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I wrote this in a comment a couple of weeks ago:

Everything we’re doing on-line emerges from the points of this star:

* engenu — rapid web site development
* encartus — elaborate custom Google maps
* Scenius — dynamic blogs-within-blogs
* ScentTrail — CRMishness with transaction management
* FlexMLS and the FlexMLS API — very robust MLS search

There is now a sixth point in our star: Praxis. I had an appointment cancel today, and I wrote the whole thing in just under five hours — while juggling all my usual eggs.

Although there is less editorial control than with engenu, now anyone we might add to our staff can create very professional looking web pages on the fly, with essentially no knowledge of how a web page goes together. Supplemented with other software (e.g., ScentTrail), I have the ability to create whatever I want with virtually no effort.

We hosted BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix twice, two years in a row. For both years, my local competitors made a big point of insisting that I have nothing to teach them. Perhaps they’re right. The only regular user of engenu I know of is Teri Lussier. Scenius has one fan, Cheryl Johnson. And only Cathleen and I are using encartus.

This seems a shame to me, but I’m the real estate business, not the software business. My belief is that the software I have written makes us much, much stronger as Realtors. We have tremendous marketing leverage for just two people.

But Praxis compounds that leverage a thousand-fold. I can do anything I want. I think I can take on anyone, including the Realty.bots. I’m convinced I can take whatever turf I want in Metropolitan Phoenix.

I don’t know when or where we’re going to do Unchained the next time. But I won’t be teaching Praxis, in any case. Even so, I have an idea that my local competitors may come to regret not having studied what I have to teach when they had the chance.

I’m an addict.   I’m addicted to drama. To feeling necessary, to the hustle, and to the grind.  I have heard 3 bloodhounds separately say “putting out fires,” recently.

And to that I say: why?  And to myself I say, why.

Here’s the thing: even though we’re living through a paperwork-fight-to the death with the Government, we still have quite predictable businesses that lend themselves to systemization.  I broke out of the pack as a mortgage lender when I tried to get every single file “clear to close” on the first pass.  It was more work up front, but in 2007 (after the ‘crisis’s’  first act) I had a great year.  Doubled my 06 volume.

Why?  Because if an underwriter ever “stipped” me, I’d add meeting that stip to my checklist and solve the problem.  I required title companies to send a HUD-1 on DAY-1, and if they were picked a fight, it was easy to get them to take the 10 minutes to estimate taxes, etc.

This process was the only way I survived, and the only way the carnage from my tax stuff wasn’t worse than it was.

Which is to say this: we can become anticipatory in our businesses.  We can learn how to figure out what customers need, and how to serve them.

But, we have to give up our “superman” ethos.  Most house problems were caused by the Realtor/Lender/Whomever having a terrible process.  Most of them were caused by someone acting clueless.  ”We need a termite inspection?  Really, man, the underwriter pulled THAT out of nowhere.”

We have more power than we realize.  We can systematize a transaction so it goes like clockwork.  So it’s “artisan” quality, in lieu of “call center” quality.   When we pursue operational excellence, then what happens?

Our clients notice a difference.

We notice a difference and are more proud of our work.

There are no “fires” to put out.

So, in lieu of going after the drama we manufacture, we can make more drama by throwing ourselves at Jeff Brown Challenges, or Greg Seinfeld Chains.

“What do you learn” with every file.

“What caused a delay” with every file.

“What gave the customer pause” with every file.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

HUD announces it’s “First Look” program today:

The National First Look Program is a first-ever public-private partnership agreement between HUD and the National Community Stabilization Trust (Stabilization Trust). In collaboration with national servicers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, the First Look program is intended to give communities participating in HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) a brief exclusive opportunity to purchase bank-owned properties in certain neighborhoods so these homes can either be rehabilitated, rented, resold or demolished.

On the surface, it sounds idealistic.  Who would be against local stakeholders being afforded the opportunity to improve their communities?  Don’t private investors do that, though? Maybe this program is targeted at those properties which even the scavengers avoid.

HUD’s NSP grantees, which include state and local governments and non-profit organizations, often find themselves competing with private investors for real estate-owned (REO) properties, which can hinder their efforts to stabilize neighborhoods with high foreclosure activity. With today’s announcement, HUD and the Stabilization Trust, working with national servicers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, will standardize the acquisition process for NSP grantees, giving them an exclusive option to purchase foreclosed upon homes in certain targeted neighborhoods.

Huh?  Competition is the engine which drives a functioning market.  This means that a government agency will specifically eliminate competition and deliberately sock banks with a loss.  How is THAT good?

HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program was created to address the housing crisis, create jobs, and grow local economies by providing communities with the resources to purchase and rehabilitate vacant homes. NSP grants are helping state and local governments, as well as non-profit developers, acquire land and property; demolish or rehabilitate abandoned properties; and/or offer downpayment and closing cost assistance to low- to middle-income homebuyers. Grantees can also stabilize neighborhoods by creating “land banks” to assemble, temporarily manage, and dispose of foreclosed homes. To date, HUD has allocated nearly $6 billion in funding to state and local governments and non-profit housing developments. In the coming weeks, HUD will allocate an additional $1 billion in NSP funding, which was provided through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  Here we go again.

From the New York Times, economist Karl Case of Case-Shiller fame says: Buy!

This financial crisis has made us all too aware that we live in a Catch-22 world: the performance of the housing market drives the economy, and the performance of the economy drives the housing market. But housing has perhaps never been a better bargain, and sooner or later buyers will regain faith, inventories will shrink to reasonable levels, prices will rise and we’ll even start building again. The American dream is not dead — it’s just taking a well-deserved rest.

It’s hard not to love Jeff Brown’s prospecting challenge. But it’s kind of easy to note that most of us have not raised our hands to submit ourselves to its arduous benefits. It goes for me, too: If I have six hours to spare on any given day, I’m going to throw it at marketing — specifically software — not prospecting. Mainly, though, because our marketing is producing healthy results, I don’t have a lot of time to spare in any case.

Take note: I am not absolving you of anything. If you don’t have enough money work, and if you don’t have any money, prospecting will solve those two problems in very short order.

But whether or not you are running Jeff’s gauntlet, the kind of goal-achieving behavior we have been talking about is hugely beneficial — to your health, to your wealth and to your happiness.

So: Let’s set ourselves a challenge. Declare a worthwhile goal — prospecting, exercise, learning a new skill, etc. — and then jump in and actually do it for every day in September. You can use the don’t break the chain strategy I talked about yesterday. Here is a printer-ready September calendar.

Goal-setting is easy. It’s actually accomplishing your goals that is so hard. Between public declarations here, in the comments below, and that growing chain of red X’s, the month of September 2010 could mark a turning point in all of our lives.

I had a short sale get to approval this morning, which puts us one tiny deal away from a million-dollar September. We haven’t seen many million-dollar months since 2005, and it’s a harder target to hit than it was in those days. I’m loving where our business is going, and I feel like we might be just that close to the glide path. It’s been a hard road since the market turned, but it has been the dedicated — driven — dogged — pursuit of sales fundamentals that has put us back on the road to financial recovery.

Meanwhile, I’m loving the hardy souls who have taken up Jeff Brown’s prospecting challenge. Quoted below is a snip from a Lifehacker post we have talked about privately for a couple of years. The topic? If you want to master something, do it every day and don’t break the chain:

Years ago when Seinfeld was a new television show, Jerry Seinfeld was still a touring comic. At the time, I was hanging around clubs doing open mic nights and trying to learn the ropes. One night I was in the club where Seinfeld was working, and before he went on stage, I saw my chance. I had to ask Seinfeld if he had any tips for a young comic. What he told me was something that would benefit me a lifetime…

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.

He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

Over the years I’ve used his technique in many different areas. I’ve used it for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses.

It works because it isn’t the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard “inch by inch anything’s a cinch.” Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day.

Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don’t break the chain, you’ll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides “compounding interest.”

Before Teri Lussier became a recovering Twitaholic, she reTweeted a remark to the effect that, once you’ve made a habit of exercise, it’s hard to quit. To this I say: Bullshit. Exercising is the second easiest activity in the world to quit. What’s first? My guess would be prospecting — and getting yelled at and hung up on — every day.

But: Whether it’s exercise or prospecting or some other burdensome chore, if you fall in love with the idea of an unbroken chain of red X’s, you’ll find the time and the determination to get the job done. When you hear that first compliment or cash that first pay-check, things will get easier. But you know you want this job done, and the only obstacle between you and having done it is digging in and doing it.

Good hunting!

Since my last post and a couple of comments happened, I’ll scribble my basic lead gen/followup methodology down.  This changes all the time, and it’s the part of what I do that’s grinding/belly to belly/phone banging based.  That part gets me 35-45% of my business.  Another 35-45% comes from referrals/social media.  Roughly 10% is “pure” PPC/internet marketing stuff.

