How to make your customers fall in love with your website

In the court of online real estate, your customers are judge and jury, but the testimony that you hear will take place out of earshot. The rules are unwritten but they are set in stone. Give your customers a really good reason to trust you, like you and feel like you can serve their needs and they will toss aside their inhibitions, along with their reluctance to part with their business. That’s because they want you, the right website and the right business, the right broker to make their decisions easy. Not guilty by irrational reasoning. (i.e. crazy in like) Your customers hear every message you send – intentional or not. Your attitude is nearly everything. Customers want you to show a certain degree of eagerness, but not desperation. They want you to believe in yourself and demonstrate why they should believe in you too. They want you to be fun but also someone they can lean on for help. They want to trust you.

The web version of chocolate and roses in the world of online real estate is:

1. Build your site to answer your customer’s questions.
2. Know your niche and be the customer’s expert on it.
3. Get to know your customers and what their pain points are.
4. Make searching on your site an intuitive engaging experience.
5. Translate what you offer into solving customer pain.
6. Build your site from the users perspective.
7. Make it easy to gather and share what they came for.
8. Use photo and video visuals liberally.
9. Create interesting non-pitchy content and give it away.
10. Always deliver on what you’ve promised.
11. Provide absolutely impeccable service always.
12. Optimize for SEO, rinse and repeat.

At the end of the day, what we’re working to cultivate is trust in an environment lacking human interaction. These are a just few of the ways that you can cultivate that trust, forge new relationships and enhance existing ones. Falling in love is just the first step; you have to deliver even after the bloom is off the rose.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is going to be an ongoing discussion for most of 2012 I would guess, as brokerages and agents around the country decide whether or not listing syndication makes sense for their businesses (I think it does).

[via AGBeat]

The history of a home includes a lot of things, depending on the age of both the home and the community it resides in. In the case of my parents home in Sammamish, that includes but is not limited to:

• Photos of the outhouse from 50 years ago
• Photos of the hideous red carpet that used to be in my bedroom
• The transaction date and price from the 1920′s when my great great grandparents bought the property
• Stories and photos of my parents water skiing in the summers with the neighbors.
• Photos of my neighbors and I playing “ball tag” on the docks.
• Numerous remodels.
• Photos of Monahan (spelling?), the small community around the old lumber mill right down the lake
• Photos of my mom and I rebuilding the deck when I was in 8th grade. And my step dad rebuilding it again a year ago.
• The fact that the ceiling in my room looked like a disaster from the time I tore off the ugly tiles in 7th grade until sometime mid way through high school when we refinished it with new drywall
• Stories of the tenants that rented the property over the years
• The fact that one of my best friends was born in the very house I moved into in 4th grade
• Stories of the journey’s my grandparents took to the cabin (now house) from Seattle more than 40 years ago when Issaquah barely existed
• The fact that my dad and mom lived there in the late 1970′s when my sister was born

You get the picture. Now, some of these photos and stories should only shared between family — or close friends. But others could certainly be shared with anyone who wanted to see them. So of course there are privacy considerations to be thought through. The important thing to note is that every single home on the planet has a story — and that’s what home owners want to know (but few will go through all these steps to figure it out). And the “story” is what listing agents are marketing while a home is on the market to make it stand out from the thousands of other properties on the market.

What got my started on this topic you may ask? Well, it was this paragraph from Rob Hahn’s post about ARG’s decision to stop syndicating their listings:

Second, given the number of times that Mr. Abbott talks about how valuable the listing information is, just how important it is as “intellectual property”, and talks about how major publicly traded companies like Zillow and Realtor.com/Move could not survive without that intellectual property… am I the only non-REALTOR out there listening to that and wondering, “Hey, so all that information about my house is that valuable eh? Should I get any piece of all that valuable intellectual property action?”

So I think you know my answer to this question. No, Rob, you are not the only non-Realtor who has thought about this. And yes, there is intellectual property value that home owners are right to share in for their own homes.

How exactly? Read on…

The Opportunity

Give home owners a way to “own” their own home online. And I mean truly OWN — not some page on some 3rd party platform.

Tell the ENTIRE history of a home & its surrounding community.

What if, as part of the home purchase, the home owner was given control of a website entirely about their property? Essentially, some sort of “carfax for homes” that detailed everything you could ever want to know about the home.

