Category: Help-U-Sell

Focus Your Website: For Buyers? Sellers? . . . or Both?

The primary function of most real estate broker websites is pretty obvious:  provide information to and hopefully capture prospective buyers.  That’s why the home search function is usually front an center and why IDX is so important.  This is certainly true of Help-U-Sell Broker websites with their scrolling ‘Featured Listings’ and nearly dominant search field.

It makes sense too:  almost every bit of advertising we do, from For Sale signs with URLs to flyers with QR codes, is intended – at least as a secondary function – to drive buyer traffic to the website where quality information and powerful search tools deliver value that makes  buyer lead capture more possible.

But what about Help-U-Sell?  Our whole marketing thrust for 36 years has been to target Sellers, take more than our share of listings and let the listings create Buyer Leads.  Since the lion’s share of real estate marketing has gone online – and since a major portion of that online presence centers on the office website – isn’t there a disconnect between the heavy Buyer orientation of Help-U-Sell Broker websites and our own ‘Secret Sauce?’  Maybe.

I’m not suggesting that our Broker sites shouldn’t LEAD with tools and tips for Buyers.  As I said, almost all of our advertising is designed to drive buyers to the website where a value experience makes them ‘capturable.’  In fact, I want our guys to be pulling Buyer leads OFF Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com and a dozen other online sources and offering them a better experience on their own Broker sites with language like:

Have you noticed that a lot of the listings you’re seeing on XXXXX.com are already sold?  Have you seen duplicates and inaccuracies?  That’s because that’s a National website trying to do a Local job.  They receive data from dozens of different sources and sometimes their machines have difficulty telling what is true and most recent.  How would you like to get up-t0-date access to the data in our Local MLS?  There is no better data anywhere for a home search here in Anytown.  You’ll be searching for homes just like I do, with the same information I use;  it’s free and easy to use.  Great – let me get your email address and I’ll set you up an account.

So, Buyer orientation and tools prominent on the first page:  YES!

But, are you also using your website to attract Sellers, to educate them about your program, to do the job so much of our marketing did in years gone by?  There are ways to do this you know.  Step one is to create a page (or pages) that provides the kind of information that caused Sellers to contact you in the past:

  • Sold and Saves
  • Testimonials
  • Easy Way/Smarter Way
  • Seller Savings Comparison
  • Brief Description of your program

Take out an old paper ETM – the one we delivered in thousands of mailboxes each month.  Can you build a page on your website with the same elements, presented in the same powerful way?  (By the way, the answer is ‘Yes.’  The tools are there and they are easy to use, especially when you have the Sarasota Tech Team standing by to help every step of the way).  The Sellers Savings Comparison has been up and operational for several months, and Robbie just introduced the new Sold And Saved banners (thanks to input from the great Brokers who attended this year’s Success Summit).

Step two is to start driving Seller traffic to this page, just like you drive Buyer traffic to page one of your Website.  That means first, buying an easy to remember URL for the new page, something like:  www.sell-and-save.com, and pointing it at the Seller page.  Then include it in every bit of advertising your do that may be seen by Sellers.  It also means taking advantage of new marketing opportunities to drive traffic:  QR codes on postcards that tease:  Find out how you can sell your home fast and save thousands.

I’m glossing over Step two rather quickly because it’s more about a way of thinking than anything else.  Attracting the Seller Inquiry has been so much a part of who we are that it is like breathing.  It’s automatic.  It’s a lifestyle.  But the real estate ditch of the last six years had us scrambling for Buyer Leads and Institutional Sellers, not genuine Seller Leads because they were (alas) non-existent.  It’s time to take the new seller tools we have for Broker Websites and become just as obsessed with exploiting them as we once were with our next ETM.

Step three is to build Landing Pages for your targeted call to action advertising.  These are simple fill-in web forms for gathering contact information on a potential client after an offer of something of value in return.  Here’s an example from the fine folks in Waynesboro, VA, Help-U-Sell Direct Savings Real Estate:  LINK.  This one is for a Market Analysis, something of great value to today’s homeowners.  You’d drive traffic to this landing page with postcards, flyers and other advertising, teasing:  Find out what your home is worth TODAY!

You might build similar landing pages for ‘Find out how you can save thousands when selling your home‘, or ‘Free E-Book:  How to Save Thousands When Selling Your Home.’  And so on.

Once again, when Boo probably would have been sufficient,  I’ve said Boo-H00-Hoo.  Forgive me:  I’m on vacation (Ole!).  But I hope you will take my enthusiasm for this topic and the new tools available to you to get back to doing what we have always been about:  Attracting inquiries from Sellers with our Superior Offer, Converting those Inquiries into Listings most of the time, and Letting the Marketing of those Listings drive a steady stream of Buyer Leads into our offices.

