No More Begging!

It dawned on me 20 years ago when I was working as a Business Consultant for one of the other large national real estate franchises:  In the ordinary real estate world, we were all beggars.

Agents made listing presentations where they begged sellers to work with them.  Then they begged them to reduce the price and relist.  They begged their buyers to be loyal.

Brokers begged agents to come work in their offices.  They begged them not to leave, too.

The Franchises begged (really:  begged) people to join them.  Then they begged them to use the tools, begged them to do the thngs that would help them succeed and begged them to renew at the end of their term.

It was all very degrading, all this begging.

In a universe where everyone is on their own and everyone has the same set of tools, where all the players are just alike — making a convincing argument for your service becomes sophisticated begging.  It’s no longer a matter of educating the customer about the benefits your particular way of doing business can bring to bear on their situation.  It’s about having enough flair to make the ordinary seem special, enough personality to be convincing when you say, ‘Trust me.’

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When I came to Help-U-Sell, I noticed something different.  I saw agents and brokers who had more then their personalities to distinguish them from the pack.  They had systems that worked.  They had a specific way of marketing a listing that got it sold.  They had a unique way of starting a new agent in the business that made them productive.  They had a carefully structured method of working with buyers that not only resulted in loyalty, but also produced such customer satisfaction that testimonials were a cinch.   Everyone — brokers, agents, even the franchisor — was coming from a position of strength because they were backed by a unique business model that worked.

The Help-U-Sell Listing Consultation is not about trying to convince the seller that you’re the best.  It’s about showing the seller enough of your program that they want it, and then deciding if this is a listing you want to take, a seller you can work with.

We don’t chase buyers.  We capture them with a carefully constructed intake system (the Buyer Data Sheet), and then do a consultation that ends in a loyalty commitment.

When we recruit (and we only do this when our program has created more business than we can handle with current staff), we don’t try to convince every agent who walks through the door to join us.  We look for the few who recognize the value of being able to focus on a single, managable aspect of the business.  Then we put them through Science 2 Sales training and hold them to a reasonable production standard.

It’s all about having systems that produce results.  That’s what puts you in a position of strength so that you don’t have to beg for business.

Winning with Finance

Lynne Holcomb (Help-U-Sell Cape Coral) came up to Sarasota yesterday for the Florida rally.  She’s a 20 year member of the Help-U-Sell team and has always been a strong player and participant.   Early in the day,  one of the Bank of America representatives went through the Alliance program we have with them.  She showed us a place in the BAC mortgage center website where a borrower can input their income and expenses and get down to a real ratio driven picture of their financial capabilities.  It was really quite remarkable and sparked a spirited discussion about financing in general:  new programs, procedures and products. 

I watched as Lynn stepped right into the conversation.  It was very clear she knew exactly what she was talking about and at times it was hard to tell who was the loan officer.  Her detailed understanding of real estate financing was powerful and impressive.  She and John Powell agreed that knowledge of finance and the ability to discuss financial options with prospective buyers is essential to gaining buyer loyalty.  It’s a value package they recognize and, once they see it, they don’t want to leave it. 

When I sold real estate (you know:  back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), finance was something you just learned.  You studied it, tasked your favorite mortgage people with keeping you up to date and you talked finance all the time.  Your knowledge of finance enabled you to makes sales that  you’d otherwise lose.  Somewhere in the ’90s there was a shift.  It seemed that agents knew less and less about the financial products that enabled their business.  Increasingly the lender was brought in to answer the most basic finance questions. 

Of course I’m talking about traditional agents here — I had not encountered Help-U-Sell yet — and I think the aversion to finance was a result of a couple of broker driven factors.  First, as the mortgage industry became more regulated and more complicated, brokers were concerned about the liability of agents trotting out their possibly incomplete or inaccurate understanding of finance.  Understandable.  Second, brokers found that they could retain their solid middle producers if they kept them slightly dependent on office resources and so de-emphasized the importance of agents understanding finance.