What It Would Look Like

Well, I’d argue strongly that a “timeline” of a home, very similar to your individual timeline on Facebook, would make for a pretty compelling user experience.

Give home owners the ability to post photos, and tag those photos with dates (and, in a perfect world, people too). Give owners the ability to post stories from past tenants, family, and friends. Give owners the ability to post details of remodels, and the dates that they occurred. Give owners a way to post garage sales. Give owners a way to post family reunions, Christmas gatherings, and birthday parties for their kids. Give family members & close friends a way to post their fondest memories about a particular house. Give anyone the ability to post a photo or story on any house — but give the owner control as to whether to veto/approve them.

Include property facts. Recent sales history. The buyer and seller agent for each transaction. The brokerage for each transaction. Nearby recent comparable sales. Local parks. And of course a listing price if the home is on the market.

I, for one, would love to browse through a timeline of every single home on my parent’s street (about 15 homes). The home I was born in in Bellevue. The home by Phantom Lake in Bellevue where I lived for 2 years. That of my grandparents home in Redmond, OR. My bosses home. My best friend’s home. You get the point.

The Challenge

Every aggregator on the planet wants as many photos about a particular home as possible. They all want unique stories about a home that can’t be found elsewhere. They want remodel details. But virtually none of them have any of that (at scale).

Why?

It’s damn hard to aggregate — and the data is only found in the minds, attics, photo albums, and scrap books of individuals scattered all over the country.

Just think about the time that has gone into your family tree. It’s probably taken hours and hours for someone in your family to compose the tree after talking to many many family members over many years, and stored at your grandparents house…only to be looked at every few years at a minimum. Sites like Geni are trying to replicate this online — and make a business out of it. Think of how much TIME you’ve spent putting data into Facebook. All those photos, all your friends, status updates, comments, etc. And think of how valuable that data is making Facebook as they approach their IPO.

Which is exactly why “ownership” is so important in my mind. Personally, I’m not going to spend hours and hours and hours building a history of my parent’s home (or my own home in the future) on someone else’s website for that website to make money from. But I would spend the time IF I (or my family) owned the property and had 100% control over how it was used/displayed online.

Who Can Pull it Off

I don’t for a second think that a large real estate brokerage will pull this off — at least not with their in-house staff. But perhaps a smaller, tech-savvy, innovative one like M Squared can. In my mind, the only reasonable bet is going to be a technology vendor of sorts — even if that tech vendor is hired by a brokerage to build it. Whether that’s someone like Zillow (former employer), Virtual Results (former employer), Trulia, or an entirely new startup — I don’t know. And agents are the ones that will get this product into the hands of home owners. At least, that’s the most likely scenario in my mind since I don’t think the number of home owners who would proactively buy this product on their own is that high. But if the beginning is part of the marketing materials for a home on the market? It’s a good value add — particularly if the agent is the one that fills the site with a foundation of data for the owner to build upon.

You might be wondering how Zillow or Trulia could do this given their advertising-based business model. I think there is a way, and I’ll quickly explain. Zillow has SOME of this data now, but they certainly want more of it — and they want it primarily for the page views it could generate. However, I’d argue that if they built the right platform — one that home owners can buy control of — they’d get adoption. Certainly not everyone, but from many. Home owners (or real estate agents) could buy and control the website. The property details (beds, baths, sq footage, etc) would be sucked from the Zillow API and then could be modified to be correct. Zillow and the owner would jointly own this modified data, and either of them could do with it as they wish. The photos, stories, etc. would be owned entirely by the property owner — with an opt-in check box that says “share everything with Zillow”.

There, Zillow just created 100 million websites to sell for $39.95 — or whatever price point they want to put on the website product. That’s some decent coin for someone to go after.

Conclusion

This is an opportunity to for an agent/broker to build a lasting relationship with a home owner. I believe SOMEONE will get this opportunity right (any my bias hopes its’ Zillow). It’s just a matter of who, and when.

Anyone already working on this? Who thinks this would work?

A few comments from buyers/sellers/home owners:

Andrew M

Why Does Abbott view it as the intellectual property of the real estate company when it’s a series of picture of MY house and details of MY house (which are all publicly available) that I’m trying to sell to the largest audience possible?