There are fuzzy lines everywhere–how do you categorize someone that was referred in by Greg Swann?  What of the person that opted in 16 months ago to a different product?  Anyway.

The excuse to call: I am resuming my webinars that teach my bareknuckle brand of internet marketing/salesmanship.   I invite people to these, for free. They are low key, soft selling events that have what I know.  At the end, I simply offer to “do it for your business for X.” These have done well for me in the past, and will do well for me again.  Twice a month is about as much as I can handle, and still be “on.”  I generally invite people here, or offer up one of my other contacts as a way to connect. “I have 1500 people on my fb….feel free to ask for an introduction to anyone.”

GenuineChris Axiom:  My efficiency at cold calling literally doubled when I stopped allowing anyone to try and buy on the first call. “Oh, you’re a lead? Great, gotta go, call ya later.”  ”Almost leads” talk your ear off on the initial call, but they never buy.    People that buy do so quickly.

The Next Part of The Equation- Your Goal: Your goal is not to convince a singular person to do ANYTHING on the first call.  I don’t set appointments.  I don’t troubleshoot.  I only wish to identify need.  If they have a need for us, THEY WILL SAY SO.  ”Do you have anything broken about your $thing_you_sell?”   You’re working the list. “Hey, we’ll see if I can help–mind if I call you back this afternoon?”  Why are you doing this?

Because you want to work your list. Getting through your list is where the value is.  You have a lead.   Act like you’ve been in the endzone before. You’ve got someone to call back. (There are scripts for this).  Your goal is to get through your list.   Contact 20 people, 3 need something.  Call the 3 back later and put them in a different (e.g. no longer cold calling) category.

Another thing: When you don’t oversell on the first call, you keep control of the relationship and they don’t treat you as a beggar.  You’re asking for zilch.  You’re not one of those Google Bot Monkeys that calls from the 425 area codes 3x daily, you’re the real deal.

More methods:

My Facebook is 1500 people.  Try to hit 2x yearly.  750/half = 375/quarter. 60 working days in an average quarter. 6.25 contacts/day. That’s enough for any friggin’ agent to sell 30 homes.  And you don’t have to harass, you’re just lookin’ for info.  No biggie, just info.  You’re cool and calm and it’s not a big deal, and you’re patently NOT selling.

I call people in about the following order:

1. People that Express an immediate need: Search.Twitter.Com “Know anyone + keywords,” “Need+ keywords, Recommend + keywords, help me +keywords” produces 4-5 good leads daily.
2. Friends/business contacts: I call people who know me.  Like in the above paragraph.  
3. Targeted Likely: For PC, political consultants are golden.  For FRB, it’s social media coaches.  Looking for killer “one-to-many” relationships.  These folks can send 2-3 sites/quarterly and I have several performing like clockwork.   Those are my “best customers,” generally.

Now, I do this in excel, and an assistant dumps everything into HEAP, firing the appropriate activity series.   I don’t do this because it distracts me.  I am only to be using the spreadsheet with callto links& skpye.

More methodology:  I have my FB contacts in an excel spreadsheet.  Of my 1506 contacts, 1191 have phone #’s listed, and we have phone #’s on another 100+.  This brings the calls/month down.  I separate the FB tabs, and I got it started over a month by adding  a letter of the alphabet each day.  Icky work, to be sure, but it was done once.  I average 50 randoms/monthly, so they get CRM’d a little more aggressively (those that  I add, I don’t send an autoresponder to).

That’s the system. More complex than necessary.  I have more complexity than this, but I’m draining my systems of complexity.  I want to be selling 3 hours a day.  We will get there.

Right now, there’s no real way to do business with me online.  This is not an accident–and I’ll get to the Jeff Brown section of the equation momentarily.  I’m redoing everything. We’ve not been marketing lately, because we’ve got to raise the standards of everything.

This won’t be interminable, we’ll be done with this at some point real soon.  Like this week.   I’ll be up on Tuesday or Wednesday (read Thursday or Friday) and this will certainly be the last ‘public iteration,’ that I ever go through.  I’ve got to end the “stay up all night and then roll the site back to how it was” school of doing things for myself.

A detail to peep at before it gets built into the shopping cart: what happens after people buy. This is one of many things that we’re rolling out, and it simply takes time. Making a sales channel that is tight, that makes and keeps promises and that is reasonably indifferent to the volume it handles.   I’m working back to front- from the customer experience in the first minute, day, 3 days 5 days.