Since Help-U-Sell is a broker-driven, consumer-centric model, I’ve seen a much greater willingness among our people to learn and use finance in their day to day real estate practice and I’ve seen it make a huge difference, especially with buyers.  Buyers, like any other consumer, will stick with you if they perceive value.  Everyone can show them property — some will zero in more quickly on their needs than others, but it’s not a difficult process.  Anyone who pays attention can tell them a little about each community.  But it’s the pro who can show them how finance can make the home more affordable, how it can solve many of the problems that come up in a real estate transaction.  That’s value. 

Yes, you do need a strong relationship with several lenders you can call for the very detailed explanation of finance.  But you also need to understand the products, what they can do, how they fit and the benefits and pitfalls they bring to the transaction.  All you have to do to see the power of this knowledge in action is to listen to Jack Bailey talk about creating a ‘Real Estate Plan’ for a prospective purchaser.  I’m sure Lynne Holcomb is just as impressive. 

Make time with your favorite mortgage people to take you through their portfolio of products.  Have them show you how they work with qualifying guidlines and underwriting requirements.  Become a student of finance and then don’t be afraid to talk about it with your customers — with the caveat that you’ll want them to discuss this with a mortgage rep too! 

I remember a sad cartoon I saw once.  It wasn’t funny, really.  A real estate agent and buyer were standing outside a house that was for sale.  The buyer says, ‘Hmmm.  $180,000, right?  If I put down 10% and get a 30 year fixed, roughly what would my payments be?’  The agent is digging in her bag.  ‘Hang on a second,’ she says, ‘Let me call my lender.’  Sad.

Revisiting the Elevator Speech

I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman yesterday about the Elevator Speech. When I told him I worked for Help-U-Sell®, he asked (as if from a script): ‘What do you do?’

Like Pavlov’s dog, I spoke right up. ‘We are REALTORS® and we do all the things the other REALTORS® do – and more – except instead of a commission, we charge a low set fee, which can save you a lot of money when it comes time to sell your house.’

He scowled.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘You lost me at REALTOR®,’ he replied. I continued to look puzzled, so he went on. ‘As soon as I heard you were a REALTOR®, I thought I knew exactly what you do. I didn’t really hear anything that came after . . . nothing to set you apart or make you different.’

‘Nothing?’ I asked, aghast. I was in shock. Seeing my discomfort, he smiled.

‘I’m kidding,’ he said, ‘I heard what you said, I really did. But I was listening like a consumer.’

Turned out he was a Certified Financial Planner and had been working through an exercise in his company to get at how to most effectively communicate their message to consumers in a quick, concise and differentiating way: an Elevator Speech.

‘What we discovered was that when we differentiate first, our message gets through,’ he said. ‘We don’t lead with ‘We’re Financial Planners’ because people have a mental image of what that is and if they put us into that picture we look just like everyone else. Another thing – we did away with all the ‘buts’ and ‘ands’ and ‘excepts’ in our speech. We found that those kinds of qualifiers negated what went before in people’s minds.’

My original impulse was defensiveness: I learned that elevator speech seven years ago. I knew why every word was chosen and I knew why it was supposed to work. But when I ran through it again, in my head, I remembered that the opening phrase was chosen to combat the rumors our competitors were spreading, not to differentiate us from them. We said we were REALTORS® right up front – and sometimes elaborated to say we were ‘full-service REALTORS®’ – because the other guys were telling everybody we weren’t!


‘Let me hear your speech,’ I said. I wanted to turn the tables, put him on the spot and see if I could find the holes in his dialogue.

‘Sure,’ he replied, ‘We fix people’s broken investment portfolios.’

‘Really?’ I asked, ‘How do you do that?’

‘See?’ he answered, ‘It works.’ I continued to look puzzled. ‘The whole point of the speech is to let people know you are different in a way that might benefit them and get them to ask for more information. You played your part very well.’

I’ve been thinking about our speech ever since. Perhaps it is littered with little land mines that could blow up and ruin our chances of getting through to the consumer. I remember Mike Miller, during his brief stay as our Chief Communications Officer, insisting that ‘set fee’ was a negative: Lawyers charge fees, banks ‘fee us to death,’ airlines charge excess baggage fees. He was pushing for ‘set price.’ Personally, I’m not ready to go there; but it is something to ponder.

