BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

This guest post was written by Larry Easto who is a
best-selling business writer, and publisher of Real Estate Marketing Link

 In the spring of this year, a friend started a search for a new home.

Because she didn’t know any active real estate agents, a retired agent was asked for a recommendation. In turn, this agent asked a former colleague to recommend a suitable agent for my friend. As it turned out, this former colleague also happened to be the current president of the local real estate board.

Within a day or so, the recommended agent called and the first meeting was arranged. At this meeting, my friend advised the agent that she had been pre-approved for a mortgage.  She also mentioned that although she was starting her search in March, she was not looking to move until later in the year.

My friend and the agent agreed they could work together and the search was started.

The agent was one of three members of a sales team. Property showings were conducted by one, two and sometimes all three members of the team.

After having seen about a dozen properties over the next month, by mutual agreement, the active search was wound down.

The agent assured my friend that she and her team knew what she was looking for. The agent also told my friend that that the team would continue to email listings they thought suitable. The agent also said that either she or another team member would keep in touch regularly with my friend by either phone or email.

The emailed listings stopped a few weeks after the last meeting. Now, about 6 months after the last meeting, there has been no further contact from any member of the team.

Since the last contact with her agent, my friend has received a substantial inheritance and no longer needs mortgage financing.  And now that the property values are declining, she is interested in reactivating her search for a new home.

But she faces a dilemma.

Should she contact her agent and by so doing reward the agent and her team for failing to keep in touch as promised?

Or should she start all over again with a new agent?

If so, how can she find an agent who will do as promised - keep in touch and continue to help?

Even though the first agent was personally recommended by the president of the local real estate board, she and her team members seem to have lost interest in helping my friend and moved on to other things.

If my friend can’t rely on the recommendation of the local real estate board president, whose recommendation can she rely on?   

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Note from Kathleen:  Do you have any suggestions for Larry’s friend?  Do you think this is an isolated incident?  How organized is your follow up system?????

This guest post was written by Larry Easto who is a
best-selling business writer, and publisher of Real Estate Marketing Link

Once upon a time, there was a real estate agent named Norm.

Norm was not like other real estate agents. He was more interested in hearing purchasers’ stories than what kinds of homes they were looking for. Once he’d heard their stories, he would then ask what they were looking for. 

Similarly, when talking to home-owners, he would simply swap the same stories they had exchanged many times. Eventually Norm would ask if the owners had thought about moving. He already knew their stories…and as a result, understood what housing would be most appropriate for their stage in life.

Norm never showed properties: he introduced the owners and purchasers to each other. He invited the owners to tell stories about living in the house and invited the purchasers to tell their stories about their lives.

By encouraging his clients to tell their stories, Norm was applying the age-old technique of story-telling to real estate marketing. Strategically, this helped build relationships with his client and identify their needs and wants.

When owners and purchasers swapped their stories, it was not just social chit-chat. It allowed the parties to establish a rapport that helped minimize, if not totally avoid problem-causing misunderstandings.

When owners like prospective purchasers, they will be less anxious about selling the home that they love. They believe that once sold their home will be in good hands.

Similarly, when purchasers like the home, its stories and owners, they can see themselves living there, adding their own stories to those they heard about the home.  

In the current real estate market, it’s virtually impossible to follow Norm’s techniques in bringing owners and purchasers together.

But even in today’s technology-driven world, people still love stories. This means that story-telling can be just as effective now as it was when our ancestors told stories around the campfire.

Listening to people’s stories is a perfect way to establish rapport and also identify clients’ needs and wants. We all like people who listen to our stories. By listening to prospects stories, you help them like you. And the more prospects like you, the more likely they will choose you as their agent.

While physical things like HVAC systems and appearance are features that distinguish property from another, they can be changed. 

Intangibles such an interesting history–or a collection of stories–helps make a house a home and distinguish it from other similar properties.

The moral of Norm’s story…the ancient technique of story-telling can be a very effective real estate marketing tool that will help you learn about clients and serve them better.  

This guest post was written by Larry Easto who is a
best-selling business writer, and publisher of Real Estate Marketing Link

What Good Are Regular Marketing Reports?

At one very frustrating stop in my career path,  I had to to prepare weekly activity reports. I was required to record and report details of everyone I spoke to. At the time, I thought it was simply something that the director demanded to control her people.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I now understand that the reports were intended to track sales and marketing activities. I now appreciate the importance of tracking the results of all marketing activities.

The Benefits of Tracking Marketing Activities

Unfortunately many agents do not track their results. It’s something that they never quite get around to doing.  By tracking results you can expect two significant benefits:

1. You will learn which marketing activities yield the best results and also which ones need to be improved or even terminated. I’m not sure why sales people continue to devote resources to marketing activities that fail to produce what they seek. Maybe they don’t track their results so they don’t really know which activities are effective and which ones are ineffective.
2. By tracking results, you shift your focus from continuing to chase the next deal to developing and maintaining systems that can generate the next 200 deals. In other words, tracking results enables you to run a business that, if properly managed, will generate a sustainable income.

The Bottom Line

Good business management includes tracking and then analyzing your results. This analysis will help you identify effective marketing activities so that you can continue to do these things and do them better.  The analysis will also help identify ineffective activities so you can either improve them or stop doing them.

From the perspective of overall business and marketing management, tracking results make so much sense. If only that director had explained the importance of tracking results, working with her might have been less frustrating.

If you’d like to see your guest post (and links to your site) on this blog, contact me today!