Here’s the “thank you” page that most see the moment their credit card is processed.

http://flatratebiz.com/thank-you

There are a series of emails that go out in the first few days, and my illustrious customer service turk calls people within 2 business hours to restate the same stuff and welcome them to our team.  While I was waiting to get this done, I tore out my old shopping cart.  I am not sorry I did this because the project is moving faster.

Now: there is no way to do business with me but sales are not down.  Projects are getting done and delegated, my books are more or less kept (the bane of a small business for many reasons).   Revenue is coming in at the same clip it had been before.

Why?  Because I know what the hell I’m doing all the time.

As part of a fun & semiprivate project, a few of us wanted to get good at what we do for a living . I wanted to be more intense. We  joined forces to set good goals for the last part of the year, so we didn’t take the time between Halloween and St. Patty’s day off.   We wanted to know: what do we do?

So I got a service called “RescueTime.”  And it’s remarkable. 3 weeks on it, and I’m more productive–maybe by an order of magnitude.  It’s the “spouse in the room,” that Jeff wanted.  ”26 Minutes?  Reading Klosterman?  You don’t even like him. (I don’t, I respect the talent, hate his subject matter)”

It spits reports like this: was a “news and opinion” reportthat I considered ‘distracting.’   You’ll see that Copyblogger is blue.  That’s not distracting.  Why?  Because Copyblogger commentors are the a top 10 source of business for me.  You can edit manually after the fact.

It gives me nagging warnings: “WTF were you doing between X&Y time.”

You can also “get focused,” and all of the sites below will be blocked. You won’t be able to check and see Sports.Yahoo.Com if you’re “focused.”

When Greg tells of 70+ hour workweeks, I don’t doubt it.  But I do think that he can shave 15 hours off this time easy, in 3-5 minute bites and chunks.   I know that I have, and I am doing what’s necessary.

The before and after is profound.   I have tracked revisions and “time in the system,” as a primary rubric.   Things that I’m doing are getting done way faster than at any point in my life.

This program is that “spouse in the room.”  Each night, Heather and I have a brief meeting the moment the kids go to bed.  (Recommended: plan the meal for tomorrow, plan the workout, go over money–has changed our marriage).   I share this with her willingly, because if she’s gonna defer her dream by watching munchkins, I gotta do what I gotta do so she doesn’t explode.

So, what I’m doing differently, is staying vertical.  I have a standup desk that’s made to call people. stand, headset on, and I use Skype.  I can contact about 22 people per 60 minutes. Most of them are from facebook.   I see if they need anything, and then follow up with those that do.   I’m averaging 45 minutes per day doing this, and I am increasing it by a bit each day. I hope to work myself up to 90 minutes.

The following is a quick youtube vid of an inelegant system I use:

Tomorrow’s monday.  Tomorrow, there will be 122 days left in the year.  Enough time, I would think, to do some serious damage if you hustle.

Note: This post isn’t aimed at the (IMHO) 10-20% of the real estate agent population who, day in and day out, work hard, effectively, and with massive purpose.

Dad, ‘FDB’ to some of his friends and family, said those exact words to me a few months after I’d gone from part time agent/student, to real estate full time. He wasn’t one to sugarcoat his words. Silly me, I not only protested like a stuck pig, I gave examples of how hard I’d been workin’.

22 year olds can be exceptionally clueless at times.

Mind you, in 90 days of hard 40 hour weeks I’d produced exactly one damning goose egg on the listing/sales board. I now know what Dad was talkin’ about, cuz a 14 year old C- student could put something on the listing/sales board after 12 hard working 40 hour weeks. It’s seriously not possible to get shut out workin’ that many rigorous hours week in and week out for a full quarter.

The trick is to be honest about how you’re defining hard, effective, work.

It’s not what you tell everyone else either. Imagine your husband/wife is in the room with you. Now how hard are ya workin’?

I’ve never understood this, even though I was guilty of it myself. Dad busted me for constantly gettin’ ready to get ready, to do something really lame, that wouldn’t produce squat anyway. Why do people get licensed only to pretend to work, then complain about how bad the market is, or the rest of the litany we’ve all heard — or uttered ourselves.

Lord knows I’ve put in my share of overtime over the years. But I’m hear to tell ya, with rare exception, those who work at doing what gets them in front of serious buyers/sellers and/or doing what gets those buyers/sellers where they wanna go, don’t hafta work wicked long hours to make an exceptionally good living. If you like working longer hours for whatever reason, good for you — and your bank account. But you can earn six figures workin’ 40 hours.

