One of the things that I admire about Greg is how thoroughly he makes sure that EVERYTHING he can do is done to market a sellers property. Custom signs, coffee table books, the list goes on and on. When it comes to sellers, he gets his money the old fashioned way, he earns it.
One of the quiet unsung Bloodhound heroes of a broker is Cheryl Johnson. If you want to see someone who puts EFFORT into building the best systems for her agents as an independent broker, she has my vote for the best and the brightest. BOTH best and brightest.
One of the tools that she often uses for this purpose is WordPress mu (multi-user). And she graciously left an explanation of how to use it via GoDaddy here on her blog.
In our brokerage, we have quite a few buyer leads coming in. Our agents WANT to treat them to something special, but they needed the tools to accomplish it. So here’s a little (big actually) DIY project using Cheryl’s post that we are just putting the polish on to help our agents treat buyers the way Greg treats sellers and Cheryl treats agents.
We created an ONLINE WELCOME KIT that allows each agent to have a welcome kit **simply a WP blog with EVERYTHING we can think of that they might need** of their own. Here’s one that we did for Stephanie Mattingly in our office. Bear in mind that we are still making changes so you may see a glitch or two as it gets fine tuned. Contact information all goes to the agent directly. It is simply a great way to give potential buyer clients the information they need, including a “Get Hooked Up” Guide to help them connect the dots once they move and a Services Guide to connect newcomers with local services vendors (and connect our agents to them as well.).
If you do the hosting the way that Cheryl describes in her post, the cost is simply a deluxe shared hosting account at GoDaddy. (a few bucks a month across 110 agents…equals pennies for each one.).
How do the agents fire this marketing weapon? On agent websites, emails, blogs and facebook pages there are going to be links…”Check out our ‘Welcome to Louisville Kit’. If you know a friend coming into town, please forward this to them”.., etc. So, instead of a buyer waiting for our agents to mail them a box, the box comes instantly, electronically to them. If they lose it, it gets sent to them again. Instant gratification. And if they want a boxed hard copy as well, they can request it and one will be happily sent to them.
Giving them what they want. Faster. More efficiently. That’s what it is all about.
Robert Worthington says:
Eric! :))) after reading the post I have a reminder to put together a welcome kit this weekend. You are absolutely right about giving buyers and sellers what they want right now. I always love the wealth of information that you and many others post on bloodhound, this is great!
March 12, 2010 — 8:21 am
Cheryl Johnson says:
Thanks for the mention!
March 12, 2010 — 11:56 am
Eric Blackwell says:
da Blog Mother is more than welcome! 😉
Eric
March 12, 2010 — 1:25 pm
Ms. Cakes says:
Cheryl Johnson is a tecno-genius and all-around wonderful human being! They don’t call her the Queen of Kludge for nothin’!!
March 12, 2010 — 5:32 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
Kludge indeed.
I could not agree more.When it comes to taking the time to LEARN the technology as well as being a broker and then share it openly with others, she is tops.
I admire that in her.
Being able to bang out a WPmu roll out on GoDaddy shared hosting (cheap and easy for these kind of low traffic, high impact rollouts) was something that MANY people were floundering with when she wrote this. It remains the best and easiest way to rollout that type of thing.
March 13, 2010 — 6:54 am
Greg Swann says:
I don’t deserve much credit for the work we do with sellers. The high-end listings are all Cathleen, and she kills with them. When I list in my own name, the houses are much lower on the food chain, and the marketing is very different.
I’ve thought about talking about work I’m doing with engenu for my buyers, especially investors, but that’s a task for another day — not Saturday. 😉
Meanwhile, here is an example of Cathleen’s knock-your-socks-off listing praxis. She represented the current sellers when they bought the house, so she had the resources to build this “before and after” page. I’ve never seen a better example of the value added to a home by remodeling, and this is a very potent defense of the sales price. You can bet this slide show will be running on a laptop at open house.
March 13, 2010 — 7:56 am
Marissa Myers says:
I think the WP Welcome Kit, branded to each agent, is excellent. What SEO benefit are you getting from the welcome kits?
March 17, 2010 — 7:33 am