Christopher S:

Talk about completely going the wrong way. My wife and I just bought a house and we had a buyer agent only represent us. Bottomline, from a buyer’s perspective Zillow, Redfin and Trulia are invaluable tools that save time and inform the buyer.

Yes, you DO need a skilled agent but what Abbott is completely missing is that Zillow, Trulia and RedFin are merely tools that the buyer and the agent need to leverage. They don’t replace the agent, they enhance the agent to client experience.

Also, who’s he kidding with the multimillion dollar ocean front property as an example successfull house marketing? Not all, not even a fraction of sellers can afford a TV ad to sell their house.

“To our industry colleagues, please find our listings as you always have, through our cooperative, sandicor MLS…” Again, consumer’s don’t want a site that’s clunky and antiquated like sandicor. Even the new sandicor is a poor experience in comparison’s to the zillows, & redfinds of the world. The raw data is meaningless without the ability for the consumer to sift through it and make sense of it (neighborhoods, schools, comparison’s, historical tax, etc, etc).

I’m sorry but this kind of thinking reminds me of the candle manufacturer legistlating law’s in France to force people to close their blinds due to stiff competition from the sun.

Brandon G:

If I was a rival broker, I would love this. How is ARG going to explain to their customers that their listing will only be seen by half the people it was seen by before? Hopefully the word will get out, if you want the most potential buyers possible to see your house, don’t list it with ARG.

Geoff C:

Way to go. I am looking at purchasing in the future, and it will not be through ARG now. Sorry guys, but you just closed down a whole lot of options for yourselves.

Sarah M:

I agree with you… my husband and I recently bought a house, and both Trulia and Zillow were integral to our search. And yes, they sometimes have inaccurate information, but the benefits outweighed the problems, for the most part. They are shooting themselves in the foot this way.

Pretty telling, don’t you think?

The real estate industry is buzzing about Edina Realty and ARG pulling their listings from syndicators.  The announcement, one strong view, and a different response.

Most of the arguments about syndication are ignoring the elephant in the room.

Real estate brokers and syndication sites are battling for SEO.

9 out of 10 home buyers today are online.  The first business to grab a consumer’s attention is likely to get that consumer’s business, or generate revenue through the online traffic.  Buyers and sellers create income for whichever business has the most-accessible presence online.

All real estate companies are in competition.

Brokerages, individual agents, vendors, and syndicators collaborate in many useful and productive ways, but we are all in competition for the consumer’s dollar.  Brokers owe a high level of professional representation to our clients, while maintaining a competitive and sustainable business model at the same time.  When we disregard the competitive nature of our business, we lose focus in our decision making.

When you give away your listing, you give away SEO.

Unique content online is king for SEO.  Own a unique piece of online real estate, and you own the traffic and revenue that come along with it.  The more times you duplicate and syndicate that content, the more diluted it becomes, and the less-valuable your share of it becomes, in terms of SEO.  An individual listing is a unique and valuable piece of online property.

Who is #1 when buyers search for [Your City] real estate or homes for sale?

Is it a national syndication site?  Quite possibly.  When buyers search for your listing, “123 Main St ,City State”, they also probably find the syndicator first.  Why?  Because you gave it to them.  Thousands of real estate brokers give their SEO to that site every day.  Brokers create thousands of links to syndication sites’ listings, and effectively encourage their clients/consumers to do the same.

Is diluting your listing’s SEO good for your client?

Who is best to receive the inquiry from a buyer?  Better yet, who would the buyer want to receive his/her inquiry?  Trulia doesn’t know where Seattle homes are in the neighborhoods of Inverness or Arroyo.  Realtor.com can’t find Newport Shores or Surrey Downs, because it doesn’t list homes for sale in Bellevue in those neighborhoods (yes, I am pushing my own SEO right now).  A local agent would know, but they’ve all given their rights to that traffic away through SEO dilution.  It doesn’t matter who is “best”.  All that matters is who is “seen”.

Listings create consumer traffic.  Consumer traffic creates revenue. 

It’s true that these large sites currently have far more national traffic than most brokers’ local sites.  That traffic comes from brokers’ listings. Listings are the holy grail of online real estate.  Consumers certainly like maps and research features, but in the end their #1 goal is to find a home.  Without listings, a website is just an informational resource, without a solution to the home buyer’s ultimate need.  [Zillow has an amazing real estate website.  It used to generated its revenue through beverage advertising.  Until real estate brokers' listings and corresponding agent ads grew the revenue significantly, this company was not in a position to have the big, successful IPO they they had last year.]

