Help-U-Sell

Listingbook

I ran into this company about a year ago and was blown away but what they are doing. I’m going to urge you to find out if your MLS has it and if it does, jump on it . . . with both feet!

Listingbook enables you to give real time MLS access to your buyers and sellers so that they can search the most accurate and up-to-date information available in the local market. The only way they get access is through the account you give them and they’re reminded of that fact every time they log in.

When your customer uses Listingbook, you get a report of everything they do: how many houses they viewed, which ones they liked, which they eliminated and so on. As such, it acts as an early warning system. Say you give the Brown’s an account and watch them use it casually for a few weeks. Then, one Monday, you log in and discover they looked at 29 houses they day before! Guess what?! It’s time to pick up the phone!

You know, we’re bombarded with stats about how many home buyers use the Internet in their search. The general consensus is that the figure is about 85%. Of course, that’s why we all need to be shifting as much of our marketing as possible to the Internet: that’s where the buyers are. But the other side of that coin is that the Internet buyer tends to spend much more time looking before they’re ready to buy, some estimate five or six months or even more.

What happens in most offices is that an Internet lead comes in, the buyer is in their first month of nosing about and the agent either a) decides they’re not serious because they don’t plan to buy next weekend or b) pesters them to the point that they change their email address and cell phone number!

Listingbook is a high-value item you can offer these buyers that lets them do the research they want to do while keeping you connected to their process. It’s like this: prior to Listingbook, we’d send our Internet buyers to an IDX feed or REALTOR.com or Trulia or any number of websites. It’s like we handed them the keys to the car, stood at the end of the driveway and waved as they drove away. With Listingbook, you still give them keys to the car (and it’s a Cadillac), but you get to ride along in the back seat!

There are also great benefits for your sellers (most of whom are buyers, too). Sellers get a report every day about activity in their specific neighborhood: price changes, sales, expirations and so on. It’s not unusual for Listingbook sellers to call their agents to initiate price reductions based on the information they receive.

I’ve barely scratched the surface here and I know many of you are thinking, ‘But I’ve already got all that through my MLS.’ Trust me: you don’t. I’ve convinced a hand full of people to really get involved with Listingbook and they all report greater success converting, hanging onto and closing leads. They also report very happy clients. If you need further validation, ask Jack Bailey. He’s the broker/owner of Help-U-Sell Greensboro and has been a Listingbook user since they started 8 years ago in his city. He swears by it.

Here’s my advice:

Call your MLS a
nd ask if they have it. If not, tell them they need it.
If they do have it, go get the training as soon as possible
Don’t be casual about the training. This tool takes a little work to master, but it’s well worth the effort.
Use the 1-800 help number. I’ve heard over and over that the Listingbook help desk folks will take whatever time is necessary to get you up and running.
DON”T TELL YOUR COMPETITORS! Really. Most are ignoring Listingbook because they think they already have it. Here’s your chance to get a leg-up on everyone else in your marketplace!

MLS

10/21/09 – Oh: here is the drop-down list of MLSs from the Listingbook website. If yours is not listed, I’d still check.

Stop! Don’t Take THAT Listing!

The rationale for Help-U-Sell’s set fee pricing has always been that a sharp, well-informed broker knows roughly how long it will take to sell a properly priced listing and what it’s going to cost to accomplish that task. There’s a lot in that statement:

Let’s start with ‘well-informed.‘ Set fee pricing begins with a thorough Market Analysis. You have to know how the market behaves before you know how long and at what cost it’s going to take to sell the average listing. You have to know the turnover rates, down to the smallest geographical distinction, so you can target effectively. You have to understand your individual market’s seasonality so you know when to gear up and when to gear down. Until you know how your market behaves you’re in no position to offer set fee pricing.

Now consider ‘at what cost.‘ A brand new Help-U-Sell broker sets up his first marketing plan as a ‘best guess.’ He has no data on which to judge the effectiveness of any marketing he might do because he’s never done any before. So he guesses. And then he does what all true marketing companies do: he tracks results. Soon he knows what’s working and what isn’t. He makes adjustments and continues to track. Soon he can tell you how many leads each bit of marketing he’s done has produced. And he makes a few more adjustments. After awhile, the marketing plan gells, marketing expense becomes predictable, almost fixed. It varies, but just slightly and then by plan, not by whim.

Marketing is usually the biggest variable on the balance sheet, so once it’s locked down, the broker knows what it costs him to operate on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Considering this figure (plus a reasonable profit) along with: average days on market, time between contract and closing, % of listings that sell and close, seasonality and the number of listings the office usually has in inventory — the broker can tell you roughly what it will cost to market and sell a properly priced listing at this time of year. It’s this knowledge that enables the broker to set his fee.

