Blog, Matt. Blog!

Don’t Quit! Let Us Help!

Okay, I’ve spent a couple of weeks “teasing” you about the Zero2Hero Agent Challenge 2010 contest.  Good news is we now have about half the contestants we need, so there’s still time to enter!  I know there are many of you out there who are hesitating… Part of you wants to be a part of the contest but you’re scared.  Or maybe you want to know a little more before going for it.  So, I thought it might be a good idea to tell you a little more about what you can expect and explain just what we have planned for the Zero2Hero Agent Challenge 2010 contest. Drum roll, please… Continue Reading…

Quick Answer Series: What Makes a Good Website?

As the President and CEO of a real  estate website company and who has licensed our website technology to over 20,000 agents world-wide, this is a question that is near and dear to my heart.  It’s near and dear to me for two reasons: Continue Reading…

Quick Answer Series: Oh No! Another REO!

I’m often asked what I think about REO business.  Here’s what I think: It beats no business at all… barely.  Now that I have your attention, let me take a minute to explain why. Continue Reading…

Quick Answer Series: What’s All the Hype about “Short-Sales”?

Lately, it seems you can’t read anything about real estate and not see somebody selling their unique short-sale technique, their book or system on how you can become the “short-sale king” in your area, or their coaching on how to profit from doing short-sales.  It’s become so prevalent now that it seems there is even a Certified Short-Sale Professional (CSP) designation! Continue Reading…

The Science of Online Lead Capture (Part 7)

First I’d like to commend you for sticking with me through the previous six installments.  We’ve covered a lot of ground, and hopefully you’ve been able to take something of value away from each article.  Now we finally come to the end.  We’ve discussed lots of topics, from technology to advertising.  From theory to practical application.  Now it’s time to help you assemble your own online marketing plan and what specific steps you need to take to put your newly formed strategy into action.  So let’s get started.

Before jumping into your plan, we need to consider your budget.  In my practice, my online and offline marketing budgets were initially split evenly.  As I began to see that I got a higher return on investment for my online marketing, I began to slowly phase out my offline strategies and spend almost all my marketing budget online.  With the number of real estate customers who begin their search online increasing year after year, I think you should start by apportioning at least half of your budget to online advertising.  So how much should your advertising budget be?  The experts tell us that you should commit 20% of GCI (gross commission income) to marketing.  I believe that if you use low-cost online marketing, you can generate more business than you can handle for 10% of GCI.

So let me suggest this: If the experts say 20% of GCI, let’s take half that amount (10%) and spend it on your online marketing.  Then when you see the amazing results possible, you can begin to phase out your offline budget until eventually you are left with only your 10% being spent online.  One other thing I’d like to mention about your budgeting is this:  You have to budget your advertising based on what you want your income level to be, not what it currently is.  For example, if you’d like to gross $100,000 next year, you should budget for $20,000 in marketing expenses.  That’s $1,667 per month that you need to invest, and you have to invest it before you get it back.  Much like farmers have to buy seed before they reap their crop, you must invest in the seeds of your sales, and that’s your marketing.

Next let’s talk about how much you can afford to spend per lead in advertising.  Using the proper lead capture technology you should be able to stay well under that amount, but you need to know what your leads cost you and whether you are within your budget.  Here’s how you can determine your budget per lead.  Find the average sale price in your market.  Multiply that by your average transaction side percentage, and then multiply the result by your company split.

For example, if the average sale price is $200,000 and your average transaction side is 3%, your average gross commission is $6,000.  If you are on an 80% commission split with your company, your average net commission is $4,800.  Twenty percent of that is $960 per closed deal in advertising.  Now take that number and divide it by 24 (the average number of leads required to produce a closed transaction), and you have a maximum cost of $40 per lead.  If your eyes are glazing over, get out a calculator and go back and re-read the first part of the article.  It’s really pretty simple.

Now, you need to look at your website.  If your current website produces leads within your per-lead budget you don’t have to do anything.  If you’re like most agents, however, your cost per lead produced is much higher than your budget.  Nationally, the average cost per online lead is $116.  That means that unless your average commission (after broker split) is $13,920 the cost per lead is too high.  ($116 times 24 leads per deal is $2,784 divided by 20% is $13,920)  Let’s assume you need to improve your website capture before spending money.  What should you do next?  I believe you need to decide whether you want to buy better technology or whether it might be better to build your own.

First let’s discuss building it yourself.  If you go back and study this series of articles, you should have the basic information you need to start building your own lead capture technology.  Do you have the technical skills to do it yourself?  That’s what I did back in 2002.  I looked around on the Internet for a ready-to-go solution and couldn’t find one.  All I found were template websites for agents, all focused on giving out information rather than capturing customers.

So, I got a couple of books and learned to build my own using Microsoft Publisher (not recommended).  To be honest, the last thing I wanted to do was spend hours every night after work learning to build my own website, but I didn’t have any choice.  Frankly, if I’d have been able to get the technology for less than the price of a magazine ad a month, I would have done it in a second. Another solution might be to find a low-cost geek to build it for you.  A good place to start looking might be asking at your local high school computer department, or advertising on Craig’s List or Guru.com to find a low-cost geek for hire.

Again, if it were me, and the technology was available reasonably, I’d buy it.  My problem was that it wasn’t available when I needed it so I built my own.  And it worked so well that I eventually started licensing my solution to other agents, and our technology division was born.  Many generations later, our solution is only $120 per month, turn key.  I’d appreciate it if you’d at least take a look at it.  It comes with an integrated contact manager (better than Top Producer or Agent Office) and a free website.

But many agents use their own existing website, and that works fine too.  The point is that if it reduces your cost per lead from $116 to $4, it’s nearly paid for itself on the first lead.  But whether you build it yourself or buy it, it is absolutely imperative that you acquire good lead capture technology before spending advertising money on an inefficient website.  Without an efficient gateway, your cost per lead is just going to be very high, and you’ll run out of money before you attract enough customers.

I’d like to mention one other thing about your lead capture solution.  You should search for a technology that is integrated with a contact manager or CRM.  The reason for this is that many of your customer leads will come to you during phase one of the buying cycle.  Because of that, you will need to manage your communication with them for as much as 90 days before actually showing them houses or listing their property.  Integrated contact management will cut your work load down to a fraction.  Imagine keeping up with hundreds of conversations and emails with dozens of leads.

With our LCM gateway technology, when a lead is captured, it is not only emailed or text messaged to the agent, but it is simultaneously dropped into their contact manager to assist in hassle-free followup.  With a single click, our agents can see the entire history of any customer.  With another they can access dozens of template emails, make their own templates, or send a non-template email and have it placed in the permanent history file.  Believe me, when you are working lots of leads, having the integration is a huge advantage.

Well, that brings me to the end.  I truly hope that you’ve been able to receive something of value in reading these articles.  Please send me an email and tell me what you think of this series.  We would be happy to help you understand your online marketing and lead generation in detail.  Don’t worry, no salesman will try to pressure you or sell you anything.  Go ahead and let us check out your online marketing — it’s free with no strings attached.  I am confident we will find a few places to save you money and increase your results.

