What Are You Doing To Make The Phone Ring?
Defending Full-Service Business Models Part 5

By Bernice Ross

ull service brokers are desperate to reverse commissionectomy trend. Provided they can get in front of the seller, many agents do an excellent job in articulating the value of full service brokerage. The challenge is making the phone ring. Due to heavy market competition, mailing or relying on referrals is not enough. To reverse the commissionectomy trend, you must be more aggressive and offer more value than ever before.

Several days ago, I received an email from one of the agents I interviewed for Waging War on Real Estate’s Discounters. Barb Van Stensel is having no trouble convincing people to pay her a full commission. In fact, when there is a divorce or a sticky problem that will require a considerable amount of her time, Barb often charges more. Clients are willing to pay her more because of the value she provides. Barb’s strategy for making the phone ring illustrates what is required to compete successfully and turn the commissionectomy tide. Rather than spending all her money mailing postcards and/or letters, she allocates her marketing budget over a number of various resources. Here’s what she does as well as some of the associated costs:

When sellers list with me, I market their property using the following tools:

1. Their property is listed on Realtor.com, my personal website, our office website, and our national website.

2. I also advertise on Yahoo Real Estate ($49.00), Ebay ($200.00), and on Craigslist.

3. I run a classified ad in the Chicago Tribune every week ($50.00 per week). I tried the photo display ads in the Tribune and those didn’t work well at all.

4. I advertise in our local paper as well. Our local paper actually generates more leads than the Tribune ($35.00 per week).

5. I distribute 600 brochures to the agents in the area where the listing is located ($54.00)

6. I also mail flyers to potential move-up buyers in the surrounding areas.

7. I use AgencyLogic.com (it’s awesome!) to create a website using the property address as the URL ($99.00 per listing). I’m not charged for the service unless I obtain the listing.

7. Instead of using a brochure box, I have laminated business cards with the property’s website address and my contact information.

8. I love written open house invitations as a way to invite people to attend our open houses.

9. I attach a squiggle pin to every color brochure packet at each of my listings.

10. When I take a listing, I send a laminated photo and description of the property to the 400 people in my sphere with the phrase “just listed,” “under contract” or “just sold.”

11. I publish a bi-monthly newsletter aimed to assist AARP members who are buying or selling.

12. I also do homeowner’s workshops for people who want to exchange into investment properties or who want to downsize.

There are a number of important things to note about Barb’s strategies. First, she uses both traditional and web-based marketing tools. There has been a tremendous shift in advertising from print publications to the web. In fact, in areas where the local newspaper offers an on-line advertising section, most real estate advertising has shifted to this area because this is where the buyers and sellers are nowsearching. Nevertheless, classified ads and ads in Barb’s local paper are still generating calls.

Secondly, note that Barb is tracking results. A major mistakemany agentsmake is advertising without tracking how many leads their advertising generates. The easiest way to do tracking is to use an 800 Call Capture (IVR) system. With these systems, you not only get the phone numbers of over ninety percent of the people who call on your listings, you can also tell which ads and which advertising media produce results. Most systems provide you with 1000 mailboxes. You assign a different code to each listing plus codes for web, print, and sign advertising. As a result, you can eliminate ads that don’t work and concentrate your marketing dollars where you will receive the greatest amount of return.

Third, while Barb does use some passive types of advertising (newspapers and web), notice that these are balanced with a host of face-to-face activities. Barb actively prospects for listings and buyers by personally inviting people to attend her open houses. She uses a written invitation as part of her face-to-face prospecting. She also conducts live workshops for investors and for people who want to downsize. This strategy taps into the huge pool of investment buyers as well as to very lucrative baby boomers who are now selling their larger homes. Many boomers are downsizing and are using their sale proceeds to buy investments.

If you want full commissions in the future, you will need to do much more than in the past. The days of the 5 P’s (Put a sign in the front yard, post it on the MLS, place an ad in the paper, put it on the web, and pray it sells) are gone. To make your phone ring, you must aggressively market in a variety of advertising media. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long time between phone calls and closed transactions.

Written by Bernice Ross for Inman News.

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Tips For Gaining Home Seller Trust
Using Memorized Scripts For Real Estate

By Howard Brinton

o often, buyers and sellers interrupt the flow of even the best presentations with very difficult questions. However, memorized scripts, delivered in a conversational style, are effective tools that help agents keep control of a sales situation, no matter what the customer's state of mind. It can be a witty answer, a story or an example you use to help a client gain perspective, factual information your client needs to make a decision, or a carefully phrased question that helps you understand your client's needs. Here are a few scripts that every Realtor should have in when working with sellers.

The Kodak Moment

“This is my Kodak moment for the house. This is your opportunity to present the house to me. I need to be the most educated individual about your house, second only to you. This is your opportunity to guide me through the house and tell me everything you have done during your tenure in this home to create value for your property. I want to know everything from the can of paint to the new roof, to the new central air or heat or whatever you have done. I want to know four things: the work you have done to the house, when you did it, who did the work and what you spent. I want to be able to show to the buyers, and the other Realtors, the actual dollar value that your home is offering over the other opportunities that are in competition with your home. That is how we are going to create that extra value that we are looking for in this market.”

Permission to Sell Quickly

“One of the things I need to ask you is permission to sell your house today. As a real estate agent, I'm darned if I do and darned if I don't. If I take six months to sell the house, you're mad at me and think I didn't get enough money and you don't want to pay me. I'm in a dilemma because I know you want me to sell the house. If I have an agent who has a buyer tomorrow, I need permission from you to tell him to go ahead and sell it, because I don't want you to be mad at me. I would rather wait six months so you're happy with me, then we'll bring in the buyer. I don't want to be paid until you are happy with me. Can we sell tomorrow?”

Your House Must Sell Three Times

“Mr./Ms. Seller, when we put your home on the market, it has to be sold three times. The first sale is to my peers, the other Realtors, who are in the market every day. They need to be excited about the price or they simply ignore the listing because it's often a waste of their time to show it to buyers who won't pay that price. The second sale is to the buyer, and they compare your home to the others they're looking at in the marketplace. The third sale is to the appraiser for the bank. Even if we're lucky enough to get a higher than market price from a buyer, the appraiser compares the sale with these same past sales we've reviewed and their appraisal usually hits right at the market price. Now I've got to ask you, if you bought a home and the appraisal came in lower than what you paid, what would you do? (Response) I'll tell you what normally happens. The deal falls through and we fall right back to the drawing board and begin the process again. How would you feel about that?"

The Dollar Bill Analogy

(Lay two dollar bills out—one wrinkly and old, and one crisp and new)
"If you could only take one of these, which one would you choose?"
(It's always the crisp, clean one).

"That's exactly what happens with your home, Mr./Ms. Seller. The buyer will choose the cleaner one, because it looks better, and has more functionality (pop machines, change machines). We've got to get your home dressed up and looking good. Does that make sense?"

"Why Is There a Transaction Fee?"

"What this does is allow us to have someone who's specifically assigned to close your home. The most difficult time in the process of selling your home is from the time it goes under contract to the time it closes, and we have someone who watches that every day. This allows us to do that."

Using the right words in a selling situation is like using the right prescription for a patient--it works. If you would like to add more scripts to your repertoire, you can sign up for a free script-of-the-day at www.GoStarPower.com/Resource.

Copyright 2006 Inman News

Written by Howard Brintonfor Inman News.

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