you strain your muscle.
  • Meet with them and form a pact:  when one of you go down, the other(s) will pick up the slack.

Now, when you discover you’ve strained your Real Estate Muscle:

  • Devote an hour or two to organizing your current business so you can hand it off.
  • Meet with your pal(s) and give them your files.  Plan to talk with them once a day.
  • Contact your active clients – sellers and buyers – and explain that you have the flu or a family emergency or a sick parent or something and that your Pal(s) will be covering for you.  You expect to be back in the saddle within the week.  
  • Go somewhere where you can rest.  This might be home . . . or maybe it really is Cabo!
  • Give your mind and body a break from real estate.  Talk to your Pal(s) once a day and then drop it.  
  • Think about what it was that caused the strain.  What drove you over the edge?  
  • What can you do immediately on your return to put that straining influence in check?
  • And how can you organize yourself and your business so that a strain in this area will be unlikely in the future?  

Need an example?  Here’s one that has ‘strained’ many real estate people:  shifty, rude or obnoxious clients.  Honestly:  if you are working with people you really don’t like, it’s a strain and it can drive you right off the cliff.  So give yourself permission to get the real estate flu, hand your business off and go to . . . Cabo!  But think:  how did  you get yourself into this pickle?

You’ll probably realize that at some point you were so desperate for business that you took whatever business you could find.  That’s usually how we end up with obnoxious clients.  The real problem isn’t the clients, it’s the desperation.  Without the desperation you can be picky about who you work with.  So what caused the desperation?  Oh, lack of leads (perhaps).  So how can you generate enough leads so that you can be picky about the ones you choose to work?  Oh, I know!  Marketing!  Maybe it is time to jump into that great mailbox program from Excel . . . or try this Facebook pay-per-click thing, or buy a zip code from Zillow.  And when you get back to work, is there a listing you want to give back?  A buyer you want to pass off to someone else?

See how it goes?  Strain is a symptom.  First you have to take care of the symptom by stepping back, by stopping.  Continuing to work when you have a strain only makes the strain worse.  You think:  what caused the strain?  What can I do NOW to get control?  And what can I do going forward to ensure that I don’t have this problem in the future?

I’m sure my strain came from forward bends:  downward facing dog, child pose, bent-leg forward bend and so on.  I pushed too hard and, I think, did a lot of bending from the low back, not from the hinge of the hips.  When I go back to yoga next week, I am going to limit my forward bends.  I’m going to use blocks under my hands to ensure that I don’t over-bend.  I’m going to consciously think about my hips and stop when they stop hinging.  It’s taken a week in a chair on muscle relaxers to come to this understanding.

Now:  What’s your plan of attack on your Real Estate Strain?  And where are your muscle relaxers?

Small Adjustments

Most of us want to lead healthier lives. Most of us want to build a healthier planet. Most of us want to have a healthier business.

Getting healthier in your business is just like getting healthier in your body and your home: it is often a matter of small adjustments applied consistently over time.

Think about water for a moment. It’s a precious resource, one that becomes even more so as populations increase. What small adjustments could you make in your relationship with water that would benefit your health or planet?

From a health standpoint, you could drink more of it and cut out the ‘junk’ alternatives to water humans have concocted through the years (read: soda).

From a conservation standpoint, you could turn off the tap while you brush your teeth and shave. A very small adjustment with a very big benefit. Really: can you imagine how much water we’d save if everyone did this?

From an environmental standpoint, you could quit carrying your water around in a ‘disposable’ plastic bottle. There’s nothing ‘disposable’ about them and the alternative is so simple.

Small adjustments in your relationship with water can mean big benefits in your life and the lives of others.

Now, think about your business. What small adjustments could you make in your business life that would yield equally big positive results?

How about planning your day the evening before? Really, simply writing your to do list before going to bed has proven to increase productivity. Simple step: Big return.

How about getting up 30 minutes early every day and spending the extra time stretching and breathing? You will be better prepared physically and mentally to tackle your day and, over time, you will reverse the natural fossilization that occurs as people age. I mean: do you really want to look like a question mark when you hit 80? Small adjustment – Big benefit.

How about committing to NOT respond to crisis? One of the things that happens as we get busy in real estate is that we become reactive. We are bombarded with urgent requests to get things done and to solve problems and to help others with their own tasks. Your entire day can be taken up responding to one urgency after another.

The truth is there are very few real estate emergencies. Not real ones. Most problems can be solved and few ever require immediate attention. So why allow the crisis of the moment to derail your plan for the day? If you will plan your day the night before and then give your plan primacy over everything else, you can quit being re-active in your business and start being pro-active.

If you have agents, you know how they can overload you with dozens of problems. Are you better equipped to solve the problems? Sure. But what other important activities are you going to sacrifice to do so? You could insist that nobody come to you with a problem without also bringing a couple of potential solutions (this short-circuits a lot of unnecessary problem dumping). Or you could be less formal.