BUT, there’s another key phrase in that opening statement, and it’s the most important of all: a “properly priced listing.” A properly priced listing will sell within the average number of days on which your plan was based. An overpriced listing will take longer — if it sells at all — thus costing you more than you planned to spend.

I’ve had brokers stop me at this point and argue that a few overpriced listings that take a little longer to sell don’t really cost that much more to market and besides, the sign exposure is a big plus. OK. I get that. Just remember: every day you have a listing, it’s costing you money. They aren’t free. You have an office expense, you have a marketing expense, you have the cost of your time and energy (which, oh by the way, is finite), so the listing that does not perform within the parameters you used in setting up your plan and your fee is a drain. How many of them can you afford to have? As to sign exposure, how beneficial is it to your image in the marketplace for that For Sale sign to be up month after month until the weeds grow up around the bottom of it, the grommets rust and it begins to lean?

Here’s my point: you can’t afford to routinely take overpriced listings. Doing so will absolutely blow your carefully constructed set fee pricing right out of the water and you will lose money. Should you ever take an overpriced listing? Sure, but only if it’s close, and only with the seller’s full understanding that you believe it’s too high, and with a commitment to revisit price in 30 days.

One of the things you must do as a Help-U-Sell broker is to become a pricing warrior. You have to be the Hercules of pricing. You have to be so strong and convincing when presenting price that your sellers don’t hesitate to follow your lead. That means you must practice, drill and rehearse your dialogues. You have to massage your MLS and marketplace stats until they throb. In short, you have to know your stuff. And knowing your stuff is always the starting point to delivering excellent service to your clients.

3 Things Your Marketing Should Accomplish

It’s three. Just three. You should have something going on in each of these areas every day.

Visibility – Targeting – Client Base Development

I know: it sounds simple. I tried to complicate it, tried to make it five things and then four, but ultimately, that’s it: three very clear Objectives.

Visibility

To be visible is to be seen. That’s what you want in your marketplace. You want to be seen and the more the better. In the real estate business, being seen is usually a function of signage: for sale signs, open house signs, directional signs, office signs, and on and on.

Think of it this way: every day, every homeowner in your marketplace decides which real estate company is biggest, strongest and best. Oh, they have no idea they’re making the decision — it’s all taking place subconsciously. But they’re making it nonetheless. As they walk and drive through their neighborhood they’re noticing signs: for sale signs, sold signs, open house signs, directional signs, bus benches, billboards, office signs, and they’re keeping count: who has the most. Whether you have 5 listings or 50, you want to be the company making the largest number of impressions with your signs.

So what do you do? You coach each seller to hold their own open houses, provide each with half a dozen directional signs and encourage them to put them out often. You put out directional signs yourself, pointing to your office. You put Market Blitz signs up wherever you can. You buy a VW Beetle and wrap it, parking it within eyesight of the busiest intersection in your marketplace. You rent office space that allows you a big, visible sign. You sponsor a Little League team and have your logo placed on the back of their shirts. Once a month, you put up an awning in your parking lot, hang it with Help-U-Sell banners and offer free lists of foreclosures to potential buyers and a selling consultation to potential sellers. In other words: you avoid being a secret agent. You actively seek and exploit opportunities to be seen as a Help-U-Sell broker in your area.

If you orchestrate the Visibility portion of your marketing plan well, every other piece of marketing you do will be enhanced. Really. People seeing your homes magazine ad or finding your listing on REALTOR.com will be more likely to respond because they’ve ‘seen your signs everywhere!‘

Targeting

It’s a basic marketing concept: getting the most bang for your buck. Your goal is spend your time, money and effort trying to reach the people in your market who are most likely to buy or sell real estate in the near future. When you do ‘Arounds’ near a new listing, you’re targeting (the neighbors are more open to your message because they’ve seen the sign two doors down). When you optimize your website with keywords relevant to your marketplace, you’re targeting (people in your marketplace looking for information about buying or selling will be more likely to find you). When you do a mailing to people who closed between 2003 and 2006 with minimal down payments, you’re targeting (this group is most likely to be upside down or in some other real estate distress that you might be able to solve).

Your task (in addition to being visible) is to always be targeting various groups that may have a greater or more immediate need for your service. When you call FSBOs and Expireds, you’re targeting. And targeting is the second prong in your three prong approach to marketing.

Client Base Development

Here’s a sad bit of history: during the early part of this decade, many Help-U-Sell offices generated so many leads that they ignored the back end of their businesses. The focused on closing new business and didn’t cultivate the happy past customers and clients they’d served. When the market turned, these offices had no strong, supportive base on which to fall back. Today, the offices that are surviving, even thriving, are ones that can say, ’30 – 40 -50% of my business is repeat or referral.’

