Tag: Help-U-Sell

Something New

There is a new training experience available on the Help-U-Sell Download Library.  In ‘Take Ten Training,’ Maruine Grisso has created short — usually about 10 minute — training sessions on how to use some of the Help-U-Sell tools.  Currently there are three sessions:  The Easy Way, The Client Qualifier and The Seller Savings Comparison.  Each session comes with a video presentation of the slides with audio and a PDF handout.  Many more sessions are planned, so check back regularly.  The folder is in the Download Library under ‘Training Sessions.’  If you don’t know how to find that or have forgotten your login information, send an email to support@helpusell.com.

 

Do It For the Whistle-Pig

‘Whistle-pig’ is a common name for the Groundhog (Marmota Monax), and his day is coming:

February 2, 2010

Although PETA and other animal rights activists want to retire the real Groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, from his annual responsibility of predicting the end of Winter and replace him with a robot rodent, their efforts have not resulted in a change to this year’s event.  As always, Phil will be prompted to come out of his burrow at Gobblers Knob, PA, and look for his shadow.  If he sees it, we’re in for six more weeks of Winter.  If not, there will be an early Spring.

Personally, I’m hoping for a very cloudy day at Gobblers Knob and for Phil to have a shadow-free experience.  Not only do I want our brokers in the North and Mid-West to have an easier time getting their signs in the ground (one broker told me he carries a mallet and a railroad spike in his trunk for making sign-holes in the icy dirt), I also want an early Spring selling season — something I’ve been predicting for a long time.

Groundhog Day is not the only thing happening next Tuesday.  It’s also:

National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day!

Remember?  It’s the day when everyone in the Help-U-Sell family will have one prime objective:  to get at least one new listing before the sun goes down.  We have a contest going around the event and you can get details HERE.

Maybe there’s a way to pull the Pennsylvania Groundhog event, the interests of animal rights activists and the National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day together.  Maybe we could get Punxsutawney Phill to sleep in on Tuesday and let our brokers handle the prognostication.  You know:  if you see a shadow when you put your Help-U-Sell for sale sign in the yard, it means six more weeks of winter.  No shadow . . . and the big thaw will have begun.

What’s Happening . . .

Cool factor 8:  You can get internet on an airplane these days so I’m able to catch up on a few things as I travel across country to Sarasota.  It’s about time!  Wonder when they’ll break down and let us use cell phones?

THE BIG TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT is coming.  It’s March 3 and 4 in Las Vegas and at the moment, it looks like it will be at the new Springhill Suites.  That location is sorta firm but not set in concrete yet.  The hotel is across the street from the Las Vegas Hilton, near the Convention Center and is offering a room rate of $109.  The Sahara and Riviera are walking distance and offer better rates.  There is no charge to attend beyond transportation and hotel.  The meeting will start mid-day on Wednesday and continue until 5pm or so on Thursday.  While there will be updates and news and even a little training, the real focus of the meeting will be technology:  maximizing the effectiveness of the new Corporate and Broker websites, the Help-U-Sell.mobi site, using Social Media, Zillow, Trulia and other online tools to build your online presence and so on.  I anticipate 100 brokers will attend and am looking forward to this meeting as a kind of Help-U-Sell family reunion.  I hope you’ll get it on your calendar TODAY and start shopping airfare. 

There will be a smaller version of the meeting March 1 and 2 in Sarasota at the Help-U-Sell home office if that makes more sense to you.  The meeting will be the same but the opportunity to rub shoulders with a large group of your peers will not be there.  I’m expecting 6 – 10 attendees.  There is a nice LaQuinta a couple of miles away for about $80 a night and a Comfort Inn at about $60. 

Folks, I can’t say it strongly enough:  GET TO VEGAS for this meeting . . . Sarasota if that works better, but GET THERE.  We have a lot of work to do to get maximum benefit of the great new tools Robbie is bringing to us and this is where we’ll begin the process. 

Speaking of Robbie Stevens, I understand that yesterday’s Tech Tuesday Teleconference was a home run as he demonstrated the mapping capabilities of the new websites.  How exciting that Help-U-Sell has it’s own Google Maps app. and that all you have to do to see the listings in an area is to type the location and press enter. 

Maurine is cranking up the first ever Help-U-Sell Online University next Thursday.  It will run every Thursday for a couple of months (we’re not sure how many because this is the first time we’ve done it) and will leave attendees with a solid grasp of the Help-U-Sell system and, more important, how it works in today’s real estate market.  If you need a refresher, if you need to get re-energized or if you’ve forgotten what you learned in your old University, I urge you to sign up and attend. 