Who should consumers find when they search for homes in your neighborhood?

That’s debatable, and really outside the SEO topic.  Most real estate brokers know dozens of local associates that they respect for their knowledge of the local market.  Unfortunately for them, they all point their web traffic to a national aggregator who may or may not.  Collectively, they’ve told the consumer to ask a syndication site.

Real Estate SEO will determine the direction of our industry in the long-term.

The companies that are successful selling real estate online will continue to gain greater power and influence over consumers, brokers, and even legislation that affects the real estate industry.  As a handful of companies gain larger shares of the market, more brokers are taking notice, but far too few are focusing on the source of that power.

SEO is your real estate online.  It is much like real estate in the physical world. 

Those who own the best real estate have usually worked hard for it, paid well for it, and will protect it fiercely.  The more they acquire, the more powerful they become.  Those who disregard its value and allow their real estate SEO to be acquired by others will see their influence wane and, over time, fail in their efforts.

In the end, brokers will decide on their own what is in the best interest of their clients, and their business.  The answer is not as cut-and-dry as many might assume.  Page views, traffic, experience, local knowledge, and a host of other factors will determine what is best for each individual’s clients.

Bottom Line:  Buyers will search.  They will find listings.  If they’re not at the syndication source, they’ll find them at the broker source.  The key is not in pointing as many people as possible to just any web site.  The key is pointing the right people to the right listing source.

As reported by Inman News (“Premium” content – sorry), Abbott Realty Group (ARG) recently announced that they will no longer syndicate listings to third-party aggregators. Subsequently, a big ol’ agent food fight ensued. OK, it’s more of a heated debate. But there are definitely two camps in the syndication discussion, and it’s an important one for buyers and seller, as well as agents, to understand. If affects us all.

If you are one of the three people remaining who hasn’t seen Jim Abbott’s video on the subject, here it is:

Click here to view the embedded video.

ARG’s decision followed a similar announcement by Edina Realty back in November. At the core, the arguments against syndication involve two issues: Data integrity and data control.

I’ll start with the issue of data integrity, because that is the simpler of the two. Sites like Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com – let’s call them the troika – display loads of inaccurate data. There is no argument there. Because many of their listings are manually entered, many are outdated. I can point to numerous examples of homes being displayed as for sale that sold six months, or more, ago. I have seen my own listings entered by other agents as their own. There are foreclosure sites who routinely list homes by street – no address – that are not for sale but simply have had a Notice of Default filed, with the idea that buyers might contact their agents or sign up for there foreclosure listing services.

Some have argued that the likes of the troika do not have a corner on the inaccurate data market – that MLS listings are, too, fraught with errors. And while this is true, MLS errors represent agent input mistakes, oversight, or mere sloppiness. You won’t find double entries or intentional deceptions – or scams.

And then there are the rental scams which not only pose an inconvenience to our clients but present potential security risks. Where Craigslist used to own the rental scam space, we now see our listings appearing on the troika sites as rentals, and this happens nearly every time we list a home.  One of our clients learned that he was our latest victim when the first of a series of would-be renters knocked on his door – this one a Highway Patrolman who caused our elderly client much undo anxiety. Another client learned of the rental posting at the conclusion of a showing and from the showing agent who, having seen the listing on Trulia, was there only to help her client secure a six-month lease.

Absent syndication, would we eliminate rental scams? Of course not. The photos and listing information can be lifted just as easily from my site or any site with an IDX feed. But eliminating the ability for the scammers to do their one-stop shopping will make things a little more difficult.

Let’s talk about the larger issue of control. It’s about our information being hijacked for fun and profit and, yes, we handed them the keys.  It is about extortion. You gave us the car, and now you must pay for the ad, the enhanced positioning or profile, if you ever want to drive the conversation again. We are starting to see what this means for the agents and brokers. What does it mean for the buyers and sellers?

Let me share a story, a story that most agents have no doubt heard before. Our listings are on Realtor.com (no, we haven’t opted out), but we discontinued paying for the “special premium featured titanium agent” package on Realtor.com years ago when the bounty got a little too pricey and, philosophically, we got a little irked. So when I visited the page for one of our listings this week and filled out the contact form for more information, I wasn’t surprised by the outcome.

