Category: Marketing

The South Africans Have Arrived!

Here’s a little background you may not know:

 

Robbie, Donnie and Reinhard

Our new Help-U-Sell website and the new Broker websites that are being unveiled a the upcoming Tech Summit, are being developed by a crackerjack team in South Africa.  The are led by our own Robert Stevens, an Afrikaner himself.   After working with Help-U-Sell for several years, Robbie took the franchise to his homeland and established it there.  If you look at what he accomplished in South Africa in two years, you cannot help but be more than impressed; you’ll be amazed.  He grew from nothing to 34 offices, terrifying the traditional business that was already there while delighting consumers as only Help-U-Sell can.

Robbie came back in 2008, and when Ron Westman and Infinium took over, one of their first official acts was to empower Robbie to do what he’d been advocating for a long time:  rebuild the Help-U-Sell web presence from the ground up.  You see, our website had been outrageously effective in the 2002-2005 time-frame.  It absolutely flooded leads into the system.  The reason was simple:  while the rest of the industry fought tooth and nail not to give consumers free access to information, we embraced the idea.  After all, Information Without Obligation was one of our core values.  So we employed IDX at a time when most of the other players in the industry kicked it aside and hoped it would go away.  Of course, the consumer was delighted and flocked to our website.  We quickly started to outrank Re/Max and Century  21 in the Alexa traffic stats and even topped Realtor.com a few times.

Unfortunately in 2005, things began to shift.  One of our large competitors saw what we were doing, declared they wanted that and wooed our vendor away, leaving us out in the cold.  We scrambled.  But truth is, the next few well-intentioned attempts to restore the Help-U-Sell website failed.  Robbie realized the biggest problem was that we were at the mercy of the vendors who created, hosted and maintained our site.  Not only were they in control, they also took many of the great ideas we used in our website and distributed them to their entire client base.  We needed our own site, we needed to build it, we needed to be responsible for it.

So in January, 2009 he began working with a team he’d met while bringing Help-U-Sell to South Africa.  No strangers to real estate, these guys had already established the South African version of Zillow/Trulia and were the cream of the crop of that nation’s real estate oriented web developers.  In six months they had the new corporate site up and running and nearly doubled traffic.  Helpusell.com is carefully constructed to be the Marilyn Monroe of real estate websites capturing the eye and the attention of search engines on a near constant basis.  What can I say?  Helpusell.com is flirty and captivating!

Now, the focus is on our broker websites, designed to synergize perfectly with the corporate site and to bring a level of easy customization to our brokers that’s never been seen on this kind of site before.  When they are introduced at the Tech Summit, the first week of March, the new sites will make it possible for a broker to quickly localize, customize and optimize his or her website, to maximize hits and page views, and minimize bounce rate.

Today, the first contingent of the South African team arrived at Help-U-Sell HQ in Sarasota.  They will be with us for the next several weeks to ensure that the introduction of the new broker sites goes without a hitch.  It is an important and exciting moment in our history.  You’ll be meeting them at the Tech Summit but for now, let us all say, ‘Welkom!’

 

National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day!

Floyd Wickman used to say, ‘You can’t DO a sale . . . but you can DO a listing.’  What he meant is that it’s difficult to get up in the morning, decide you’re going to make a sale and then DO it before the sun goes down.  There are just too many factors that are beyond your control.  However, you can get up in the morning and DO a listing.  You really can.  What?  You doubt?  If someone told you they’d give you $1 million if you were able to get a new listing by the end of the day, you’d be able to do it, right?  Sure you could.  You’d start calling all your past clients, looking for leads.  You’d call FSBOs and Expireds. You’d probably start making some cold calls. 

Truth is:  any one of us could get a new listing by close of business if we approached the task as a priority.

So . . . Tomorrow, January 20, 2010 (what a great number!  1-20-10) let us all resolve to get at least one new listing by  close of business.  Really:  think about it tonight before you turn out the light.  How will you attack this challenge?  What will your strategy be?  And then, tomorrow, when your feet hit the floor, you’ll be in gear. 

