Category: Marketing

New Website Features

We just got finished with another Tech Time Tuesday webinar with Robert Stevens.  Robbie shared some new functionality on the Help-U-Sell Broker websites that I think we should highlight here.  But first, some basics:

Your listings get on to your (new)  Help-U-Sell office website in one of two ways.  You either enter them manually via OMS or you input them into your MLS and it comes to your office site via the IDX feed you have set up.  (Note:  we are talking only about your new Help-U-Sell office site, the one that Help-U-Sell corporate hosts and maintains.  We’re not talking about your New Home Page website or your Point2 website or any other you may have.)

Generally speaking, your Help-U-Sell office website offers more capacity for images and greater functionality than most MLS’s, so once the listing comes into your website via IDX, you may elect to edit it in OMS, add pictures, virtual tours, or tag it as Help-U-Sell Homebuyer Stimulus eligible.  Here’s where the new functionality comes in.

In OMS, in the Listings area, when you access your listings, you’ll see a coded icon at the far left of the list of properties.  A grey circle with an ‘A’ in it means ‘Automatic’.  These are listings that have NOT had any changes made to them after they came over via IDX.  Because there have been no changes made, a price change input into MLS will automatically be reflected on your Help-U-Sell office website.  Note that in these cases, price will be the only change made in MLS that will update your Help-U-Sell office website.  Changes to status or comments made in MLS will not be reflected — and you’ll need to enter them manually in OMS to change your listing on your office website.

If, however, you make any change to your listing after it comes over via IDX — change the price or status, add pictures, edit comments, correct an error — the icon code on the left side of your list of properties will change to a red circle with the letter ‘M’ inside, ‘M’ standing for Manual.  From that point forward,  a price change input into MLS will also need to be input manually in OMS for the change to reflect on your Help-U-Sell office website.

I know this is a little confusing but it all gets down to the system you orchestrate in your office for listings and listing maintenance.  As a Broker, I would simply add a step to any change in a listing:  after making the change in MLS, make it again in OMS.  That way I will know that everything is up to date.  If, the change you’re making is a price change, when you get into OMS and see that the listing in question has the grey circle ‘A’ next to it you may decide to wait a day for the IDX feed to make the change.  (Me?  I’m going to make the change in OMS right then and there so that I know it’s done and it reflects immediately.)

Generally speaking, IDX feeds come in once a day, often in the wee hours of the morning.  So a price change made in MLS on Tuesday afternoon will likely come over until Wednesday morning (again, we’re assuming this is a listing tagged with the grey circle ‘A’, with no changes having been made in OMS.).

The other great bit of news on today’s call had to do with content creation and management on your office website.  You’re now able to add new pages of content to your new Help-U-Sell office website by going into the content manager in OMS.  This exciting development means you can go hyper-local with your office website, highlighting some of the nuances that affect your marketplace.  Perhaps your State or Municipality has a special program to encourage home ownership;  that might deserve its own page.  Perhaps your office is participating in a big local charity event; that might be another page.  Remember that every page of your website is indexed by the search engines so each page represents an opportunity to attract more visitors to your site and to generate more leads for your business.

The new Help-U-Sell office websites continue to  grow and improve . . . it’s an exciting process.  If you’re not tuning in to Tech Time Tuesday each week, you’re missing out on some great stuff.  Thanks, Robbie and team!  We appreciate the great work your doing for us.

Mastering the Buyer Inquiry

Yesterday, on the regular Wednesday Help-U-Sell training webinar, we worked on the  Buyer Inquiry.  I think this is one of the more critical moments in the client life-cycle, if not the most critical.  It’s the place were all of the power and energy of the marketing program falls right into the hands of the person answering the phone.  This is the Arena for your real estate career, where it all happens.  It’s the Moment of Truth you will either leave with the beginnings of a client relationship or leave with nothing.  It is clearly where the rubber of all your preparation and hard work meets the road.  I am absolutely convinced that this is the single most important skill to polish if you want to increase your production and your own bottom line . . . and I’m not kidding or puffing the goods.

Think about it:  if 1 in 10 buyer inquiries make it to the closing table, how much better would your income be if 1 in 5 buyer inquiries made it to closing?  Right:  Twice as good.  So, without even listing more or improving your closing ratios, you could double your income right now by mastering this little five to ten minute phone conversation!