First we received an auto-generated response ensuring us that our inquiry had been sent to a “local area expert.” The “expert,” I’m sure, is a very fine company. It just happened to be one I had never heard of, with an office twenty miles away, and one who to my knowledge has never sold a home in this particular area. Next came another email informing us that an account had been set up for us on the referral agent’s website (“Our website has every listing in the San Diego area and it is updated daily”).

The next email was short and sweet; it gave us the name of their preferred “partner” lender who was standing by to help with all of our financing needs. It was the fourth and final email that finally hit on the subject at hand. “I have checked the status on this home and it is currently available. It is a traditional sale with no banks involved (like on a short sale or bank owned home). Did you have some particular questions about the home that I can answer for you?”

That’s it. Now with several hours and two pots of coffee separating me from my original query, I have a mortgage broker referral, I have an account on an agent’s IDX site, yet I still don’t have any answers nor have I been offered an opportunity to view the home I have expressed interest in. This is what we call a buyer left behind. The seller’s home was exposed, all right, but had I been a real buyer, the system failed him.

Further, relinquishing control of the conversation surrounding your inventory violates the most basic principle of Real Estate Career 101: The most valuable thing to a real estate agent is a stick in the ground. This is because listings breed listings, listings breed buyers, and listings build reputation. So when we “virtually” hand third party aggregators our body of work that took years and boatloads of money to cultivate, we slowly erode our own future growth potential – unless of course we pay for the opportunity to redirect the fruits of our labors back home.

Defenders of syndication say that an argument against syndication is an argument for dual agency. Nothing could be further from the truth. Much like you can opt out of syndication, you can opt out of dual agency.  Take the call, answer the questions, and then send the buyer to the nearest competing brokerage to view the home and write the offer if that helps you sleep nights. At least by having had the conversation, you haven’t opted out of your role as the champion for that home you signed on to sell, because that would not be in your client’s best interests.

Both Rob Hahn and Jay Thompson pointed out that Internet Data Exchange (IDX) sites like yours, mine, and the sites of every brokerage in the country, are no different than the Troika sites. I don’t agree. The data accuracy issue becomes a relative non-issue where IDX is concerned save the MLS input errors. Even then, the MLS’s have procedures in place for policing and ultimately ensuring compliance. More importantly, IDX sites lack the resale component of the troika sites. While an inquiry on my listing may in fact go the agent-owner of another IDX site – and often does – consumers are generally clear on the fact that they are on a particular broker’s or agent’s site. And while some ambiguity may still exist where an IDX site is concerned, they are not simply trying to sell the customer to the highest bidder.

On a larger scale, this is about an industry handing over the car keys. We moan about the flaws in the Zestimates and then we send Zillow the eyeballs. We gripe about how Trulia and the likes are using our data to redirect our customer contact opportunities (what some agents might call “leads”) and spawn their own IPO’s, yet we continue to click the submit button. We lament the fact that buyers are confused and that the best interests of buyers and sellers alike are not necessarily served by the pay-to-play lead generation model. We defend syndication by saying that our sellers demand it, but our clients in fact look to us to explain what works and doesn’t in marketing their home. If you don’t believe this, then ask yourself when the last time was that you promoted your extensive newspaper advertising program to a would-be seller. Just because it is “free” does not make it a beneficial marketing strategy.

Sure, some sellers may not get it, and therein is the conundrum for both the agent and the brokerage. That’s also the genesis of our fear, our inaction, and our continuing down this dangerous road.

You see, my client’s home does not really need to be on 400 national websites. That is just a myth we have propagated out of convenience and our desire to win listings. It is rhetoric we bought into, rhetoric delivered by those who are in the business of profiting from our business. My client’s home does need to be in the MLS, because it is through that platform of broker cooperation that the overwhelming majority of sales still take place. Of course, through the miracles of IDX, my client’s home will still be exposed far and wide on sites other than the MLS and my own. But those sites are owned and operated by other agents and brokers, not by those who are in business to repurpose and profit from my efforts.

