New Websites – New Capabilities – And a Video Primmer

The introduction of the new Help-U-Sell Broker Website Templates on March 1 has sent everyone into a dither, trying to decide exactly how to best maximize results from the new platform.  Aesthetically, they are certainly a step up:  more modern, cleaner, easier to navigate.  But the issue is:  how do you use this magnificent new beast to lure potential customers and generate leads?

First, understand that your existing content will transfer – so if you’ve done a good job of  1. Personalizing your content 2. Locallizing your content and 3. Optimizing your content, you can rest easy that what you’ve done will not be lost.  If you haven’t done those things NOW would be a good time to get started and here’s a link to a marvelous document, ’11 Days to a Great Website’ that will walk you through that process in manageable chunks.

This is a great time to revisit what you’ve done, freshen up your content as well as your look.  Remember, the key to getting found and noticed on line is LOCAL CONTENT:  frequent references to the local marketplace, neighborhoods, even local events.  Perhaps you could build a new page or two with information about upcoming events or planned development.  One of the best ways to ‘get local’ is to create custom searches by neighborhood or area or even type of property.  Tony Tramontano in Sarasota can help you create custom searches like  ‘Apache Springs Homes For Sale’ or ‘Downtown Highrise Homes for Sale’ and then embed buttons for the searches in your home page.

The thing that most people seem to be jazzed about right now is the use of Video in your website.  Understand, just as Dorothy had the ability all along to go home, just by clicking her heals, you, too have had the ability to create and embed video in your website.  We seem to be at some kind of watershed or something now, though, and everybody is working on it and doing it.  Good idea!  I’ve had so many conversations this week about how to produce website video that now I’d like to give you a very thin (but still helpful, I hope):

Primmer for Creating Video for your Website

1.  Budget a little money – you’re going to need some equipment.  While the onboard camera on your laptop might be good enough, the built in microphone almost certainly will not.  You might try using the laptop camera, but go to radio shack (or Frys if you want a better selection) and buy a lapel mic.  Also get an extension cord so that you can use the mic 6 – 10 feet away from the computer.  Your laptop should have a mic in jack, probably right in front that you can plug into.  The only trick will be to tell what ever software you use to record that you want to use THAT mic, not the one that’s built into the computer.

2.  If you’re not going to use your laptop camera – and you might get better results if you don’t – you’ll need to shop for a video camera, too.  When I do video, I use a stand-alone webcam, the Logitec Pro 9,000.  It’s got a high quality Carl Zeis lens and even has a decent built in mic (though you will still get that amateurish room ambiance with it).  I attach it to the top of my laptop and use the screen for my notes or script.  Of course, when using this webcam, I also use a lapel mic and plug it in just as described in step 1.  The other camera option is to buy an actual video camera but here is the key:  the camera MUST have a jack for an external microphone, and that’s pretty rare.  To my limited knowledge, NOBODY has come up with an onboard mic that will give you good enough quality to make the impression you want to make.  An external mic is essential (how many times can I say that?).  And, by the way, while I’ve had good results using my Logitec USB webcam with a separate lapel mic, my results using a video camera and plugging in an external mic into the computer have been . . . not so good.  I think it’s too much data for a typical computer to handle all at once.

3.  Lighting becomes the next big issue, and the good new is:  bright sunlight is good.  If you have a nice window in the room in which you are shooting and it’s a sunny day, you should be fine.  But for darker places or night time work, you’re going to need lights.  You can find really good deals on fairly substantial lights online, but you’re not building a studio.  Instead, I’d suggest you simply play with the lighting you can find around your office or home.  I’ve even done video using clip-on lights I bought at Home Depot with high wattage bulbs.  You want to use lighting to eliminate shadows on the wall behind you and across your face.

4.  As you set up, experiment with video aspect ratio.  Today everybody is shooting in HD size:  16:9. It’s a rectangular frame.  But the old-style square frame might be better suited to your video.  If you are going to be looking into (or through) the camera and talking, you  probably don’t need that wide view that takes in lots of blank wall on either side of you.  So look in your recording software for an ‘aspect ratio’ setting and see what looks best.

5.  If you are using your laptop camera or an external USB camera (like my Logitec), it will come with software for recording and this will be fine.  If you’re using a stand-alone video camera, you’ll be recording right onto the camera’s media (whatever it is) and then transferring it to your computer for editing.

