Archive for the ‘Consulting’ Category

FourSquare And Social Media ROI

December 1st, 2009 - Jeff Turner

I think my comment on Matt Stigliano’s FourSquare post deserves a bit more explanation.

First, I want to say that I am not a FourSquare fan. It’s partially because I think geolocation will be better served inside a larger social network, like Facebook. It’s partially because my wife hates geolocation and sees it as potentially dangerous. But it’s also because Foursquare allows anyone to input anything they wish. And since it’s a game, it allows people to cheat, easily. And a few people I know cheat, openly. They know who they are. So, I’m not even going to begin to argue the merit or lack of merit in investing time playing Foursquare.

The Quesiton of ROI

It’s not surprising that the conversation in the comments on Matt’s post quickly turned to ROI. Bob Wilson rightly questioned the value of spending any time at all on Foursquare under the assumption that it would “bring you business” and said, “I guess I’m growing weary of all those who keep pushing sm as a biz model for selling real estate who are unable or unwilling to provide real numbers that demonstrate the value or ROI.” He then quickly added, “Oh, wait. I forgot that you are not supposed to ask about ROI when it comes to SM”

I always find it humorous when someone says that. I’m not sure who made this “don’t talk about ROI with social media” rule, but I’m thinking it was somebody who doesn’t understand the nuances of analyzing return on investment in marketing or what can or should be measured in the first place.

The Problem With Most Social Media ROI Discussions

The problem I see with most of the discussions around social media ROI in the real estate industry is that the product real estate agents sell, a house, is not an impulse buy and the decision to use one agent over another, a completely different kind of conversion, is not a simple decision. If they were, we could focus on conversion alone and be done. But they’re not. So, the focus on conversion to the exclusion of all other sales or marketing objectives is simply wrong. It fails to address the big picture. In real estate, the “conversion” is proceeded by multiple touch points of exposure. Those touch points can include print advertising, direct mail, email, a phone call and yes, social media. Each exposure, each touch, each conversation, plays a significant role in helping the customer move from awareness of the “product”, whether that’s a house or an agent, to the intention to “buy.”

The key to evaluating the merit of any tool, social media or otherwise, is understanding where that tool (and the behaviors it facilitates) fits in the acquisition, persuasion and conversion cycle. Focusing on conversion alone will simply result in a lack of investment in acquisition- or persuasion-oriented initiatives. Just as an unbalanced focus on acquisition initiatives will result in a lack of investment in conversion tools and behaviors.

Marry that with the absence of a clear marketing goal (even the simplest of goals) and poor to no analytics and you have a recipe for disaster. In the business environment, engaging in any activity without an understanding of what you hope to achieve as a result of that activity makes it impossible to measure the success of that activity. The goal can be as simple as “lead people to my blog post.” That’s measurable. Did my efforts lead people to my blog post or not? Did my advertising bring more visitors, did organic search bring more visitors or did my tweets bring more visitors? How do I make sure I can measure the impact of each effort? And that can’t be the end. There has to be some understanding of a path to conversion. After they came, who stayed longer? Which channel moved more visitors to the next step in my conversion process? Do I know what that next step is? Subscribe to my blog? Search my IDX? What is it?

Tools Are Just Tools

Tools aren’t strategy. Tools aren’t behavior. Tools don’t do anything without someone using them. Some use them well. Some don’t. Some tools probably shouldn’t be used for business at all. And in a business context all tools are worthless without a plan. Where do the different tools and behaviors fit for you? Where does Twitter fit into the cycle? What about Facebook? Where does advertising fit? Where does your phone fit into the cycle?

And, by the way, do you know the ROI of your phone?

Tags: foursquare, game, measurment, roi, social medai, tools
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | 14 Comments »

The Lure Of The Shiny Object

November 25th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Some very well meaning, very smart people are being distracted by the lure of shiny objects. And they are distracting others in the process.

The sexiness of the social media space and the desire to see an immediate return on the time investment required to access it, has created an atmosphere ripe for solutions to problems that don’t really exist. Example: Tweetlister.