Cultivation of your client base means staying in touch in a way that the customer finds meaningful. It means reminding them from time to time that you’re in the business and are ready to give their friends the same excellent service you gave them in the past. It’s a simple message,but it’s very powerful. And just like maintaining visibility and target marketing, it’s something you should be working at every single day.

Visibility – Targeting – Client Base Development

The Elevator Speech

You’ve got one, don’t you? You know: an elevator speech!

It’s the 60 second or less description of who you are and what you do that you will use over and over again, just about every day in your career. The elevator speech should differentiate you from your competitors, make you stand out and above all, distinguish you as an alternative to the status quo. This is the biggest reason your more traditional competitors don’t have elevator speeches: they are all pretty much alike, with little to distinguish one company from another beyond the logo and the colors.

Here’s an elevator speech from a traditional real estate practitioner:

‘Um, well . . . we’re a full service firm and um . . . we list and sell real estate, and . . . we’ve got a great sign and of course there’s the MLS and you’ve seen our ads in the paper, right?’ . . . and so on.

It is essential that Help-U-Sell people have an elevator speech because you are different. Consumers sense this from the name or from what their neighbor said, but they’re usually not sure how you are different. The elevator speech, rehearsed and internalized until it becomes automatic, powerfully establishes you in the consumer’s mind with a distinct identity — one that is very attractive!

Here are the points your elevator speech should make:

You are a REALTOR
You do everything the others guys do and more
You charge a set fee instead of a commission
You save consumers a lot of money over what they’d spend on a traditional commission arrangement

Here’s an example of a typical Help-U-Sell elevator speech:

(You get on a fairly full elevator on the first floor and punch the button for ’17’. You notice one of the other passengers staring at your name badge. ‘Help-U-Sell, huh?’ she says, ‘What do you guys do?’)

‘We’re full service REALTORS. We do everything all of the other REALTORS do — and more — but instead of a sales commission, we charge a low set fee, which can save you thousands of dollars. For example, the median price single family home here in Springfield is about $220,000. A typical 6% real estate commission on that would be $13,200. We’d sell the same property for a low set fee of $4,950, a savings of almost $8,000.’

Notice that the speech is customized to the local market at the end, an important element in bringing the power of your program home. If you happen to be in a situation where you have a little more time — say 10 seconds more — you might even personalize the speech for the person with whom you are speaking:

‘Well . . . about $250,000 I guess.’

‘A typical 6% sales commission on that would be $15,000. We’d get the same result and only charge $4,950. That’s about $10,000 in savings!’

The point of an elevator speech is not just to quickly an succinctly distinguish yourself from other real estate companies. It’s also to leave the other person hungry for more information. Typical responses to good elevator speeches are: ‘Really?’ ‘ How are you able to do that?’ and ‘Tell me more!’ All are an invitation to elaborate.

You’ll use your elevator speech when you are face to face with a consumer (and you want to always wear your name badge to encourage the question), but you’ll also use it when the telephone rings in your office. Seller inquiries often begin with the question, ‘What do you do?’ Any time you hear it — or anything similar — it’s time to trot out the elevator speech. I’d suggest you always personalize the speech when you get this kind of inquiry because it helps start the process of getting information from the caller that will continue as the call progresses. Here’s an example:

‘Help-U-Sell Acme, may I help you?’

‘Yeah, um . . I saw one of your ads and I was wondering, what exactly do you guys do?’

‘We are a full service real estate firm. We do everything all the other REALTORS do, and more, except that instead of a percentage based sales commission, we charge a low set fee — which can save you lots of money at closing. For example, may I ask the approximate value of your home?’

‘Oh, I dunno . . ’bout $300,000′

‘Well, a traditional broker with a 6% commission would charge $18,000 to sell your home. We’d do the same thing for $5,950 — which would save you about $12,000.’

‘You’re kidding! How are you able to do that?’ . . . and so on.

Notice that each of these example speeches end the same way: with the savings a seller might achieve by working with you. That is the most powerful story you have to tell and it is important that your elevator speech leads up to it.

You may be wondering how you might use the elevator speech with a prospective buyer. First, let’s distinguish between the casual, curious question and the serious inquiry. The casual question is the one you got in the elevator. A curious person saw your badge and asked for information. Chances are they don’t have an immediate need to buy or sell. It’s an opportunity to educate everyone within earshot about your program and it may end with one or more requests for your business card. In these situations it’s best to simply use the standard seller version as illustrated above.