You are in business to help people sell and purchase real estate.  Your measure of success is closed transactions.  You spend thousands of dollars each month to attract the buyers and sellers who will fuel that process.  The Buyer Inquiry phone call is the bridge that connects all of  your marketing dollars with the big payoff of a closing.

Think about your car for a moment.  You have an engine under the hood.  It’s powerful, but all by itself it’s not going to take you anywhere.  To GO, you have to have something else:  spinning wheels. Of course, without the engine, the wheels don’t spin and you still don’t go anywhere.  In your car, there is a contraption that sits between the engine and the wheels that translates the power of the engine into the spinning of the wheels and it’s the Transmission.

In your office, Marketing is the engine.  It powers everything.  The end result, the spinning wheels, are closings – that’s what we want.  But without a strong transmission – the well executed Buyer Inquiry call — we don’t go anywhere.  Let’s put some numbers to that.

Let’s assume it costs $85 to make the phone ring one time in your office with a potential buyer on the line.  Now, I didn’t just pluck that $85 from thin air.  I’ve been working with brokers on operational issues like this for 30 years and I can tell you those who did the math were usually surprised to discover that every buyer inquiry cost between $80 and $100 dollars to generate.  If you were to add up everything you spend to market your company and then divide that by the total number of buyer inquiries you receive over a period of time, you’d know your own cost . . .

So, everytime you pick up the phone and it’s a potential buyer on the other end, just picture that you’re holding about $85 in your hand.  You can either toss it in the trash can . . . or you can INVEST it in your business by capturing that buyer lead.  The payoff for capturing the lead can be very large:  like about $6,000 – that’s what the average buyer side commission is in Help-U-Sell today.

Of course, you know and I know you’re not going to get every single buyer inquiry to the closing table.  In fact, you probably won’t get most of them.  But let’s just assume it takes 50 buyer inquiries to create one closing – then your cost to create the closing (not counting your time showing, negotiating and handling details) is $4,250 (50 inquiries X $85 per inquiry), and that leaves a pretty small return at the end of the day . . . one for which it’s probably not worth staying in business!

So, let’s see what happens when we start doing a better job on the phones.  Let’s assume for every 10 buyer inquiries we receive, we are able to get one to closing.  Then our investment (at $85 per inquiry) is $850 and that’s starting to look like a pretty good return:  invest $850 to receive $6,000?  Pretty good.

But, I think you can do better than that. I believe if you work on the Buyer Inquiry diligently and continuously, you can get that down to 1 in 5.  And now your investment is $425 (5 x $85) and your $6,000 return is more than $10 for every $1 invested in marketing.  Now that’s a business worth having.

At Help-U-Sell, we have a tool for capturing that buyer inquiry and turning it into a prospect.  It’s the Buyer Data sheet and it is utterly simple and brilliant at the same time. You owe it to your income, your career, your office, your family . . . but mostly to yourself, to practice handling incoming calls every week (if not every day). If you are a broker/owner, make role play of the Buyer Inquiry part of your company culture.  Do it every week, several times a week.  Do it so often that the natural discomfort that comes from exposing your skill level before your peers goes away.  Do it until it just becomes what you do in your company.  If you are an agent, make a pact with a partner.  Commit to regular focused practice on this one key skill.  Role play, critique, try different scenarios.  If you do, I promise:  you’ll see a corresponding increase not only in your numbers of buyers, transactions and closings . . . but also in your income.

The Mission and the Message

We Help-U-Sell folk are pretty passionate about what we do.  We see ourselves as anything but ordinary.  We have a better idea, one that works better and costs less, and we are very proud of that fact.  We’re not just selling real estate, we’re changing the way real estate is sold.  This sense of mission, of participating in something bigger than the job, becomes a driving force in a Help-U-Sell career.

Talk to Help-U-Sell people and it doesn’t take long before the passion oozes out.  You see the fire in the eyes and notice the quickening of speech.  It’s the kind of thing that’s almost impossible to keep tucked in — as if you’d ever want to.  I think this passion for the mission is one of the reasons our crew is so successful when they get face-to-face with a potential client.  The client sees the excitement, feels the passion and it’s hard to resist.  The fact that our people believe so strongly in what they are doing is one of our great secret weapons.

