Look What Showed Up On My Door

Door hangers are really in this year.

They help make marketing affordable.  Ok:  that means you use person power to get them out rather than postage power.  This came from an agent — not Help-U-Sell — who attached her card in the appropriate place.  Best I can tell, all my neighbors got one too.  The door hanger itself was provided by Fidelity National Home Warranty and I think it’s pretty effective.  I asked Scott Jackson, our Bank of American National Accounts Manager, if they had something similar our Help-U-Sell team could use.  He told me the local MLOs have access to a wide variety of marketing materials for brokers and he was sure several dealt with Short Sales and Loan Mods.  If you’re looking for something new to add to your marketing activities this summer,  I think this could be a good thing.  Call your B of A MLO and see what’s available and then start pounding the pavement (or get your kids to do it)!

(Aside to anyone attending the latest round of Help-U-Sell rallies — this would probably work well with that TOP SECRET Short Sale lead program we presented at the rally.  I don’t want your competitors to know about it, so I won’t name it here and I won’t describe it in detail.  If you missed it at the rally, call me and I’ll fill you in).

 

 

Jeff Gets Brawney

Jeff Braun, Help-U-Sell broker in Union Grove, Wisconsin, has been in coaching with Ron McCoy for more than a year.  The weekly sessions last an hour, max, and are intended to give Jeff an ear and an opportunity to think through the challenges he faces in his specific marketplace.  Those challenges include a smaller market, lower average sale prices, and fewer transactions than many Help-U-Sell brokers enjoy.

Last month, Jeff and Ron decided a price reduction campaign was in order.  Jeff had the listings — more than 30 — but they weren’t selling.  So he systematically went to each seller seeking a reduction . . . and was successful with nine.  Today, as a direct result, he has 10 pending transactions and is on cloud nine.  His plan is to now go back to the many who resisted the first time around and show them what happened with those who did reduce their price.

In this case:  Better Prices = More Sales = Better Market Visibility = More Listings = More Leads = More Sales.  It’s a great snowball effect.  Congratulations, Jeff!

Sleepless in Sarasota

Ever have a sleepless night?  That’s me right now.  My brain just won’t turn off.  So I got to digging around in the blog and came across the pricing series I did last November.  I think it might be helpful today as more and more people are starting to venture back into the market.  Read them in order, 1-4, and let me know your best pricing secrets.  Oh, by the way:  if you’d like good quality versions of any of the graphics to use in your own pricing conversations, just let me know.

Pricing Clinic 3

Pricing Clinic 3

Pricing Clinic 3

Pricing Clinic 4

Why We Charge A Set Fee

The Low Set Fee is the heart of our identity.  It is the engine that produces the result we are known for:  consumer savings.  There are several reasons why we charge a Set Fee instead of a percentage based commission.

  • It is logical. If you know how your market behaves at any given time, if you know how long it will take to sell a properly priced property, if you know what you’ll be spending each month on marketing — you are able to know what it will cost to sell the typical home.  That, plus a ‘fudge factor,’ is your carrying cost.  Add a reasonable profit for your company and you have a Set Fee that makes sense to you and to the consumer.
  • Percentage Commissions, on the other hand, make no sense at all.  Think about it:  if your company charges, say, 6%, the guy with a $200,000 house is going to pay $12,000.  His friend, two blocks away with a bigger house, worth $300,000, is going to pay $18,000.  What did the friend get for the extra $6,000 he paid?  $6,000 more advertising?  I don’t think so.  Is his agent going to work $6,000 harder?  Doubtful.  Truth is:  they’re paying hugely different prices for the same thing.  It’s nuts and the consumer knows it.
  • It is a differentiator. Differentiation in the real estate business is a good thing.   The California Association of REALTORS has been asking consumers for years if they’d use the same agent again in a real estate transaction.  In 2004, 79% said ‘yes.’  In 2009, only 22% said ‘yes.’  If that’s not a confidence crisis, I don’t know what is!  Seems to me, the smart thing is to look as little like the rest of the pack as you can.  Charging a Set Fee instead of a Commission says you’re different.
  • It drives more business to your door. The Low Set Fee that produces savings over what ordinary brokers charge has great appeal to Sellers, resulting in large numbers of listings which create a strong flow of buyer leads through the office.  More Sellers = More Buyers = More Business.