When Brad Inman opened the New York Real Estate Connect conference with a clip from the movie “Network” in which the news anchor shouts, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore,” he was talking about prevailing consumer attitudes in our “cottage economy.” It will take this same kind of outrage within our industry to reverse this trend toward putting distance between our customers and us. Taken to the extreme, this road could be leading toward a destination of disintermediation. In its more basic form, it is a flawed delivery system that benefits neither the customer nor the real estate community.

And it will take more than one ARG with 25 agents or even an Edina Realty with 2100 agents. One little San Diego Castles Realty with 11 agents would most certainly go unnoticed. But, I suppose, that is how big changes start – with little ripples. I, for one, applaud ARG’s move. It was bold and, in my opinion, it was right.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Since regular readers already know what I think on this topic given the Edina article I wrote, just head over to Jay’s blog and read his take. It’s spot on.

Who’s next?

You want to know how agents and brokers are really making money from social media?

It’s not from the engagement. It’s not from the connections they gain.

It’s from SEO.

Most of those making money with social media are doing it by floating their SEO efforts (which means more traffic/conversions). I obviously don’t have access to the hard numbers, but I know someone like Jay Thompson is making money from the SEO juice his site, PhoenixRealEstateGuy, has gained as a result of his social media activity over the past 5+ years. How does that happen? A number of ways. For starters, posts like this link to his site constantly because he’s one of the most well known real estate brokers in the country in the social media world. Secondly, he’s met LOTS of people via social media. And anyone that knows search engine optimization knows the way to win is to know LOTS of other individuals who own websites (and can link back to you). Well, Jay knows a ton of them. Anytime I think of or hear “Phoenix”? I — thousands across the country and world – think of Jay. That’s worth it’s weight in gold when it comes to SEO. Why? Because anytime a conversation about Phoenix comes up, there is a good chance I’m going to link to Jay. Oh yea — and all those conference mentions he gets? They don’t hurt either.

You likely already know getting a site to rank well is hard work if you’re going after even a somewhat competitive keyword. But to succeed on the web, we all know you have to spend time or money on it. You should already know the cost of neglecting SEO. It goes without saying that SEO is certainly a long way from dead. It’s just shifted away from strictly links, links, links as Facebook Likes, Tweets, and Google +1′s are transforming into the more common voting mechanisms of the web. It’s hard to measure precisely, but I think it’s fair to say anyone with a strong social media presence knows their social media efforts are massively helping their own SEO efforts.

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, certainly use social media to increase engagement with your current sphere and find new contacts to increase your sphere of influence, but the real money is made by leveraging your social media to improve your own SEO.

What do you think? Agree or disagree?

**Photo via MarkVitorillo

Fortunately, the power of the Internet remains as strong as ever. In fact, more and more people are establishing a presence online – which means you have more opportunities to use proven networking techniques and tools to grow your network.

Two such tools – online chats and online forums – are, for some reason, ignored by many real estate professionals. But, they can provide a much-needed angle for your efforts to spread the word through an online community.

It’s All About Self-Promotion

As any real estate pro knows, the business is about self-promotion. Most people decide on agents based off of advertisements and word-of-mouth, not through in-depth research of competing agents in a given area. That is why often times, the first agent to make a good impression on a prospective homebuyer takes the cake.

Using online forums and chats is a way to make that first impression. You are putting yourself out there, representing yourself to these buyers who are already making themselves available simply by being online and looking for help with real estate. Maybe they are on a local message board asking questions about the neighborhood. Maybe they are on a real estate message board with queries about closing costs, inspection regulations, or some other area of concern.

No matter what their need, you have an opportunity to promote yourself and what you do – even if you never make a direct offer to represent them!

Choose the Right Hangouts for Message Board Activity

Using forums (or message boards) effectively comes down to choosing the right places and actually using them.

Virtually every metropolitan area in the country has multiple forums dedicated to life within that particular area. Several other subject-specific websites also feature a wide variety of forums that you can utilize in your online communication campaign. It is as simple as creating a profile, browsing through the questions and discussions posted, and contributing.

Try to say anything helpful, even if it is a small suggestion or a short sentence. Have your information prominently displayed, but do not be too pushy – imagine if they were talking about real estate in real life on the sidewalk and you just happened to overhear them as you walked by. Answer the question, be friendly, and the rest will flow accordingly.

Oh, forums aren’t just for clients; they can also be invaluable networking tools with other agents as well.