I’ve written about a great broker for whom I worked in the early 80s. He was Godzilla’s boss. Remember? The man was adored by his agents. Really: we were so proud to work for him and to have him on our side. One of the things he did so well was to solve problems. We all knew, if we were backed up against the wall with a terrible situation, he could find a strategy, a solution, better than anyone else. And the conversation always went something like this:

‘Have you got a minute?’

‘Sure, what’s up?’

‘Well, I’m having a heck of a time with blah blah blah blah.’

‘Really? Tell me about it.’

‘Ok: blah blah blah blah blah.’

”What solutions have you already tried?’

(From this point forward, I will omit the ‘blahs.’ All lines will be the Broker’s – they are the only ones that count)

‘Why wasn’t that solution successful?’

‘What do you think might make a difference?’

‘How do you think we could make that happen?’

‘I think that’s a pretty good plan – what do you need to move forward?’

And so on. He rarely if ever gave us the answer. Mostly he just asked questions and we found a solution. Now, I don’t want to imply that he never had input. He did. But mostly he got us to think about our problems in new ways and to invent our own solutions.

It was a small adjustment in his style (he curbed his own impulse to have the answer)  that had a big payoff in his business – a happy, loyal and productive staff.

Finally, think about baseball for a moment, professional baseball.  There are superstars being paid millions to play the game and there are many not-s0-super-stars making a whole lot less.  The average players – the ones who will be largely forgotten when they leave the game – will successfully make contact with the ball and have a hit 5 times out of every 20 times they come to the plate.  The superstars?  What makes them so much more valuable?  What makes them worth millions to a club?  Every 20 times they come to the plate, they will get 6 hits.  Just one hit more.

What small adjustment can you make in your business and your life to get just one more hit?

How to Fix Your Broken Real Estate Company (before it’s too late)

Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey writes:

‘Dear Set Fee Blog.  I have been reading your posts for some time and am convinced that my current real estate company business model – what you call ‘Ordinary’ – is antiquated, out-of-touch with consumers, and, well . . . it sucks.  But I don’t know how to go about changing it without firing all of my agents, shutting the doors and starting over.  Help me, please.  Tell me how to go about abandoning the tired old agent-oriented model and converting to a shiny new consumer-centric,  set-fee model.’

Dear Mr. Feder.  Thanks for writing and, believe me, you are not alone.  I am considering starting a 12 step program for Ordinary Brokers and I’m sure the meetings would fill fast.

But first, let’s understand that the kind of change you’re talking about is HUGE.  It’s not just a simple matter of altering how you charge consumers or how you offer your menu of services.  Even a well-studied outsider would probably screw it up without expert coaching.

I am a good example.  I came to Help-U-Sell in 2004 as an outsider, hired to do a job:  upgrade the company’s University.  It took three months before I had all of my old paradigms out of the way and could see Help-U-Sell for what it really is:  a bold new way to deliver excellent service to consumers while making a healthy profit in real estate.  You have to question all of your assumptions, all of your beliefs about how the business works.  And you have to change from the core outward.  ‘ Sell Fast – Save Thousands’ is just the outward expression of a ton of tweaking behind the scenes. Nonetheless, here is what I suggest:

Start carefully monitoring the lead flow in your office.  Where are the leads coming from?  What (and who) is generating them?  What portion of the incoming leads are coming from company sources as opposed to agent sources?  You want to consider this to know how much business your company is likely to do in the event all of your agents pack up and leave; which is a possibility if you go through with the change.

By the way, ‘carefully monitoring the lead flow’ means to monitor it like it’s never been monitored before.  You want to get source information on every single inquiry, whether contact information is gotten or not.  You want to know why everyone, even the caller who was a nutcase or the one who simply hung up, called your office.

I don’t think you can realistically expect your current staff, and certainly not your current agents to do this.  My suggestion:  hire someone (or convert your best office admin) to handle ALL phone and Internet inquiries.  One person through whom all incoming traffic is routed.  This person collects source information, handles the inquiry, collects contact information and then turns the lead over to you for assignment to the appropriate agent.  By the way, if yours is a big office, you probably need more than one person doing this important function.

Try to maintain your sense of humor as you review the data your new call coordinators are collecting.  You’ll probably discover that many of your agents, in fact, most of them, have been living off leads YOU generated.  You’ve been paying them huge splits to generate their own leads, do their own marketing and so on . . . but it has been YOUR marketing, your investment in signs, facilities, web presence, and advertising that has been causing consumers to contact the office.  Surprise, surprise!  It’s time to wake up now.

As an aside, I once did a modified version of this exercise with an Ordinary broker who had a ‘Top Producer’ who did about 30% of the office’s production.  The broker spent most of his days living in fear that the agent would leave.  When we did the analysis we discovered that more than half of that agent’s production came from office-generated leads.  Then we put a pencil to the company dollar she generated (after the huge split she was paid), deducted a factor for what it cost to produce those company-generated leads and discovered that the broker was probably losing money every time TP closed a deal!  He was making more from some of his less productive people.  He said goodbye to TP then watched as everybody became more productive and his bottom-line improved.