Tweetlister launched in May of 2009. It allows the “tweeting” of real estate listings into a user’s Twitter stream. It gives real estate agents the ability to “post and re-use as many listings as you want.”

Funny, I thought Twitter already gave them that ability.

My first response, six months ago, came in the form of a tweet. I said, “Here’s an example of a solution in search of a problem if I’ve ever seen one.” And this was all I intended to write about it. Besides, Nicole Nicolay had already done a good job of exposing the shiny object.

But it didn’t go away. This private twitter conversation, a few weeks later, should have given me a clue that this would be a very distracting shiny object. It was sent to me by an extremely bright executive from one of the largest real estate companies in America.

Them: “Good concept – I definitely see this tool being abused.”

Me: Why is it a good concept? Why would you want to push people to yet another 3rd party listing site? Why not your own?”

Them: “That was a duh moment when I read your response. I’m a twitter newbie. Still learning & having fun. Thanks for the schooling.”

That wasn’t schooling. I didn’t teach them anything they didn’t know already. I just wasn’t distracted by the shiny object and simply asked a few questions to make sure there was something worth biting on the hook. But several very smart people, people I resprect and also call friends, did bite. And then they told their friends to bite. They’re still biting.

I posed the following question on the post linked above; “Your listings are probably already on your site or your blog. If you really want to automate, you could use Tweetlater (or Hootsuite or Objective Marketer or CoTweet) and set up a similar kind of schedule. Then the links would come straight to you. This just gets in the way, IMHO.” Agents could be leading buyers to their site and to their IDX search, but instead they are tweeting away and leading them to a search site they have no control over, one that is not a destination search site and one that could easily lead the buyer to another agent. And they are paying $9.95 a month for that right. I still don’t get it.

I’ve been thinking about this for six months. Why do smart people spend so much time leading people away from the sites they own? Why aren’t people employing a more focused hub and spoke approach to how they use social media? Why aren’t brokers providing more intelligent tools to help their agents?

That thinking has lead me in several directions, one of them being how the real estate virtual tour business works and how we do things at Real Estate Shows. The result of my thinking? Real Estate Shows needs to get out of the middle of the real estate transaction to the greatest extent possible. When consumers search on sites like Trulia and Zillow and Realtor.com, if they click on a link to a virtual tour, it should lead to a site owned by the real estate agent, not to yet another third party site.

How do we do that? I have a few ideas, but this post is already too long. The answer lies in being more intelligent with how our links work and becoming invisible to the consumer. More to come.

Tags: cotweet, hootsuite, objective marketer, questions, Social Media, strategy, Twitter
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Consulting, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Using Social Media To Strengthen Your Brand

August 17th, 2009 - Bill Leider

Ever since the word brand (a noun) was expanded to branding (a verb) interpretive misunderstandings about what “brand” and “branding” really are have multiplied. Various self-proclaimed gurus (consultants above criticism) have written about the sins of misguided “branding.” Unfortunately, too often, they themselves didn’t know what a brand or branding were either. So they just added to the confusion and the body of misconceptions masquerading as wisdom.

Simply stated, your “Brand” (the noun) can be defined as what you deliver and how you deliver it. The quality of your Brand is determined by how closely aligned the experiences of your customers are between what they expect vs. what they get.

Every single thing you, as an organization, do or don’t do factors into the equation of brand definition and brand strength. That goes way beyond advertising, marketing and sales.

Branding (the verb) is about two things:

Spreading the word about who and what you are; getting and keeping your name out there. It creates name recognition, top of mind and back of mind awareness; and
Making promises and creating expectations in the minds of your current and potential customers. It is supposed to increase sales (duh).

Advertising and ad campaigns do not strengthen brands.

They build awareness, they communicate promises and create expectations. They can be clever, cute, creative, entertaining, informational, confrontational, sexy and more. But they do not strengthen Brands. Brands are strengthened when the promises are kept, when peoples’ expectations are met or exceeded. Brand strengthening is experiential. Advertising is informational.