Finally, one last commercial message.  Come on, you can read it!

If you’d like to look into licensing our LCM web gateway technology, it’s easy to get. Put away your credit card. You can get the technology for free by joining my personal real estate team, by joining one of our FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Offices, or even by opening your own FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Office. But don’t worry — we even have ways you can license our technology and stay right where you’re at. So, check us out by clicking this link:

My Promise to You for Reading: If you invest your time in reading The Science of Online Lead Capture and then — more importantly — in applying what I show you, your business will never be the same again. This is my sincere promise. It’s my greatest honor to be able to play a small part in your success. Thanks again for reading.

Matt Jones
Broker/President/CEO
FavoriteAgent.com

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The Science of Online Lead Capture (Part 6)

In the last installment, I discussed website basics.  I intentionally left off one part of the typical website: the capture mechanism or gateway.  Some call it the form or registration page, but whatever you call it, it is the most important part of your site.  As far as I’m concerned, it is more important than the website itself.  Yes, I really said that.  Let me repeat myself: It is more important than the website.

I’m always amazed when I’m told by veteran agents — agents who are otherwise intelligent and successful in every area of their practice — that they would never put a capture gateway on their website.  I look at them stunned and ask, “Why?”  The answer is the truly shocking part: “Because many visitors would leave and go to another site.”

Now do you see how ridiculous that statement is?  What difference does it make where they go if they are not going to you?  I say good riddance!  Get rid of the free-loaders.  If they are not willing to identify themselves to me in exchange for looking at MLS listings on my site, then I say they don’t qualify to work with me.  I’m not running a charity website.  I’m not a free source of information and services.

Most agent websites today are like a department store without a cash register.  Imagine if Walmart filled their store with all the merchandise that the typical shopper wanted and then opened their door and let anyone come in and pick up what they wanted.   I bet they would have more visitors that way.  But how much more sales would they do if they installed cash registers at the front of the store?

Unless you are running a real estate charity, you need to think about your “store”.  Your lead capture gateway is your cash register.  I’m not saying that your website should charge cash, but there should be an exchange of value.  You give the customer free access to all the inventory in your market, as well as other valuable information, and they give you something in return: their contact information.

And just like large retailers such as Walmart continually study shopping habits of their customers, you should be studying the shopping habits of yours.  You can bet that Walmart knows exactly where to put the cash registers.  They know exactly how many to install.  They even know what merchandise to place around the register to maximize sales.

That’s what our company does — it’s why we exist. We’ve made a science of learning customer online shopping habits, and we continue to test preferences every day, in real time.  For example, we are currently testing a new version of our LCM (lead capture module) and so we are routing a third of all of our traffic through that new gateway design.  We learned in yesterday’s test that we have discovered a way to improve lead capture rates by a substantial amount.  So far our margin of error is 3.479%, so we are continuing to test, but by tomorrow we will know within a 2% margin of error.

What does that mean, practically speaking?  In this case, the difference is significant:  31.1% capture rate from our new design versus 25.7% average capture rate for the same period of time from our current LCM gateway.  That means that we can reduce our agents’ advertising cost by 21% with this new version if the testing proves to hold consistent.  That means that we can reduce the average lead cost for our agents from $4.16 to $3.29!  If so, this new design will be a huge breakthrough for us.  We’ve been working on this new design for months, and we thought that if our estimates were correct, we could bring aggregate national lead capture rates for our technology users from 25% to over 30%.  It looks like we exceeded our expectations.

So how did we do it?  In this case, there were a host of changes, although most were not visible to the customer.  We changed the way the browser processed the form, we changed the way the site inserted the lead into our database, and how we notified the agent of his or her new lead.  We made only a minor visible change to customer pathway, and we didn’t change or eliminate any of the information we were capturing.  And the net was a 6% increase in CR or an improvement of 21%!  See, it’s a science.

If you are an agent with a typical real estate website your capture rate (according the the latest numbers released in the National Association of REALTORS® 2007 Member Profile) is only 0.87% of your visitors.  Here is the data:

• A full 60% of all 1.3 million REALTOR® have websites - nearly twice as many as five years ago.
• There are 780,000 real estate websites and 7.5 million homes selling (15 million transaction sides)
• There are 19.23 transaction sides available per real state website!
• There are an average of 462 website visitors per real estate website
• Despite all of this opportunity, the typical REALTOR® receives a mere four inquiries from their Web site accounting for only 3% of their business.
• On average, real estate websites capture customers at a stunningly low percentile of all visitors — at a rate of 0.87%!

What if you captured 25% instead of 0.87% of your website visitors?  Instead of your typical website lead costing you $116, it would now cost you only $4.16!  Imagine what that could do to your advertising and marketing budget?  That single move could have a financial impact on your business of literally tens of thousands of dollars.

So how do you go about installing efficient lead capture on your website?  First, if you don’t do anything else, just turning on your registration form in the customer path before the IDX link will be a step in the right direction.  Next, you need to decide to either build it yourself or find a good solution from a third party.  Feel free to look at our solution while you are at it — our LCM gateway technology works with or without a website, and it requires no setup or elaborate installation process.  Any solution you look at should pay for itself in 1-2 leads.  If it doesn’t, keep looking.  Don’t be fooled by fancy bells and whistles.  Remember Google.  Customers prefer simple.

Finally, I’d like to share a word about DOJ/NAR compliance.  I’ve recently written an article about the new settlement between the US Department of Justice and the National Association of REALTORS®, and our company has studied the impact of the new settlement agreement on our agents at great length.  After consulting with our attorney and spending two days on the phone with the DOJ and NAR attorneys, we’ve come away with an unpopular opinion on the subject of compliance.  I’ve had several patronizing and insulting emails from leaders in our industry about our position, but at the end of the day our agents will not run into compliance problems, even if others do.

The problems all come down to the interpretation of the term “VOW” or virtual office website.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s clear that companies like Zillow, Redfin, and Zip Realty are the ones the NAR was targeting in protecting the listings, and not individual agents offering IDX links on their websites.  But the simple fact is that the actual settlement documents define a VOW (for the purposes of the agreement).  In the agreement, any website that offers listings (MLS or IDX) to the public is considered a “virtual office website”, even if they don’t attempt to establish a formal relationship with the customer.

It is a widely held opinion that those agents with IDX links and that don’t attempt to capture customer leads will likely not be targets of enforcement, much like drivers who drive 60 in a 55 mph speed limit, but they are clearly required to be in compliance according to the agreement, and adding a lead capture gateway decreases the risk of compliance enforcement.

Nevertheless, as a company who licenses technology to over 14,000 agents worldwide, and whose business is the efficient capture of customer data on behalf of agents, we felt it was necessary to teach agents to comply with the letter of the settlement agreement.  We even put our money where our mouth was, and offered a fully DOJ/NAR compliant gateway free of charge to any agent that wanted it.  The reason I mention the subject of compliance while I discuss installing efficient lead capture technology on your website is that it would be wise for you to make sure that any solution you look at be fully DOJ/NAR compliant.  It doesn’t cost any more to do it properly.