Tami Patzer, in addition to doing  just about everything, is starting to upload the Operations Manual to the Download Library.  You’ll be able to view it and pull it down by chapter.  There’s already a new Identity chapter and the plan is to update the rest of it, chapter by chapter, until it clearly reflects who we are today.  Tami’s also in charge of spearheading ou PR campaign and has already snared an interview with RIS Media for John.  I’m looking forward to new, positive press about us and what we’re doing. 

I’ll be working with Lori Warnelo over the coming weeks to develop a new job for her and a new function for us at home office.  Lori is going to be the first Help-U-Sell customer relations rep.  Her job will be to contact each office about once a month,  learn what’s new, get a production update, share information about coming events and new tools, and provide a conduit for transmitting requests for help and good ideas to the appropriate people.  We’re seeing this job as a part of the Coaching Program, being the first layer of contact in that system.  Honestly, I think it will be more than one person can handle, so I expect we’ll have someone else working with Lori soon.  Lori has a great history with Help-U-Sell and an understanding of who we are and what we’re doing, so I want the job to develop with her first. 

While we are not marketing franchises at this time — our focus remains on our existing offices — but requests for information come in regularly and receive a response.  We’ve also had a number of former franchisees who have asked about coming back.  Our plan is to be very careful and judicious about who becomes a member of the family, but to begin to develop a process for dealing with the leads that come in.  We’re considering a once or twice a month webinar to present the Help-U-Sell franchise offering to those who express an interest along with an introductory phone call and information packet. 

The Coaching Program continues to grow with Jack Bailey and Ron McCoy both bringing great value to the brokers they talk with once a week.  To get involved all you have to do is make the request.  You’ll be assigned a coach and will probably have several one-on-one meetings to get in the groove of the program after which you’ll join a small Coaching Group.  Feedback from the groups has been excellent.  Members seem to get as much out of brainstorming with each other as they do from interaction with their coach and positive change happens.

America’s Real Estate Company and The Power of Intention

Years ago, after I’d sold my real estate company and embarked on my new career in the corporate side of the business, after I realized I loved what I was doing and would devote the foreseeable future to it, I did a little daydreaming about how I wanted it all to turn out.  What was I going to be doing in 3 years?  in 5?  What job would I have?  Where would I be living and what would I be making?  I wrote down a few of my key thoughts on a piece of note paper and tucked it away in my desk.  A move a couple of months later landed the paper and much of the rest of my desk contents in a box stacked away in storage. 

About five years later, in a fit of Spring cleaning, I came across the box, opened it and discovered the paper.  Every single thing I’d written down had come to pass, exactly as I’d pictured it.  It was such an eye opener for me because I’d forgotten all about the daydreaming and the piece of paper.  Suddenly I had proof that simply getting clear about what you want and focusing on that (not on what you don’t have) can cause your dreams to manifest. 

When I came back to Help-U-Sell last Summer, I wrote lots of things on lots of pieces of paper.  I’m having a ball watching these new daydreams slowly evolve.  There is one thing I wrote down that I’d like to ask all of you to help with. 

I look forward two or three years . . . and I can see Help-U-Sell offices in Walmarts across America.  Seems to me the fit is perfect:  we’re all about providing excellent service and saving consumers money.  So is Walmart.  And while the snootier bunch may snicker at Walmart, just as they snicker at Help-U-Sell, when it comes time to buy a Sony flat panel television, you can bet they shop there. 

When you think about who we are and what we do, we really are America’s Real Estate Company — just as Walmart is Where America Shops.  Picture yourself walking into Walmart, looking to the right and seeing McDonalds, looking to the left and seeing the Optical Department and then looking a little further and seeing . . . Help-U-Sell.  Isn’t that a beautiful picture?

Here’s where your part comes in.  I have no idea how this will happen, who will play a key role, where the contacts will be made;  but I do know that if 300 people have it in mind (rather than just little old me) the chances of that contact, that connection happening are much greater.  Spend a few minutes this week thinking about how this might work.  Picture it having already happened.  See the sign, see the agents, see the pictures of property, see the consumers milling about.  And then write it down.  And tuck it away in a box.  In January of 2015, we’ll all look back and see how the Power of Intention helped our entire organization achieve a goal. 

I realize this all may sound a little magical,  a little silly.  If that’s in your mind, just remember John Kennedy in 1962, speaking at Rice University in Texas painting a picture in the National Consciousness.  He said we would go to the moon and we’d do it in that decade.  As an entire nation held the vision, we achieved the goal. 

You can read the full text of Kennedy’s speech here.

(‘The Power of Intention’ is a great book by Wayne Dyer.)

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