Enter Social Media. It presents a powerful opportunity. If you develop and execute a sound Social Media strategy you can cost effectively strengthen and support your Brand and improve the effectiveness of your Branding.

Here are some things to consider.

Develop a comprehensive Social Media strategy. If you don’t have a well-thought out strategy, what you have is a hobby. The odds of achieving financial success with a hobby are similar to those for winning the lottery.
• Your strategy should be broad and deep. In other words it must encompass more than building name recognition and trying to increase sales. Think about how you can use Social Media to engage your customers and prospects in meaningful discussions about what they want from you: your products; your product support; new products/services and new features. Enable your customers to tell you about their experiences with your “Brand:” what they like and what they don’t like. Listen. Respond. Do it publicly. Transparency is the path to trust. Use the information you get to improve, to fix what is broken and to build on what works well.
• Determine whom you want to engage? What do you want to discuss and learn? What outcomes/results do you want to achieve?
Coordinate and integrate Social Media with all other forms of marketing going on in your organization. Take into account the behavioral/cultural changes that you must effect in this process.
Transition your culture to embrace transparency. This is much easier said than done. But consider that much of the information that for centuries was deemed confidential is now considered public. People want to be part of an ongoing dialog. They want to know what is happening. They want to participate in and help shape discussions, and more. If they don’t like where the conversation is going, they want the power to shift it. Let them – or they will leave. Social Media is not about pushing your message down the throats of your audience. It is about conversations. It is about you learning by listening.
Choose your Social Media platforms and your communication programs and processes with all of the above in mind. Technology just provides the tools. Knowing which tools to use should come as a result of first determining all of the elements above. Don’t be seduced by the buzz of tech toys. Letting the hype about any particular piece of technology make your decisions for you is orchestrating frustration at best and disaster at worst.

Social Media should not replace or compete with anything you currently do that works effectively and profitably. Done well, it should enrich everything.

Tags: brand, branding, Social Media, strategy
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | No Comments »

Being An Effective Writer In The Social Media Realm

August 1st, 2009 - Bill Leider

Multi-tasking makes contemplation impossible. In today’s world, people who don’t multi-task are deemed retarded. Taking the time to search for deeper meanings is becoming obsolete.

Peoples’ concentration levels leave no room for expansive exploration. Bullet point bluntness has replaced the expansive paragraph.

Social media readers like to absorb bits of data. The value of that data is determined by its relevance to the immediate needs and whims of its readers. A presentation longer than a page is the Social Media equivalent of War And Peace. This is the environment in which the Social Media participant must become effective, relevant and read.

Talent is not required.

The good news in all of this is that writing talent is not required for success. Authenticity, brevity and relevance rule. People do not use Social Media to have a literary experience. They use it to connect to others. Successful Social Media people are not judged by their writing skills. They are judged by their ability to connect with people.

If you are reluctant to engage in Social Media because you say you are not a good writer, you need to find a new excuse. That one is simply inaccurate.

Clear thinking is required.

So here’s a better reason. You might be a fuzzy thinker. You may find it difficult to write your thoughts clearly and concisely. That is not because you’re a bad writer. It’s because your thoughts are not well organized, they don’t flow logically and often they are not convincing.

Being a fuzzy thinker does NOT mean that you are not intelligent. You can be intelligent, capable, do a good job and still be a fuzzy thinker.

Being a fuzzy thinker simply means that you are not always able to clearly write what you really want to say. It means that you have some trouble putting on paper what you are thinking. You have a thought in your head and somehow you can’t get it from your head to the paper in a way that makes sense and that succinctly reflects what you want to say. That happens to many people.

For people who fit this description, there is another aspect to acknowledge. The fact that one cannot put certain thoughts into written words indicates that the thoughts themselves are not clear. In other words, you don’t really have a handle on your idea, or opinion, or thought. Don’t blame your writing skills.