Maurine Grisso, on the Broker Roundtable Call today, presented the Set Fee as well as I’ve ever heard it presented.  She talks in term of 3 ways your home might sell:  You Sell – We Sell – They Sell.  No matter how it sells, you always pay the Low Set Fee.  If you find your own buyer (You Sell), that’s all you pay.  If our Help-U-Sell office finds the buyer (We Sell), you pay your Set Fee plus our Selling Fee.  If you elect to go into the MLS and another Broker brings the buyer (They Sell), you’ll pay your Set Fee plus whatever % Commission you offer to the selling broker.  In all cases, the Seller saves over what they’d pay a traditional broker.

The Set Fee is who we are.  It’s what sets us apart from the crowd.  It’s what motivates consumers to call us and ask, ‘How’s that work?’  Set it wisely and re-evaluate it regularly, and wear it like a badge of honor.

Charging Less, Making More

The ability to go into the marketplace with a financially attractive offer for consumers AND walk away from the transaction with more dollars than your more traditional counterparts is at the heart of Help-U-Sell’s appeal to brokers.

Think like a traditional broker for a moment.

  • The success of the office is built on one thing:  your ability to attract and retain productive agents.
  • Your primary tool in accomplishing this is commission split — you know to be successful you need agents and to get them, you’ll need to pay well.
  • Unfortunately, the health of your bottom line is dependent on how many commission dollars you retain after splitting with your agents.

Put all of that in a hat and shake it up and you’ve got  . . . a mess!  Your formula for success is at war with itself! No wonder ordinary real estate offices suffer from embarrassingly low profitability if they make a profit at all (despite the fact that consumers think they’re paid way too much!).

Help-U-Sell takes dynamite to all of that nonsense.  First thing we do is demystify the listing process.  We toss out the notion that personality is what sellers buy when they list their property for sale.  Bunk! we say.  Listing is a logical thing.  If you present a system with a track record of success for a fee that is reasonable, most people jump at it.  Instead of two hour marathons where traditional agents warble on about how wonderful they are, listing presentations become simple, short and matter-of-fact:  here’s what we do, here’s what you do and this is what it costs.  Listing is so easy in Help-U-Sell that, well . . . even a Broker could do it.  That’s why we take the listing side of the business out of the agents’ hands.

We believe the listing side of the business belongs to the company, and the broker or an assistant (that’s different than an agent) takes all listings.  The agent’s role is on the buyer side, where we can afford to split commissions.  But, since we create all the leads for our buyer agents through our large number of listings and the power of our well-conceived marketing, we don’t have to give away the farm to get and keep salespeople.  We’re not asking them to call on FSBOS or Expireds, to knock doors or make cold calls to find listings.  We’re not asking them to master a slick listing presentation or memorize responses to two dozen common seller objections.  We just want them to take the prospects we’ve created and find them a property.   Good agents thrive at Help-U-Sell.

Back to the listing side;  here’s how the dollars break down:

Here’s where the ‘yeah-buts’ start to echo from the mouths of ordinary agents.  Yeah-but, with no listing agent the seller’s getting less than full service! Says who?  Full service is getting the property sold for the greatest walk-away dollars in the right time frame — and we do that every day.  Yeah-but, you get what you pay for!  When you list with me I’m going to actively market your property until it’s sold! Um, let’s see . . . ‘actively market‘ . . . I guess that means put a sign in yard and a listing in the MLS, which then syndicates to a couple dozen Internet sites, right?  In my experience that’s what ordinary agents do when they get a listing.  In my Help-U-Sell office, we have a comprehensive marketing plan, orchestrated, monitored and constantly improved by . . . ME.  It’s not just a bunch of agents running around willy-nilly, making it up as they go along on every listing they take.  I could go on with the ‘yeah-buts,‘ but we try to keep these posts to a ten minute read or less.

We are a very proud group, and rightfully so.  We’ve taken the fluff and snake oil out of selling real estate and converted the process to logical systems that get results.  We’ve done it in a way that saves consumers thousands of dollars and makes our brokers a nice profit.  Who could ask for anything more?

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