Category: Help-U-Sell

Get Ready!

Tomorrow is National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day!

Every war story you report here at The Set Fee Blog is a chance to win a one-on-one website make-over and optimization consultation with Robert Stevens ( a $548.27 value, worth tens of thousands in increased business).  We’ll draw the winner at Noon, Eastern Time on Thursday, February 4.  You do not have to be present to win, but you do have to submit your war stories for a chance.

Today is a great day to get organized:

  • Before you leave the office tonight, pull the Expired Listings you will call — that will be one step that won’t hang you up tomorrow.
  • Identify the FSBOs you’ll call, too.
  • If door-knocking in a target neighborhood is in your plans, what will you be leaving behind?  Perhaps an explanation of the current Tax Credit would be good.  Get that piece done today so you don’t waste time on it tomorrow.
  • If you’re planning cold calls, take a few moments to scrub your list for Do-N0t-Calls, or ask a lender or title rep to do it for you.
  • Take a few moments preparing your dialogues:  what will you say to your past clients, to FSBOs and Expireds, to cold contacts?  If you need ideas there are some HERE.
  • Open your day planner and block time for prospecting activities.  Plan to devote at least three hours prospecting for new listings.  Remember, tomorrow the future of the entire Free World depends on your getting a new listing before the sun goes down! (well, actually, before close of business — lots of listings happen after dark).
  • Finally, tonight, when you are lying in bed, before you turn out the light, think about it. Picture yourself getting to the office tomorrow morning.  Picture yourself calmly brushing the crisis of the moment aside to be dealt with on your time, not despite your plan.  Picture yourself picking up the phone and calling all of the people you’ve planned to call, saying exactly what you planned to say.  Picture yourself pulling a market analysis and prepping your clipboard for the listing appointment you just booked.  Picture that unknown seller smiling as they sign your listing agreement.

Then Tuesday morning, getting up and getting it done will be a snap!

 

Do It For the Whistle-Pig

‘Whistle-pig’ is a common name for the Groundhog (Marmota Monax), and his day is coming:

February 2, 2010

Although PETA and other animal rights activists want to retire the real Groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, from his annual responsibility of predicting the end of Winter and replace him with a robot rodent, their efforts have not resulted in a change to this year’s event.  As always, Phil will be prompted to come out of his burrow at Gobblers Knob, PA, and look for his shadow.  If he sees it, we’re in for six more weeks of Winter.  If not, there will be an early Spring.

Personally, I’m hoping for a very cloudy day at Gobblers Knob and for Phil to have a shadow-free experience.  Not only do I want our brokers in the North and Mid-West to have an easier time getting their signs in the ground (one broker told me he carries a mallet and a railroad spike in his trunk for making sign-holes in the icy dirt), I also want an early Spring selling season — something I’ve been predicting for a long time.

Groundhog Day is not the only thing happening next Tuesday.  It’s also:

National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day!

Remember?  It’s the day when everyone in the Help-U-Sell family will have one prime objective:  to get at least one new listing before the sun goes down.  We have a contest going around the event and you can get details HERE.

Maybe there’s a way to pull the Pennsylvania Groundhog event, the interests of animal rights activists and the National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day together.  Maybe we could get Punxsutawney Phill to sleep in on Tuesday and let our brokers handle the prognostication.  You know:  if you see a shadow when you put your Help-U-Sell for sale sign in the yard, it means six more weeks of winter.  No shadow . . . and the big thaw will have begun.

It’s About the Buyer, Klem!

I met Don Taylor for the first time last month.  I had a meeting with his daughter, Marci, and when I showed up at the Orange County Starbucks we’d chosen as our meeting place, there stood Don, as well.  Needless to say, it was a thrill and an honor to meet them both.  They deservedly occupy a very hallowed perch at the top of the Help-U-Sell family tree.

We talked about all kinds of things but Marci said something that was quickly echoed by Don:

‘People forget, but Help-U-Sell was always about the buyer.’

(Stop.  Think about it for a minute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ok)

I immediately pictured a slide I used in the first round of Help-U-Sell rallies done last year.  It is a simple diagram of how Help-U-Sell generates leads:

Put succinctly, we go into the marketplace, set a fee for our home marketing services that is reasonable and logical, that saves sellers money and still generates a nice profit for the office.  The Low Set Fee* creates interest and results in more sellers inquiring about our service than would if we were ordinary brokers charging a one-size-fits-all, percentage-based commission.

We all know what happens when a prospective seller asks about Help-U-Sell:  they almost always list with us.  So more interest, more inquiries, means more listings.

It almost makes me sick to think about it today, but during the high flying times of 2004, 5, and 6, many Help-U-Sell brokers stopped right there, where the dashed red line is.  They put blinders on and believed that if they just worked listings and didn’t worry about buyers, they’d make plenty of money with fewer staff.  They thought, ‘It’s a sellers’ market.  I have a model that enables me to get more sellers than anyone else.  Why should I scramble around chasing after buyers?’  All you have to do today to comprehend the completeness of that folly is to look around . . . and see that those brokers are no longer with us.  Like the Dinosaur, they became extinct.

You can’t ignore the buyer, no matter how overheated the market becomes.

While listings are not a loss-leader at Help-U-Sell (we expect to make a reasonable profit on them), one of the benefits of having them is the buyer leads they generate.  These are buyers who might buy one of our listings, perhaps generating a selling fee, or buy an MLS listing, thus generating a co-broke commission.  In either case, the buyer side usually generates more revenue to the Help-U-Sell office than the listing side.

That’s why the most popular way to implement the Help-U-Sell model is with the Broker and/or a licensed assistant taking the listings (after all, with our system, it’s not Rocket Science), and licensed agents working with the buyer leads the listings generate.  There’s usually a few more dollars on the buyer side, making splitting commissions with an agent possible.  In most cases we don’t have that kind of latitude on the listing side.