If you are one of those people, chances are you have been that way for some time. And you probably find yourself in situations where you are required talk to others and you find yourself taking longer than needed to make your point or to be clearly understood. You might eventually say what you need to say, get everyone to understand and you accomplish your goal for the conversation. But it is not as crisp and dynamic as you might like.

If any of this describes you or even sometimes describes you, it is impeding your success. It is preventing you from achieving more. The good news is that there is a cure for this condition.

Write.

Do the very thing that you claim you cannot do. Write to yourself. You don’t have to publish everything you write. Just do it. If you don’t like it, throw it away. Write something every day. Even if you have nothing to say, write about the frustration of having nothing to say.

Over time, you will experience a stunning change. Your thoughts will become clearer. Your arguments will become more compelling. You will become a more successful oral presenter, not to mention a more easily understood writer.

Being understood, being authentic, writing something that brings value to your audience – these are the attributes that will make you successful in the Social Media realm. The only thing delaying you is finding your will to do it. I’ll be writing more on the process in future posts. Stay tuned.

In the meantime – write something.

Tags: authenticity, Social Media, thinking, writing
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | No Comments »

Looking At Problems Differently

June 6th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

I have known and worked with Bill Leider for almost two decades.

Bill Leider Doing New York Times Sunday Crossword

We share a common set of values, yet we are nothing alike. When we returned from our recent trip to Philadelphia, where both Bill and I served as advisors to The Social Media Marketing Institute, the photo on the right jumped out at me.

As is his practice, he prints out the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles and brings them with him on trips. The New York Times crossword puzzles are considered some of the trickiest puzzles around. Bill can rip through these crossword puzzles faster than anyone I’ve ever met.

I realized something important as I looked at this photo. The crossword puzzles are the perfect illustration of what makes Bill so good at breaking down business problems and helping companies solve them in ways that produce exceptional results.

Solving a crossword puzzle requires a good understanding of crossword conventions, puzzle logic and a broad general knowledge (vocabulary, literature, culture, art, sciences, geography, etc.). You can learn the conventions and logic relatively quickly, but the general knowledge is what separates the men from the boys. All the tricks and techniques in the world won’t help you solve the puzzles if you’re lacking the general knowledge and the ability to tie them all together.

Bill’s unwillingness to accept the first answer, the answer everyone can see, can be frustrating to some. But first answers often relate to symptoms, not the true, underlying issue or opportunity. I know in our early dealings, I found myself wanting to strangle him. Truth be told, I still do. But what always comes from his ability to see the hidden clues, from his creative approach to asking questions, from his desire to “solve the puzzle,” is a unique perspective on every situation. Even his “wrong” answers and seemingly unrelated questions open your eyes to new possibilities. They help you figure out the clues to solving your own puzzles.

If you’re willing.

Tags: crossword, puzzle, solve, strategy
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Consulting | No Comments »

Waltzing To A Samba – The Real World Realities Of Changing Your Organization

May 12th, 2009 - Bill Leider

Today you have before you a dizzying, dazzling, daunting array of new platforms, tools and techniques for changing the way you do business.

Conferences all over the country, blogs from every corner of the world are filled with the voices of revolutionary thinkers telling you how to blow up your company, start over with a clean sheet of paper and build the dream organization of tomorrow.

I don’t hear the visionaries talking about what you should do with the organization you already have; the one you spent years building; the one in which you have a significant investment; the one that you rely on for your financial and emotional sustenance.

We also have a body of experts telling you how to defend and sustain the status quo: how your message about your value proposition can be repositioned so that doing what you’ve always done for the prices you’ve traditionally charged will suddenly seem appealing to the public. A slick new web site, a new ad campaign and life is good. Comfort food for the delusional.

I don’t hear any meaningful talk about transition; that fear filled journey from current reality into the unknown and out the other side to a more successful future.

Let’s consider just three basic elements of your present reality:

Your current fixed costs:
You have leases or mortgage payments on your premises. You cannot wish them away because you went to a workshop and imagined the brokerage of the future. So assuming you want to redesign your traditional brick and mortar presence into something better attuned to emerging consumer wants and needs, then time – transition time – must become a part of your thinking and planning.

