Realtor Marketing Technology Blog

You’ve got to seize the opportunity if it is presented to you.
Clive Davis

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Mark Twain

High expectations are the key to everything.

Sam Walton

In life and business, there are two cardinal sins.. The first is to act precipitously without thought and the second is to not act at all.

Carl Icahn

And so, my fellow Americans.. Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

John F. Kennedy

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Winston Churchill

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.

Ray Kroc

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

Albert Einstein

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Here are some great ways to sell without coming across to hard:

1. Listen to what the seller or buyer is saying. Remember……folks like to talk….they don’t want to hear YOU talk! That is why God gave us two ears and one mouth. Unless you are listening…..how can you pick up on potential areas your client may need help? LISTEN!

2. Let clients know of things you have gone through. It is ok to talk about failures…..at least it shows you are doing something….and folks love to hear you are not infallible and are human!

3. Ask who else your potential clients are looking at. This lets you know how fast your potential clients are moving, and allows you to know certain things your potential clients are looking at. Are they looking at an agent that offers a written Unique Perceived Benefit? Are they looking at a discount brokerage? Again…..this will let you pick up on your potential clients needs.

4. Turn away folks that are unrealistic. You will find plenty of respect for yourself when you do this!

5. Do you sound credible? Would you hire you?

6. Call them and say HI! Ya don’t always have to be in “SELL MODE”!

7. If you don’t like selling and marketing real estate…..GET OUT! You won’t be helpful to anyone if you don’t believe in what you sell.

8. Over Deliver but don’t tell them about it until the end. That way, if things don’t quite work out the way you told them, folks won’t feel like you over promised and UNDER Delivered!

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Even while you creatively imitate others, remember that it’s also important to be different. Distinguish your business or practice from all the rest. Make your enterprise special in the eyes of your customer or client. That is the goal I want you to pursue.

How do you get your business differentiated? By creating a Unique Selling Proposition – or USP.

A USP is that distinct and appealing idea that sets you and your business, or practice, favorably apart from every other generic competitor. The long-term marketing and operational successes I help you achieve will, ultimately, be helped or hurt by the USP you decide upon.

The possibilities for building a USP are unlimited. It’s best, however, to adopt a USP that dynamically addresses an obvious void in the marketplace that you can honestly fill. Beware: It’s actually counter-productive to adopt a USP if you cannot fulfill the promise.

Most business owners don’t have a USP, only a “me too,” rudderless, nondescript, unappealing business that feeds solely upon the sheer momentum of the marketplace. There’s nothing unique; there’s nothing distinct. They promise no great value, benefit, or service – just “buy
from us” for no justifiable, rational reason.
It’s no surprise then that most businesses, lacking a USP, merely get by. Their failure rate is high, their owners are apathetic, and they get only a small share of the potential business. But other than a possible convenient location, why should they get much patronage if they fail to offer any appealing promise, unique feature or special service?