Here’s the important thing about this:  you can’t manufacture it.  You could go to sales seminars for a month and still not be able to muster this kind of excitement about what you’re doing if what you’re doing is . . . no big deal.  Believable passion for the work comes from knowing that you have something really special to offer, believing you bring something of great value to your customers and seeing your biggest challenge as simply spreading the word about what you do.

In every successful selling situation, there are two sales being made.  Of course, the customer is buying; but so is the salesperson.  Every time a Help-U-Sell person presents his or her program to a consumer, they are drawing on a deep well of belief in what they do, and each time the consumer says, ‘Yes!’ that belief is further reinforced . . . and we get stronger.

There’s a rather cynical phrase commonly applied to passion and a sense of mission in business.  It’s ‘Drink the Kool-Aid,’ and it’s a reference to the tragic events that occurred in Guyana in 1978.  The followers of Jim Jones believed in him to the point that they were willing to drink his poisoned Kool-Aid.  When we tell someone to ‘Drink the Kool-Aid,’ we’re saying they need to suspend their logical skepticism and just do it.

I actually went to a business meeting several years back with thousands of others, where we watched a business leader on the stage mix a gallon of Kool-Aid.  As he talked about his product (which was nothing special at all), he added stuff:  Mustard and Ketchup, vegetable oil and vinegar.   At the end of his presentation as the throng rose to its feet in roaring approval he drank a cup of the stuff . . . and then invited others to join him on stage to do the same.

Listen: There is no Kool-Aid to drink at Help-U-Sell.  There is no suspension of logic here, no misplaced belief in smoke and mirrors.  We have no special effects department, no stunt men.  What we have is real, it is tangible, it makes sense and it can be grasped by most people in a few minutes.  That’s why the passion is believable, why the sense of mission is strong enough to drive us even when the market is challenging.  Our message is the mission.

The Mind of Mr. Hippauf

On Wednesday’s Help-U-Sell Broker Roundtable call, Walt Hippauf talked about doing listing presentations online using Go To Meeting.  It’s something he’s done out of necessity:  he’s had difficulties with his legs and is not as mobile as he once was.  Online meetings have made it possible for him to get his business done while minimizing the amount of time he spends on his feet.

It’s more than that, though.  When Walt meets his prospective sellers online, he makes a statement about his business.  He says:  ‘I am different.  I am current.  I represent the new way to sell real estate.’  All of this is true, of course, but the online meeting makes it apparent.

It’s also more efficient.  Speaking as someone who’s lived and breathed PowerPoint for decades, I can tell you that the same presentation done online is always shorter than one done face to face.  Online you are forced to be concise and to the point.  Face-to-face, you spend time elaborating and being conversational.  Walt’s proving that you can do an online listing presentation in 30 minutes or less — and that’s music to the ears of any seller who’s contemplating being trapped in the living room with a salesperson for the evening.

It gets back to that generation gap thing again.  You know:  where the average age of a home buyer today is 32 and the average age of a Realtor is 52.  Speaking in gross generalities: we are in an industry where our customers are often more comfortable with technology than we are.  Where we want to sit down around the kitchen table, make a little small talk so that when we get down to business it’s friendly, they want to get in, get the information, and get out.  Anything that complicates or slows the process is a negative.  Anything that makes it simple and quick is positive.   And here’s the thing about the Thirty-Somethings:  They’re impatient with anyone who doesn’t get it. ‘Oh, you can’t provide me listing information on my smart phone?  Well, then, I’ve got to find someone who can . . . let me Google that.’

It occurs to me that we — meaning Help-U-Sell Corporate — ought to be doing a brief overview of the Help-U-Sell consumer offering online each week.  It’s something that should be of interest to prospective sellers and buyers but also to outside agents and brokers who may not know what we do and how we work.  It would be something to which you could invite FSBOs and Expireds.  If we do it every week, it could become an early step in your listing process.

So help me put this together.  Whatever we do will have to be brief — like 15 minutes.  Our goal will be to get people comfortable with us and excited about working with us.  In that short period of time, what are the 3 – 5 key things to tell consumers about Help-U-Sell?  Leave me a comment with your thoughts.

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