While you are waiting (and perhaps negotiating yourself out of some current leases) the question arises, what do you do during this fixed cost transition period? How do you blend your message and image and structure of the future with the physical and financial realities of the present? Surely, not everything you’re doing is bad, obsolete or unprofitable, as some of the pundits would have you believe. The world as you know it is not going to crash and burn in the next few months.

Your current culture:
You have people: Realtors/agents; administrative staff; marketing people; technology people. In all probability your Realtors are diverse in their views and their business methods. Some embrace the Internet, some cringe at having to turn on their computers. Some of the cringers may be your highest producers. Some of those skilled in the new technologies may lack the interpersonal skills to achieve great financial results. They all pay desk fees. They all carry business cards with your name on them. They all define who you are.

Over time you have created, both consciously and unconsciously, an organizational culture/dynamic, an established way of doing and being and interacting and getting things done and communicating and helping one another. You cannot take that cultural dynamic for granted and assume that it will sort itself out through a period of profound change.

Your current market(s) and customers:
The demographics and behaviors of your markets and customers will weigh significantly on how and at what pace you transform your business model. Not everyone wants to radically change. Not everyone will decide to do or not do business with you based on whether or not your company embodies the form and practices of the company of the future. Certainly some will. But how many? How quickly? What is the speed of the trend toward change? When do you reach the “tipping point?”

At the end of the day, the real value you deliver lies in helping people buy homes that meet their lifestyle and financial needs and sell homes at optimum prices in acceptable time frames. Everything else should support that value proposition.

You must protect and enhance your Brand. You must grow. You must optimize your bottom line. Your agents must do the same, for themselves and for the organization.

What does all this mean?
Change for change’s sake has never made good business sense. Self proclaimed “visionaries” who tell you to destroy what you have built because fashion dictates it have probably never run a successful company over a long period of time.

Still, you cannot ignore the winds of change. You cannot deny that technology is altering lives and life styles and the ways in which people engage, connect, form relationships and transact business. You cannot ignore shifting demographics and the resultant changes in the behaviors of the people who are spending their money to buy what you offer.

All of it demands that you, as a leader, use a well-reasoned sense of balance. You achieve that balance by choosing and investing in the right elements of the “new wave” of thought, of technology, of behavior – elements that will not destroy you in the process of transforming you.

One of those leading edge elements that can help you reshape your business is Social Media. Social Media offers an array of new engagement tools, creative behavioral approaches and cultural change mechanisms that can have a profound, positive impact on creativity and results without trampling on what is tried, true and effective. Social Media requires only a small financial investment and, executed correctly, a modest investment of time.

Most importantly, Social Media is not a fad.

Social Media is here to stay. And Social Media can become a hands-on, experiential metaphor for a variety of new behaviors that will define the organization of tomorrow, both inside and outside the Social Media world. In upcoming articles, we will discuss why all that is so and how to use Social Media effectively.

Stay tuned.

Tags: Change Management, strategy, transition
Posted in Blog, Change Management, Consulting | No Comments »

Tried And True Answers Don’t Get Deep Enough

March 15th, 2009 - Bill Leider

Why don’t more Realtors use the Internet more effectively to gain more clients, do more transactions and earn more money?

Are the majority of established Realtors just so fearful and stubbornly defiant that they won’t embrace Internet marketing even if resisting it could mean their demise?

I say the majority of Realtors because whenever I poke around various search portals to see how Internet listing presentations appear, most of them are pathetically weak. They contain one photo of the front of the home/condo, perhaps a few still photos of the interior, or not, bland descriptions of the property that are stylistic relics of MLS postings from the days when only Realtors could access the MLS. There is nothing to stir emotions and heighten the interest of potential buyers.

Would these resisters rather die (financially) than change? The standard answer is that people normally resist change and that generally speaking, the strength of their resistance increases with age and experience.