Would you want to patronize a firm that’s just”there,” with no unique benefit, no incredible prices or selection, no especially comforting counsel, service or guarantee? Or would you prefer a firm that offers you the broadest selection in the country? Or one with every item marked up less than half the margin other competitors charge? Or one that sells the “Rolls Royce” of the industry’s products?
Can you see what an appealing difference the USP makes in establishing a company’s perceived image or posture to the customer? It’s ludicrous to operate any business without carefully crafting a clear, strong, appealing USP into the very fabric of the daily existence of that business.
The point is to focus on the one niche, need or gap that is most sorely lacking, provided you can keep the promise you make.
You can even create hybrid USPs – combinations that integrate one marketing gap with another. Before you decide on a USP, though, be sure you can always deliver that USP through your whole organization. You and your staff must consistently maintain high levels of quality or service.
If you decide your USP is that your company offers the broadest selection of products or services “instantly available” or “always in stock,” but in reality you only stock six out of 25 items and only a few of each item, then you’re falling down on the essence of your USP promise, and your marketing will probably fail. It is critical to always fulfill the “big promise” of your USP.
If you don’t honestly believe you can deliver on your USP, pick another one to build your business on. Just be sure it’s unique and that you can fulfill it.
Remember, the USP is the nucleus around which you will build your success, fame, and wealth, so you better be able to state it. If you can’t state it, your prospects won’t see it. Whenever a customers needs the type of product or service you sell, your USP should bring your company immediately to mind.
Clearly conveying the USP through both your marketing and your business performance will make your business great and success inevitable. But you must reduce your USP to its sinewy bare essence.
Try it. With paper and pen, prepare a one-paragraph statement of your new USP. At first, you will have trouble expressing it tightly and specifically. It may take two or three paragraphs or more. That’s okay. Ruthlessly edit away the generalities, and tenaciously focus on the crispest, clearest, most specific promise you could possibly hold out. Then, rework it and hack away the excess verbiage or hazy statements until you have a clearly defined, clearly apparent Unique Selling Proposition a customer can immediately seize upon. And then, integrate your USP into every marketing aspect of your business, such as display advertising, direct mail and field selling.
Let’s say you run display-type ads, and your USP is that you’ve better selection and follow-up service than any other competitor.
There are several ways to integrate these qualities into your ads.
For example: State the selection USP in the ad headline:
“We Always Have 168 different Widgets in No Less than 12 Different Sizes and 10 Desirable Colors, in price ranges from $6 to $600.”
Or, if good service at an affordable price is your USP, use this as a model:
“ABC Tree Trimmers will trim and maintain your trees and shrubs six times a year, once every two months, and all it costs you is $16 a month, billed quarterly.”
By now you should have the general idea that you should carefully integrate your newly adopted USP into the headline and body copy of every ad you run. And in every direct-mail piece you send out.
But integrating your USP into just your ads and mailing pieces isn’t enough. You must integrate its positioning statement into every form of your marketing. When your salespeople call on prospects, everything they say should clearly reinforce your USP. They should explain the USP to the customer in a clear, concise statement. For example:
“Hello, Mr. Prospect. I know your time is short, so I’ll get right to the point. Your company manufactures widgets. You buy steel and copper from a competitor. You’re currently paying $100 a ton for steel and $75 a ton for copper, of which you waste roughly 25%. My firm will sell you a higher grade steel and a higher alloy copper for $95 and $69 a ton, respectively, freight prepaid, which saves you an extra $3 a ton. Plus, we’ll guarantee our metal will produce a waste factor of 15% or less, and we’ll replace any wasted coverage, free. One last point, Mr. Prospect. It could be important. We’ll furnish you with 50, $20 gauge titanium rivets and cap assemblies free with every 10 tons of steel you order this month. May I have your order?”
Throughout the sales pitch, your sales reps should refer to the USP benefits or advantages, showing the prospect why it’s vastly superior to take advantage of your USP rather than your competitor’s USP, if he or she even has one.
Don’t try and merely have your salespeople “wing it.” Insist that they do their homework. Make them sit down (figuratively speaking) and express the essence of your USP. Be sure they can clearly and powerfully express your USP in 60 seconds (the oral equivalent of a written paragraph), and then compellingly state how it benefits the prospect. Furnish your prospects with plenty of examples of how you honestly deliver your USP.
When an old, tired company or profession adopts a powerful, new, and appealing USP, it gives new life, newexcitement, new interest and new appeal to the marketing plan. You’re suddenly different, instead of just being another interloper preying on customers you’ve trapped into hearing your sales pitch! Now you’re on the customer’s side.
However, remember this axiom: You will not appeal to everybody. In fact, certain USPs are designed to appeal to only one segment of a vast market. There is a vast gulf between the upscale clients and the bargain seekers, and you probably can’t reach them both. Which do you want to stake out as your market niche?
Don’t forget my earlier advice. Don’t adopt a USP that you can’t deliver, or further marketing is useless. Also, analyze the market potential of various USP positions in terms of volume, profits and repeat business.
For example, the highest marketing niche may be in the exclusive, expensive USP, but the biggest money may be made in the discount-volume USP. There’s a place for both, but if you try to ride two horses, you’ll probably bite the dust. Remember too, that your USP is giving advice, assistance and superior service; it can’t stop with mere sales rhetoric. It must become total company conduct. If someone calls in with a question, the people answering the call must extend themselves. The same goes for every person who interacts with that customer, from the cashier and the delivery person to the service or repair people. You and your employees must live, breathe, and act your USP at all times.