In the next and final installment, I’ll be discussing putting it all together into a seamless online marketing strategy, and we’ll discuss making the decision of either buying or building your lead capture technology.   We would be happy to help any reader out with understanding online marketing and lead generation in detail.  Don’t worry, no salesman will try to pressure you or sell you anything.  Go ahead and let us check out your online marketing — it’s free with no strings attached.  We will likely find a few places to save you money or increase your results.

OK, it’s time for one more commercial message.

If you’d like to look into licensing our LCM web gateway technology, it’s easy to get. Put away your credit card. You can get the technology for free by joining my personal real estate team, by joining one of our FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Offices, or even by opening your own FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Office. But don’t worry — we even have ways you can license our technology and stay right where you’re at. So, check us out by clicking this link:

My Promise to You for Reading: If you invest your time in reading The Science of Online Lead Capture and then — more importantly — in applying what I show you, your business will never be the same again. This is my sincere promise. It’s my greatest honor to be able to play a small part in your success. Thanks again for reading.

Matt Jones
Broker/President/CEO
FavoriteAgent.com

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Becoming a Mega-Producer (Part 7)

Putting All The Pieces Together

In the previous installments we’ve discussed all the various elements or components of what I believe to be the best approach to systematically becoming a Mega-Producer that you’ll find anywhere.   I’ve determined to give you the entire approach — from the initial preparations you must make, to the underlying theory, to the preparation required to become one of the top agents in your market, to how to go beyond your own production and build your own team.

In this installment I will help you assemble all the pieces.  I admit that I’ve given you a lot to chew on already.  Not a day goes by that we don’t get three to five emails from agents asking us to discuss how the approach might work in their market.   If you’re a bit overwhelmed, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger!  I hear those questions a lot.  But remember: nothing worth having is easy to get.

If it were really easy to learn, everyone would be a Mega-Producer.  However, the fact is that it’s not.  While the concept itself is the very picture of simplicity, putting it all together takes a commitment from you the agent, probably unlike anything you’ve ever been taught.  But again, I promise you that, if you’ll take the time to put it all together, you’ll be one of the top agents in your market in no time.  Maybe you’ll be the top producing agent in your market — or even in the state or country.

My approach really comes down to two parts: the technology element (assembling the right tools) and the human element (having the knowledge and the philosophical base).  If you have the technology element and yet lack the knowledge and underlying values, you won’t become a mega-producer.  By the same token, if you have all the education in the world and yet fail to acquire the technology tools critical to compete in this new age of real estate, you can never become the dominant agent in your market, and you may find yourself struggling just to survive.  Becoming a mega-producing agent requires balance.

The Technology Element.

In the first two installments, we discussed how the Internet is rapidly becoming the predominant method for home searches today.  From only a small percentage of searches a few years ago, as many as 92% of buyers and sellers today are turning to the Internet like never before.   Now more than ever, it’s critical for any agent to develop a comprehensive web-marketing strategy.  After all, if the Internet is where the customers are looking for real estate, then the web should be where you focus your marketing efforts.

To develop a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money. Instead, it’s important that you invest in the proper pieces.   Many agents adopt a marketing policy of “ready, fire, aim,” rather than “ready, aim, fire.”  The result of such a policy is frustration.

Frustration from spending a lot of money and receiving little, if any, return on your investment.  Frustration from wasting a lot of time trying to do what all the “experts” advise, only to figure out too late that those so-called experts haven’t got a clue about online marketing.  Frustration from making a good-faith investment of time and money, only to be let down again.

For less than the cost of running an ad in a homes magazine for a single month, you can put together the marketing solution that will return as many as 100 new inbound real estate customers!  (For most agents, that same money spent on a magazine ad will return 8-10 leads.)  What’s even better is that, by using technology to capture the leads, not only do you get more information, but also the information is inserted into your client manager, making follow-up a snap.

For the first time ever, instead of having to go to multiple vendors and piece together the tools you need to be successful in today’s real estate climate, you can get it all in one place. Introducing Pipeline-i® — Intelligent Technology — the ultimate Virtual Office technology package for today’s working agent.

Now, in one application you’ll get our LCM Gateway®, state-of-the-art lead capture technologies for both web and telephone, our Agent SimpleSite®, a customer-centric personal website, our Client Management software, and our mobile Virtual Assistant® application for your smart phone.  Pipeline-i is the single most powerful Virtual Office real estate platform available today, at any price, and is complete with hundreds of training articles, videos, calculators, business planning modules and much, much more.

And instead of having to piece it together, Pipeline-i gives you a seamless and perfectly integrated Virtual Office, allowing you to operate your real estate practice wherever you have your computer and an Internet connection, whether that’s a coffee shop, your home office, or your car.  Now you can communicate with other team members, share leads, track your progress, write a business plan, generate new customer leads, refer business, log client communications, take online training, and schedule activities for yourself or team members, all from one command center.

Powered by our Pipeline-i Virtual Office technology, you’ll go weeks without ever coming by the office.  Why?  Because your real estate office is virtual.  And that makes you more productive at what you do best — work with clients.  And we even have several options for getting this entire technology package without spending a dime.  You really owe it to yourself to check it out by visiting http://Info.FavoriteAgent.com.  Don’t worry, nobody will try to sell you anything.  We don’t even have a sales force.  But our technology really is that good!

And what’s even better is that our typical agent spends roughly $250 for advertising.  That’s all! The result is an average of 92 leads, nationwide, for a marketing cost of only $2.71 per lead. And for that tiny investment, our agents not only spend less money on marketing than their competition does, but they generate more business than they can personally handle, allowing them the freedom to grow their businesses like never before.

Imagine what it would be like for your own business to have twenty new leads every week — and each for less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks® coffee!  Would that change your business?  Would it take the pressure off?  Would it allow you to be a little choosier about which customers you work with?  Would it give you enough “breathing room” to begin to expand your business?  Could you see how simply having a steady inbound stream of customers would allow you to run your practice more like a business?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you truly owe it to yourself to look into getting the right technology.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money to have state-of-the-art lead capture and client management technology.  And having the right technology will set you up for being the top listing agent in your market because you will have more opportunities than anyone else.  And that’s what it really comes down to: more opportunities.  We’re happy to discuss your specific scenario and your market.  Maybe we can help you take your practice to a new level.

The Human Element.

As I mentioned before, having the best technology in the world — having an endless supply of new inbound customers — won’t help you at all if you don’t have the basic skills needed to turn those opportunities into closed transactions.  That’s where the human element comes in.  I believe that there are several fundamental things which a REALTOR® must have if he is to become a master listing agent.   Just as the technology is crucial to success, so are these basic “human” factors.

First let’s talk about education.   In Becoming a Mega-Producer I’ve given you some very specific things to learn that will make you the best agent for the job.  Let’s be honest here: most of us haven’t done a lot of studying since we left school, and the temptation is to try to get by without having to do the work.  I know that.  But that’s all the more reason to make yourself do it.   Average agents won’t.   You want to be a top agent!