It’s like diggin’ 4′ X 6′ holes, 6′ feet deep, for sump pumps. If you’re gettin’ paid $1,000 a hole, you’ll press hard to learn just how many you can dig in 40 hours of real work. You won’t be spendin’ time cleanin’ your pick and shovel, or takin’ an hour to lay out the hole’s dimensions. You won’t spend hours upon hours searchin’ the internet and bookstore for books on how picks ‘n shovels are made.

You’d be creating holes as fast as you possibly could. You’d be figuring out ways to dig more efficiently, without wasting energy. You’d learn about what tools might work better.

All of which begs the central question.

Why are you consistently screwin’ the pooch when it comes to diggin’ all the holes you can as a real estate agent? What is it that stops you from swingin’ that pick high in the air, bringin’ it down hard, and repeating that ’till yet another hole is dug — and another $1,000 earned?

Once and for all, ask yourself: Whom do you really think you’re kidding?

After I’d flailed and stuttered my way into a corner, Dad laid down what I’ve since called the FDB Challenge. If this post even pretty much describes you, consider growin’ a pair and take the same challenge.

Get a notebook, create a spreadsheet, grab a legal pad — anything on which you can document every single hour of your 40 hour workweek. Keep this journal for the next 12 weeks. If a task takes less than an hour — note how long it took. Leave no minute unrecorded. Don’t make a big deal about it. Each entry should take a few seconds. There’s no whining in real estate.

The Rules

1. At least six hours a day must be spent prospecting. Not marketing — prospecting. Pick a method(s), but do it. All prospecting must include direct contact — phone, email, custom written letters, FSBOs, expireds, etc. You know the drill, so don’t pretend you don’t.

2. You must stand in front of a mirror repeatedly callin’ yourself a wuss if you don’t strictly adhere to rule #1.

The over/under for most agents is lasting ’till around 2ish on the first day. See, it’s not that we don’t know how/what to do, we just don’t wanna do it. So stop with the excuses, you sound like a 10 year old girl who’s skinned her knee at recess.

I Promise

I promise you’ll be a completely difference agent if you take the FDB Challenge to heart. There’s no way you won’t generate tremendous new business working 40 hours a week for a dozen weeks with this much prospecting. You’ve got nothing to lose since you’re not producing much now anyway, right? Keep your eye on the ball. Don’t let up for the entire 12 weeks. Become driven.

Here’s what happened when I took the FDB Challenge

I’m goin’ from memory here, but I remember the numbers fairly well.

90 days later I’d listed eight properties. Four were already in escrow by the 90th day. I’d put five buyer sides into escrow. Two had closed by the last day. I had numerous potential listings in the pipeline, along with many who were referring to me.

Using today’s values, (in San Diego) those 90 days would’ve fattened my bank account by roughly $120,000 or so.

I was 22 years old, and couldn’t find my ass with a map, two guides, and a GPS. Yet those 90 days of seriously hard work, almost all of it prospecting, changed by life forever. It stripped me of ever having an excuse, regardless of market conditions, for not making a decent to magnificent living. It also caused me some acute embarrassment for a few days. I almost couldn’t be in the same room with Dad, I was so ashamed of how I’d been such a pathetic, excuse making slacker.

All that vanished in an instant when he allowed one day that I might have a future in the business after all — a huge AttaBoy comin’ from him.

Are you flailing around, wondering if you’ll be in the business next year?

Is theFDB Challenge for you?

I pride myself with being a fairly understanding person, yes, sometimes to a fault. But I just can’t understand how so many sellers are unwilling or unable to accept any responsibility for their current situation. Sure, facing a short sale is not a position in which any one would want to be in but at some point we all need to take responsibility for what we do (or don’t do).

Most recently I was on the listening end of a tete-a-tete in which the potential seller blamed EVERYONE but himself. “It’s the government’s fault!”. Yep, the government is an easy one to blame, whether it was Bush’s foreign policies or Obama’s socialism. “I didn’t know what I was signing.” Want to blame the mortgage broker who helped you get financed? Sure, every homeowner is a victim of unscrupulous lending practices. “I thought property values only go up!” Or was it the Realtor who didn’t have the Magic 8 Ball to tell you property values would decrease? Yes! How about NO! How about accepting life, successes and failures, as they come? When did accountability go out of fashion? Is it fear or embarrassment that keep people from saying ‘yes, it was my mistake’? Is it a learned skill or an inherent attribute? Oh well, I better get used to it.