6.  I have tons of editing software:  Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, Adobe Visual Communicator, Camtasia (which is more for screen captures) and even more.  You don’t need any of that stuff.  Go online and download a copy of Windows Live Movie Maker. Bring your video into it and do what little editing you’re going to do right there.  You’ll certainly want to add a title up front and probably a caption under your face identifying you . . . maybe even a phone number at the end.  You can do all of that quickly and easily in Movie Maker and can even create fades at the beginning and end.  Actually, you can do a lot more, but since we’re talking about short video clips – 1 – 2 minutes, max – you’re going to do them in one take, so cutting, splicing and all that harder stuff will not be necessary.

7.  A note about music:  it can be nice playing softly in the background, but it shouldn’t be playing on your boom box when you record yourself.  If you want, add music in the editing phase.  You’ll pull it into Movie Maker and attach it to the video right there.  BUT:  DO NOT PULL IN THE MUSIC FROM YOUR FAVORITE CD.  It’s copy protected and you will be inviting a heap of hurt if you do it.  I have software that generates royalty free music and even will create pieces that are exactly as long as I want.  But you can also do a little web surfing for ‘Royalty Free Music’ and will find quite a bit.  Of course if your video is short and sharp enough you  probably don’t need any music at all.

7.  Probably the most important thing you need to do is GET COMFORTABLE.  Remember:  few are really going to remember the details of what you’re saying.  What they will remember is how they felt about you and how you made them feel.  So, no matter what the script, you want to look comfortable, engaging, friendly and professional.  The only way you’re going to get to that place is by practice, practice and more practice.  When you make your first few videos, set aside a couple of hours for recording, even if it’s just a 90 second piece.  You’ll want to shoot it over and over and over again.  Pretty soon, you won’t be looking at your notes.  Pretty soon you’ll be speaking your words with sincerity rather than reading them off a screen.  And here’s a little content tip:  I know you love what you’re doing and you’re very passionate about it.  That’s good – it’s your excitement and passion that will make people want to work with you.  But when you are genuinely passionate about what you do, there is also a tendency to excitedly tell everything there is to know about it.  That would be a big mistake.  Your script should be no more than 2 minutes in length and less would be better.  You should simply hit the highpoints:  You are a set fee realtor.  That means big savings.  It also means full service and powerful marketing.  You’ve been in the business for x years and helped x consumers save approximately x dollars.  and so on.

8.  I know this all sounds complicated, but it’s not.  It does require an investment of time and money, though and as always, you have to ask yourself, ‘is this the highest and best use of my time?’  So before you go do all of this, investigate what resources exist to do the production of your video(s) locally.  It may be cost effective to go into a studio or have a crew come to you for a few hours, rather than spend a few days trying to figure all of this out.  You might even find a film or television program at your local University, Community College or High School where you could get your video done inexpensively.

Here’s your checklist:

1. Decide if you’re going to shoot it yourself or have a professional do it for you.

2. Regardless what you decide in , script it, keep it short and practice, practice, practice.

3.  If you’re producing it yourself, decide which camera you’re going to use.

4.  Find an external lapel mic that will work with your video camera or computer.

5.  Choose the software you will use to record your video.

6.  Choose the software you will use to edit your video (probably Windows Live Movie Maker).

7.  Make a decision about background music and if it’s a yes, find royalty free tracks.

8.  Practice and rehearse until you look comfortable on camera. That’s the most important thing.

And FINALLY:  If you’re not on Tech Time next Tuesday (9am Pacific time) you better have a good reason!  We’ll be going through the easy migration process of getting your new site live.  As of now there are six brave souls who have done it.  Next Tuesday you’ll get a real time course in how to do it, too.

The Power of Zillow – The Power of Inventory

Hey!  Take a look at this:

That’s the first page of results of a search on Zillow for homes for sale in Chino Hills, CA.  Do you see the Help-U-Sell logo over on the right?  Yep.  It appears six times!  Six of the first nine listings are Patrick Wood’s!  Patrick is, of course, our franchisee in Chino Hills and he’s done about as good a job establishing the brand in his community as anyone this side of Don Taylor.  What do you think a consumer, looking for real estate in this town, who does what consumers today do (go to Zillow.com) thinks when they see this?  The compounding effect is remarkable!  The logo to the side of the listing is one of the benefits of becoming a ‘Premiere Agent’ with Zillow.  Of course, the main reason Brokers and Agents upgrade to Premiere is to have their contact information appear next to the listings of non-Premiere agents, but that’s really of minor importance to Patrick.  He gets HUGE bang for the buck from the display of the logo because he has a ton of listings! This is always true in our business:  the broker with lots of listings gets lots of leads.