So, here we are in 2010.  The market is still weird, but it’s not nearly as weird as it was last year at this time.  And you know what?  It doesn’t matter how weird the market is anyway;  the great truth is still true:

He who controls the inventory, controls the market

So get out into the marketplace.  Tell your story.  Take more listings.  And then . . . capture, incubate and close the buyer leads those listings generate.  That’s the Help-U-Sell way.

*By the way, Don has no problem with ‘Flat’ fee.  He thought the whole campaign about tires going ‘flat,’ and ‘Set’ fee being preferable was splitting hairs.  I have a feeling the consumer would agree.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback

Peter King with Sports Illustrated does a column on their website called ‘Monday Morning Quarterback,’ where he reacts to the NFL Football games of the previous weekend.  I’m taking a page from his lesson book here  to comment on a few Help-U-Sell specific things, but feel impelled to talk football first in Peter’s honor.

First off, The Chargers (my home team) reminded me so much of the traditional real estate world in their lacklustre AFC Playoff game.  They were overconfident, relied on the same old same old, did nothing new or out of the box, did not respond to the challenge of the moment, and. . . they lost.  It’s taken me a week and two days to even be able to talk about it.  The Jets, however, are a rag-tag upstart bunch that clearly has a different approach. They reminded me of Help-U-Sell, intercepting passes, forcing fumbles, running poor Phillip Rivers ragged.    It took Peyton Manning and a well prepared Colts team to handle them.

Yes, we’re all glad to see the Saints in the Super Bowl, but is Brett Favre a class act, or what?  To see him come back after spraining his ankle and scramble around like a 25 year old made me proud to be a grey haired geezer.  Could there be an AARP Magazine cover in his future?

Speaking of the future, the upcoming Tech Summit is shaping up.  The development team from South Africa arrives in a couple of weeks to ensure that the rollout of the new broker sites goes without a hitch.  They will attend the meeting as well, as we all learn how to do the simple things that will make our websites really Hummmmmm.  If lead generation is your goal and if you’re short on the time, money and effort it would take to do a consistent direct mail campaign (i.e.  ETMs), then learning how to use the Internet to accomplish the same objective is key;  and that’s what we’ll be doing at the Tech Summit.   It will also be a time to come together and bond as a new, rejuvenated Help-U-Sell family.  You get the added benefit of hearing a bunch of guys talk like Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman in ‘Invictus.’

Most frequently asked question:  What does it cost?  Simple answer:  nothing.  All you pay is your transportation, lodging and most meals.  Lunch on day two will be provided.

A surprising number of folks are planning on coming to Sarasota for the meeting, which will be held at Help-U-Sell Headquarters.  The host hotel is the HERE and it is very nice at $119 a night.  It includes breakfast, dinner and a shuttle service to and from the meeting.  March 1 and 2 are in the heart of the ‘Season’ in Sarasota, so rates everywhere are pretty high.

The Vegas hotel is The Palace Station.  It’s across the freeway from the strip and is a very nice property.  They have about 10 restaurants and offer free shuttle service from airport and to the strip.  It’s also a bargain at $29 and $39 a night (plus about $10 in fees).  The more expensive rooms are worth the extra.

You’ll need to come to the meeting with your wireless network enabled laptop so that you can participate, learn and get maximum benefit.  If you don’t have one, now’s a great time to invest or upgrade.  The little Net-Books do just about everything you’d need, weigh nothing and cost less than $500.

The new edition of Help-U-Sell Connect is out except for the video update, which Tami, Robbie and I will be recording that this week.  I didn’t mention John because he won’t be there:  he’s roaming around Northern California, working with Maurine on University and calling on a few brokers.

Maurine started the first ever online Help-U-Sell University last week with an overview of Marketing.  It was excellent and took the 30 or so attendees back to basics.  We all know that marketing has changed, but in order to cope with the changes and make good decisions it is important to remember what the intent of marketing was from the beginning.  That’s what last Thursday’s hour long session was all about.  University continues this Thursday and I’d urge you to get involved.

Finally, Lori Warnelo has been calling offices in her new role as Team Services Liason.  Our goal is to be in touch with every office about once a month.  Lori will be reminding brokers of upcoming events and initiatives, taking the marketplace pulse and looking for ways to improve the overall performance of the Help-U-Sell team.  You Go, Lori!

And finally, FINALLY:

DON”T FORGET!

National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day

Next Tuesday, February 2, 2010!

Make it your goal in life that day to get a new lisitng and to report your war story in a comment here in the SetFeeBlog for a chance to win a one-on-one website consultation with Robert Stevens.  Details HERE.

New! Improved! National Help-U-Sell Get a Listing Day!

Ok; So everyone who took a listing last Wednesday was too shy to post a war story.  Besides:  What was in it for them, right?  So . . . Now, announcing the New,Improved National Help-U-Sell Get a Listing Day, Tuesday, February 2, 2010 (that’s 02-02-2010).  The idea is simply this:  if your life depended on it, you’d be able to get up in the morning, go out into the world and come back by sundown with a new listing.  That’s what we’re all going to do on Feb. 2.

And this time there’s a pretty cool prize.  Robert Stevens will give the winner — drawn at random from all war stories posted on this blog — a free comprehensive website consultation.  The winner will work with Robert one-on-one to customize, localize and optimize their Help-U-Sell website for maximum attractiveness to search engines, which translates into more leads.  It’s a great prize!

For inspiration, I have two things.  First, read the original National Help-U-Sell Get a Listing Day posted  HERE.  Then, take a look at a video Michelle Morgan’ (Help-U-Sell Real Estate Specialists, Lake Havasu, AZ) posted on her website, HERE.  It rocks!

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