Most real estate agents and mortgage loan originators don’t know how to find business.  I fear that some of the social media strategies I’ve shared have morphed into a  “build it and they will come” approach to business development.  Greg Swann did a nice job of identifying this problem when he said that time spent on social media marketing is wasteful:

“Marketing” by social media is a huge waste of time. Selling is one-on-one, focused, time-consuming and goal-directed. Marketing, done properly, is broadcast, diffuse, time-efficient and passive and long-term in its goal-pursuit.

He’s absolutely correct.  The time investment required, to keep your social media current, never pencils out if you want to make six figures annually.  You will get some results but trust me when I tell you that you could have equaled or bested those results by handing out business cards at the swap mart (and yes, I’ve done that, too).  Here’s where his opinion gets a bit murky, though:

Even if you are really doing your best to market your services on-line, if you are doing it by engaging people one-on-one in fleeting media like Twitter or Facebook, you are almost certainly wasting your time.

That, I can tell you from experience, is only partly true.  Using social media to prospect can be exponentially more effective than cold-calling or handing out business cards at a swap mart because of the rich information users provide.  People buy from people they trust and connections help to build trust more quickly.    I’ll come back to this later but it helps to understand the difference between marketing and prospecting as lead generation tools.

Greg’s working definition of marketing (op. sit.) is a good one.   The long-term benefit of marketing is that it is scalable.   Online marketing, especially blogging, can be a workhorse, which generates inquiries from prospects for as long as the information is relevant.  The hour investment in a well-written blog post can attract tons of inquiries over time (I have a few blog posts that perform that well).  Likewise, a consistent display advertisement in the town’s weekly newspaper can trigger you to “top of mind” status for people seeking to sell their home.  The problem with marketing?  Marketing costs either time or money.  If you need rather than have money, you might consider prospecting as a lead generation tool.

Prospecting is best defined as an active business generation effort.  You seek potential customers in the “river” and sift through the “silt” to find little nuggets of “gold”.  It is, by nature, a disqualifying process where you throw out people who have no immediate or pressing need for your services.  Good prospecting rejects certain interested people as much as it does to accept them.  Consider this advice about prospecting from Russell Shaw:

You don’t want to pay a lot for advertising for two reasons: you don’t have the money to pay and you wouldn’t know what to put in the ad anyway.  Okay so skip advertising for now.  Prospect.  Learn what people consider valuable just by trial and error.  See enough people and ask enough people what they might be interested in and in very short order (a few hundred people from now) you will know what to say and what not to say when you are talking to a prospective customer.

There are exactly two methods of getting business in our business: marketing or prospecting.  Learn to effectively do one or both of those or leave real estate sales.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, those are the only three choices.  The skill of getting customers is the “important skill” in our business.  For a really bright future make this important thing your important thing.

You can blindly cold call names out of a telephone directory.  You can wear out the shoe leather by knocking on doors for listings.  You could ask the question “Wanna buy a home?” when you hand out the business card at the swap mart; that action alone turns the marketing effort into a prospecting effort.  Ask any top-producing securities broker or insurance agent and they’ll tell you that, in the beginning of their career, they built their business through cold prospecting.  The top producers still prospect but they use a much more sophisticated strategy; referral prospecting.

Referral prospecting leverages your proven work results by soliciting introductions from happy customers.  This can be as crude as the “referral card at closing” or as sophisticated as asking a past customer for an introduction to a specific person.  A personal example of the latter was when I asked a securities broker, for whom I secured a refinance loan, for an introduction to another broker in her office.  I thought I might have an opportunity to write a bigger loan for next broker; I was right.  The challenge with that strategy is that you must have a specific “target prospect” in mind.

Social media offer us a peek behind the curtain of the previously hidden relationships our customers have.  It helps you to identify that “specific prospect”.   LinkedIn shows us our customers’ colleagues, friends, and customers.  Facebook might identify our customers’ political connections, work colleagues, kids’ Pop Warner coaches, family members, and neighbors.  Social media narrows the field so that you can more effectively “target” the people with whom you wish to speak.

Social media marketing is really not a cost effective strategy for business generation but social media prospecting can help you fire an arrow at more bull’s eyes.  I’ll share some specific strategies, which can produce immediate positive results, in future posts.

Happy hunting!

In a recent comment on his own post: Are you closing on the wrong objectives? The most insidious form of sales call reluctance is proudly racking up empty “accomplishments.”  Greg Swann, the author, said this:  “we devote a lot of effort … to closing on the buyer and on the buyer’s agent. Salespeople need something to say, so we go to great lengths to get them to say what we want said.”  That’s a very good point, as far as it goes – which is not far enough.