This is why most of Help-U-Sell marketing is directed to potential Sellers.  If we do a good job of building inventory with our superior offer to Sellers, we’ll have all the Buyer leads we could ever want.

I don’t hear it much anymore, but there was a time when I’d occasionally hear a broker complain that they weren’t getting any leads from their website.  My reply was always the same:  ‘How many listings do you have in inventory?’  I’d usually hear something like ‘three’ or ‘five’ or ‘I’m down to two.’  They didn’t have a website problem, they had an inventory problem.  Solve the inventory problem and the leads will flow.

I mentioned that Patrick Wood has done a superb job of establishing the Brand in Chino Hills.  I want to share something else from him.  It’s a little bit of community involvement, of giving back, that really works:

That’s Patrick’s son in one of the uniforms his dad bought for the team. Once again:  same logo, prominently displayed.

Now, some Help-U-Sell purists might question the prominence Patrick gives to his own name.  I mean, one of the beauties of Help-U-Sell is that it is a system that works.  Unlike ordinary real estate businesses, it is not dependent on personality for success.  When we go out to establish the brand, we establish Help-U-Sell, not any individual.  Yet here, Patrick is branding himself just as he is Help-U-Sell.  He’s done this for eight years and today he IS Help-U-Sell in Chino Hills.  Ken Kopcho in Santa Maria, CA has done something similar with his ‘Ken Sells’ identity and website.  There’s nothing wrong with this.  If there is a negative, it is that branding yourself probably diminishes the value of your business on the open market.  If you were trying to sell a business that was built as much around YOU as around your Brand, the assumption is that it would collapse when you walked away.  An established Brand – especially one like ours, that’s built on replicatable systems – should be in a much better position to survive an ownership change.

ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE . . .

Tomorrow, Google’s new privacy policy goes into effect.  This is a logical change that probably won’t upset too many people (although some have been screaming about it for weeks).  What they’re going to do is pool all of your profile information from all Google owned products to create one master profile with all of your information in one place.  By pooling your profiles into one, they’ll have more comprehensive information about you and will be better able to serve up advertising that is apt to appeal to you.  In addition to the information you’ve provided to, say, Google+, YouTube, Blogger, etc., they will also pool your browsing history.  Again, it helps them know what advertising to serve you.

Don Gross of CNN had a pretty good piece about the change and you can read it here.  At the end of the article, he presents a handful of easy things you can to to improve your privacy in this new Google world.  I found it helpful enough to reproduce it here:

Here are a few tips on how to keep your data a little more private on some of Google’s most popular features.

Don’t sign in

This is the easiest and most effective tip.

Many of Google’s services — most notably search, YouTube and Maps — don’t require you to sign in to use them. If you’re not logged in, via Gmail or Google+, for example, Google doesn’t know who you are and can’t add data to your profile.

But to take a little more direct action …

Removing your Google search history

Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has compiled a step-by-step guide to deleting and disabling your Web History, which includes the searches you’ve done and sites you’ve visited.

It’s pretty quick and easy:

— Sign in to your Google account

— Go to www.google.com/history

— Click “Remove all Web History”

— Click “OK”

As the EFF notes, deleting your history will not prevent Google from using the information internally. But it will limit the amount of time that it’s fully accessible. After 18 months, the data will become anonymous again and won’t be used as part of your profile.

Six tips to protect your search privacy (from the EFF)

Clearing your YouTube history

Similarly, users may want to remove their history on YouTube. That’s also pretty quick and easy.

— Sign in on Google’s main page

— Click on “YouTube” in the toolbar at the top of the page

— On the right of the page, click your user name and select “Video Manager”

— Click “History” on the left of the page and then “Clear Viewing History”

— Refresh the page and then click “Pause Viewing History”

— You can clear your searches on YouTube by going back and choosing “Clear Search History” and doing the same steps.