I’m going to make a confession here.   I don’t really like to study either, but that’s what gives me an advantage.  My peers never crack a book, while I read about two books a week.  Do I do it because I like to read?  NO!  I do it because I need to continue to push myself to become all that I can become.  If I am to be the top listing agent in my market — if I really want to be the best — then I have to make myself do those things that I don’t necessarily want to do. Remember how your mom used to make you eat spinach?  Well, I say eat your spinach.

It’s a hassle to do the market research required to become a top agent, but this is your career.   I promise you that there are agents calling me every day asking for help because they really want to go to the next level.  Those who put in the work invariably succeed.  Those who don’t, won’t.  They won’t become top agents.  It’s as simple as that.  Winners make it happen, and losers make excuses.  It’s all about you.   Do you really want this?  If you do, I’m absolutely convinced that you can achieve it.

The other key human factor is your governing values (or personal philosophy).   It’s not my desire to be preachy here, but I believe that out of our inner self flow the issues of life.  We influence our success or failure by how we bring ourselves to the process.  And I believe that the value system we use to govern our businesses has a direct impact on the outcome of our lives.  And I believe that there are a number of principles that we can follow to ensure our success.

1. The Principle of Vision. The most important principle, in my opinion, is vision.  By this, I mean being able to see that which is not, as though it were.   I believe that we’re made in the image of a creative God and as such are inherently creative by nature.  And it’s that creativity which gives us the opportunity to build something truly phenomenal.  Most of us don’t take the time to allow a clear vision to be formed in our hearts.  But the more detailed our vision, the greater our chances of achieving it.  The scriptures teach that, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Allow yourself to develop a vision for what could be and take the time to see it clearly in your mind’s eye.

2. The Principle of Confession. Taking our vision and beginning to articulate it is the key to bringing it to reality.  Just as God’s instrument of action in creating the world was “speaking” (i.e. God said, “Let there be light”), the way that we transfer vision to reality is by speaking it.  I never miss an opportunity to share my vision with people around me.  Every time I get a chance, I articulate it to employees, agents, recruiting prospects, and peers.

Why is confession so important?  Because our subconscious mind believes what it hears.  That’s another reason to be careful what you’re listening to.  If there are negative people around you — people who tell you that you can’t do something — it’s important that you let them know you don’t want to hear their negativity.  If you must, find someone else to spend time with!  You alone control what your subconscious mind listens to, so make the message good.

3. The Principle of Reciprocity, or Sowing and Reaping. We’ve all heard the old adage that what goes around comes around.  It’s true.  Scripture teaches us that, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”  In other words, give, and it will be given to you.  This principle is true in two different ways:

a) Quantity.  To the degree that you give, to the same degree you’ll receive.   “He that soweth sparingly will reap sparingly.”  The more you do to help others, the more your kindness and generosity will come back to you.  Giving abundantly is the key to success.   I know of lots of agents who never volunteer at their local Association, who never take the time to help a new agent, who never help those in need.  What a shame.

b) Kind.   You will reap in kind with your sowing.   If you plant apples, don’t expect to grow bananas.  If you want to reap success, you need to sow success for those around you.   If you’d like to receive happiness, then make sure that you don’t sow seeds of “ugliness” for those around you.  Whatever seeds you plant will ultimately come up.  Make sure you’re planting the right seeds.

4. The Principle of Greatness. If we want to be great, we must be servants.  The way up is down.  This is contrary to traditional wisdom, which teaches us that, if we want to get ahead, we must put down our competition.   I marvel at the crab-bucket mentality that so many agents have.  Many would rather pull someone else down than actually see what they can learn from a competitor.  How tragic!  If you want to be great, serve those around you.

5. The Principle of Leverage. Two are better than one.   You can create leverage through synergy.  Team building is an example of this principle.   By enlisting others, we can build something much bigger than ourselves.  In fact, we can build a whole that’s greater than the sum of the parts.  Don’t be afraid to work with other people: often that’s the key to going to the next level.

6. The Principle of Stewardship. If we’re faithful in the little things, we will be entrusted with bigger things.  If we waste the resources that we’ve been given, we shouldn’t be surprised that we lack the resources that we need to grow when opportunities come our way.  I know of many agents who have all the “toys,” own a huge house, drive the most prestigious car, and yet live from deal to deal.  Again, what a tragedy.

7. The Principle of Responsibility. To whom much is given, much will be required.  God holds us accountable for that which he has entrusted us.  If you’ve been given success, you have the opportunity and the responsibility to use it wisely.  This principle is related to the principle of stewardship, but different.  One is the flip side of the other.  Stewardship is the key to getting success.  Responsibility is the burden of that success.

8. The Principle of Perseverance. We must endure trials and hardships in order to succeed. There is a refinement of character that comes from perseverance.  Show me a successful person, and I’ll show you someone who has gone through many personal trials.  And when those trials come your way, learn to see them as an opportunity to persevere.  I know that, in my life, nearly every time I feel as if the situation is so bad that I can’t possibly endure it, I hold on anyway.  Invariably the solution to my problem comes right after I’m the most tempted to give up.

9. The Principle of Thankfulness. Nothing is less attractive than a whiner and griper.   Nobody wants to be around that kind of person.  Well, there’s a principle that thankfulness is attractive.  Of course, when everything is going well, it’s easy to be thankful.  But if you find yourself in a tight spot, determine to be thankful anyway.   Lack plus thankfulness equals sufficiency.  I personally believe that this is the mechanism that demonstrates to God that we truly trust Him.  If we’re thankful, regardless of our situation, we attract other people to come along and help us.

10. The Principle of Rest. The more talented you are, the more you’ll be tempted to “force” things.  And while forcing an issue often provides a solution, it’s rarely the best solution.  If you feel pressured to make a decision, don’t make one.  Bite your tongue, and say, “No, thanks.”  Often the best action is no action — rather simply to wait patiently for the right solution to emerge from the quietness.

So there you have my entire Becoming a Mega-Producer seminar — the approach that’s made me one of the top agents in the country and earned my clients, my agents, and me lots of money. Now you have the big picture, from the technology tools to the underlying philosophy that’s been responsible for my success. Hopefully, you can see that this is not simply an approach to memorize: it’s a way of doing business. I hope that you’ll try it if you’re looking to improve your business.

I know that, over the last few years, we’ve had hundreds of other agents who’ve decided that this approach could provide a missing ingredient in their practices. Many have gone on to grow as fast as or even faster than I did. We have quite a few agents who’ve grown so fast that they’ve had to recruit additional agents. Many have grown their personal production while taking more time for other activities. But one thing is certain: every single agent who has actually tried to do what we taught him has experienced some degree of success. The fact is that this approach works everywhere.

Well, now you have the secrets that made me a mega-producer. Now you know exactly how I’ve grown from a single agent practice to the owner of the largest brokerage in our market, all in three short years. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t luck. I didn’t do anything that you can’t do if you decide you want to do it. The ball is in your court. Will you decide to go for it? I hope you will.

Feel free to print out the installments and to read them again and again at your convenience.  If you take the time to study what I’ve shown you and then — more importantly — to apply it, your real estate business will never be the same again. If you’d like to know more about my company or me, feel free to visit our website at http://Info.FavoriteAgent.com.

Finally, one last commercial message.  Come on, you can read it!