But is there more to it than that? Do these Realtors know something that the techie, product peddling, “solutions” savants haven’t figured out? Perhaps.

The Nash Equilibrium

In his new book, “The Mind Of The Market,” Michael Shermer writes:

“Technically speaking, staying with the old technology may sometimes be what is called a Nash equilibrium, a concept identified by the Nobel laureate mathematician John Nash (immortalized in the film A Beautiful Mind).”

“Applied to economics, markets reach a point of equilibrium where holding on to strategies is more profitable (or at least is perceived to be so) than switching strategies; thus, industries, corporations, businesses, and people reach a point of stability in which switching strategies appears undesirable.”

The application of this message for many Realtors is that their current strategies and actions regarding how they use or ignore the Internet may be due to their perception of having achieved market equilibrium. These Realtors believe that switching their strategies to embrace the Internet and to invest in building a strong, vibrant Internet presence/campaign would offer either no advantage or a disadvantage.

How did they form that belief?

To reach this equilibrium, Realtors must believe that: the right price is the driving factor in selling a home; adequate information about the listing is effectively disseminated through traditional channels, i.e. the MLS; buyer behavior is driven by a need to find a home at a price that represents good value; and buyers will endure whatever “theatrical” shortcomings exist in Internet presentations to find their homes.

Based on those beliefs, it follows that there would be no advantage in becoming champions of Internet marketing since all listed homes will sell with or without strong Internet marketing once the right price is established and disseminated through pre-Internet channels.

The disadvantage (to Realtors) would be making an investment of time and money on a new strategy that will not yield any return on investment and will take away time better spent on historic marketing practices.

The “proof” of this perception is the data showing that all houses eventually sell with or without an appealing Internet marketing campaign. When a house doesn’t sell for a given period of time, the seller, with input from the listing agent, simply lowers the price until the house sells. Therefore, the only significant variable in selling or not selling any given home must be its price.

If these same Realtors are getting their desired results or if their results are no worse than those they achieved before the new technology (the Internet) was introduced, they would conclude that the new technology has no effect on their outcomes and their incomes.

The perceived existence of this Nash equilibrium further strengthens peoples’ normal resistance to embracing and utilizing the Internet. So after at least 3 years of preaching and teaching and prodding by NAR and by many Real Estate companies, not to mention the many vendors who sell Internet tools and solutions, the rate of widespread adoption is somewhere between glacial and non-existent.

Solutions

The approach to helping Realtors change begins with developing a deeper understanding of why they are stuck.

The typical explanations that I hear from Brokers I’ve spoken to are inadequate. Answers such as, “Oh, people resist change. That’s normal. Eventually they’ll come around or they’ll retire and their younger replacements will embrace the Internet.” Or, “You know how it is, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Or, “These Realtors are independent contractors. If they don’t want to change, I can’t force them. And as long as they’re paying their desk fees and expenses, that’s good enough.”

I suggest that Brokers and management executives begin to dialog with Realtors about what the Realtors who do not embrace the Internet see as the justification for maintaining the status quo. Don’t focus on overcoming their resistance. Instead, dwell on what those Realtors see as the advantages of remaining unchanged. Learn whether and to what extent there exists in your organization a Nash equilibrium and how widespread it is.

That knowledge will help you develop a better foundation for making widespread change effective, sustainable and profitable.

In our next posts, I will discuss other elements that influence resistance to change: consumer apathy and cognitive dissonance. And I will examine some approaches you can employ to strengthen your ability to lead and transform your culture.

From there we’ll move to an important reality of today’s market – the existence of two distinctly different consumer populations and how to effectively address them both.

Tags: Change Management, dissonance, equilibrium, nash equilibrium
Posted in Blog, Change Management, Consulting | 2 Comments »

Real Estate Is A Business – It’s For Grown-Ups Who Understand How Business Works

February 26th, 2009 - Bill Leider

Even though I’m not a Realtor I hear about situations daily involving Internet marketing that have me scratching my head and asking myself, “Does that Realtor understand that they are running a business? And does he/she understand what a good business person ought to focus on in making solid, thoughtful decisions?”