Clearing your browsing history on Google Chrome

— Click on the “wrench” icon at the far right of your toolbar

— Select “Tools”

— Select “Clear browsing data”

— In the dialogue box that appears, click the “clear browsing data” box (there are other options you may want to use as well)

— Select “Beginning of Time” to clear your entire browsing history

— Click “clear browsing history”

Gmail Chat

When you start a chat with someone, you can make the conversation “off the record.” Off-the-record chats will not be stored in your chat history or the history of the person with whom you’re talking. All chats with that person will remain off the record until you change the status. To go off the record:

— Click the “Actions” link at the top right of the chat window

— Scroll down to “Go off the record.” Both you and your chat partner will see that the chat has been taken off the record.

What are Google’s other products?

Obviously, anything with “Google” in its name counts. But the Web giant owns other products that might not be so obvious to some folks.

— Gmail. Yes, the “G” is for Google.

— YouTube. Google bought the Web’s leading video site in 2006

— Picasa. The online photo sharing site became Google’s in 2004

— Blogger. The blog publishing tool has been Google’s since 2003.

— FeedBurner. A management tool for bloggers and managing RSS feeds. Google bought it in 2007.

— Orkut. Google’s original social-networking site isn’t big in the U.S. But it’s one of the most popular sites in India and Brazil.

— Android. Yes, you probably know this. But just for the record, Google owns the most popular smartphone operating system.

 

 

Platinum Edge and the Clarity of the Brand

We at Help-U-Sell have a second brand, reserved for upper end properties, Platinum Edge.  Platinum Edge has its own logo, and colors (purple and gold), and is occasionally used by a handful of Help-U-Sell brokers.  I was on my way out of Help-U-Sell when the sub-brand was devised and was only peripherally privy to the conversation that led to its birth.  Now, half a dozen years later, I’m looking at it and wondering, ‘What in the world were we thinking?’

We have Help-U-Sell:  an already well-established brand.  By well-established I mean that most consumers have heard of us and many have an inkling that we are somehow different than ordinary real estate practitioners. That is HUGE.  Really:  establishing brand recognition is a very tough task that usually takes years.  The good news is: once you have it, it tends to stay with you.  (For more about this, read ‘Marketing Warfare’ by Ries and Trout. )

To trade the power of that wonderfully distinct brand for something that is completely unknown by the consuming public seems misguided at best, even cavalier.

I know the history.  A group of our old Regional Directors got together and decided that the Help-U-Sell brand was a turn-off for high end homeowners.  It seemed to them that the reason we had little presence in the lofty price ranges was that those homeowners were, um, what’s the word?  Oh, yes:  embarrassed to have the Help-U-Sell sign in their yard!  They didn’t want the neighbors to know they wanted to save money, don’t you see?  And somehow, by simply changing the sign and the name they’d flock to us to save thousands on the sale of thier McMansions.

I guess that must have resonated in 2005.  A lot of stupid stuff did.  And hats off to Infinium for NOT re-inventing the Regional Director mess when they took control of Help-U-Sell at the end of 2008.  Today we function quite well without that extra barrier between the franchisor and the franchisee.

Last year I visited with Josh and Bettina Grein, Help-U-Sell Grein Group in Stafford, Virginia.  They have a good business, much of which takes place in the upper end of their marketplace, homes priced at $500,000 and up.  I asked how they were able to break into that market.  Bettina looked at me, puzzled, and finally said,  ‘Break in?  What do you mean?  . . .  That’s where people can save the most.’  Period.

I don’t think we needed Platinum Edge to sell high end properties.  I think we needed passion, pride and belief that what we have works – three things that were in rather short supply in 2005.  Consumers are psychic:  if you stand before them with doubt and trepidation, they sense it and respond accordingly . . . if you’re not proud and passionate about what you’re doing, you might as well stay home.

Today our group is like a hungry, happy pack of wolves.  They are so deeply into Help-U-Sell, into saving consumers money, into doing it differently and better that it’s almost part of their DNA.  It’s as if  a whole new species of  REALTOR is loose on the planet, a mutant strain that has evolved in response to changes in the (consumer) environment.  It’s stronger, faster, smarter, clearer and more effective.  While all the old dinosaurs in the forest are slowly turning into crude oil, this new breed is taking over.  It’s Survival of the Fittest and we’re certainly up to the challenge.  Platinum Edge?  That’s just a hat-tip to the old Tyrannosaurus we used to be, our clunky, addled, awkward, embarrassed former incarnation.  Today Help-U-Sell comes in just one color, and it’s the color of passion and love:  RED.  Let’s Hunt!