Start calculating what it actually costs you to market a properly priced listing.  Don’t consider what you have to pay a listing agent.  We’re only looking at hard costs here:  how much marketing, how many days of office operation and so on.  Be aware that whatever number you get today may be different tomorrow.  Cost to market a listing varies in direct proportion to days on market.  If your marketplace slows and DOM goes up, so will your cost to market a listing . . . so take your figure and add a ‘fudge’ factor – say 25%.

Now consider:  is there a way to effectively accomplish the successful marketing of a listing without paying an agent 70% or more?  This involves carefully examining what a listing agent actually does.  We could go through the whole laundry list here and then we could demonstrate how almost all of it could be done much less expensively . . . but instead, let’s just acknowledge a fact you already know to be true in you gut:  You’re paying that agent 70% NOT to sell the listing, but to GET the listing.    It’s the damndest thing!  Today, we pay listing agents at closing not for getting the listing sold – listings, properly priced and plugged into an effective marketing program pretty much sell themselves – but instead as a reward for bringing business into the company.  In other words:  for getting the listing.

Now your task is becoming clear.  You must create marketing and administrative systems for standardizing the marketing of your inventory.  You have to take marketing BACK from your agents.  You need to design it, orchestrate it, hire the admin staff to get it done.  Marketing has to transition from being idiosyncratic – created willy-nilly but a pack of individual agents who have widely different ideas about marketing – to being automatic . . . standardized, monitored, controlled and adjusted by you.  In your new universe you’ll be plugging your listings into your already operating marketing system, not designing a whole new marketing program for every listing you take.  Its a very big shift.

Then you have to take BACK the ‘getting’ of  listings from your agents.  You and your team of assistants now need to be in charge of this inventory procurement function.  I am aware that the faint of heart, having read this far, are now shutting down their computers. Oppressed by their own paradigms, they cannot envision a world in which listing inventory is secured without agents.  But I assure you it can be.  It starts with an examination of your seller offer:  what do you have to offer that is, far and away, better and different than most of your competitors.  If – like most real estate brokers – your offer is identical to every other broker’s, you have a problem.  You’re going to have to refine who you are and what you have to offer until you stand out from the crowd and are thus, easy to spot by consumers.  Then you must market that offer.

Once your offer to sellers is fine tuned and really different, you will discover that it is much easier to present.  Your listing consultation will look something like this:

  • Tell me everything I need to know about your move
  • This is who we are and how we work
  • This is what makes us special and different
  • Here is what our past clients say about us
  • This is how much we can realistically sell your house for and what you’ll likely net
  • Sign here

If you take out all of the fluff and show-biz most listing agents trot out during their presentations, this can be accomplished in, oh, 30 minutes of less.  When you have a better deal to present, you don’t need the smoke and mirrors, the fluff and show-biz to get the listing.

Up until now, most of this could be done in stealth mode.  You could do your research and preparation without telling your agents.  But now that all the ducks are in a row, everything is lined up and ready to go, it’s time to call a special meeting.

Present the state of the company – get right down to profitability.  I don’t know what yours is, but if you’re like most Ordinary brokers your company is making less than 5% profit – which is obscene considering the risk owning a real estate company involves.  Get their buy-in that that’s a pitiful bottom line for a fine real estate company like yours.

Then present your solution:  you are going to become a lead generating machine, which means taking back marketing and investing in it heavily.  They will like that.  But, you’re also going to take back the listing function.  You will no longer need agents to find consumers – you’ll be doing that with marketing.  What you will need agents for is handling the buyer leads your marketing and your listings generate.  You anticipate that a good buyers agent in this new company you are building should close in the neighborhood of 20 transactions this year – all basically fed to them by the company marketing program.   You may now invite all who are not interested in this opportunity (which will be most) to leave.  Now, interview the ones who are left.  Since you will be shouldering the financial burden for lead generation, who on your remaining staff would you trust with the important task of converting them to sales – for a much more reasonable 50% split.

At the end of the day, your office population may have dropped from, oh, 50 agents and 3 admins/assistants to 5 agents and 4 admins/assistants.  You can now begin to look for smaller, less expensive space.

By the way, all through this process, it’s a good idea to contact Ron McCoy at Help-U-Sell for advice and to begin a conversation about becoming part of the family.  The Brand will help you through the transition and position you properly for maximum impact in your marketplace.

As you start to walk down this new path, you will begin to feel as if you are waking up from a very long nap.  Real estate will look new and it will be exciting again. You will be filled, even driven by a new sense of purpose:  the mission.  You’ll work harder and have more fun than you have in years.  And, in six to nine months, your personal bottom line should be way ahead of where it is today.

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