Help-U-Sell Success Summit Update

Ahhhh.  That’s what I feel every year at this time.  The NAR Expo is history and the Help-U-Sell Success Summit is done for another year.

I had lots of anxiety going into this year’s Summit.  Last year’s event was so good I thought it would be hard to top.  Also, our numbers were down slightly because of the location.  Not that Orlando isn’t a great place for a meeting, it’s just that the largest concentration of Help-U-Sell brokers is in the West and they pretty much stayed home.  One of our newest members, Kurt Steffein, made the haul from California (and what a wonderful energy he brought along), and Lona Murphy from Oregon surprised everyone by showing up unannounced!  A special thank you goes out to both of them.  But as we set the room for the meeting, we kept adding chairs and adding chairs, and by the time Jack Bailey rolled in with his entire Coaching Group in tow, we were about 30 people.

I could go on and on about who came and the nuggets they shared, but here’s something that’s more important: It was once again, a great meeting.   There is excitement about the business and the the opportunities bursting forth over the next several years.  Our crew is hungry and ready – their enthusiasm and love for what they do hasn’t paled in the downturn of the last few years.  Everybody who attended stayed fully engaged for the entire meeting.  We had no dropouts and no nod-offs.  Conversation was lively and productive.  And there was something else about this group that came through loud and clear – they all genuinely like and care for each other.  We talk about a Help-U-Sell Family a lot, and I know, that language is typical of a lot of real estate organizations.  But here it means something.  It really does.

What were the key messages of this meeting?  There were many, but here’s what I take away:

This year – and next year – are OUR years.  For the first time in a long time, sellers with equity are returning to the market.  That’s our target.  Always has been.  We have a huge competitive advantage in a marketplace where Joe and Sally Homeowner want to sell, because Joe and Sally also want to save – and that’s what we’re all about:  selling and saving.  After slogging through a market where many if not most of our sellers were . . . banks . . . who really couldn’t care less about what makes us unique, special and better, we are once again going to be in the driver’s seat.

That’s great, but it also means we have to return to an old habit that we’ve gotten away from in recent years:  marketing.  We have to dust off our logos (so to speak) and go back to spreading the word that we are here, people use us, it works and they save money.  The way we spread that word has changed somewhat.  It’s much more electronic and frankly, less costly.  But make no mistake about it:  as right as the timing is, it will mean nothing if we don’t re-invest in marketing who we are and what we do.

We are real estate people (thank goodness!) and as such are people people.  The highest and best use of our time is usually to be face to face with consumers.  However, there is an electronic universe in which the people we need to be talking to are living, at least part-time.  We have to be comfortable with that electronic landscape, with how it works and how to position ourselves within it.  I know, for most of us, that means hiring someone to manage our online presence; but even then, we have to have a basic understanding of how the Internet works from a marketing standpoint and how to take advantage of the huge opportunities there.

We are exceptionally blessed to have Robbie Stevens, Tony Tramontano, and everyone else at Help-U-Sell dedicated to securing our position in this new world and patiently nurturing our collective understanding.  I saw so many lights going on in that room the last couple of days as Robbie worked through some of the basics of our own Office Management System.  I think we’re all going home more comfortable and a little wiser.

I also remain in awe of Ron McCoy.   Of the Corporate team, he has the greatest longevity – about 12 years – but it’s much more than that.  In addition to all of the history, the great ups and downs of Help-U-Sell, he has a depth of understanding of what makes us tick and how to turn that into business success.  He has a great strategic mind and his attitude is unflagging.  After a grueling hour of tool after tool with an Internet marketing ‘guru,’ Ron showed us how to use Instagram to improve our online impact.  He showed us, we did it, we had fun, and we got it.  If you don’t believe me, check Facebook for yesterday, Nov. 13, and you’ll see a whole passel of pictures of Ron during the presentation, taken and posted via Instagram.

Mostly we are blessed to have such a delightful, scrappy team.  So many of the people who attended the meeting joined the Franchise in 2005 and 2006 – at the onset of the worst real estate market in history.  And they are still here, still strong, still smiling and many have done much more than simply survive.  Many have built remarkable businesses as one after another of their traditional competitors have downsized, consolidated and gone out of business.  It’s always been great to be Help-U-Sell.  It’s once again a great time to be Help-U-Sell.

Help-U-Sell, where different is better
It’s Good To Be Help-U-Sell

 

 

 

Get Ready!

Help-U-Sell Success Summit 2012

November 12-13

Orlando Florida

Immediately Following the National Association of REALTORS 2012 Expo and Convention

Join us for two days of high energy conversation!

Discover what Core Marketing is today!

Hear from the brokers who had the largest increase in closed business this year versus last!

Pick the brain of an Internet Marketing GURU!