Miscellaney: Facebook Deflation, Google Glasses and the Market Segment Specialist

Today’s Help-U-Sell Power Hour was really good. It was one Wednesday I didn’t come in with all kinds of stuff to share and instead, let the group take the call where they wanted it to go.  Seems there’s a lesson in that for me: shut up!

In talking about recruiting, the concept of the Market Segment Specialist came up.  It’s an idea that hatched on our Wednesday call several months ago.  Maurine Grisso was talking about a 55+ community she’d like to break into and said she wished she could find an agent who didn’t want to work full time, who lived in that neighborhood, to be the face of her Help-U-Sell business there.  Brainstorming resulted in a job description and title.  You can read more about this HERE, and HERE.

In my daily scan of relevant tech info, I learned that Facebook is getting ready to announce a new twist on advertising.  The new ads will be larger and will offer options for more specific targeting.  The rumor is you’ll be able to advertise to the ‘Friends’ of people who ‘Like’ a particular business.   I learned about this right after I saw a graph from Chis Smith, Chief Evangelist (!) at Inman, documenting a decline in the impact of Business Pages on Facebook. In a 30 day period, ‘Likes’ of business pages are down 15%, Comments are down 19.9% and Impressions are down 24%.   It could be that we’ve hit a saturation point with Facebook marketing and are starting to turn off from it, much as we did from Groupons not too long ago.  Groupons came out of the box like a shotgun blast, but after awhile people got tired of offers (sometimes not so good) in their email and began to turn off.  In the case of Facebook, I see an opportunity to re-examine how we use this communication tool in our businesses.  In other words:  let’s get creative once again in how we use Social Media.

Then, purely for fun, I saw a piece about the glasses Google, working in conjunction with Oakley, is likely to release later this year.  You wear them, just as you would any pair of shades, but a transparent web browser appears on the lens, enabling you to surf the web while walking around.  Using Google Maps while making your way through a foreign city would be interesting, as would using Google Goggles to identify landmarks along the way. I’m not sure whether this will be immensely silly and irrelevant or very cool.  I mean:  it seems we’re already doing that with our Smart Phones;  why would we switch?  And are we inching ever closer to having our technology actually implanted into our bodies??  If so, nerd that I am, I can’t wait!

Finally, remember, it’s the 22nd of February.  There are just 7 days left in the month (it’s leap year).  That means there are just 7 days left in the Help-U-Sell Winter Warm-Up Contest.  If you want to put on a full court press here in the closing week of the event, do so by focusing on  LISTINGS.  Get as many as possible because new listings carry the greatest weight in contest results.  What do you think?  Could you take one new listing evey day for the next seven days?  What if your State was going to take away your real estate license if you didin’t?  Could you do it then?  Uh-Huh, I thought you could.  So I think you now have your assignment:  7 new listings in 7 days.  That’s 35 additional points in the contest, which could be enough to boost you into one of the money positions!  Good Luck!

Clarifying Terms: Full Service Broker, Limited Service Broker, Discounter, Help-U-Sell

I wrote a piece a long time ago called Full Service Broker vs Limited Service Broker vs Discounter.  It remains popular.  I think it’s because the title uses terms people use when searching online.  Trouble is, the piece was really just musing.  I was trying to point out how mushy the definitions of these key concepts are in the world of real estate today.  Nobody reading that post is going to come away with a firm understanding of the various kinds of brokerages out there and few will get a feel for how we at Help-U-Sell are different and better.  So, let me take a stab at it this time being a little more pedantic.

Full Service Broker: A Broker who essential takes over the task of selling a home. Usually that means the seller does nothing but sit back and wait for a contract and then a closing. I could be more granular in the description – break it down a little further – but I don’t think that’s necessary.  When you list with a Full Service Broker, you expect that you are turning the messy task of selling your home over to someone else.  Your job, once you have the house in tip top shape, is to simply disappear anytime anybody wants to see the home and to be patient.  Generally speaking Full Service Brokers charge a percentage based commission in the 5% – 8% range (although real estate sales commissions, whether percentage based or not, are fully negotiable between the broker and homeowner and no standard or even standard range exists).  That can get pretty pricy.  Think about it:  the owner of a $300,000 home with $100,000 in equity who agrees to pay a, say, 6% commission is paying $18,000: almost 20% of their equity!  And don’t get me started on the guy down the street in the smaller house worth $250,000 who will pay the same broker the same percentage but, in his case, it’s only $15,000!  Why is the first guy paying $3,000 more for the exact same service?? It makes no sense (it really doesn’t)!