For the purposes of this post, I’ll ignore the zillions of situations where no Internet marketing is done at all and focus only on those where I wonder what the people were thinking when they decided how to market on the Internet.

For me, three fundamental areas of concern emerge:

1. Products and programs should be evaluated and used based on their effectiveness in producing bottom line results – not on coolness.

Many of the tech driven products being introduced today emphasize a certain “cool” factor. Their advertised unique selling proposition (USP) is their “coolness.”
Oftentimes Realtors buy them on that basis – coolness – without analyzing how that product/service will contribute to their bottom line and to achieving their clients’ goals.
Realtors should be asking some fundamental business questions to guide their decisions about what products and services to use in effectively marketing themselves and the homes they represent? Here are some:
What should be my marketing budget – a different question than “how little can I spend?”
What expenditures on what approaches are most likely to yield the best result (i.e. achieve the clients goals). The correct answer to that question is almost always the best investment choice.
Who is the target audience for this home?
What kind of message and presentation most appeals to that audience?
Based on pricing and other factors, how long will it likely take to sell this home?
If I think the house will be on the market for an extended amount of time, what kind of flexibility does that call for in my Internet marketing?
How does that impact my marketing budget and my marketing approach?
What tools and techniques are best for this property?

2. Realtors – at least the good ones – should focus on helping clients achieve their goals and on building their business – not on foisting new toys on people because they represent the latest techno wet dream. That begs the question, what is a home? To me, a home is a place to:

Raise your children; feel safe; entertain; dream; relax; putter; create memories; build equity; and express your life style.
For most people it’s the largest investment and the biggest asset they will own in their lifetime.
A home, unlike a California marriage, is not something that you’re going to trade in next year if you grow tired of it or if something better comes along.
When people search for a home they want their senses and emotions caressed and massaged, they don’t want them assaulted. They want to feel an intimate connection. They’re not looking for a rock concert rush.

3. Ultimately success is measured on sustained profitability – not on how often one can introduce the latest techie toy, or continue to use outmoded, ineffective advertising approaches. Selling real estate is about reaching people, building trust and creating sustainable relationships. It’s about being creative, timely, relevant and focused on profitable results – for clients and Realtors.

As a professional, Realtors must know more than their clients about what will work best to sell homes. Many of today’s consumers are more tech and information savvy than most Realtors. That doesn’t automatically make them better marketers.

I believe that many Realtors roll over and bow to clients’ unwise wishes simply because they don’t know enough or have the confidence to advise clients about alternatives. The attitude of, “hey, I know it’s wrong, but the client wants it and I never disagree with a client” might win a few battles but it’s a recipe for losing the war.

Most people want professional advice confidently and knowledgably offered by the people they hire. That’s why they hired you. Any given client can tell their Realtor that they want a particular Internet or print media presentation. At that point it’s the Realtor’s responsibility to diplomatically determine exactly why the client wants that approach, and, if their reasons don’t make for good marketing, to point out better approaches to reaching the market and selling the home.

I believe that if more Realtors focus on some business basics (like the 3 above) then:

Selling real estate will look and feel more like a responsible business to more consumers;
Realtors, in the aggregate, will be more highly respected; and
More Realtors will increase their bottom line income.

Posted in Blog, Commentary, Consulting | 1 Comment »

A Different Approach To Change

February 28th, 2008 - Jeff Turner

This audio was prompted by Ben Martin’s “Snap Wrap” of the Society of National Association Publications Lunch & Learn from yesterday afternoon. Listen to Ben’s original message here. It should be noted that Ben engaged in a battle to get REALTOR® participation in the Virginia Association of REALTORS® new blogging and social media efforts. And he’s done an excellent job moving them forward.

I’m hoping my thoughts here will help him move them further.

Tags: change, realtors
Posted in Blog, Change Management, Consulting | No Comments »