Sit down and write a synopsis of your USP for your staff, how you’re trying to carry it out, and how everyone can project that USP to the world. Make their cooperation a condition of employment. The entire company must adhere to the USP.
Talk to your staff, write scripts, hold contests, and reward people who distinguish themselves in promoting your USP. Set an example so that your staff can see the USP in action.
How can you ensure that you are in the hearts and minds of your customers after the sale? Here are a few good approaches:
* Immediately following a sale, write, call or visit your customers.
During this follow-up effort, see that the customers feel important and special, and that their initial purchases are “resold.” Repeat your USP and remind the customers how it helped them make their purchasing decision. Reassure customers about their wise decisions, and show how the same USP that served them this time will be there to serve them in the future.
* And again, state your USP, telling customers why you’ve adopted it, and why it’s such an advantage to them. People rarely understand the benefits you provide them, unless you carefully educate them to appreciate your efforts on their behalf.
* A post-purchase follow-up incorporating the essence of your USP is vital, regardless of how frequently you back-end” or resell to that customer. You enhance the customer’s loyalty and value to your business by following up after the sale. At the very least, a follow-up call, letter, or sales appeal drastically reduces or eliminates cancellations, returns, refunds, complaints, adjustments and disputes, and reassures customers of the prudence of their recent purchase.
Good marketing requires that you give customers rational reasons for their emotional buying decision. There is a formula for success, and the USP, my dear friends, is truly an integral part of that formula.
Depending on the business, I usually advise my clients to offer frequent special promotions to their customers by mail, telephone or in person. Everyone wants to feel appreciated and personally acknowledged. By offering your customers genuine, specially priced deals or first choice, you endear yourself to them. At the same time, you enhance your customers’ perception of your Unique Selling Proposition.
If your USP is service, your preferred promotions will be service-based rather than price-based. Give them extended service – for instance, a special offer of your basic service, or one year of free consulting or assistance not normally given.
Also, don’t underestimate the profit potential inherent in special offers. Acquiring first-time customers usually costs a small fortune.
Space ads have to reach tens of thousands of readers to produce a few hundred customers, so it may cost you $10 or more to acquire a customer. The same goes for TV, radio, or direct mail. Field sales-people may have to call on 15 to 30 prospects before they make one sale, so the cost of acquiring a new customer may be “hundreds” of dollars.
But once you satisfactorily deliver your product or service and have a core customer base, you can continuously rework and resell at a very modest cost per sale. When you have a list of customers who have already shown their willingness to spend money on your products or services, it costs very little to go to them with additional special offers.
If you have 10,000 customers, it will probably cost $3,000 to mail them a letter. (At best, that same $3,000 for display advertising would probably generate only 100 new customers at a cost of $30 per customer.) Calling all 10,000 prospects on the phone would take five telephone sales people about a month. If they were on salary, that might cost you about $10,000 (for that month) or only about $1.00 a contact.
If broad choice is your USP, have a customer-service representative contact your customers to see if everything is satisfactory. If everything is not, offer to replace, repair or correct the product or service. Your customer-service people should know just as much about available choices and options as your salespeople. Give them reasonable authority to replace, repair or reinstall if there is any dissatisfaction. Make them aware that their jobs depend on ensuring that the promise behind your USP is fulfilled. They should provide evidence to any customer with a problem, complaint or question that the USP is real and that the entire company is enthusiastically committed to doing whatever it takes to promptly fulfill the USP promise.
Anyone in your employ who does not, cannot, or will not promote your USP should be immediately replaced with someone who can and will.
Your real wealth comes from repeat or residual business which will only happen if every aspect of your business is a continuous extension of your USP.
You can send a personal thank-you note, letter, or a computer-typed letter to customers. You can send a gift or a gift certificate. You can send items to correspond with holidays: A box of candy on Valentine’s Day; a poinsettia, a turkey or ham at Christmas; a birthday card – the possibilities are many. If you add up the customer’s value in future business or repeat sales, you can probably justify a sizable investment in his or her goodwill. Everyone likes to be acknowledged and feel they are special.
You should even integrate your USP into every contact with dissatisfied customers!
Whenever someone asks for a refund, replacement, or adjustment, instead of resenting the fact that you have to give back money, use that opportunity to reconvey the essence of your USP – either in person or by letter. If you have an exchange department, instruct that staff to courteously and sincerely reiterate your firm’s USP, and assure the dissatisfied customer of the firm’s commitment to offer more service, greater selection, better guarantees or whatever. Then, if you issue credit or a check, include a prepared letter expressing your deep commitment to your USP, and apologizing for any inconvenience, disappointment or dissatisfaction. With every refund, send a letter expressing disappointment that you did not fulfill the customers expectations, and strongly restate your firm’s USP and your commitment to it.
Then ask the dissatisfied customer to please give you another chance to make good! And make it worth their while by giving them a discount certificate, a special bonus, offering three widgets for the price of two, or some other preferential treatment that shows unhappy customers you want their business back, that you appreciate them, and that you will make good.
Above everything else, never, ever lose track of the fact that USP is all about the customer or the client. It is not about me, you, the company or the profession. Don’t make the mistake of aggrandizing your business. Instead, help your customer or client do some aggrandizing.