If you’d like to look into licensing our LCM web gateway technology, it’s easy to get. Put away your credit card. You can get the technology for free by joining my personal real estate team, by joining one of our FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Offices, or even by opening your own FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Office. But don’t worry — we even have ways you can license our technology and stay right where you’re at. So, check us out by clicking this link:

My Promise to You for Reading: If you invest your time in reading Becoming a Mega-Producer and then — more importantly — in applying what I show you, your business will never be the same again. This is my sincere promise. It’s my greatest honor to be able to play a small part in your success. Thanks again for reading.

Matt Jones
Broker/President/CEO
FavoriteAgent.com

<< Prev | The End

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The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation (Part 6)

Putting All The Pieces Together

In the previous installments we’ve discussed all the various elements or components of what I believe to be the best listing presentation you’ll find anywhere.   I’ve determined not to give you just the listing “pitch”, but rather to give you the entire presentation — from the initial preparations you must make, to the underlying theory, to the preparation required to become the top listing agent, to my actual presentation itself: the actual what-to-say and how-to-say-it.

In this installment I will help you assemble all the pieces.  I admit that I’ve given you a lot to chew on already.  Not a day goes by that we don’t get three to five emails from agents asking us to explain some of the mathematics or to discuss how the approach might work in their market.   If you’re a bit overwhelmed, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger!  I hear those questions a lot.  But remember: nothing worth having is easy to get.

If this listing approach were really easy to learn, everyone would be doing it.  However, the fact is that it’s not.  While the concept itself is the very picture of simplicity, putting it all together takes a commitment from you the agent, probably unlike anything you’ve ever been taught.  But again, I promise you that, if you’ll take the time to put it all together, you’ll be listing at a premium every time.  You’ll be the top listing agent in your market — maybe even in the state or country.

My approach really comes down to two parts: the technology element (assembling the right tools) and the human element (having the knowledge and the philosophical base).  If you have the technology element and yet lack the knowledge and underlying values, you won’t become a master listing agent.  By the same token, if you have all the education in the world and yet fail to acquire the technology tools critical to compete in this new age of real estate, you can never become the dominant agent in your market, and you may find yourself struggling just to survive.  Becoming a master listing agent requires balance.

The Technology Element.

In the first two installments, we discussed how the Internet is rapidly becoming the predominant method for home searches today.  From only a small percentage of searches a few years ago, as many as 92% of buyers and sellers today are turning to the Internet like never before.   Now more than ever, it’s critical for any agent to develop a comprehensive web-marketing strategy.  After all, if the Internet is where the customers are looking for real estate, then the web should be where you focus your marketing efforts.

To develop a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money. Instead, it’s important that you invest in the proper pieces.   Many agents adopt a marketing policy of “ready, fire, aim,” rather than “ready, aim, fire.”  The result of such a policy is frustration.

Frustration from spending a lot of money and receiving little, if any, return on your investment.  Frustration from wasting a lot of time trying to do what all the “experts” advise, only to figure out too late that those so-called experts haven’t got a clue about online marketing.  Frustration from making a good-faith investment of time and money, only to be let down again.

For less than the cost of running an ad in a homes magazine for a single month, you can put together the marketing solution that will return as many as 100 new inbound real estate customers!  (For most agents, that same money spent on a magazine ad will return 8-10 leads.)  What’s even better is that, by using technology to capture the leads, not only do you get more information, but also the information is inserted into your client manager, making follow-up a snap.

For the first time ever, instead of having to go to multiple vendors and piece together the tools you need to be successful in today’s real estate climate, you can get it all in one place.   Our company has it all in one place.  Introducing Pipeline-i® — Intelligent Technology — the ultimate Virtual Office technology package for today’s working agent.

Now, in one application you’ll get our LCM Gateway®, state-of-the-art lead capture technologies for both web and telephone, our Agent SimpleSite®, a customer-centric personal website, our Client Management software, and our mobile Virtual Assistant® application for your smart phone.  Pipeline-i is the single most powerful Virtual Office real estate platform available today, at any price, and is complete with hundreds of training articles, videos, calculators, business planning modules and much, much more.

And instead of having to piece it together, Pipeline-i gives you a seamless and perfectly integrated Virtual Office, allowing you to operate your real estate practice wherever you have your computer and an Internet connection, whether that’s a coffee shop, your home office, or your car.  Now you can communicate with other team members, share leads, track your progress, write a business plan, generate new customer leads, refer business, log client communications, take online training, and schedule activities for yourself or team members, all from one command center.

Powered by our Pipeline-i Virtual Office technology, you’ll go weeks without ever coming by the office.  Why?  Because your real estate office is virtual.  And that makes you more productive at what you do best — work with clients.  And we even have several options for getting this entire technology package without spending a dime.  You really owe it to yourself to check it out by visiting http://Info.FavoriteAgent.com.  Don’t worry, nobody will try to sell you anything.  We don’t even have a sales force.  But our technology really is that good!

And what’s even better is that our typical agent spends roughly $250 for advertising.  That’s all! The result is an average of 92 leads, nationwide, for a marketing cost of only $2.71 per lead. And for that tiny investment, our agents not only spend less money on marketing than their competition does, but they generate more business than they can personally handle, allowing them the freedom to grow their businesses like never before.

Imagine what it would be like for your own business to have twenty new leads every week — and each for less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks® coffee!  Would that change your business?  Would it take the pressure off?  Would it allow you to be a little choosier about which customers you work with?  Would it give you enough “breathing room” to begin to expand your business?  Could you see how simply having a steady inbound stream of customers would allow you to run your practice more like a business?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you truly owe it to yourself to look into getting the right technology.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money to have state-of-the-art lead capture and client management technology.  And having the right technology will set you up for being the top listing agent in your market because you will have more opportunities than anyone else.  And that’s what it really comes down to: more opportunities.  We’re happy to discuss your specific scenario and your market.  Maybe we can help you take your practice to a new level.

The Human Element.

As I mentioned before, having the best technology in the world — having an endless supply of new inbound customers — won’t help you at all if you don’t have the basic skills needed to turn those opportunities into closed transactions.  That’s where the human element comes in.  I believe that there are several fundamental things which a REALTOR® must have if he is to become a master listing agent.   Just as the technology is crucial to success, so are these basic “human” factors.

First let’s talk about education.   In The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation I’ve given you some very specific things to learn that will make you the best agent for the job.  Let’s be honest here: most of us haven’t done a lot of studying since we left school, and the temptation is to try to get by without having to do the work.  I know that.  But that’s all the more reason to make yourself do it.   Average agents won’t.   You want to be a top agent!

I’m going to make a confession here.   I don’t really like to study either, but that’s what gives me an advantage.  My peers never crack a book, while I read about two books a week.  Do I do it because I like to read?  NO!  I do it because I need to continue to push myself to become all that I can become.  If I am to be the top listing agent in my market — if I really want to be the best — then I have to make myself do those things that I don’t necessarily want to do. Remember how your mom used to make you eat spinach?  Well, I say eat your spinach.