Some ideas to get your REALTOR juices flowing:

Call FSBOS and ask, ‘If I could show you a way to triple your marketing exposure at a fraction of the cost of an ordinary REALTOR, would you give me 15 minutes of your time? ‘

Call Expireds and say, ‘I know you must be frustrated trying to sell in this market.  I have a completley different approach that gets results and costs a whole lot less.  Can I drop by in an hour to show it to you?’

Call your past clients and CIs and ask for their help:  ‘I have all of these buyers and, truth is, I’m having trouble finding houses for them!  Really, the inventory is way down.  Do you know anybody who’s thinking of selling?’ 

Make up a flyer and go door to door in a good first time buyer neighborhood:  ‘I’m in the neighborhood today alerting homeowners to the tremendous tax benefits available right now for people buying and selling real estate.  Who do you know that’s thinking of selling?’ 

Tomorrow night, when you get home, take a minute to hit the ‘Comment’ button at the bottom of this post and share your war story.  We all want to hear how it went! 

Great Facebook Usage

Check this out:

 

It’s a great Help-U-Sell testimonial photo taken by Mikki Hart of Help-U-Sell Amarillo, TX.  Aside from it being a great photo, it’s not unusual:  one of the things we all do is take these kinds of photos for use in marketing pieces.  What’s cool is that Mikki posted it on her Facebook page.  And look at the comments:

Looks like the photo was seen by another one of Mikki’s sellers who excitedly said, ‘Me Next!’  Can you imagine how great all of this makes Mikki look in the eyes of anyone who sees it?  This is great use of Social Media to build your business. 

R.E.O.s by Major Metropolitan Areas

The Brookings Institute is out with some interesting data regarding foreclosures in the market through September 2009.  First, they ranked metro areas by the number of REOs per one thousand mortgages.  You can see on the following map what we already knew to be true:  the highest levels are in the Southwest and Southeast — where all the red and orange dots are — and the lowest rates are in the Northeast — blue dots.  You can see that Syracuse, NY had the lowest level of REOs where Las Vegas had the highest. 

A full listing of the top 100 metro areas is located here. 

They also published a similar map showing where the largest changes — positive and negative — occurred in the levels of REOs.  Here is the map for that:

The locations with the highest decreases in the levels of REOs were in California.  In fact, nine of the top ten decreases were in California.  The largest increases were in the Southeast with six out of the top seven metro areas being in Florida.  The full list is located here. 

There’s a ton of information here but what leaps off the page at me is that the market seems to have turned in California.  Buyers — many of whom are investors — have poured into the market and are snatching up foreclosures as quickly as they can.  I’ve heard this from our California brokers, usually in the context of how difficult it is to get a first time FHA buyer into a well priced foreclosure where an all cash investor is the competition.  In a downturn, it is usually the investor who establishes the bottom.  When they begin to buy, prices and rates of sale begin to improve.  It’s also true that real estate trends often start in the West and sweep Eastward.  In other words I see this as very positive for all of us. 

I also see how important it is to know your market before you make your plan.  If you are in the Northeast and are reading about the prevalence of REOs, it would be wise to do a careful analysis of your specific market before you devote time, energy and money to tackling this business.  You may discover that REOs are not much of a factor in your town.  If you’re in the Carolinas — which are pretty blue in the first map and pretty red in the second — I think you might consider gearing up for and increase in REO business. 

 

The Help-U-Sell Consumer Offering

Remember Denzel Washington in ‘Philadelphia?’  He played the no-nonsense attorney that finally takes Tom Hanks’ case.  Several times in the movie, he stops the person speaking to him and says, ‘Talk to me like I was a five year old.’  It was a plea to be spoken to plainly and clearly so that there would be no misunderstanding.  If you’ll indulge me for a few minutes, I’d like to speak to all of us as if we were five year olds about the most basic of concepts:  The Help-U-Sell Consumer offering. 

The Seller offer is pretty easy.  By easy, I mean I think most grasp it pretty well.  It is:  We charge a set fee for our services which is not only logical, but can also save thousands over what an ordinary broker would charge.  Our set fee is comparatively low for a number of reasons but mostly because we market efficiently* and because we let the seller handle some of the less complicated parts of the process. 

