You know, if the brokers pulling out of syndication were serious about ‘going to the source’ being in the best interest of consumers, they wouldn’t put their listings in MLS. I mean, a dim agent from across town is just as likely to show your listing having found it on the MLS ( and having never seen it) as one who snares a lead from Trulia.
Of course, we at Help-U-Sell have long maintained that every listing does not need to go into MLS and often hold back the most salable listings so that our sellers can save the most money. Our fee stays the same either way. When we do have non-MLS exclusives, syndication is very important. We can give a seller huge exposure on the Internet without going into MLS. Of course, when that competitor agent snares a lead on our exclusive from an aggregator site, we have to tell them that the seller has not agreed to pay their commission . . . but then, that’s kinda fun, isn’t it?
Check out this letter from a consumer on Inman today. It somehow reminded me of something:
There is a difference between advertising and marketing.
Advertising is promotion without a plan, with no clear or realistic purpose, with little or no measurement of results. Advertising is what most REALTORS do. They promise the seller this advertising and that advertising, pretending all the while (wink, wink) that somehow the advertising is going to sell the house.
Help-U-Sell is a marketing company. We create a powerful marketing plan with a crystal clear purpose: to generate leads. Leads, properly handled, sell houses.*
We syndicate our listings out to Trulia, Zillow and other aggregators because it’s good marketing. It generates leads. It doesn’t matter how the aggregators came into existence or how stupid we all were to let it happen. Since we are a marketing company, we go where the leads are, and today, they are on Zillow.
That’s it.
[swfobject]2673[/swfobject] *(Not every listing we take is a good lead generator. That doesn’t mean that the house is a bad house. It just means that other houses in our inventory are better lead generators. So, part of being a marketing company is carefully selecting the properties that generate the largest number of leads. Next time you find yourself promising a seller advertising, watch out: you’re dangerously close to falling into the traditional REALTOR trap.)
We had a good discussion about the whole syndication flap on yesterday’s Power Hour Rountable call. Everyone agreed that the whole concept of the syndicators using our own data to attract leads they sell back to us was repugnant. However, they saw it pretty much as something we did to ourselves (we being Realtors in general). We failed to give consumers what Zillow, Trulia and others gave them, and today, that’s where consumers go to look for houses.
The group was quick to accept reality: this is the way it is today. Sellers expect to be seen on the syndication sites. If you can’t give that to them, they will likely go elsewhere. They don’t care what your syndication baggage is or how indignant you are about using your data to attract leads for other brokers. They just expect to be there. Plus there was general consensus that the aggregator sites work. At one point in the call Ken Kopcho got on his mobile phone and counted: 31 leads from Zillow!
Speaking for the group, I’d say we agreed to go full bore into mining this rich source of leads,and nobody wants to stop syndicating. However, there was agreement with what Kirk Eisele said in his comment: consumers will go wherever their needs are best met, and this is not a closed case. When someone comes along with a home search tool that out-Zillows Zillow, that’s where consumers will go. There’s no reason why that can’t be us. We own our own technology, aren’t dependent on outside vendors who have to please masses of clients, and can do whatever we want with our web presence.
Go back in time, oh, 7 years I guess. Helpusell.com had outrageous web traffic. And it excreted leads, one after the other. There was a good reason why we, at times, had better traffic than much larger organizations: we embraced IDX and used it when most of the industry was afraid to give that information to consumers. Consumers wanted to go to one website and look at all houses available for sale in the local market. Using IDX to do that gave us a big leg-up on the competition.
But of course, in time the competition leveled the playing field by dropping their hysterical resistance to giving the public free access to information and adding IDX to their own sites. We suffered a major blow when one large competitor went to our vendor and basically bought them out from under us. We went from being the darling of Internet lead creation to . . . nowhere. That’s why, today, we own our own tech. We built it, it’s not available to anyone else and it does what we want it to do.
We have an opportunity today to take back some of what we gave up to the aggregators. The shift will come when we give them everything they get from Zillow and MORE. Today? I have to run because I just got 5 new leads from my ad on Trulia.
First, let’s understand what syndication is. When a real estate broker submits a listing to the MLS, he/she is given the choice whether to share the listing with various Internet property portals: Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com and many more. At Help-U-Sell, with the broker’s agreement, we pull all property listings from the MLS via an IDX feed – that’s how we get the Help-U-Sell broker’s listings (along with all the others in the MLS) into helpusell.com. We also share information with dozens of Internet portals and our brokers can opt in or out of that sharing for their individual listings. That’s syndication.
These portals – let’s call them what they are: aggregators – present the listing data on their own sites and use the traffic they generate to sell advertisements. The advertisers are usually REALTORS who want to be seen as the knowledgable expert in their areas.
I remember Dale Strack railing on about this seven years ago. ‘First they get you to share your data with them – For Free! – then they turn around and sell the leads your data generates back to you!’ he’d say. And he was right: we real estate pros often take the easiest path . . . I mean: we could have done the work the aggregators did to get our listings seen and preserve the leads not for advertisers but for the source of the data, but we didn’t. We had a long and rich history of hoarding information from consumers and the thought of opening up our own treasure trove of data was repugnant to us! We opted to let someone else do that.