It’s a hassle to do the market research required to become a top agent, but this is your career.   I promise you that there are agents calling me every day asking for help because they really want to go to the next level.  Those who put in the work invariably succeed.  Those who don’t, won’t.  They won’t become top agents.  It’s as simple as that.  Winners make it happen, and losers make excuses.  It’s all about you.   Do you really want this?  If you do, I’m absolutely convinced that you can achieve it.

The other key human factor is your governing values (or personal philosophy).   It’s not my desire to be preachy here, but I believe that out of our inner self flow the issues of life.  We influence our success or failure by how we bring ourselves to the process.  And I believe that the value system we use to govern our businesses has a direct impact on the outcome of our lives.  And I believe that there are a number of principles that we can follow to ensure our success.

1. The Principle of Vision. The most important principle, in my opinion, is vision.  By this, I mean being able to see that which is not, as though it were.   I believe that we’re made in the image of a creative God and as such are inherently creative by nature.  And it’s that creativity which gives us the opportunity to build something truly phenomenal.  Most of us don’t take the time to allow a clear vision to be formed in our hearts.  But the more detailed our vision, the greater our chances of achieving it.  The scriptures teach that, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Allow yourself to develop a vision for what could be and take the time to see it clearly in your mind’s eye.

2. The Principle of Confession. Taking our vision and beginning to articulate it is the key to bringing it to reality.  Just as God’s instrument of action in creating the world was “speaking” (i.e. God said, “Let there be light”), the way that we transfer vision to reality is by speaking it.  I never miss an opportunity to share my vision with people around me.  Every time I get a chance, I articulate it to employees, agents, recruiting prospects, and peers.

Why is confession so important?  Because our subconscious mind believes what it hears.  That’s another reason to be careful what you’re listening to.  If there are negative people around you — people who tell you that you can’t do something — it’s important that you let them know you don’t want to hear their negativity.  If you must, find someone else to spend time with!  You alone control what your subconscious mind listens to, so make the message good.

3. The Principle of Reciprocity, or Sowing and Reaping. We’ve all heard the old adage that what goes around comes around.  It’s true.  Scripture teaches us that, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”  In other words, give, and it will be given to you.  This principle is true in two different ways:

a) Quantity.  To the degree that you give, to the same degree you’ll receive.   “He that soweth sparingly will reap sparingly.”  The more you do to help others, the more your kindness and generosity will come back to you.  Giving abundantly is the key to success.   I know of lots of agents who never volunteer at their local Association, who never take the time to help a new agent, who never help those in need.  What a shame.

b) Kind.   You will reap in kind with your sowing.   If you plant apples, don’t expect to grow bananas.  If you want to reap success, you need to sow success for those around you.   If you’d like to receive happiness, then make sure that you don’t sow seeds of “ugliness” for those around you.  Whatever seeds you plant will ultimately come up.  Make sure you’re planting the right seeds.

4. The Principle of Greatness. If we want to be great, we must be servants.  The way up is down.  This is contrary to traditional wisdom, which teaches us that, if we want to get ahead, we must put down our competition.   I marvel at the crab-bucket mentality that so many agents have.  Many would rather pull someone else down than actually see what they can learn from a competitor.  How tragic!  If you want to be great, serve those around you.

5. The Principle of Leverage. Two are better than one.   You can create leverage through synergy.  Team building is an example of this principle.   By enlisting others, we can build something much bigger than ourselves.  In fact, we can build a whole that’s greater than the sum of the parts.  Don’t be afraid to work with other people: often that’s the key to going to the next level.

6. The Principle of Stewardship. If we’re faithful in the little things, we will be entrusted with bigger things.  If we waste the resources that we’ve been given, we shouldn’t be surprised that we lack the resources that we need to grow when opportunities come our way.  I know of many agents who have all the “toys,” own a huge house, drive the most prestigious car, and yet live from deal to deal.  Again, what a tragedy.

7. The Principle of Responsibility. To whom much is given, much will be required.  God holds us accountable for that which he has entrusted us.  If you’ve been given success, you have the opportunity and the responsibility to use it wisely.  This principle is related to the principle of stewardship, but different.  One is the flip side of the other.  Stewardship is the key to getting success.  Responsibility is the burden of that success.

8. The Principle of Perseverance. We must endure trials and hardships in order to succeed. There is a refinement of character that comes from perseverance.  Show me a successful person, and I’ll show you someone who has gone through many personal trials.  And when those trials come your way, learn to see them as an opportunity to persevere.  I know that, in my life, nearly every time I feel as if the situation is so bad that I can’t possibly endure it, I hold on anyway.  Invariably the solution to my problem comes right after I’m the most tempted to give up.

9. The Principle of Thankfulness. Nothing is less attractive than a whiner and griper.   Nobody wants to be around that kind of person.  Well, there’s a principle that thankfulness is attractive.  Of course, when everything is going well, it’s easy to be thankful.  But if you find yourself in a tight spot, determine to be thankful anyway.   Lack plus thankfulness equals sufficiency.  I personally believe that this is the mechanism that demonstrates to God that we truly trust Him.  If we’re thankful, regardless of our situation, we attract other people to come along and help us.

10. The Principle of Rest. The more talented you are, the more you’ll be tempted to “force” things.  And while forcing an issue often provides a solution, it’s rarely the best solution.  If you feel pressured to make a decision, don’t make one.  Bite your tongue, and say, “No, thanks.”  Often the best action is no action — rather simply to wait patiently for the right solution to emerge from the quietness.

So there you have the entire listing presentation that’s made me one of the top listing agents in the country and earned my clients and me lots of money.  Now you have the big picture, from the technology tools to the actual presentation to the underlying philosophy that’s been responsible for my success.  Hopefully, you can see that this is not simply a “listing presentation” to memorize: it’s a way of doing business.  I hope that you’ll try it if you’re looking to improve your business.

I know that, over the last few years, we’ve had hundreds of other agents who’ve decided that this approach could provide a missing ingredient in their practices.  Many have gone on to grow as fast as or even faster than I did.  We have quite a few agents who’ve grown so fast that they’ve had to recruit additional agents.  Many have grown their personal production while taking more time for other activities.  But one thing is certain: every single agent who has actually tried to do what we taught him has experienced some degree of success.  The fact is that this approach works everywhere.

Well, now you have the secrets that allowed me to list 114 homes in a single year, all at 8% or more.  Now you know exactly how I’ve grown from a single agent practice to the owner of the largest brokerage in our market, all in three short years.  It wasn’t magic.  It wasn’t luck.  I didn’t do anything that you can’t do if you decide you want to do it.  The ball is in your court. Will you decide to go for it?  I hope you will.

Feel free to print out the installments and to read them again and again at your convenience.  If you take the time to study what I’ve shown you and then — more importantly — to apply it, your real estate business will never be the same again. If you’d like to know more about my company or me, feel free to visit our website at http://Info.FavoriteAgent.com.

Oh, here’s my last commercial message.

If you’d like to look into licensing our LCM web gateway technology, it’s easy to get. Put away your credit card. You can get the technology for free by joining my personal real estate team, by joining one of our FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Offices, or even by opening your own FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Office. But don’t worry — we even have ways you can license our technology and stay right where you’re at. So, check us out by clicking this link:

My Promise to You for Reading: If you invest your time in reading The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation and then — more importantly — in applying what I show you, your business will never be the same again. This is my sincere promise. It’s my greatest honor to be able to play a small part in your success. Thanks again for reading.