A phone call into your office, an inquiry, is different. You can be reasonably sure that the person on the other end of the line has a legitimate need to buy or sell real estate in the near future: why else would they have called? Sellers will usually begin the call by asking what you do. Buyers will usually begin by asking about a property. It’s the sign, the ad or the flyer that motivates a buyer to make the call, not curiosity about how we’re different. You must use the opportunity of the buyer inquiry to distinguish yourself as being different (better) than anyone else, to communicate the value you can bring to the buying process, and oh, by the way: answer the buyer’s questions!

Notice that with the seller inquiry, we lead with the elevator speech because it opens the caller to wanting more information about us and a willingness to share information about their situation. It’s almost the opposite with buyer inquiries. We must begin by answering their questions about the property in such a way that they perceive the value we bring. That’s what opens them to learning how we’re different and better (the elevator speech). . . and it’s also a topic big enough for a post of its own!

SOI vs CI

You may have both, you know. An SOI and a CI that is.

SOI is ‘Sphere of Influence.’ It’s an old real estate term and means everyone who knows who you are and that you are in real estate. Some are your immediate family and best friends while some may be little more than acquaintances. The key is that they associate you, your name or face with buying and selling real estate. You cultivate your SOI in hopes that when it comes time or them to sell, they’ll think of you. Cultivation comes with newsletters, postcards, drop by visits, occasional phone calls, market updates and so on.

CI is ‘Center of Influence.’ It’s a Help-U-Sell(r) term and it is subtly different from SOI. A Center of Influence is someone who, under the right set of circumstances, might tell others about you. The concept of the CI comes from the marketing truth that word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising. CIs help you spread the word to those who are likely to be buying or selling soon. They may not know you personally, but they understand that Help-U-Sell equals savings and are willing, even anxious to share that understanding.

Here’s the deal: in 1976, when I started selling real estate for Century 21 in suburban Atlanta, I was told it was a numbers game. I was told the more people I asked if they wanted to buy or sell, the more business I’d do. This was true. Probably still is. I was also told that I should ‘farm’ an area and ask everyone who lived within that geography if they wanted to buy or sell, regularly. Years later, the concept of farming evolved to where it was not necessarily a geographical thing. We began farming other kinds of groups of people. People with a strong connection to an ethnic group might farm that group. People who were active in a specific country club might farm that club. Others of us started farming our Sphere of Influence: contacting them on a regular basis to see if they wanted to buy or sell.

Help-U-Sell came at it from a direct marketing point of view and realized what was needed was to help people understand if they worked with Help-U-Sell they’d probably save money. We wanted people to equate Help-U-Sell with savings. When we cultivate that identity with one consumer, chances are good that next time he or she hears that a friend or neighbor is planning to sell or buy, they will suggest a conversation with Help-U-Sell.

Our advertising messages were carefully crafted to cultivate this kind of CI behavior. Postcards, Free Weekly Lists, homes magazines, newspaper ads — all were designed to make three important points:

We’re here — People use us — and It works

Look at Help-U-Sell homes magazine ads. You may see a dozen homes, but as many as half of them will be sold — and will say so. But they’ll say more: ‘Sold in 16 days, Seller saved $4,325’. Or ‘Sold in 8 days, Seller saved $5,676.’ We showcase ‘sold and saved’ as much as ‘For Sale’ because doing so powerfully delivers the three key messages: We’re here, people use us and It works.

Keep looking at that Help-U-Sell ad. There’s another distinguishing characteristic there, maybe off to the side: the Testimonial. Our clients are usually delighted the day they list with us and even happier the day they close. Getting a concise testimonial to use in marketing is easy under these circumstances and using the testimonial in advertising powerfully hammers home the message: We’re here, people use us and it works.

Testimonials, Sold and Saved, and the tag line: Full Service – Big Savings all work to ingrain a Help-U-Sell identity into the consumers’ mind. Anyone who gets the message that we might save them some money in commissions is likely to call just to find out what we do — and that accounts for a large part of the numerous leads the typical Help-U-Sell office receives every month.

So, really: whats the difference between SOI and CI? Nothing much. It’s mostly in your approach. If you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off screeching ‘Wanna Buy?!? Wanna Sell?!?’ you probably have an SOI. But if you’re gently getting the message that you are different in a way that benefits buyers and sellers into the minds of people — you probably have a CI. And I think that’s better. Eventually your SOI gets tired of you always asking the same questions. They may just joke about it or they might stop taking your call. The CI on the other hand, gets your message and disseminates it for you. The CI is self perpetuating.

And oh, by the way: unless you have a business proposition that is different and also beneficial to the consumer chances of ever getting anyone to spread the word for you are pretty slim.

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