Here’s what I’m thinking: the answer to ‘What do you do?’ might simply be, ‘We are a set fee real estate company.’ Period. It says you’re different, hints that there might be a benefit to the consumer and begs the question, ‘How does that work?’

Please don’t change your elevator speech – you know, the one you currently have that is working. But chime in: What do you think about the advice I got this weekend? Should we rethink the Elevator Speech? If so, how do you see it in the future? Click the ‘Leave a Comment’ link above and speak your mind!

Are the Yellow Pages Extinct?

It’s a real question — one I hope you’ll answer in a comment.  I’m asking because I found myself irritated this morning.  It happens about once a year. 

I live in a 24 unit condo.  Every year, about this time, a man with a dolly and 24 yellow-bagged copies of the Yellow Pages makes a visit to the YPbuilding.  He leaves the books in a stack by the mailboxes.  Every year I find more and more of the bagged books (mine included)  in the recycle bin in the garage.  Last year, probably 18 of 24 were never taken into the home.  That’s what irritates me:  the incredible waste of natural resources involved in printing the thing for no reason then to recycle it. 

I know I’m abnormal (in so many ways), but I haven’t used YP in years.  If I want to find something locally I usually Google the name of my city and the service I seek and then review a few websites.  Is this true for you?

So tell me:  do you use the Yellow Pages to advertise your business?  Do you have a line ad or a display ad?  Does it produce leads for you?  Just click ‘Leave a comment’ above to respond.

Agents Are The Problem, Right? Wrong

Help-U-Sell is a broker-centric business model, which is to say:  the broker is in control of the business.  He/she takes responsibility for studying the market, designing and implementing the marketing, generating the leads, converting them to listings and sales and ensuring the survival and growth of his company.  That does not imply that there is no place in a Help-U-Sell office for agents.

True, if you look at the issues that plague traditional real estate offices, you can easily conclude that the agents are the problem.  Their huge commission splits, constant shopping for a better deal and complacent acceptance of sub-standard productivity have all but destroyed any chance for a traditional broker to make a reasonable profit.  But truth is:  that’s not a problem with the agents, it’s a problem with the broker. 

Traditional brokers adbicated their leadership role to agents back in the 80’s.  Forced to compete with 100% companies, they allowed their commission splits to soar to impossible heights.  Less company dollar meant cutting marketing budgets, focusing what cash there was on attracting more agents.  (It’s really sad that so many brokers who averaged less than 25% of GCI as company dollar thought that if they just had more agents they’d somehow make it up in volume!)

The issue isn’t agents.  It’s broker control.

The Help-U-Sell model is absolutely suited to agent populated offices if the broker stays in control.  This means:

  • The broker decides when, where and how to market — he doesn’t leave this up to the agents
  • The broker pays for the marketing
  • The broker considers every lead that comes into the office to be his
  • The broker demands a high level of performance in converting leads to clients to sales
  • The broker hires only when the business grows to the point that another person is needed (the Buyer Pool is his gauge)
  • The broker stays primarily responsible for the listing function.  That means he takes the listings or has an assistant stand in for him.
  • The broker pays buyer agents in the 50%-60% range — which makes sense because he’s furnishing all the leads and is not asking them to knock doors, cold call or take lisitngs
  • The broker holds everyone accountable and does not hesitate to eliminate poor performers

Agents flourish in this environment.  They come to work every day with something to do, confident that there will be another buyer and another buyer to keep them busy because the broker is marketing and the marketing works.

Sellers receive maximum exposure because the office has a well thought out marketing program in place, controlled by the broker, not a bunch of individual agents.

Buyers get to work with specialists who aren’t distracted by the listings that aren’t selling or the ad that’s due today or anything else that goes on in the other side of the office.

The Broker smiles every month when he sees his bottom line.  His business makes sense because he stayed in control.

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