By Jay Abraham

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Before we get into today’s lesson, I sat this morning, pondering what the best message I could give to you. In our quickly changing business world, the best thing I can teach this morning is a story by Elbert Hubbard who wrote a story about a man named Rowan……I’m not gonna give the story away, but it is perhaps the biggest thing we can do in our real estate businesses…….without further ado, I present to you, A Message to Garcia…..

1899

A Message to Garcia

By Elbert Hubbard

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly.

What to do!

Some one said to the President, “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.”

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How “the fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, & in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing- “Carry a message to Garcia!”

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man- the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, & half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, & sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office- six clerks are within call.

Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio”.

Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task?

On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I hired for that?

Don’t you mean Bismarck?

What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?

What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia- and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.

Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce” Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply, can neither spell nor punctuate- and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

“You see that bookkeeper,” said the foreman to me in a large factory.

“Yes, what about him?”

“Well he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for.”

Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizen of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” & with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer- but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go.

It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best- those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself.”

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular fire-brand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry & homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds- the man who, against great odds has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes.

I have carried a dinner pail & worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; & all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village- in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed, & needed badly- the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

THE END-

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The small amount of time we spend in the warm up phase of our listing appointment or our buyers appointment is disproportionate to the huge impact it can have on the sale. Remember that folks love to talk to folks who will let them talk about themselves! It is much more than just saying hello. It is the first few minutes you get to create a warm feeling of rapport and listen to them! After a few minutes of talking about their interests or maybe common interests, go into the who, what, when, where and whys of your call. During the opening, you make a lasting impression on whether or not folks will do business with you.

Remember that after your opening you are in the greatest danger of going in to why YOU are the greatest agent since real estate was invesnted as a career…….don’t do that! Stay on track and remember that in a sales presentation, after warming up and establishing rapport, talking about the customers needs is the most important thing……not why you are the greatest!

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