A couple of days ago, in a post by Glenn Kelman comparing days on market to listing activity level the discussion led, as it should, to actual offers in comparison to days on market.  I wrote a comment that in our local market, “If you go more than two weeks without an offer, you’ve done something wrong… which, generally speaking, means you’ve priced it poorly.”  Again, true as far as it goes – which is not far enough.

Agents don’t realize who their target market is or, if they do, agents don’t act on that knowledge.  Who sells a home?  The buyer?  No.  The buyers’ agent.  According to the latest statistics from NAR, when asked where they found the home they eventually purchased, the number one answer is: agent.  Think about that for a second: the primary referral source for the actual buyer who purchases your listing is the buyers’ agent.  Do you think maybe they merit a little of our marketing focus? Duh…

I co-host our weekly Brokers’ Open Caravan.  I have a few minor responsibilities: inject a little humor, keep the energy in the room up, and a weekly “Marketing Minute” presentation.  But my primary job as MC is to keep the highlight on the Listing Agents who are there to pitch their property.  Most agents, God bless ‘em, get up to the front of the room, drop their head down into their notes and, in their best impression of a sleep aid, recite the Agents’ Manifesto of Facts: ”This beautiful home has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and 1400 square feet.  It’s offered at…”  Shoot me now!  Good Grief Myrtle, I already have that info right here in fr0nt of me!  I can read…  What the agent should have have done is realized the golden marketing opportunity facing them.  What they should have done is remember to answer these two simple questions:

1. What’s Something Interesting About This Property?  Tell the other agents something about the property that we don’t already know:  sellers’ motivation, unique aspect of the property, a humerous anecdote, something to remember!  I’m an agent in your audience and I hear about ten homes a day.  Give me a hook.  Give me a reason to remember your home when I meet with my client tomorrow.
2. Who is the Perfect Buyer for This Home?  Describe the buyer in enough detail that even I, a donut stuffed, coffee dependent, escrow-in-trouble distracted agent, might recognize them.  Force me to run through my mental rolodex.

I know this will come as a surprise to many of you… but some real estate agents are lazy.  If you do their work for them, your listing will see more showings.  What do you think Greg means when he says: “…salespeople need something to say…”  He means you’ve got to put the words in their mouth and give them a reason – hell, even tell ‘em which buyer – to show your listing.

There are only a few true channels for marketing your listing: Signs, Flyers, Single Sites, the MLS and Brokers’ Opens.  The sign?  It has only two purposes: sell the home and sell people on you as a listing agent.  (Vast majority fail at both! Want to know more?  You’re reading the #1 source – just search Custom Signs).  Flyers and Single Sites?  Designed toward the buyer; designed to make the house “sticky” and create an emotional response in the buyer.  This is important because the internet ranks #2 in finding the actual home a buyer eventually purchases; yard sign is (a distant) #3.  But what about the #1 source?  What about the buyers’ agent?  The MLS and the Brokers’ Open are your venues, but are you using them?  Are you creating a memorable image of a home and a buyer that will stick inside of an agent’s mind?

Good marketing makes use of more than one tool to reach an audience.  Great marketing realizes that there may be more than one audience and dedicates marketing channels to each of them.  Next time you put together a marketing campaign for a listing, realize that your biggest and most influential target audience is other real estate agents!  Act accordingly.

I was talking to Scott Cowan this morning, and he asked me about future Unchained events. It happens that I’ve been thinking about doing something, and Scott and I explored a few ideas.

Here’s one I really like: BloodhoundBlog Unchained and Unwired in Las Vegas: The Return of the Sales Monster.

I’m thinking Friday, November 26th, 2010, the day after Thanksgiving. One day, one big room like we did in Orlando, 9 am to 9 pm, bop ’til you drop. You could fly in Thursday night after the family stuff or early Friday morning. Arrive when you can, leave when you have to, and maybe we do streaming video and a webinar all day as well.

For content, I think I want to focus on selling, rather than marketing. We can be counted on to cover a lot of wired marketing just in passing, but, as I have been writing, there’s is a lot of ground on the sales side of our business that we’re leaving uncovered.

I also want this to be a Stone Soup project, if we can get that done. I want to keep it cheap, so you can afford to come, and I want to keep it simple, so that I can coordinate things without going up in flames.

So tell me: Is this a good idea? Would you come?

Also: Hit me with ideas. Content ideas in particular, but I’m game for anything you have to say. We might set up the room in “rounds” so that we can structure the day half as formal group sessions and half as mini-kennels, self-coalescing unconference sessions.