Check your Help-U-Sell email for full details and then

REGISTER by clicking http://seminars.helpusell.com/

On Hiring

I just got off a Training Magazine webinar on ‘Engagement.’  That’s the mysterious factor that comes into play in almost every human interaction from Facebook to the Church Social.  In this case the experts were talking specifically about Employee Engagement:  keeping the members of your team energized and  involved in the success of your business.

Much of the discussion centered on hiring, and I think that was appropriate.  Your best bet at building a good team is to hire the right people.  But who are they?

If you are an ordinary real estate broker (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), you probably have lots of scripts memorized about the kind of person who can be successful in the business.  In reality, though, you long ago gave up the notion that you could tell who would make it and who wouldn’t.  You hired too many hot shots who failed miserably and probably a few plodders who plodded on to do big business.  The ordinary broker would never say it out loud, but the philosophy of hiring is basically this:

Hire anyone who can fog a mirror.  Give them a little training – hopefully the kind that requires little investment of time or energy on the broker’s part – and give them six months.

On paper, the ordinary broker would compare the new person’s performance against a standard at six months and decide then whether they could stay or go.  In practice however, the ordinary broker is too busy hiring more and more agents to have time for this weeding out process . . . and that’s why the average real estate agent in the US does what?  about 7 deals a year.

At Help-U-Sell we have a different problem.   We have difficulty attracting agents who are used to being paid 75% commission splits on the 7 deals they do a year to our program where they’ll probably do 15 or 20 deals and be paid 50 or 55%! Somehow that ordinary agent believes that the size of the commission split establishes his or her value as an agent – NOT the number of buyers and sellers he or she helps.  What can I say?  It’s a crazy universe!

One of the revelations I had in today’s meeting is that, in hiring, skill sets are important . . . but if they are present, the MORE important thing is Cultural Fit:  Will this person be able to embrace our culture, our mission, and get onboard with enthusiasm and passion?

Here’s where we (Help-U-Sell) have an edge.  The skill set for Real Estate Sales is pretty fluffy.  You have to be able to talk to people and to present yourself as a professional.  You have to be able to learn and remember lots of semi-technical, semi-legal information.  You have to be organized and able to manage a lot of detail – or be willing and able to hire someone to do this for you.  It helps to not be afraid of computers or technology in general.  You have to be able to persevere in the face of setbacks and defeats.  I could go on but you get this picture:  this is all pretty soft stuff.  I mean: it’s not like ‘you must be able to program in C+.’  

So, with this soft skill set, LOTs of people might be successful in Real Estate.  What becomes more important is their ability to fit within the company culture . . . which assumes your company has one (a culture).  But most real estate companies don’t.  Really:  What’s the culture of most real estate companies?  They all do the same thing in the same way with the same tools . . . . what’s the difference?  There is none.

But there is a difference at Help-U-Sell.  Our people – and by that I mean everyone:  brokers, agents, admins, processors, corporate employees, everyone – is on fire for the mission.  We’re not just selling real estate, we’re changing the way real estate is sold.  We’re changing the world for the better, not just perpetuating a bad idea that’s been around for decades.  This passion for the Crusade is one of the many things that differentiate us from every other real estate organization.  And THAT’s what we should be looking for when we hire:  people who have the ability to get excited and passionate about doing real estate in a better way.  If we can find them, the rest is easy.  After all, most of those soft skills can be developed.

Picture this:  a help wanted ad for a Help-U-Sell office:

Needed:  2 agents who want to change the world.

We are overrun with buyer leads and seek dedicated

individuals to take extraordinary care of them.  If you

want to be busier than you have ever been in your

career, if you want to delight consumers by giving them

outstanding service AND a better deal, call today:

123-456-7890

Engagement, the ability to become involved and passionate about the company mission, is essential to today’s best companies.  Near the end of today’s meeting, one of the presenters shared Zappos policy on new hires.  They do the standard interviewing/screening process, looking for skill sets and cultural fit.  Candidates who make it through are put into a three week training program about the company, the work, the culture and the mission.  At the end of the three weeks, each one of them is offered $3,000 to quit.

Stop.  Let that sink in a minute.

What Zappos is saying is they acknowledge they can’t always tell who will fit with the company and who won’t.  But they’d rather pay their bad hiring decisions to go away rather than invest time, money, effort and productivity in trying to rehabilitate them after the fact.  Clearly:  anyone who would take the money and run . . . is no one they need on the team anyway!

So, Help-U-Sell brokers:  I know you are overwhelmed.  You need help, and you need it now.  But don’t let your need turn desperate to the point that you make bad hiring decisions.  You may have to talk to ten people to find one who can burn for you.  Don’t give up after 3 or 4 and start modifying your program so that a marginal agent, already disgruntled with their current broker, will come to work for you.