Discounter: These brokers focus on the commission and cut it to levels Full Service Brokers cannot meet.  Using the above hypothetical examples, a Discounter might take the listing for say, 4%, a significant savings for the seller.  But here’s the thing about Discounters:  they use the same business model the Full Service Brokers have. They are on the same planet, in the same universe.  If they’re going to operate on that planet for less revenue, something else is going to have to give.   Think about it:  If you find a hammer at Ace Hardware for $4 and then spend the rest of the day shopping until you find a Discount Hardware Store who sells the same item for $3, you may have a bargain!  Or maybe you don’t.  You gave up something to get that dollar off the hammer.  You had to spend you time and money driving around to find the store and the hammer (their profit margins are so small they can’t afford to be visible or easy to find), you probably had nobody on the floor to help you, you may have had to dig through disorganized bins to find your hammer and you may have had to dig until you found one in good shape.  There are trade-offs for this kind of savings, and there are with the Discounter’s view of real estate too.  The quantity and quality of marketing the discounter does will probably be reduced, the amount of personal attention the seller receives will probably be less (after all this broker has to do big volume to compete and has less time), and let’s just hope there’s not much else going on when the offer comes in. You don’t want your Discount Broker watching the clock and counting the seconds and thinking about wrapping this negotiation up so he can get on to the next one!

Limited Service Broker: This is a term the Full Service and Discounter Brokers invented to diminish the value of Brokers who don’t represent anyone in a transaction.  The model is different this time.  Usually it involves a set fee, often paid up front and non-refundable.  The Broker then takes the property information and does very limited marketing, usually just putting the property into MLS or on a FSBO website.  There is no hand-holding, no showing, no open houses, no communication, no assistance with pricing and strategy. All they are providing is access to a few marketing tools you probably don’t have access to on your own.  The kicker is, if you pay an MLS only Limited Service Broker to put your house in the MLS, you’re also going to have to be prepared to pay the other broker who sees the listing in MLS and then comes in with a buyer!  Suddenly, that rock bottom front fee is not looking like quite the bargain you expected!  Some Limited Service Brokers do provide representation – which means they look out for your best interest and get involved in negotiations and make sure the deal goes as planned to closing – but it’s often at an additional fee.

Help-U-Sell is something else all together.  We operate on a different planet than the three guys above.

We recognize that technology has made marketing a properly priced home pretty easy, and pretty standard.  The idea that your agent needs to create a completely customized, personal marketing campaign for your individual home is actually a little absurd today unless you are in some astronomical price range or in a completely unique boutique type situation.  Marketing is:  pricing the home properly, starting a buzz locally through signs, flyers, postcards, MLS, past clients and so on, making the property easy to find online via various websites (the more the better), social media outlets, video, QR codes and so on, and then being sharp as a tack when an inquiry comes in to make sure that, if the prospect is right for the home, the’ll get to see it.  It’s not rocket science.  It takes a professional working every day in the real estate business to do it well, to manage it and keep it on track, but it doesn’t take a super-human or even a star.

We also recognize that the best thing we can do for all of our sellers is to generate leads – potential buyers who contact our office and with whom we develop a working relationship.  And that’s what our marketing is designed to do: generate leads, not just for your individual house but for all the houses we have in inventory.  Truth is:  the caller rarely buys or even wants to see the house that motivated the call.  Once they have the information they often discover that there is something missing or not matching their needs.  That’s where the developing relationship with the agent on the other end of the line comes in.  If we really know our business, if we really know our inventory, if we are really good at listening, we probably have something else in inventory that would be perfect for this buyer . . . and that’s how we market your home.  A great Help-U-Sell office is like a clearing house for buyers and sellers, or maybe more like a buyer/seller dating service!