Matt Jones
Broker/President/CEO
FavoriteAgent.com

<< Prev | The End

Tell Me What You Think!

The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation (Part 2)

Imagine what it would be like to be the top listing agent in your market. What if you got to the office and did nothing but talk to sellers and negotiate sales?  What if you actually listed two or three homes every week, without fail?  I know it sounds like a lot of listings, but think of the freedom you’d have! And if only half of those listings were to sell, you would close over 50 transactions this year just from your listings!

When I finally realized how nice it was to be a listing agent, I was on vacation with my family to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. While on vacation, I did absolutely no work, but I did take a handful of calls from my office during the week. And while I was playing, I had two of my listings sell. Now how cool is that?!  There’s nothing like the feeling of your business running itself, making you money, while you’re lying on the beach in the sun, listening to the waves crash in and catching up on your reading.

Well, if you do what I did, it’s not that hard. Most agents I know could do it — if they would do, step-by-step, exactly what I did. There’s nothing I did that can’t reasonably be duplicated by any intelligent agent with the motivation to learn something new and the willingness to work hard. Nothing. So let’s pick up where we left off.

You must solve the lead problem first.

Allow me to tell you a fishing story. A real estate fairy tale, if you will. Once upon a time there was a huge river, stocked full of home-buyer and home-seller fish. All along the banks of that river were REALTORS® with their fishing poles. Everyone was catching all he wanted, and life was good.

Then one day, way upstream, a big commercial fishing company set up operations, with its computerized fish finders, its power nets, and the latest in fishing technology. The company began to pull many of the home-buyer and home-seller fish out of the water before they could make it downstream to the unsuspecting agents.

And it wasn’t long before the fishing downstream began to get tough — so tough, in fact, that many REALTORS® just threw in the towel and quit the business. Others worked longer hours and did what they could to survive, while a third group simply gave up on the whole thing and bought fish from the big commercial fishing operations.

But what if an agent were able to get the same technology that the large commercial fishing operations were using?  What if he were to go way, way upstream and begin to catch large quantities of home-buyer and home-seller fish?  Not only would life be good again: it would be GREAT!  What a huge advantage that agent would have!

Well, believe it or not, this story is actually true. The big commercial fishing operations are the lead vendors, such as HouseValues, HomeGain, and ServiceMagic, and every day the “fishing” gets tougher downstream because new lead vendors open their doors. If you don’t believe me, just check your email inbox. Not a day goes by that I don’t receive some new version of the same old thing — somebody using my listings to advertise on the Internet, catch my customers, and then attempt to sell them back to me.

And if the lead vendors weren’t bad enough, add to that many of the national companies who do the same thing — catch those home-buyer and home-seller fish upstream, and then sell them to their own agents, for a referral fee. I thought they were supposed to be looking out for their agents, and not exploiting their lack of marketing skill. Hmmm.

But there’s another part of the story that’s also true. It’s possible for an agent to use the same kind of technology that the lead vendors and national companies use to capture their leads — commercial lead capture technology on a single-agent level. And for those agents who use it, the technology produces amazing results.

Some real-life examples of “lead capture” technology:

In Greensboro, North Carolina, we have an agent named Kay Hunkins. She’s a veteran agent who was one of the first in her market to begin to try to tap the Internet. Well, she was getting literally thousands of hits to her websites every month and had her sites listed in lots of online relocation directories. The result was that she was getting between 10 and 15 leads from the Internet every month. Not bad.

When she installed a lead capture gateway on one of her existing websites, however — she did nothing else differently — she was immediately so busy that she actually found herself ignoring most of her prospects and following up only on the choicest leads. She began taking listings left and right, and she put a deal in escrow the same week she started with us. Without upping her advertising a dime, she began to capture over 20 leads every day. All of her leads were people who had been coming to use her site anyway, but now she was able to identify them!

Or there’s John Miller, an agent in Austin, Texas.  When he began using lead capture technology on his website, John was struggling with only a handful of leads every month. Now, using the lead capture gateway technology, he captures between 300 and 400 leads every month.  His business will never be the same!  Now he’s so busy that he’s having to recruit agents and build his own real estate team!

So did these agents suddenly get smarter?  Did they begin working harder?  Did they work longer hours?  Did they just get lucky?  No.  No.  No.  No.  They just got better fishing equipment.   Now, instead of having to be dependent on “commercial fishing operations” to sell them leads, they make more leads than they can possibly use, and all for next to nothing.

And I could go on and on with story after amazing story.  There are many talented agents out there, just waiting for the tools to succeed and someone to point them in the right direction. They are the reason for their own success — we just happened to be fortunate enough to help them assemble the right tools and then point them in the right direction.

The simple fact is that you have to solve the lead problem before you can attack the other challenges in this business.   Having more business than you can handle allows you to work without pressure.  It allows you to turn away those “problem” customers.  It gives you the ability to multiply yourself by building a team, if you so choose.   And most importantly, it gives you freedom.  No longer are you at the mercy of lead vendors, RELO companies, or even your broker.  You have the freedom, finally, to take some time off and enjoy life again.   A good lead count will solve virtually every other problem you can have.

Know how much each lead costs and where it came from.

Lee Iacocca, when he was head of Chrysler Corporation, made an amazing statement.  When asked about advertising, he said he was convinced that half of the millions of dollars that Chrysler spent each year on advertising was wasted.   Half!  But then he added that, if he could only figure out which half was being wasted, he could save the company a lot of money.

As REALTORS®, we’re told by the “experts” to spend 20% of our GCI, or gross commission income, on advertising. Magazines, newspapers, business cards, fliers, direct mail, websites, radio and television spots, billboards, and every promotional gimmick that comes down the pike.  We sink money into all of these advertising ideas in a frantic attempt to generate enough customers to keep our businesses rolling.  And the sad thing is that we know deep down in our hearts that much of what we spend our hard-earned advertising dollars on is utterly wasted. Just like Lee Iacocca, if we could only figure out which half was wasted, we could save a lot of money.

Well, I have good news.   By using lead capture gateway technology, it’s possible to know which ads are pulling and which are not.  It’s possible to know exactly where each customer came from and how much each lead cost.  Let me give you an example from my own real estate practice. Currently I split my Internet advertising between two sources: Google and Yahoo (formerly Overture).  My cost with Google is slightly lower per visitor, but my CR (capture rate) is slightly lower as well. With Yahoo, my per-visitor cost is higher, but the actual CR is also slightly higher.

I’m able to monitor each of those advertising expenses in real time. No more waiting until the end of the month to see how the magazine did. No more wondering if an ad is working.  I have the answers in real time.  And here’s how I know.  I assign each ad its own unique URL (web address), and the server log tracks how many visitors and leads have come in for each URL.  I then take this information and make a quick calculation to determine exactly how effective each campaign was.   No guesswork!  This is a business.