Thank goodness we did. Now the consumer has almost all the information we used to hoard from them!
But now there is this tempest brewing. It started a few months ago in Minnesota, where the gigantic Independent firm, Edina, opted out of syndication on their listings. A few firms followed over the following months and then, last week, Jim Abbott from San Diego pulled his firm out. Abbott is not near the heavy weight that Edina is, but he understands media and created a very compelling video about his decision. The video has gone viral in the real estate community and I’m sure will bring this issue to the forefront for many. Here – give it a look:
Abbott’s frustration is that his listings are generating leads for other brokers. And he is correct, it is almost impossible to find listing agent information on most of the portals. The only agents easy to find are those who ponied up the cash for premium accounts – and there is no screening process for agents wanting to advertise in this way. The consumer is as likely to find a Dud this way as a Star.
Imagine the frustration of a great agent who takes dozens of good property listings and sends them out to the syndicators. Meanwhile a new agent or a failing one inks an agreement with a syndicator to become a ‘Preferred Agent’ and snares a quality lead on one of those listings. Because they know nothing about the property (and little about the business), they lean heavily on the listing agent through the showing, offer and acceptance process. The listing agent feels as if he/she carried the selling agent through the sale and is bothered by the low level of service the buyer client received from their agent.
I think pulling the plug on syndication is a noble thing. I’m not sure it’s practical. Truth is, I hear from my brokers every week that the preferred agent programs on Trulia and especially on Zillow work: they produce leads. And today, it’s a rare broker who pulls the plug on anything producing leads.
Funny: there’s been an alternative – actually a better program than that of any of the aggregators – out there for years: ListingBook. It’s free to agents and brokers, gives consumers real time access to the local MLS and the same listings the aggregators have, and preserves the lead for the agent who brings the prospect into ListingBook. It’s the consumer centric alternative to the problems Abbott is talking about in his video. I’ve been pushing ListingBook for years: it’s a wonderful way to give the very best infomation to your clients without giving up control. If brokers understood its power there would be no need to syndicate to anybody.
I am very curious about where you weigh in on this and would welcome your comments. We’re also going to spend a little time on the issue on our Wednesday Help-U-Sell Power Hour. So please plan to attend.
Up until about 2006 we had a very coherent statement of those things we hold most dear: our Core Values. Great care was taken in the creation of the list. We didn’t want what usually passes for this kind of statement – a bland list of noble words that don’t really describe the company. We wanted this list to be real. And it was. But then there was a changing of the guard in 2006 and the old set was scrapped and replace by somebody else’s idea of who they wanted to be . . . and the original list was abandoned.
I’ve been thinking about that original list lately and I’d like to revive it. It truly describes who we are (not who we want to be, but who we really are right now).
1. Integrity
We tell the truth.
We believe so deeply in our product that we don’t have to stoop to techniques and manipulation to be successful: all we have to do is tell people what we have.
We provide a valuable service for a reasonable fee.
We make an honest living. We don’t ‘make a killing’ on every closing. We are paid fairly by the people we serve.
We believe in our program.
We realize we are different. We have a unique offering for the consumer that is fundamentally better than what traditional brokers offer.
Our system works. Period.
Our words, our actions and our beliefs are in sync. We don’t say one thing but do something else.
2. Information without obligation
We don’t hoard or hide information.
We answer questions honestly without technique or manipulation.
Our selling style is to educate; we empower our customers with information.
3. Consumer choices
One size does not fit all.
We allow the consumer to choose the services he or she would like to employ and then we charge them based on how the home actually sells.
Our focus is always on how we can better serve the consumer.
4. Seller participation
We believe in our customers’ ability to handle some aspects of the sale.
We partner with our sellers to market their property. We HELP YOU sell your property.
We coach our sellers through the process.
5. Seller savings
Because we always have our customers’ best interest at heart, the more we can save them, the better.
We deliver high value service for a set fee considerably lower than the commissions charged by other offices.
6. Buyer/Seller contact
Because we believe in our service, we don’t have to justify our existence by getting between the parties.
We believe that most people are honest and principled.
Our job is to coach, educate and facilitate a successful transaction.
7. Unique management model
We believe that we can offer a high value service to consumers and make a healthy profit at the same time.
We organize our offices to serve the consumer, not the agent.
We believe it is our business; we hire people to help us do more of it and do it better.
8. Powerful marketing system
We are a marketing company. We study our marketplace and our marketing to make sure we are maximizing results.
We have a marketing plan and we stick to it.
We measure results.
We actively market real estate
And here it is once again without the extra verbiage:
Integrity
Information without Obligation
Consumer Choices
Seller Participation
Seller Savings
Buyer/Seller Contact
Unique Management Model
Powerful Marketing System
This set of 8 Core Values is more than mere words on a page. It is a living breathing entity, one we use every day to remind us who we are and to help in decision making. Any time you are considering a change to your program or a new piece of marketing or a new way of doing anything, take out the list and weigh what you’re considering against it. If it does not align with your 8 Core Values, then it’s probably something you shouldn’t do. We are a principal centered organization and these are the principals on which we base our business. Be proud of them. Display them. Share them with your staff and give them a little time every day.