Personal Marketing

I was there in the 80s when the concept of Personal Marketing was born.  Re/Max had swept into the industry and turned the spotlight squarely on the the agent . . . the agent who did exactly what every other agent did, who had the same tools, the same program.  That was the problem:  how do you market something when what you have to market is exactly what everyone else has to market?  The answer was:  you don’t.  You don’t market what you do.  You market yourself.  You become your own brand.  And over time you create a belief that, while what you do isn’t all that different, who you are is.

Here:  think about cars for a minute.  Think about Dodge cars.  in the 80’s there was nothing at all spectacular, different or unique about Dodge cars.  That was pretty much true about all American made cars in the 80’s.  Now try to think like a Dodge dealer:  you’ve got the same product every other Dodge dealer has.  You have essentially the same financial deal with the manufacturer that every other Dodge dealer has.  You have the same pool of salespeople and service people to pull from, the same financing avenues. There is absolutely nothing unique or different about what you have to offer. How do you sell more Dodge automobiles than the other dealer across town?

Cal Worthington was up to that challenge.  He pretty much quit marketing Dodge cars and started marketing Cal Worthington.  He did crazy stuff:  did a commercial while wing-walking on a bi-plane, dressed up in a gorilla suit, made a pitch while skydiving, ate a bug, ‘stood on his head ’til his ears turned red,’ and so on.  Usually in his commercials, he’d introduce his dog Spot, who was never a dog at all.  It was a tiger once, a lizard, a Killer Whale, even a Hippopatamus.  I can still hear his jingle:  ‘Go See Cal! Go See Cal! Go See Cal!’   And people did go see Cal.  I’m not sure how many people trusted Cal or thought he was up to anything more than negotiating the best possible deal for his dealership.  But people wanted to go see that crazy guy . . . personal marketing works.

In the late 70’s The Personal Marketing Company was born and brought this concept to the real estate business.  It was the right idea at the right time. Agents who, like Cal, who had the same Dodge as the guy  across town, had the same tools, same procedures, same methods for making sales, were hungry for a new twist on marketing.  As Personal Marketing gained traction, we watched the real estate company logo on the For Sale sign shrink and shrink until it became the fine print at the bottom.  We saw the agent’s name and photo become larger and larger.

The Personal Marketing Company was largely about product.  They had all kinds of newsletters and postcards to sell to agents that would accommodate their individual branding.  But in the 80’s Hobbs and Herder showed up to teach people how to market themselves, and that’s when everything really shifted.

Remember a month ago or so?  I did a post about an amazing open house I encountered.  There were dozens of directionals, all with pink flourescent flags on top, all featuring the agent’s branding leading to the house.  Along the route there were companion bus benches.  It was impressive.  But while I was writing the piece, I wondered what company this person worked for.  It wasn’t clear on any of the signage.  The signs were pretty unique:  all pink and green, but the only name on them was . . . the agent’s.  So I went to her webiste and there it was, burried in the fine print at the bottom of the page:  she worked for Keller-Williams.  The message to the consumer is clear:  my company has nothing special to offer.  We’re just like everyone else.  But me?  I’m special.  You should be doing business with meeeeee.

Today, my buddy, Ken Kopcho sent me a video from the Tom Ferry Organization.  He’s promoting his ‘Success Summit’ coming up later in the year (How the heck did he end up with the same name for his annual meeting as ours?).  Here: check it out:


The ideas are good.  But it’s all about personal marketing, marketing who you are, not what you do.  It works and I approve for Realtors everywhere.

But Help-U-Sell people are not generic Realtors.  We really do have a unique system that works.  The consumer experience is completely different with Help-U-Sell.  In short:  we have something real to market.  We don’t have to create a fictionalized persona to grab the interest of consumers.  All we have to do is distribute the message that:  We Are Here, People Use Us, It Works, and They Save Money.

Somewhere close to one of Cal’s dealerships was a Honda dealer.  Who knows who the owner of that dealership was:  that’s not what they were marketing.  They were marketing a product that was different.  Their ads said:  We Are Here, People Buy Our Cars, They Don’t Break Down, They Get Great Mileage, and Our Customers Are Happy.

The Wall Street Journal lists the top 20 vehicles in order by unit sales.  For 2012, year to date, they show Dodge with one vehicle in the top 20:  the Ram Pick-up.  114, 630 have been sold so far this year.  Honda has three cars in the top 20:  Civic, Accord and CRV.  Total sales for those vehicles is 384, 736 units so far.  Love you, Cal, but guess who won the war….

The point is this:  Help-U-Sell people, yes:  do market yourself.  Be personable.  Be likeable.  But remember why people do business with you.  It’s not because of the gorilla suit you wore last Halloween.  It’s because you are unique, you have a program that works, your brand means something and the Help-U-Sell consumer experience is superior.  THAT’s something to market.

 

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