Let’s say that, in a week, you had 110 visitors who came from your ad in Google. Of those, you had 32 leads. Your Google ad cost was $124. During the same week, you had 98 visitors from your ad in Yahoo, resulting in 30 leads. Your Yahoo bill was $125. Then let’s say that your yard signs sent you another 20 visitors, and, of those, 10 registered.   Total cost for sign leads: ZERO!  Here’s how it all breaks out:

This is a “typical” example. What would 72 leads every week do for your business? They would probably force you to start recruiting!  Or you would log in and put your ad campaigns on hold for a while.  Either way, your business would be forever changed.

But then what if a particular source of advertising was costing you $125 per lead? (When I quit doing direct mail, that’s what it was costing me.)  What if sitting an open house cost you half a day (on the weekend) plus $100 in promotional stuff, and you picked up 5 leads?  If your time is worth $100 per hour (and it should be), your ad cost was $500.  You captured 5 leads.  Your cost per lead is $100.  Or what about spending a day passing out fliers?  Do the math.  Or spending hours a day cold-calling? (Forget the risk of violating the Do-Not-Call laws and the potential $11,000 fine!) What do those leads cost you?

What if you could generate hundreds of your own leads for only a few dollars each, and then stop when you had enough business?  You can.  This is how mega-agent teams have begun to spring up around the country.  One agent figures out how to produce more leads than he can handle, and, before you know it, he has a dominant team taking a huge slice of the local business.  Well, that mega-agent could easily be you, if you want it to be.  First you get the leads, then you get the listings.   Before you know it, you’re “forced” to build your own agent team, and in a year you have a dozen agents working for you.

Here is the best-kept secret about finding new listing leads.

Most agents know what to do when a customer fills out a CMA request on his website (or calls to ask for one).  The problem is that those are few and far between.  Another concern is that most sellers who ask you for a home valuation also ask several other agents at the same time.  Or there are the two age-old favorite and often touted sources of seller leads: FSBO (for sale by owner) sellers and expired listings.

Just like the CMA requests, the problem with both FSBOs and expireds is the fact that you’ll be competing for those listings with the hungriest and most aggressive agents in your market.   And while both are good sources for listings, those properties tend to be tougher to sell, either because the seller is unrealistic or because the property has been stigmatized by having been on the market since before you began.

I like getting my seller leads from a place where nobody else is looking: from buyer leads! What?! You read it right — from my buyer leads!  Let me explain.  According to the National Association of REALTORS®, first-time homebuyers account for 40% of all real estate purchases. This number has held constant for years and shows no indication of changing any time soon.  One thing is for certain: none of these first-time homebuyers are listing leads!

Another 23% of homebuyers are looking for investments, while 13% are purchasing vacation homes.  Of the investment properties, some are bought to “flip,” while others are bought to hold and rent.  The same is true of vacation home sales: many are bought to hold, while many others are step-up purchases, resulting in potential listings as well.

The best numbers from the NAR tell us that 52% of all buyers are also selling — some in the same markets as their new purchases and some in other markets — so more than half of the buyer leads that you get will also be sellers.  Here’s the little-known secret that will give you the first, and hopefully only, shot at those sellers: Buyer leads almost always find a replacement home before thinking of selling.

As professionals we understand that this is not in the correct order, but our clients typically get it backwards.  The human psyche is hard-wired with a security need.  We don’t quit our job until we line up another.  We don’t sell our car until we find the new one.  The same is true with real estate.  The key to generating an unending supply of fresh listing leads is to generate lots of buyer leads and then find the half who are selling too.  In most of those cases, you have the opportunity to list a home without anyone else’s knowing it’s going to be on the market.  What a huge advantage!

So over half of the buyers will either have a home for you to list or — better yet — have a listing lead you can refer to an agent in another market, giving you a referral fee with very little work involved!  No picked-over expireds.  No FSBOs that know it all.  Just an endless supply of new seller leads with no competition.  And having that endless supply of listing leads is the key to becoming the dominant listing agent in your market.

Never worry about violating the “do not call” regulations again.

In March of 2005, the FCC imposed a $770,000 fine on a Phoenix, Arizona, mortgage company for violating the Federal Do-Not-Call Law. The FCC alleged that Dynasty Mortgage made 70 calls to 50 homes in Arizona and California between March 2, 2004, and January 20, 2005. A fine of $11,000 per incident was imposed on 70 separate counts, and the company was given only 30 days to pay the fine.

Curtis White, Dynasty’s president, said that his company had extensive systems in place to try to ensure that any do-not-call numbers were not called. However, some calls may have been made mistakenly because of a “flaw in the system,” and the company is now working to fix the problem.

If this example doesn’t make you think twice about cold calling, nothing will!  I can remember many days of cold calling when I would make more than 70 calls!  It would be easy to violate the DNC laws accidentally by calling homes that “showed” to be “okay” on the latest list (which may have been out of date at the time of your calls).   And $11,000 is a huge marketing cost to incur accidentally.

So how can you be certain that this kind of disaster never happens to you?  By making only prospecting calls to inbound leads!  How can you do that?  With lead capture gateway technology, every lead is permission-based. By this, I mean that the lead has first contacted you and given you his phone number and, with it, implied consent to market to him.

The Federal Do-Not-Call Law is very clear on the fact that, in such instances, there’s a three-month window of exemption from the date of inquiry.   And your innocence is very easy to prove if you have a time-and-date stamped inquiry on file for each lead.  Inbound Internet leads are the safest of all leads to call — period.

So how safe is your marketing?  Do you have efficient lead capture on your website?  If you don’t, the first step to becoming a dominant real estate agent is having too many customers. You really have to start there.  Everything else is second to that.  Today, the lead vendors and national real estate companies are spending lots of money tapping the Internet, and if you’re going to compete with them, you’re going to have to have technology that places you on the same level with them.

What’s next?  In the next installment, we’ll start discussing the actual listing presentation that I used to list 114 homes in a single year — all at 8% or more!  What’s the key to building your credibility as a listing agent?  How can you go up against the top agents in your market and come out with the listing?  How can you be totally confident walking into every single listing presentation?  How can you make your presentation different from every other agent’s in your market?  All these questions will be answered in the next installment, so you won’t want to miss it.  In the meantime, work on getting your technology and your advertising in place. There’s never going to be a better time to start than right now.

OK.  Here’s another brief commercial message.

If you’d like to look into licensing our LCM web gateway technology, it’s easy to get. Put away your credit card. You can get the technology for free by joining my personal real estate team, by joining one of our FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Offices, or even by opening your own FavoriteAgent.com Virtual Office. But don’t worry — we even have ways you can license our technology and stay right where you’re at. So, check us out by clicking this link:

My Promise to You for Reading: If you invest your time in reading The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation and then — more importantly — in applying what I show you, your business will never be the same again. This is my sincere promise. It’s my greatest honor to be able to play a small part in your success. Thanks again for reading.

Matt Jones
Broker/President/CEO
FavoriteAgent.com

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Quick Answer Series: What about Advertising in Classifieds?

I think it’s a total waste of money!  As bad as it gets!  Even with a call capture hotline, the price paid for the few leads captured makes it a poor investment.  Here’s why it’s such a bad investment. Continue Reading…