Using Chats Effectively

Online chats are also very effective for agents and should be included in a communication campaign. You can join general real estate chat rooms, or you can have your own live chat support channel available on your website. The second is highly recommended, if at all possible. This option gives potential clients the ability to click on a button and engage you or one of your staff during business hours, all from the comfort of their home.

After all, if they’re on your website, they have a need – and they can easily reach out to you for help with meeting that need.

Doing the same approach with online chats as with online message boards (i.e. creating a profile and engaging in helpful discussions with clients) is also highly recommended. Ideally, your online networking campaign will be integrated with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other tools to keep you at the leading edge of 21^st-century social media communication. (Plus, with Facebook, you can incorporate online chat into your social media seamlessly through its integrated chat function. Pretty cool, huh?)

In short, use both methods often to grow your brand online and communicate easily with your potential customers.

Paraphrasing Ben, he says that if you aren’t successful as a real estate agent ..

You -

• Aren’t Saying the Right Things … or
• You Aren’t Saying Them Enough … or
• You Don’t Have Enough People to Say Them To

I was really struck by the simplicity of this idea and agree that if you are talking about lead generation or creating sales from buyers, it really does boil down to these ideas.

But is there more to this business of real estate? (And I’m open to the possibility that there might not be.)

In my opinion, there are three ways to fail in the real estate business. The corollary of course, is that these are the three keys to success as well. For vendors serving real estate agents, these are our pain points, help us solve these problems and we’ll both get wealthy together.

Fail to Keep in Touch with Past Clients / Sphere

You’ve probably seen the numbers before. 87% of real estate consumers like their agent and would use them again, but in reality only 14 % actually do.

I have seen a bunch of variations on these numbers so it doesn’t matter what the percentages are as long as you learn the lesson.

Staying in touch, staying at “top of mind awareness”, is the key for referral and repeat business. It is the advantage than incumbent agents have over rookies and it is the foundation for most, if not all, of the real estate programs out there. (Millionaire Real Estate Agent, Ninja, Buffini, ad nauseum)

Facebook pages, recipe postcards, Home By Design magazine, monthly newsletters, email newsletters, annual calenders, fridge magnets…  these are the widgets we try and use to automate staying in touch with our sphere.

Most of them fail horribly. They tend to be boilerplate and impersonal. They fail to connect.

The agent who can nail down this problem will succeed and so will any vendor who can help them.

Fail To Successfully Nurture Your Leads

Ben Kinney instructs his team to use the phone to help get appointments.  New leads are given an amazing amount of attention “until they buy or they die.”

Most of us probably have a system of some sort for our incoming leads, but the yield is probably really low.

Is it because most of the inquiries “aren’t really that serious”?  I doubt it. It’s because we give up too easily. We call them once or twice and maybe sign them up for automatic emails.

The agent who wants to succeed needs to have a system in place to nurture incoming leads.  It needs to be adhered to religiously and it needs to be adapted for the long nurturing process that many real estate consumers need.  The more customized and personal it can be for the consumer while remaining unobtrusive, the better.

Fail to Actively Communicate with Your Seller Clients

In a booming market it was easy. Sign a listing, put a sign in the ground, take some pictures, and wait for the offers to appear. (Not really..)

In a slow market, successful agents are pulling out all the stops trying to market a home. Over a period of months this means repeating the same tasks, tweaking the messaging, tweaking the price, trying new things to get the desired result.

No matter how hard we work, this work doesn’t count if..

• The house doesn’t sell
• The client doesn’t know we are doing the work

I often get phone calls from frustrated sellers who are firing their agent and looking to hire another agent to help them. Their biggest complaint is not that the house hasn’t sold, it’s that they never get any updates from their agent.

• Is the marketing working?
• Is anyone calling or emailing about the house?
• Why aren’t other agents showing the house?
• Are other houses selling?
• What did the buyers who looked at it think?
• Is the price too high?
• What can we do to entice more buyers?
• Why aren’t you advertising more?

Do you have a system for updating your listing clients? How often do they get updated? Is this enough?

Fail to update your listing clients and they will replace you. Succeed and they will sing your praises, even if you can’t sell their home!

In my mind, these are the keys to a thriving real estate practice. This what separates successful agents from those going back to work a second job. These are the opportunities for vendors to help out agents with new tools and products.

What did I miss?