We get all hung up about that last bit.  Somehow the whole Full-Service vs. Limited Service vs Discounter debate trickles in and next thing you know, Help-U-Sell brokers are holding open houses and handling the showings and filling the flyer box.  If you factor all of that into the low set fee, you may be working for $5 an hour when it’s all said and done.  (By the way, I’m all for you holding an open house to find buyers, just as long as you’re not the only one doing it!)

Remember how Don Taylor created this thing.  He meticulously kept track of his activities and paid attention to which ones produced the highest payoff and which could easily be handled by others.  Clerical and admin stuff was assigned to assistants who were paid a reasonable hourly rate.   He realized that some of the things ordinary agents did were probably better handled by the seller and, if taken out of the broker’s job jar, could free him to spend more time on high pay-off activities.  Seller participation was born and suddenly it made sense that the fee was low:  it was a trade off. 

Today, the seller’s phone number has disappeared from the sign.  We’ve grown stingy with those buyer calls and want to field them ourselves.  But seller participation is still key to making this system work.  It allows you to hold dozens of houses open on a Sunday (Instead of just one), allows you to multiply the number of directional signs leading to all of those open houses and frees you from the very basic tasks of opening the door, showing the house, etc. 

As far as limited-service, full-service and discount-service goes, that’s just your competitors talking.  The Consumer doesn’t care, really, as long as the value is there.  And Help-U-Sell is the Best Value in Real Estate. 

We’ve always struggled with the consumer offering on the buyers’ side.  We tried rebates for awhile, but truly, they don’t fit with the logic of Help-U-Sell.  If all you’re doing is giving the buyer $$$ back out of your commission without a specific consumer offer to go along with it, you’re just saying that your commission is too high.  Like the Seller offering, the buyer should save money for a reason, a corresponding action on his part that enables you to rebate some of the cash. 

Here’s what I’m thinking:  Consumers have changed.  They want to do their own research.  They don’t want to sit in the back of your car weekend after weekend looking at houses.  They want access to good information that’s easy to use and they want someone available when they have questions or need a door opened.  I think that might be the basis of an offer.  It might go like this:

“I’m different.  Unlike an ordinary broker who’s going to want to drag you around to house after house after house, who’s going to want to be your only source of information and who’s going to hound you until you buy, I’m going to partner with you in the process.  I’m going to show you how to use the best tools available so that you can do a lot of searching on your own.  Oh, I’m going to be searching too, just in case you miss something, but you’ll have all the time you need to look at what’s available and compare.  I’ll be in touch when I have something important to share and you can call me anytime you need information or have questions.  I invite you to drive by neighborhoods and homes you think you might like to help narrow the field.  All I’d ask is that you not go into any home without me.  I’ve found by helping my buyer clients do their own research – something most want to do today – they get more involved in the process and actually have fun doing it.  Any time you want to see something I’ll be there to take you.  Because you’re participating in the house hunting process, I’m able to rebate $$$ of my commission to you at closing.  It’s like we’re working as a team.  How’s that sound?” 

I believe the low set fee was always a value for value exchange:  the seller got a low set fee because they did some of the low pay-off activity typically done by brokers.  If we’re going to have a similar offer to buyers, it’s got to have a similar exchange, value for value. 

What do you think?

*By efficient marketing I mean that we don’t do what ordinary brokers and agents do.  In an ordinary office every agent is on his or her own.  They take a listing and they devise a marketing plan from scratch on it.  Every agent has a different marketing plan for every listing.  There is no coordination, no maximization of effort and usually no accountability for results.  In a Help-U-Sell office, the marketing is organized, orchestrated, coordinated and controlled by the broker.  He or she has made judicious decisions about where to market, how to market and which properties to feature so that every bit of marketing he or she does creates buyer leads for every listing held.  It’s efficient.  It’s why well run Help-U-Sell offices are lead generating machines.  And it’s something your prospective sellers can understand. 

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