We acknowledge that there are a number of activities ordinary brokers routinely take on that might be better handled by the seller, and if the seller is willing to take on these generally easy tasks, they can achieve significant savings.  If the seller is up for it, we will coach them on how to hold their own open houses.  We’ll show them how to walk through the home with a prospective buyer.  We’ll provide them tools to use in spreading the word to friends, neighbors and co-workers.  If they can find a buyer through this kind of easy participation, we can cut them an amazing deal on our fee.  After all:  they’ve produced the buyer!  And, oh by the way, not all of our sellers opt in to participating in this way, and that’s ok.  We can still save them big time over ordinary brokers.  The good news about seller participation is that it is a lead generator for us – and since lead generation and capture is how we get our listings sold, all of our sellers benefit when one of them holds an open house.  Let me be a little more clear.  One of the tasks most sellers are not comfortable doing is following up with buyers who come through their home.  That’s great:  we don’t ask them to do that.  We do it for them.  Their job is to collect contact information on everyone who comes to their open house (essentially, nobody comes in without signing in – that just makes sense).  They share that with us and we make the follow-up call.  Sometimes the buyer just needs a little clarification or next-step help to move forward on the property, but more times, they’ve eliminated the property because it didn’t quite match their needs. And so we have yet another lead that might be perfect for one of our other listings.

Because we design our offices and our marketing to be big lead generators -and because leads, properly handled, drive the sale of our listings – our agents have a much more manageable job description.  You see, the ordinary real estate Broker builds his business by adding agents, agent after agent.  The only way the ordinary Broker can get the large number of agents required to make his business viable is by offering prospective agents HUGE commission splits.  Because the ordinary Broker has fewer dollars to work with after paying those huge splits, he can’t afford to orchestrate and implement the kind of lead generating marketing program the Help-U-Sell broker can.  Instead, the ordinary Broker delegates this responsibility to his agents who generally just do their own thing . . . which is not to market or generate leads, but to advertise in hopes that their latest ad will show the anxious seller that they are really working.   In a Help-U-Sell office that is all handled by the Broker.  Our Brokers are in charge of and responsible for marketing, for creating all of those leads that turn into buyers and sales.  Our agents are there to take care of the buyer leads our marketing has created.  Period.  We don’t ask them to market or to build our business on the strength of their sphere of influence, to prospect for listings or call on FSBOS.  We ask them to take the leads we’ve generated for them and to take incredibly good care of them as they find their dream home.  Building and maintaining listing inventory is the broker’s job, converting buyer leads into sales is the agent’s job.  And it’s a wonderful, manageable job!  Compare that with the job description of an ordinary agent who is expected to do everything from soup to nuts, essentially running his or her own real estate company within the Broker’s company!  No wonder they burn out so quickly!

We recognize that a  buyer for a particular home might come from several sources and that the cost of acquiring a buyer varies from source to source . . . and we price our services based on which source produced the buyer.  Ordinary real estate is a one-size-fits-all world.  Usually, when you list with an ordinary broker, the high percentage based commission you are agreeing to pay is designed compensate four different entities:  the Listing Agent and Listing Office, the Selling Agent and Selling Office.  But in most cases you’re going to pay that same high percentage based commission even if there is no outside agent or company involved in securing the buyer.  In fact, you’re probably going to pay full fare even if YOU find the buyer.  With Help-U-Sell the fee is based on where we had to go to find the buyer.  If you find the buyer through an open house or talking it up at work, you pay just our low set fee – usually thousands less than you’d pay an ordinary broker.  If you want, we’ll ask the buyers agents in our Help-U-Sell office to go to work trying to drum up a good buyer for the house and if they are successful, we’ll have to pay them as well . . . but you’ll still save thousands over what you’d pay most ordinary brokers.  Finally, if we have to go into MLS to find a buyer (and we don’t always have to!), you’ll pay your Help-U-Sell low set fee and you’ll have to take care of that outside agent and broker -which will be relatively expensive.  You’ll still save, but just not quite as much.  And, if you elect to go full-bore on marketing your home, if you do elect to participate, if you ask our Help-U-Sell buyers agents to get involved and you do opt to go into the MLS . . . and then you find the buyer yourself . . . all you’re going to pay is the low set fee, saving you maximum dollars.

There are a lot of other differences between what we do and what the other guys do, whether they are Full Service, Limited Service or Discounters.  But most are technical twists on how we operate our offices.  By the way:  that is a key to how we’re able to charge less and still maker more: we operate our offices very differently from ordinary brokers.  We’ll save those twists for another discussion and leave this one where it is.  I think it’s clear that we are different.  We don’t fit any of the definitions that the industry has put on itself.  We are a different category because we approach the task of selling a home differently.  And one of the big differences is that we make sense.

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