I’ll listen to a sponsor if you’ll pay for the room and two rounds of snacks-’n'-beverages, and I’ll give you banner space, a meet-and-greet table and a 30 minute speaking slot in exchange. Conference space should be cheap in Vegas right now, so we might not be talking about a very big check.

I truly don’t know if this is worth doing. I think Realtors need to get back to selling basics, but the great mass of wired agents seem to be so infatuated with selling small talk to each other that they may have no interest in what we have to say. If we can’t fill a lot of seats, I can stay home and take a nap that day, instead.

So: Are you in? Where should our minds be focused? And: Can you take 12 straight hours of a Bloodhounds baying out their sales techniques?

It should come as no surprise that the average “good customer,” doesn’t spend a lot of time (or wish to learn) anything about the Real Estate Industry.  Even when it serves them–even if they should know.   The average “good customer,” would prefer that their real estate was “handled,” for them, that they could swallow a house selling pill and the house would get itself sold, with maximum convenience and minimum hassle.

They don’t (generally speaking) want to know anything about how you get paid, why a Divorced Real Estate Commission is better, or how many homes that you’ve sold.  They don’t give a rat’s rear about who owns what shortcodes, about your social media marketing, or anything else save the HUD-1 at the end of the month(s) it takes to sell.  Because of the time spent (and also because the NAR seems to benefit from marketing the anxiety inherent in the real estate transactions) Realtors delude themselves to think that their clients want new friends.  Realtors have made a world where “who you know” and “rapport” are more important than “what you know” and “fiduciary obedience.”

Realtors (and we vendors) delude when we think client-o-mers want new BFFs. Clients like congeniality, they need fiduciary obedience.  But they have families, lifelong friends and unless it’s happenstance, we ain’t amongst them.  Sure, our businesses require have frequent interactions when we are engaged, but we’re not friends with people because they needed a website (or a mortgage, or a house).  We are their servants, dutybound (and moneybound) to do the work that we say we are to do.

The charlatan or confidence man becomes a friend as a way to again divorce accountability from the results–either consciously or unconsciously.  If we become friends, then we get the “friendly” treatment should the webiste not rank or the home not sell for the price we promised.

If our customers could simply eat a pill and have everything “get handled” they would.  And many of them did, from 2000-2006, with the maniacal mortgage funding process.    When you leave your financial decisions to those folks that benefit from churn, well, then, you get what you got.  Churned finances. There are more vacuous, personal branding oriented Power Agents than there are fiduciaries.

There are more people centered on themselves than centered on excellence.

What winds up happening is that because the customers don’t hold us accountable (because they don’t want to be bothered with the burden of accountability), the currency that we have to use to fuel our business isn’t business excellence.  It’s contacts.  People don’t want to cross the street to get better coffee, so Starbucks put one on each side of the street. The need for the feeling of convenience and the desire to eat a pill and make the real estate issues/website issues/whatever issues go away lets mediocrity in the room.

We then realize that we don’t have to be any good–that just we need people, so we adopt a congenial flacid face that Winston Smith would be proud of– we save our ire for bitching about At&t and Dell’s customer support.

What then happens–if we don’t fight it–is that we disingenuously ingratiate ourselves to others and we become supplicants of the horde.   We realize that a large amount of contacts can insulate us from coming to grips with our own mediocrity, so we become congenial, tame, toothless and mildly amusing.  It’s an easier path than thinking, than enduring the anxious tension and fear that you must create to create something awesome.

We find ourselves rejoicing and spreading mediocrity.

What becomes clear is this: people are worth more than excellence, and any new idea–even in the bright space of new ideas–will be subject to shunning.  IF the new idea came from an egoist like Pearson or Swann then it’ll be as dead as a vook.  No consideration because we’re not in a meritocracy, we’re in an ad hominem world where stuff is only as good as it’s creator is congenial.  Mediocrities insist on congeniality because that puts them in the kingmaker role that they covet.

We are all vendors, now.  What we do about it is our choice.  We don’t need to seek approbation if we’re doing a great job, in fact too much of it may mean that we’re not a threat to the status quo.

Our 2.0 world requires less and less: you have to be excellent.  You sit through reBarf camps and unconferences to make connections.  You go to AmSpirit networking meetings (or BNI) groups in the hopes of leveraging the contacts of your contacts.  So we’re all friendly, albeit disengenously.  We get smothered and covered in mediocre and then you get confused so the currency that you start trading on is “if people like me,” not “what problems am I solving.”

Some measure success in terms of followers, Alexa rank and page views.  I measure success in terms of bank account, waistline and nookie.  This year has improved on all counts.